A Matter of Timing

I had always known that I had a good measure of luck, both good and bad. I have done my best to avoid situations where I need to depend on luck, but when forced to do so, I have had some spectacular results.

It started out with me playing a game of Risk against someone who was a numbers pro. He worked with secrets involving numbers that most people wouldn't even understand. He liked to watch people play games involving dice throws and would keep track of the results in his head. He introduced a variation of Risk where both the attacker and defender could roll up to three 6-sided die at a time if we were attacking or defending with at least that many soldiers. I decided that I was feeling extra lucky that game and announced that my five-man army could defeat his 19-man army defending Asia.

I then marched into Asia with one man left of that army, but I broke his ability to amass a killing number of people and win the game. He was astonished by my throws and seemed almost giddy to see his luck change so drastically in one turn of the game. He immediately wanted to see how I would do in a game based on hundreds of throws of numerous types of dice. My head was throbbing from a headache but he mentioned snacks and that many of my friends were already playing already. I agreed to give it a try.

I played hundreds of hours with him as the dungeon master who recorded our rolls and both when he made the rolls or someone in our party, the results were just as statistically unlikely. I ended up having to stop playing but apparently, he put all of his recorded results in a program at his work and I was entered into some kind of database of lucky people. Based on my past of being a boy scout, CPR certified, having the survival merit badge, and surviving far more recorded near-death accidents than I was aware of, I was moved pretty far up the list for people to be sent where having a good bit of luck was a very good thing.

That brings us to the present where I am stretching my arm out hovering over what looks like an opalescent and constantly changing keypad with a big wall of what looked like ten-foot-thick water hanging in between our world and an ever-changing different world after it. The portal was big enough to fit a Starship Superheavy sideways with room to spare so our tracked mothership was going to easily fit through. I wasn't given the background but the portals would stay on one location for as long as it took for a vehicle to transition the horizon before changing once you began entering,

They could discern no pattern as to what planet would be available next at first but had recorded hundreds of thousands of hours of it shifting every 3 to 5 seconds and had seen the same planets repeating after 7.51 years. Now they had the I can't even comprehend how many available planets to visit and or colonize and each of these mammoth motherships can hold enough landers to get 200 of us and enough gear to jumpstart a branch of humanity with a chance to continue on from where we are now.

Each ship was given a certain luck ratio apparently and mine had pulled up some very low scores that had other needed skills. All I really had to do was try to hit that squarish button that sometimes flattened out for some reason when I thought it was the best time for our group. No pressure. It wasn't like mine and the rest of our lives might depend on it or anything. Yes, we had the theoretical ability to grow our own food and wait around for the gate to cycle back to our appointed time but I had a good feeling about this gate coming up after this one. Yep, brilliantly green and seemed through with river valleys that were so clear from here, that they must dwarf anything on Earth.

I hit the button and our ship was propelled forward hard enough to make my head rush. I was in my suit and in the luck hatch as was tradition. Hopefully, we will be able to report back either by radio squelch with our update on the colony, but if not then in person as we return with why that planet wasn't right for people.

Wish us luck!