A geneticist looks into a way of splicing the good luck gene into bad-luckers. Using gene therapy as a way to try to turn around the lonely, painful, lives so many bad luckers are forced to exist within. -- Fighting Fit
The luck gene is a fickle, fickle beast. Some people get the worst luck whilst also being a living good luck charm for everyone around them. That's not the worst of it. Some are bad luck to a huge swathe of space around them.
There are two choices when that happens to an unfortunate soul: Isolation, or weaponisation. Pray your civilisation is not rotten enough to require a tactical Lucker strike.
Most of the time, it evens out. Luckers find a mutually benevolent cancellation aura and live passably normal lives. But for some, there is very little hope at all. For those literally luckless people, there are solitary Havenworlds with no intelligent life, soft furnishings, and over-engineered food printers.
There is also the Lucker Research Facility. Founded by the Vardians who discovered the Luck Gene, they have been working tirelessly on what differentiates a Good Lucker from a Bad Lucker, and at least toning down the worst of the latter.
It's good to have hope, but they are starting to despair.
Genetic Analyst Zu had been staring at sequence patterns so long that they had burned after-images into his eyeballs.
On one sheet, a Good Lucker's Luck Gene. On another, the Bad Lucker's. Overlaid, they were practically identical. Prefix genes, suffix genes, practically identical.
Therein lay the rub.
It's the little differences that made big changes in mutations.
He'd been at it for hours, just trying to figure out which one was the bunny. Which of those almost imperceptible bit-flips in the gene code was the magic formula for making Luck change.
Zu threw the flimsies across the room and hurled the rubber duck[1] after them. "Powers FLAKK these spavined storming BIT FLIPS!"
Counselor Odess entered with hot chocolate and comfort snacks. "I thought I smelled a burning fuse. What did the duck do this time?"
"The duck is no help. It's a freaking goldbrick. I want to fire the duck. Out of a cannon. Into the sun!" Zu accepted the hot chocolate and savoured a sip. "We've tried to isolate which bit flip does what, and... nothing. No change whatsoever."
"Maybe it's all of them?" said Odess. "Or a combination."
Zu almost choked on his hot chocolate. After a spate of coughing and another, more soothing sip, he said, "Congratulations, you're smarter than a rubber duck."
And, by implication, Genetic Analyst Zu.
"We are going to brute force the combination. Flakk this little bugger!" He stuffed a handful of nibbles into his cheeks as he started coding up combinations to test.
It's a very interesting job when you get more credit than a rubber duck.
[1] Many technicians working with codes of all varieties have utilised a rubber duck by explaining their code to the inanimate object. Many have banned this practice owing to enraged harm to the rubber ducks.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / webking]
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