The Thumb Lottery

The Thumb Lottery: You Can't Live If You Don't Play
(A Short Story in 4 Acts)

A society is so overpopulated and resources so scarce, everyone has been praying for a disaster to control the population, but year after year, decade after decade, they live in peace with no plagues or earthquakes or famine to even take the edge off the exponential population boom.

But even though food and water are plentiful, space and jobs are not, and those with more and enough to spare don't share with those that have none.

Realizing they cannot solve this problem by increasing their resources or teaching folks how to share, the entire country agrees to hold a 50/50 lottery. Each person above the age of 18, or upon turning 18, will go to a central location in each city and will press a button with their right thumb. The machine will respond by either A) indelibly tattooing the thumb with a red X, or B) doing nothing at all.

Half get a red X, half don't.

This becomes known as the Thumb Lottery.

Those that do not receive a red X may, at any time after turning 18, be eliminated by those that do have a red X.

Any person with a red X may at any time have an unmarked person killed, even for no other reason than because they cut them off in traffic, or gave their child a bad grade in school, or looked cross-eyed at them.

There arises a great black market in red X thumbs, because they can be removed and sewn on someone else.

Initially, anyone without a right thumb is considered safe, for it is assumed that they once had a thumb with a red X that was cut off by black marketeers. But eventually, to avoid being eliminated, people start removing their own right thumbs and say that their red X was stolen.

100 years later....

The population begins to adjust. Not everyone with a red X decides to kill another person; society is accustomed to many people with and without red X's living side by side. Occasionally, quietly, those without a red X will disappear, but this is done discretely and tolerated.

One day, a nonpartisan group decides the Thumb Lottery has met its goal and proposes they no longer force anyone to go through the lottery.

But there is wide protest, especially among those with red X's. "I went to the Thumb Lottery like everyone else," they say, "I pressed that button and I received my red X and I want to keep the rights that go along with it." Many without a red X agree because it sounds so reasonable and it's been the law for so long.

Then there is a great famine, and nearly all the people die.

1,000,000 years later...

They sky and oceans and rivers are clear. Vast tracts of wheat and corn separate large cities.Streets are airy and festive. Through a window we see a man having dinner with his family. It's a nice house, well lit, spacious, spartan, futuristic and otherworldly. As he raises a fork to his mouth, you notice he has no right thumb. He looks like any ordinary 21st Century man but for the missing thumb. He talks to his wife and children. They are all eating too. And as they raise their forks and drink from their cups and wipe their mouths and laugh as all families do, even a million years hence, you see that none of them have right thumbs, either.

Started: 2012-10-26

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