InterNutter answers an Ask: Luckers

This came to me via email:

Wanda the Unfortunate and ‘The Drongo’, are both luckers. Wanda is clumsy, the Drongo gets 'Wonderful Ideas!“ Both have the ability to fall into the Septic Tank and come up with valuables plastered over themselves. So, are they just two degrees of luckers? Wanda has two doses of clumsy, the Drongo seems to be immune to clumsy but not safe to be near. And what happens on places like Amalgam where population density ensures that luckers are bound to meet, are the very, very, careful lest they implode or is there some kind of anti-lucker person, thing or device to restrain them. One shudders to think of the Drongo Family Reunion get together. Muse Food? Mum.

Civilization as we know it has been trying to unriddle the Luck Gene ever since it’s discovery by the Vardians some three hundred years ago, subjective. [Relative time: plus five hundred years, minus eight hundred. One-way wormholes make for some interesting historical notation]

Possession of the Luck Gene is no guarantee of anything other than amazing synchronicity between 'good’ fortune and 'bad’ fortune. In the case of Wanda the Unfortunate, it manifested as personal bad luck resulting in good luck for everyone around her. For The Drongo [If you don’t know who The Drongo is, please purchase your copy of R.T.F.M and enjoy the mayhem] it’s a severe lack of thinking things through that results in long-term fortunes for his parent company. Gregor Elfhand possessed personal body-blindness and a lack of spatial awareness that resulted in a change in the path of history at a cost to his physical wholeness.

Being a Lucker is being on a sliding scale associated closely with the Catastrophe Curve. Sometimes the 'bad luck’ splash zone is a solar system wide. Other times, it’s intensely personal. And it can be anywhere in-between. The same with the 'good luck’ splash zone.

As you can imagine, the worst kind of Lucker is the ones who have a solar system sized 'bad luck’ zone and an intensely personal 'good luck’ zone. These unfortunate individuals are called 'Jacks’ after the phrase, "Oh, you’re all right, Jack.” And are often painted as being selfish and self-centred as a result.

There is a Lucker registry and free Lucker testing for anyone who shows the signs of being one.

For the record, Hwell Barrow has been tested numerous times and cleared of all suspicion in each case.

Luckers of the wide splash zone kind generally wear a four-leaf-clover pin as a warning to others.

All attempts to breed for certain kinds of Luckers, and to engineer them, have failed. Mostly because two Luckers in the same room is generally a very, very bad idea.

The last deep-time colony to try a deliberate program to make a planet full of Luckers -New Fortune- vanished without a trace. It actually vanished. The star no longer exists, the planets are not there any more, and there’s no evidence that they ever did.

This may be proof that the Universe doesn’t believe in too much luck.