It wasn't an easy path, naturally.

Like so many strides in science before, its initial steps were in the other direction. The research on regeneration was originally military, an effort to prevent the soldier caste from reaching depletion point before the fighting in disputation zone F-118 could even enter its second generation.

As it happens, the combat phase of the contemporary geopolitics cycle was deemed inefficiently timed and put on indefinite delay. Diplomatic program 17 was spun up to fill the gap, but the regeneration project continued.

As is so often the case in the grandest of designs, the hard part proved easy and the simple grew complicated. Regeneration itself is anything but impossible, after all most living creatures do it to one extent or another. Advancement in the field is only a consideration of acceleration and scale.

Each cell of your body knows where it is and what it is, and simultaneously carries that knowledge for all the other cells.

Your DNA hologram stores the blueprint of your whole within every minute part, and the chemistry of repair is in-built.

The limitations of scope, speed and resource can be overcome. And they were.

Growing back skin and bone and flesh overnight is only a matter of combining elements in the right amounts at the right time.

It worked…and yet it didn't.

Nerves are different. They don't respond, they grow back but don't connect to the network. The synapses that were once bright with arcing electrons dim with each renewal. They could make living flesh but they couldn't make their flesh…live.

Something was lacking. Something antiquated heresies – those deemed antithetical to liberal society, and thus justly placed under legal limitation – might have named the spark of the divine.

A first regeneration limb has noticeable reduction in strength, reflex speed and fine motor function. After three cycles a new-growth arm or leg may as well be tied on with string for all the function that was preserved.

Regrown limbs, then, were a dead end. Being both more expensive and ultimately less use than advanced prostheses.

But the technology for accelerated regeneration of viable muscle mass now existed. It was only a question of finding a use for it.

The searchlights went strobing in all directions for an application. Military and medical – the most profitable fora of research since time immemorial – were out. Farming and agriculture were the obvious next step.

What our more superstitious forebears may have called providence was on their side in this endeavour. Preliminary testing showed the body chemistry of vegan ungulates was more conducive to the regeneration process.

Simply put: Cows grow back cow faster than people grow back person.

Early ideas of selling the technology to the farming conglomerates to repair damaged or mutated product prior to market inspection were turned over for a more ambitious overhaul of the cattle market in general.