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  “Enough betting” the Speaker said, “that seems to me to be the worst bet I have ever heard. She is betting against our abilities to tweak something. Twello has won the right to accept all bets and will pay all the other bets for and against. Do you all agree?”

  All hands went up and laughter permeated the room.

  “Twello, will you accept being the winner of the worst bet,” the speaker said in a mocking tone.

  “Yes I accept,” she said with glee,” let the TWEAK begin.”

  The Speaker walked over to the far wall to access his input panel. He casually made a few strokes on it and then announced, "The simulation should be tested before we finalize. I draw your attention to the view screens that are lowering now," he said with an authoritarian tone.

  There are a few blinking lights and view screens just seemed to flicker briefly. The Speaker looked at his panel with satisfaction and said "The simulation has passed. We are ready to begin.”

  View screens blinked a few times and then settled on a view of the planet spiraling inwards. Off in the far distance, a small bright light appeared and gradually got brighter. When it got close to the planet, it simply disappeared. The planet itself was unchanged. The volcanic activity was heavy on the surface of the planet, heat visibly emanated. There appeared to be a minor atmosphere that had formed and the planet was indeed lifeless.

  On the view screens, the evolution of the planet quickened and changes were immediately evident. The planet was slowly cooling as its twin moons hovered, in the distance. As the simulation had suggested, the planet remained barren.

  The crowd murmured its acceptance, and Twello looked on in disbelief. The progress of evolution was steady, the seconds that passed, represented hundreds of thousands of years. It would only take a few hours to bring it up to the same level of evolution of when the game began.

  The far left of the view screen appeared to flicker momentarily and three bright objects traveling at a high rate of speed could easily be noticed. Within 4 seconds, they had slammed into the planet.

  Twello leapt from her chair and laughed hysterically, "I've won, I've won! All of you bastards can just shove it. I knew I'd be right," she screamed in an animated voice. Her laughter was infectious as she proceeded to dance about the room, attempting to grab anybody in the vicinity.

  ———-———————————————-

  "Gentlemen, please take your seats so that we can discuss this matter at hand," the Moderator said softly.

  Everyone moved to the chairs arranged in a semicircle allowing the Moderator to attend the open end. Within a few minutes, everyone seemed comfortable and ready to begin.

  "As you all know we have located a tweaker society, the planet I've outlined before. Now the problem is not that they have the technology to tweak, it’s how they're using their tweaking. They seem to possess little compassion for any life forms they encounter and accept no responsibility for their actions. Our dilemma is what we should do about it. There has been much debate in the past of what our responsibilities are. If we interfere, are we any better than they are? Will we be perceived as having a God complex, or will we be perceived as being righteous and caring? I will open up the floor to this particular debate after I have given you some more details of the current events on this planet."

  The Moderator shifted his voice to a monotone and said, "Most of the technology possessed by this planet is lost to everyone, including their echelon. The robots and computers are what maintain the status quo and the infrastructure of the planet. Without these, they would descend into anarchy. There is not one living person left capable of even doing simple repairs to the equipment. They began tweaking some 10,000 years ago and steadily over the course of time, their tweaking has become more malignant. They have destroyed and altered mass civilizations for bets amounting to not much more than pocket change. Our current estimates suggest that they intend to destroy the life of an entire planet. We are not just talking about eradicating a primary species, but making the planet itself devoid of life forever. Our fears are that this will escalate, and they will start eradicating entire universes. They view themselves as some sort of Gods. At one point in time, they had a thriving space program. They visited thousands of planets within their own universe. When their scientists first discovered tweaking and the ability to alter the very fabric of the universes, they pursued this at the cost of all else. What the Council has suggested is that we modify their caste system from the very beginning so that it simply does not exist. We have also concluded that we need to set everyone in equilibrium with each other. In this way, no one person will ever be better than another. Our projections estimate that they will flourish under this particular system. However, bear in mind; we have no way to restrict their ability in science. By our tenants, we are not allowed to interfere on a physics level. Our sole purpose is only to tweak the psychology and sociology of a given world."

  The Moderator took a deep breath and said quietly, "It is now open to debate."

  The head of social sciences moved into the space once occupied by the Moderator. He breathed evenly and looked around his colleagues meeting each one's eyes, one at a time.

  He began speaking softly, "As you all know this particular type of tweaker, is the worst sort whom we have to deal with. They have no conscience or accountability. They tweak for the sole purpose of generating entertainment. I agree with the Council that we should reduce their caste system so that it never appears in their culture. I would also like to take it one step further and suggest that we do something about their naming values. It shows a persistent lack of imagination to name everyone on the planet using the same constant as a start. If we use this particular detail, I'm sure that our results will be greater than expected. This is the only place in the entire multi-verse that I have ever seen a population start its name with ‘T’. On a final note, I do not believe that we should place any sanctions on this planet. Restarting the evolution is penance enough.” He left the opening of the semicircle and sat back down.

  The head of planetary studies shook her head in bewilderment and moved to the speaking place. She did not look up the crowd and was content to stare at the floor near her feet. She began speaking in a singsong voice.

  "I know it's been debated, whether or not we have the right to interfere. Yes, I say interfere. In no way do I agree with what this species is doing, however, what you're talking about is very similar to what they are about to do. You justified it so becomes more appealing. What, in fact, you are doing is removing from history everyone on that planet that has ever lived. They will not even fade into the past; they will never have existed. How is that any better than what they are doing? Yes, we have the science. We have the technology. We do not have the right. Consider this; if some other organization was viewing us and what we are about to do, would they agree with us? If they had the power to stop us, would they? We do not know everything. We are not all-powerful, and we are not all knowing. What I suggest is simpler and less invasive; we should repair the damage. If they destroy the initial asteroid that will bring life to that planet, we can send three to make sure life will start, as it should have. We could set up a special team to monitor their activities and make corrections as needed. When their tweaking isn’t satisfying because the results will not be predictable, I hold out the hope that they'll simply cease playing with the tweaks." Still without lifting her eyes to meet her colleagues, she moved back to her seat.

  The head of quantum theories made her way to stand in front of her colleagues. She began her speech a gruff voice.

  "I understand my colleague’s words quite well. I can even empathize with them. However, I do not believe they will ever give up. In fact, I think they will manage to get worse. We've seen this particular behavior before; it is never gone away willingly. We are justified not just because we have the science. We do have the understanding and have taken a social responsibility towards the multi-verse. We do not tweak out of boredom, but out of soci
al consciousness. There is no way to save the countless billions of lives that have existed on that planet. Our counsel does not allow us to take shortcuts. Even if we were allowed to play with their physics, a minor error could spell catastrophe. It is most tricky of sorts and contains more risk than anything else. We understand from quantum mechanics and from quantum mechanics, we've achieved knowledge of the multi-verse and how to make adjustments. We are socially responsible people. Our populations live without fear and one ever goes hungry. Everyone has a task and a purpose in life. This is an ideal life. We have all of this, and we share our understanding with the multi-verses around us. We cannot allow such a destructive influence to continue."

  She moved to regain her seat, quite satisfied with her speech.

  The room gained an absolute quietness as the colleagues thought out positions being presented. No one else seemed to have anything to say.

  The Moderator stood up and took his original place. He spoke in a dramatic tone, "It seems that there are few arguments against the Council on this, and we all understand our esteemed colleague’s position and sympathize with her. We do understand this is a radical action. The Council seems to see it as the only logical course. We can send it back to them with the name amendment. As well, I will include restoring life to the planet they are destroying. Please everyone if you could enter your vote, we can adjourn the meeting.”

  ———-———————————————-

  Troy walked over to where Trish was sulking and said, "There’s really nothing left for us to be here for tonight. We might as well go home. You must be hungry anyway. I would also like to apologize for being short with you earlier, I'm just frustrated. It seems that no matter what I do, I can never get ahead, always something...,"

  He trailed off and touched her hand.

  "Troy you are the love of my life; you really don't know how much you have. I've never had close to anythings like this, ever. Do you think the gamblers will just go aways one day?" she said softly.

  Twello danced and jeered at her fellow members. She insulted each one in turn for their stupidity of not following her advice. She mocked them when they insisted she was cheating somehow, but they all knew it was impossible to cheat in this game. They were just sore losers. She was ecstatic and not a very humble winner.

  She stood over Tholwer as he glowered up that her. "I've won you know," she said rather seductively and laughed.

  She began to feel strange; like the world was coming apart, and her atomic structure was disintegrating. Her eyes darted about the room. She could see everything starting to fade away. She thought to herself, "well this is rather curio......”

  ———-———————————————-

  Elksee sat on his bench in the Temple. His master's voice moved with the wind. He was trying to pay attention, but all he could think about were the tasks left to perform that day.

  The garden was especially beautiful this time of the year, almost ghostly as the traces of fog drifted amongst the trees. The master looked at his students and particularly Elksee and paused in his meditation.

  “Elksee,” he said quietly, "have you not understood the lesson? I will reiterate it for you. It is very easy; you know all about quantum physics involved with tweaking. The very nature of the beast is that we can control tweaking and all the probabilities involved. We cannot, however, understand the mathematics involved to such a degree to rid the universe of the ability to use tweaking. We have to evaluate every case instead and provide the right solutions. You learn the art of meditation so that you can overcome all of your own obstacles and prejudices, thus being able to provide the correct solution. Return your attention to the problem at hand. We now have tweakers that are tweaking other tweakers and making adjustments. You have looked at the data from all the sources. I want you to provide me with the correct answer by later today, but no later than the evening meal. We will discover then if you have the talents necessary to be a warden over the multi-verse. I only want your conclusions; you can show me the mathematics tomorrow. This is an old case and provided for the purpose of testing only.”

  Elksee watched as his master drifted back into his meditation, he was worried. “How could he ever account for every minor detail?” he thought glumly. ”Even the masters had problems analyzing this case. Why had the Master given me such a difficult one? I already know what the response was and how the masters had handled it. I just don’t know why they destroyed that entire universe.”

  End

  BIO

  James Bryron Love was born in southern Ontario in 1957.

  Since his youth he has pursued art. His art has taken on many forms that include poetry, writing, sculpting, oil painting and music.

  He was schooled in classic philosophy in Toronto amongst other subjects.

  You're welcome to visit his website

  http://jamesbryronlove.com

  other Books By James Bryron Love

  available at Smashwords (http://smashwords.com)

  Poetry

  Meager Gropings in Madness (free)

  Stuttering Dreams (free)

  SciFi short stories

  Tweak

  Demon Soup

  Dormant

  Soul Equinox

  SciFi Anthology #1

  Host ( not released yet)

  Clancy’s Drunken Diaries ( not released yet)

  Philosophy

  Harvesting the Dream

  Sexual Promises ( not released yet)

  Art Books

  Artists of Copperflame (free)

  Artists of FAA (free)

  Oil Paintings Volume 4(free)

  Available everywhere where ebooks are sold

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