Winning the Genetic Lottery

Winning the Genetic Lottery

By Ken Haramiru

Copyright 2012-2023 Ken Haramiru

Smashwords Edition

For more information about books by Ken Haramiru, go to http://haramiru.com/

Smashwords edition, license notes

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The idea for this story came to me while I was sitting around bored out of my mind at the company Christmas party. There was a casino theme, and folks were gambling with fake money. I thought to myself, If someone were to somehow win it big – real big – what would people be willing to do to get a slice? And what would a man ultimately be willing to give it all away for? And what if there were something like a lottery, but your odds of winning were only relative to how interesting your plans for the money were?

And so I present to you, Winning the Genetic Lottery, which takes place in a parallel world not entirely unlike our own. I hope you find its premise stimulating.

The Setting

International software magnate Linus Ritchie was bored of doing things with his fortune. He'd graduated from college in 1990, released his new Kernux operating system, and seized the upper hand in the operating system market within a year. By the late-90s, most of his competitors were out of business and his only competition was from the open-source community - which he wisely kept on his side by prioritizing inter-operability between his system and theirs. Linus eventually grew so rich and bored that he began amusing himself by making anonymous posts on message boards from time to time. He usually made short posts that asked simply, What would you do with a billion dollars?

The most interesting respondents were hunted down and actually awarded a billion dollars. Their ideas didn't have to be particularly good uses for a billion dollars, just interesting enough to tickle Linus’s whim. Each recipient received a billion dollars and was followed around by a film crew for as long as the viewing audience found their story interesting. Winning candidates rarely accomplished their goals, but Linus didn’t care; his interest was, as he put it, strictly for the lulz. As an investment in amusement and hijinks, his money had never been misspent yet.

The first indication that a winner ever had that they’d been talking to the real Linus Ritchie, was when his representative contacted the winner to arrange payment. The anonymous nature of Linus’s postings encouraged plenty of folks to make false what would you do with a billion dollars? posts on the internet. These provided Ritchie with even more amusement, as people scrambled to come up with interesting questions, and the Nigerian 419 scammers picked up an all-new repertoire of fraud with which to prey upon the clueless. On occasion, the more amusing impersonators would receive payment as well, and a few winners had even been chosen from impersonator threads. Needless to say, the signal-to-noise ratio on the Internet for anything related to Linus Ritchie was horrible. This is why I’d taken to providing glib, nonsensical responses to all Ritchie threads I bothered to participate in.

Chapter 1: More Money than Anyone Needs

April 1st, This Year

One morning, I was in my cubicle at work, waiting for a test run of my software to finish thrashing through its paces. I was killing time until it finished by browsing Kriegslist while sipping coffee, when I spotted yet another What would you do with a billion dollars? post. I'd taken to answering them lately, more to amuse the others on the thread than for any other reason. I started to post that I'd create the world's first all-squirrel zoo and circus, but then realized I'd already posted that one last week. Instead, I posted the following:

I'll use it to get more women pregnant than any man before me. By Darwin's standards, I'll be the most successful man who ever lived!

My finger hovered over the send button, pondering whether or not to send it for a few seconds since I was posting it from work. Finally, I concluded that I didn't give much of a rip at this point. If they wanted to complain that I made an anonymous, slightly inappropriate posting from work, they could hunt up another code monkey in this job seeker's market who was willing to pull 10-hour days.

Meh, I said as I clicked post, this job sucks anyway.

My program's test runs finished just seconds after the post appeared, spewing megabytes of log messages onto my screen. I sighed, took another sip of my coffee, and buried myself in my computer screen to start digging through the results.

Around three in the afternoon, my manager Frank came by my cubicle. When I turned my chair to face him, I noticed a face that no one wanted to see in their cubicle: Fred, head of the corporate HR department.

Jim, did you send any personal messages today from your work computer? Frank asked me.

I raised my eyebrow and guardedly said, No more than usual, sir. Is there a problem?

Fred rested his arms on my cubicle. I'm here trying to track down a post made on Kriegslist today, which the desktop support guys inform me probably came from your computer. Did you post there today? he asked.

I paled a little. Well, yes, sir, I said.

There wasn't much sense in refusing to admit it. Losing this job didn't scare me, but the process of getting terminated was never fun. I'd been through my share of layoffs, and the paperwork was never fun.

Did you respond to one of those 'what if you had a billion dollars' questions? Fred asked.

I nodded. Yes, sir. I paused for a second.

You know, I only did so while my code was running. I assure you that it didn't impact my work performance in any way.

Frank raised his hand to cut me off, breaking into a huge grin. Forget about your job performance, Jim - you're a rock star! You were writing to the real Linus Ritchie! I personally don't care at this point if you were sitting in your cubicle this morning jacking off. Just for helping track you down, we're all getting $250k apiece. Me, Fred, and the desktop support guys who handled it. All of us.

I blinked in astonishment. My fear of getting fired had just been replaced by the realization that I no longer needed this job, or any other, ever again. Holy crap. You're serious? I asked.

Serious as a heart attack! C'mon downstairs, his representative just arrived. He expects to see you downstairs in a few minutes, Fred said.

The buzz had already started, rippling through the office. My corporate messenger program exploded with incoming messages, most of them asking if I'd just become a billionaire. I locked my screen, sending it to the screen saver while I stood up shakily, my head in a fog.

Come on, people! Frank called out. Jim just got picked by Linus Ritchie!

The floor suddenly seemed like it was a mile below me as I staggered forward, in shock. I was barely aware of being steered by Fred and Frank toward the front lobby. A throng of co-workers began to crowd around us and follow, a murmur of disbelief following us as we walked. Fred, unable to contain himself, was hopping and skipping, humming some kind of happy tune. I was in a daze. My plan had been accepted? Now I had to figure out how to do it. Hell, I just posted it as a joke in the first place.

The lobby had a staircase leading down to the ground floor, and at the top of it was a huge, stone-like bald stranger with beady eyes wearing a black suit. He saw us and stood aside, then blocked the stairway completely once we passed, refusing to let anyone else by. Unable to follow us, my co-workers piled up on the balcony instead, looking down into the lobby where my fate awaited me.

A solitary man stood in the middle of the lobby. He was handsome and clean-cut, with short black hair arranged in an expensive haircut. He wore a dark gray business suit with edges so sharp they could probably slice bread, and he watched us as we set foot at the bottom of the staircase. I'd seen him before on TV, at the start of every episode of Linus Ritchie's reality shows: he was Harvey Rausch, the man everyone wanted to meet - because he was the man who Linus hired to hand over a billion dollars. He extended his hand and started walking towards us as we reached the bottom of the staircase, and my eyes darted to the corners of the room where guys with cameras were discretely filming this event.

I shook his hand as he said, Jim Baynor, yes? I'm Harvey Rausch, and I represent Linus Ritchie. Would you mind repeating the proposal you sent him today?

I drew a blank for a moment. I'd seen this on TV a hundred times over: the moment which pretty much everyone in the past decade has dreamt of at least once. I leaned towards him and quietly stammered out, Uh, I said that I wanted to have more children than any other man in history.

Mr. Rausch gave me a genuinely warm smile and clapped me on the shoulder. Even though they couldn't hear what was said, my co-workers cheered as they saw it. Mr. Rausch replied, in a loud voice they could hear upstairs, Yes, that was indeed the winning proposal. Congratulations Jim, you're about to be a billionaire! That is if you can present Mr. Ritchie with the answer to the following question: How will a billion dollars make that happen? The cheers died down instantly; lots of people screwed up at this stage, and never got their billion.

I glanced up at the balcony upstairs, where my co-workers were gathered. My face turned a deep shade of crimson as I realized that they'd all be intimately familiar with my plan by the end of the day.

I was still dazed.