Ever notice how the best speculative fiction always has an element of sociological or psychological reality to it?  Here's something I'm working on, tentatively titled The Adaptors:


When the tribunal came to power it was only natural that they seek the best way to consolidate that power among the populace. They looked for those personality types who were most inclined to crave a “favored” position in the hierarchy. This tendency was not difficult to test for, the questions plumbed the applicants views on ‘traditional values,’ acquisitiveness, imagination and ambition. It was easy to sort out who would march along with the tribunal to continue to receive their advantages.

Problems occurred with the children. This singular adaptiveness could not be relied upon to pass on to continuing generations. In fact, a disturbing number of the offspring tended to be otherwise, which caused loss of status and its attendant material advantage—which made the parents unhappy. So they stated selecting for adaptability at conception, which made the whole system work much more smoothly. Over time, however, even that became a delusion, as if the genetic adaptability itself changed into unusual behaviors over a period of time. Fewer and fewer truly adaptive children were born. No matter how hard the geneticists worked on it, they couldn’t reach reliable compliance. The jello-like matter of the code kept morphing into different combinations.

David felt this failure deeply as he looked at his son. The boy had passed all the tests, pre-birth, or he wouldn’t be here, but something was still out of sync. He was well trained in all aspects of culture, as his family’s position dictated, but he still seemed to wander outside the bounds.

Though the young people were given a certain amount of leeway in their adolescent developmental years, it was all kept within pre-defined limits. Anyone who scouted too far from the norm they were taken out, though no one was allowed to know it as such. They just became victims of their own recklessness—a less to the others—albeit they were helped in their demise. Of course, these individual were never allowed to reach the age were they were allowed to reproduce.

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