The Game of Life

Tests

     The exercise chambers were housed in the outermost living cells of Columbus, where the centrifugal gravity was strongest. The inhabitants had access to game fields, swimming pools, weight rooms, and running tracks from any corridor that ran through the equator of the ship and were required to make use of them twice daily. Those Seeds who had physical abilities, such as Ciph, were further required to spend two hours in special conditioning sessions designed to force their bodies to make use of those specialized genes, increasing the likelihood that they would be active in their offspring.

     “Come on, Max, run with me.” Ciph pulled his arm as she led him onto the track that went the full width of Columbus before it finally circled back onto itself once again. “I’ll race ya’!”

     “That’s not a race, it’s a sick joke.” Max shook himself free, “But fine, we’ll race until you beat me.”

     “Then it’s not a race at all.” She pouted.

     They ran for half an hour before he finally gave up and slowed to a jog, and she flashed him a wide grin and picked up her pace. She would be running for the next two hours at least, and probably longer. Ciph was made for endurance, Max mused, a combination of genes that pushed oxygen to the muscles and enlarged the tendons to allow for even longer distances and faster evacuation of lactic acid. Ciph wasn’t even the best among them -- some could almost double her best distance. And then there were the athletes with fast-twitch muscle fibers aplenty. They could jump higher, run faster, punch harder, and react quicker than any previously recorded human. Trained to make use of their skills from an early age, the average boy on Columbus would have put many past Olympians to shame. Max was not one of those boys.

     “Maxwell, Julian. Put on your masks, please.” The voice in his ear belonged to Julian’s mother, Doctor Val Lind. “We’ll start on level 10 and move up in increments.”

     Epigenetics is the study of how genes change over the lifespan of an individual. A gene in use, for example, becomes more likely to be passed on to the next generation than one that sees little use. Epigenetics is why families share the same tastes in food, and why lifestyle choices and habits are shared by twins separated at birth, or siblings split by adoption. On Columbus, the Seeds were conditioned daily to make exceptionally high use of their specialty genes to insure the highest rate of repopulation into the next generation.

     “One red, two yellow.” Max said.

     “Good. Level eleven.” The screen in front of his eyes flashed a dull gray, designed to notify him that the level had changed, but not to detract from his eye exercises. The computer added tiny shapes into the virtual reality field and it was the subject’s job to describe them. Levels one through five were playable by any student with enough time to acclimate to the system, but the higher levels appeared pitch black to all but Max and Julian.

     “Three blue. No, two blue, one purple, one orange.”

     The screen flashed again. Every higher level showed smaller shapes and smaller variations of color. Level fifteen was the highest he had ever cleared, though he had done it only once. Julian's record was fourteen.

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     The bridge was expansive, with viewports and monitor screens to express the various happenings of the ship. Seats for the navigation officers were clustered in a raised section near the back of the room, and the worker lounge made up most of the area directly under the front window, which curved over the entire deck.

     “You’ve got the conditioning report?” Captain Harlan glanced from his status monitor to Doctor Lind.

     “Maxwell and Julian are still peaking at level 14, if that’s what you’d like to know.” She passed the data pad across his desk, “The psychics are proving fruitless, though, I can tell you that much with absolute certainty. The computer recommends ending that sequence with this coming generation if we continue to see no results, but it is my recommendation that we forget it ever happened in the first place. Cut our losses and repurpose the labs for something useful.”