THE BIG RACE

You are an astronaut. Several years ago your spaceship crash landed on an Earth-like planet that is fortuitously inhabited by English-speaking human beings. You were excited by the amazing opportunity at first, but soon realized that life on your new home would be no picnic. With very few exceptions, all the people here are expected to spend their days digging the Giant Ditch – including you!

No one seems to know the purpose of the Giant Ditch. They just know that if they want their daily voucher for space-pizza they must show up with shovels in hand. You show up for work everyday, too. This is mainly because your ship was destroyed when you crashed and you have nowhere else to go, but also because you enjoy space-pizza. It is just like regular pizza, but the crust is made out of space-bacon! (Space-bacon is just like Canadian bacon.)

As nice as that sounds, you simply cannot be happy digging the Giant Ditch all day. You have a PhD in Astrophysics for crying out loud. But the only way to get out of the Ditch is to win the Big Race.

And you are warming-up for that Race right now!

Only a lucky few are even allowed to participate in the Big Race. To secure a registration number, you had to give one of the race officials a space-handshake (don’t ask).

But it was worth it because there is no greater honor in this strange world than winning the Big Race. At its conclusion, the Champions are presented with gold and sneakers and a special space-permit that allows them to act like complete jackasses with no repercussions.

Meanwhile, everyone else has to go back to digging the Giant Ditch. Sure, some more fortunate people, like yourself, get to wear nicer boots and dig less than others, but, let’s face it, you’re still in that Ditch everyday. That’s not exactly the life of a Champion.

So you’ve been training extra hard. And you know you’re the fastest person around (another space-handshake got you a peek at everyone’s time trials). But now you look behind some lockers and see the trouble: a group of rival competitors are taking illegal space-vitamins!

Your friend Chris approaches you with concern asking, “Hey, are you okay?”

You tell him that you just saw some competitors taking space-vitamins and you think you should report them to an official.

“Are you nuts?!” he exclaims. “No one wants to hear a thing like that.”

“I know, but they’re cheating,” you say. “It’s not fair. Because of them taking space-vitamins I will unjustly lose the Big Race.”

“Maybe or maybe not,” Chris says with a sly smile. “I may have a better option for you. But you can’t rat those people out. Your reputation will never recover. People are already whispering about how you got in this race to begin with.”

You are panicked (and red-faced). You want to win this race more than anything, but you won’t truly live the life of a Champion if your reputation is dragged through the mud.

But what about your morals?


If you decide you must tell the officials that some of your fellow competitors are cheaters, click here