The Bearer: Background
On Alternate Earth, studies and cases have shown that a small percentage of the population (10%) is responsible for 90% of the bad luck.
These people are targeted by bad luck, almost by cosmic forces: they are struck by lightning out of a sunny day, hit by cars whose brakes give out, and slip on banana peels in a no-eating zone.
Perhaps the luck is equalized somehow, because these people generally survive or are compensated for the situation.
The general populace once labelled these people as 'clumsy airheads', but following some high profile cases, they have since come to be known as 'Bearers', generally ranked class-F through class-A, each about 10x rarer and with worse luck than the next.
Most of the time, disasters from Bearers do little harm to others, and class-F through class-B have relatively tame bad luck, ranging respectively from the frequent stubbing of toes and slipping on bananas, to occasional injury and minor destruction of property.
Class-A bearers have a grade of bad luck involving weekly escapes from death, ranging from car crashes, apartment fires, and lightning strikes.
However, at a level 100x rarer and deadlier than class A, Class S Bearers are very rare, sitting at 1/100,000,000 people but are disproportionately represented in history: The Explosion of Black Tom Island (1875), the gunpowder explosion of Abbeville (1773), multiple unstoppable wildfires, the 1987 Stock Market Crash, and a failed rocket launch that killed a cow in Cuba (1986), to name a few.
Eventually, the world came to know about the potential disasters that could be wreaked by a single bearer in recent times, in Robert's Case (Misc section). After being hit by multiple tsunamis, hurricanes, and other natural disasters caused by one Bearer, the governments decided to change their stance on bearers, to prevent similar tragedies.
Summary: Bearer Information
- A Bearer's bad luck is related to the recently discovered Tetroid Waves
- The Bad Luck rating can be measured from Tetroid waves
- E is 10x more bad luck (Tetroids) than F, D is 10x stronger than E, and so on.
- The Tetroid rating from F to S can be equated to local earthquakes (diagram above)
- All humans emit tetroids, Bearers are simply humans with more Tetroids
- It is easy to track Bearers, especially B to S-class, but Tetroid waves can be blocked by some common metals
- Blocking Tetroid waves does not prevent disasters, but does impact interference (see below)*
- The strength of Tetroid waves emitted prior correspond to the bad luck event that will ensue
- Luck seems to follow laws of conservation; an event of bad luck is equalized by almost equal good luck eventually
- A Bearer can emit Tetroids above their class when in distress, and generally the event triggered aims to solve the Bearer's problems
- Tetroid wave interference happens when two or more Bearers are nearby
- Paradoxically, destructive interference (cancellation of bad luck) happens when multiple Bearers share similar harmonious emotional states
- Conversely, constructive interference (amplification of bad luck) happens when multiple Bearers are emotionally chaotic
Question
How should the World interact with Bearers, knowing that their numbers are steadily increasing, to best mitigate global and local disasters?
The best answer would also be humane, properly integrate modern society with the Bearers, and prevent unwarranted discrimination where possible.
Also, out of interest, who is responsible for the compensation, in the even of an accident? Will insurance rates for Bearers be disproportionately high, or will a common fund exist to support them?
Note: This happens on Alternate Earth, in reality we unfortunately cannot blame stubbed toes on Tetroid waves.
Misc: Robert's Case
The following case is for background and humor, does not provide too much for question details:
Up until a certain historically significant case, Bearers were not well-quantified or tracked. Domestic Class-S Bearers were not well-monitored or mitigated, and many remained unknown.
This all changed after a case dealing with Robert 'Bob' Murphy, a seemingly ordinary, if not bad, conductor, who, unknown at the time, was also an S-class Bearer. After a failed concert, the depressed Bob was further implicated by an issue with pyrotechnics, which resulted in multiple casualties and many injuries. Following which Bob was framed by a Syndicate organization, and, charged with multiple murders, sentenced to the electric chair.
As it turns out, Bob was certainly a bad orchestra conductor, but a good conductor in general; on the hour of his scheduled execution, a critical lightning storm erupted and struck the facility and multiple backup power plants, during which Bob escaped electrocution at the chair for electrocution from the sky. Seizing the chaos, Bob escaped the facility.
All following attempts to capture Bob were primarily successful, but no results at containment or execution worked: prison vehicles carrying Bob would get flat tires or get into uncanny accidents. Eventually the government gave up and decided to just exile Bob into the ocean with some supplies and a fishing boat, hoping he'd maybe drift onto the shores of their rival country. This was their worst idea yet.
Bob had the bad luck to end up in several tsunamis and hurricanes across the world, causing immense damage to multiple countries, before the United Nations, after an intense investigation, unanimously agreed to compensate him and exonerate him of the crimes he did not commit. To this day, Robert Murphy lives somewhere on an undisclosed island in the Bermuda Triangle.
Since then, governments around the world have changed their stance and system on the treatment of Bearers, hoping to prevent a similar tragedy.
