When the Du'atha imposed the lottery on us they divided the world into two hundred and fifty zones.

On the eleventh of May each year, the anniversary of the Du’atha arrival on earth five thousand individuals between the years of eighteen and twenty-five from each of these zones were selected by a computer in the Du'atha spaceship that permanently orbited the earth.

These so-called winners would then participate in a ceremony in each of the zones where their prescreening for the trials was to take place. Those selected for the trials would later be transported to the Du'atha spaceship and never be heard from again, other than when their families were inevitably notified of their deaths, usually within a year of their departure.

Besides the five thousand from each zone every year a single zone was selected to provide an additional five individuals encase any of the other participants were to die before the ceremony. In the year in which my adventure was to begin zone 21 in which I was a resident was chosen for this honour, the last of the five alternatives that year.

Once a zone was selected for this honour they couldn't be again and thus the Lottery would only last for two hundred and fifty years.

To be fair the lottery wasn't without its compensations, everyone selected by it received two million of the new credits introduced as a worldwide currency by the Du'atha shortly after their arrival. As for those poor souls chosen for the trials their families or nominated individual and descendants would annually receive two hundred credits for a period of three hundred years.

I had completely forgotten about that year's lottery draw being very busy on an important project at work and my father's health having taken a turn for the worst recently. At the moment the draw took place I was taking a rare break from work, on a blind date that had been set up by a friend of my sisters. I rarely dated after my first serious girlfriend had entered the trial and perished but my sister had persuaded me to go and the date had surprisingly been going well. The automatic notification that I received via my Du'atha wrist communicator about being selected by the lottery soon put an end to that.

Once I received it I made my apologies to my date, the heavenly Kate Mulleen, explaining my situation and then quickly made my way home to comfort my family who had been informed of my situation shortly after myself. They were all of the opinion that I would be selected for the Trials and that when that occurred their last sight of me before the inevitable funeral that would inevitably follow closely thereafter, provided my body could be recovered. I tried my best to reassure them but even the fact that I was the fifth alternative and if previous years were anything to go by wouldn’t have to go ahead and attend the ceremony didn’t help. Plus I don’t think I did a very good job of it and we had to call the doctor to trank my highly-strung mother.

In the month-long period between the announcement of the lottery results and the selection ceremony my only and very much older unmarried sister Eva and not me was the real pillar of the family. She arranged lots of events to distract me, herself and our parents. We must have visited practically every tourist attraction in a hundred miles radius of our hometown, did everything from ballroom dancing to hot yoga and eat out most nights. We ended up spending a good portion of the two million credits I received for being selected by the lottery but if it helped them stop thinking about my possible fate for even a moment it was well worth it.

Five days before the ceremony the fifth of this year's lottery winners to die did so and I got the good news shortly thereafter. On the night before the selection ceremony, we threw a huge party for our family and friends in the biggest local venue we could find and we all partied until the wee hours.

But all good things come to an end and this was no exception, once we cured our hangovers the next morning we had to get ready for the big event. We all got dressed in the new clothes we had purchased for the occasion and headed off to the ceremony. It was still hours away but we had to travel to the venue and I had been asked to arrive two hours before the start of the ceremony.

For the first few years, they had been held in the largest, most prestigious venue within each of the zones but in recent years they had begun erecting purpose-built venues and our zone was no exception. This was the first year that ours was being used and since every zone had been doing their utmost to outdo each other it was magnificent, I say this as a structural engineer, a rather junior one but still. I wasn’t personally involved in the project but the company I worked for was. While it certainly didn’t get finished on budget it did however get built on schedule.

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It was built a bit like an iceberg with most of its structure underground with only its entrance sticking above, and what an entrance it was. I don’t think I can do it justice so I won’t even bother trying other than to say it was unlike anything you have ever seen before and that it was only possible due to technical innovations provided by the Du’atha, which they in turn had apparently gotten from a trading partner whose name I couldn’t even begin to pronounce.

There was a massive car park all around the entrance and my family dropped me off at its edge between the spaceport and the hyper train station, before heading out to lunch without me.

Upon entering the building I was recognised as one of this year's participants and immediately met by a member of staff and lead down to the behind scenes area of the venue to join those of my fellow lottery winners who had arrived before me.

I actually recognized one of them, an old semi-acquaintance from my university days whom I had become estranged from thanks to some trivial misunderstanding that had never been resolved. His name was Gerald Culver. I didn’t immediately approach him until he also noticed me and beckoned me over.

“So they got to you too, not rating my chances of getting out of this without being selected or whatever the correct word for it is, what about you?”

“Well I was the fifth alternative and you know what they say, ‘Deathstalker luck. Always bad.’”

“Are you still using that same old moniker for all your computer games?”

“ Well, it’s a lot better than the GeraldCTPO BOX you were using at uni.”

“No, it’s not, they are both equally terrible and you know it.”

I didn’t get a chance to reply to that because of the hologram of a Du’atha that suddenly appeared in the centre of the room floating a meter above the ground. It was the first Du’atha I had ever seen outside of photographs and the occasional artwork that rarely did them justice.

As a race, they were about half a meter taller on average than us humans and while they were humanoid in appearance they were a lot less human looking than say a Romulan or even most of the various human-animal hybrid beastmen from fiction. Each of their legs have two knees like ostriches but more pronounced and they have four digits on their hands and feet unlike our five. Their legs are on average about a tenth larger than ours but their arms are about a fifth the size.

They evolved from a creature that looked somewhat like a clawless cross between a sloth and a tarsier. Their noses are nearly twice as large as ours with rather bloated-looking nostrils. Their eyes are much larger than ours and more rounded but they have hardly noticeable ears and the males have small horns that are usually covered over by their long bushy hair.

A few moments after it first appeared the hologram began to speak, in English and as far as I could tell in his own voice and not via any kind of translation device. Not that I am an expert or anything, but I do speak seven languages fluently and can get by in a further two, not that I’m bragging.

“Welcome humans to this most auspicious of events, you have been chosen by fate in the form of lots to gain a chance at representing your planet and zone and potentially determining its future. I know that this is not a path you would have chosen for yourself but know that future generations yet unborn might look back on this event and praise you for your forbearance in accepting this fate, not that we are admittedly giving you much chance to do otherwise.

If you are successfully chosen to partake in the system Trial you will learn more about the reason behind it but for now, I will simply answer the most common questions about the device that selects those who will undertake the trial and what it actually does. The first of these is as always, what happens when I lay my hands on it. Well, the simple answer is that it somehow quickly runs several tests on your body and mind and then analyzes the results to determine your suitability to enter the system trials.

Now, what determines this suitability you might ask, well it judges you on several parameters, some of which we are aware of and some that unfortunately even after countless years of study since it was originally found on a now-dead world we are not. The ones that we are aware of include such things as your health and well-being, what it judges to be your potential in a wide range of areas and many other things besides. That’s all I want to tell you today and thanks once again for excepting your fate I will see those chosen in person aboard a ship orbiting your planet in three days.”

And with that, the hologram disappeared and the deputy manager of the arena shortly arrived and began preparing us for the ceremony, which we walked through twice before it was time to do it for real.