The Genesis Game
Jink's face fell as he watched the last of his crustacean-humanoid life forms keel over in death. The creature's eyestalks drooped and its claws rose feebly up to the heavens as it cursed Jink's name in a language composed predominantly of clicks and clacks and foamy gurgles.
"Maybe Genesis Games just aren't y'know… your thing." Kumandi glanced over nervously at his friend, who was glumly prodding the quickly decaying pile of chitin that used to be a crabperson. The two were sitting next to each other at Planet TR-21, Universe 45, Timeline 7.
A little animation and sound effect hovered over the table, announcing the demise of the crabpeople. "Whoa, check it out! Someone already went extinct. That's just fucking sad." Apart from the two friends, there were six others crowded around Planet TR-21. The one responsible for this sudden outburst was an individual with mischievous, shifty eyes that cast a wicked air over his otherwise handsome features. His name was Darul, and he was kind of a dick. But Darul the Dick wasn't really wrong. The Genesis Game had hardly progressed a few thousand years and Jink's species had already been wiped off the face of the planet. The time dial on this particular timeline of TR-21 was set to 200yams (years a minute). The few thousand years of game time meant that Jink lasted all of fifteen minutes in the exercise. It was pretty fucking sad.
Kumandi's avian-humanoids were on the cusp of transforming from a band of wandering nomadic tribes into an agrarian society. The feathered people had already developed a rich culture and were making leaps and bounds in scientific discovery. With Kumandi's careful guidance, the species had developed quite large frontal lobes. They quickly mastered technology that complimented and made great use of their natural gift of flight. Jink had tried to nudge his own crabpeople along towards the evolution of higher intelligence as well, but the little fuckers just wouldn't cooperate!
The rules of this Genesis Game allowed a player to directly intervene in the evolution of their species once every millennium. Jink had tried to jumpstart the technological advances of his species with the gift of fire. He hadn't really considered the fact that his crabpeople spent most of their lives in or around water. How useful could fire be for a species that lived underwater? As dimwitted as they were, the crustaceans were not an ungrateful bunch. They went ahead and tried to harness the gift from the heavens, but it took them over one millennium to figure out how to keep a flame from going out. The dimwits kept trying to bring the fire into the ocean. Eventually they realized that the use of fire could only be restricted to dry land and for a moment it seemed as if the future of the crabpeople had been salvaged, but in the end their anatomy failed them. To utilize the divine gift of fire they had to be within close proximity of the roaring flames and the stubborn crabs dried themselves out in the process. Their small stunted brains barely capable of rational thought melted into soup and sloshed about inside the exoskeleton of their heads.
"Jink, you're like, really bad at this!" Darul started up a steady stream of goading once he looked up from the other side of the planet and saw Jink's dejected slump. He easily deduced that Jink was the owner of this miserably short-lived species. "Maybe you should run over to Planet NO-08. I hear it's populated with only earthworms and protozoa. Simple life cycles and fewer cells - I think you could really shine."
"Just ignore him, you know he just gets off on seeing people riled up." Kumandi whispered placatingly. Jink noticed that his friend was still periodically shooting him sidelong glances. Kumandi was nervously readjusting the eyeglasses that were perpetually slipping down the bridge of his greasy hooked nose that bore an uncanny resemblance to the beaks of his avian-humanoid hybrids in the Genesis Game. "Don't start shit now dude, Professor Pent at your six o'clock," Kumandi further warned. Jink felt a surge of rage threaten to overcome him but fought to quell his emotions as he felt the eyes of the professor bore into the back of his head. Professor Pent was the draconian instructor overseeing this exercise. Her oft recited mantra "poise under pressure and grace in equal measure" sounded pretty, but it translated to a strict intolerance for any outward display of emotion in her classroom. Darul's gleeful crowing had already drawn her stifling gaze over to their Game Table.
Darul was playing with a race of human-bear hybrids that he had evolved into pure killing machines. He had gifted his species with the cultivation of a miracle herb that induced a savage, frenzied bloodthirst that paired terrifyingly well with their omnivorous nature. The bearpeople were quickly expanding across the planet, claiming territory and warring with any species they happened to encounter. On second glance, they were not so much warring as directly devouring everything in their path.
Jink heaved a sigh and stood up, turning to leave the Game Table. The practice hall was dark, only dimly lit by pinpricks of light hanging high above in the seemingly endless void. The high ceilings along with a few continuously burning guide lights created the illusion of a starry night sky. Jink didn't stop to admire the affect and made to navigate his way out of the hall by the main source of illumination coming from game tables scattered across the length of the floor. Apart from Planet TR-21, there were seven other tables that were lit up. Each table had eight silhouettes sitting around it, faces straining in concentration thrown into sharp relief by flashing animations. None of these other seats were empty. Jink really was the first to lose his civilization.
"Or you could go hang out with the nerds in Terrain Sculpting! I bet even you wouldn't be able to kill a rock." Darul's last taunting remarks followed Jink as he left Planet TR-21 behind. It was hard being a god in training.