Day 8: It's all under control

(I've been posting a lot of gloomy, metaphysical-driven worlds. So today, I'm going to put up a straight adventure world.)

In an alternate Earth, technologically advanced aliens keep alive only the most dangerous -- and entertaining -- creatures, broadcasting the vicious clash of monstrous beasts as part of an intergalactic betting and reality show.

The Intergalactic Broadcasting Federation is perhaps the most famous -- or, rather, infamous -- of all the networks serving the larger MX Galactic Rim region. The region is best-known as an undeveloped backwater, best-known for its secretive, privately financed (and some say mad) scientific endeavors, largely ignored by the thinly stretched police forces. When the embarassingly rich need something ... unethical done, they come here; while they're waiting for it to be finished (or recuperating, as the case may be), they play on wildly terraformed paradises, where their every whim is catered to.

One of the IBF's most lucrative enterprises is its intersolar broadcasts of interactive betting shows. Its subjects range from the maddeningly mundane (which of these Kitallian bottle flies will faint in the toxic fumes of the Morim flower first?!?) to the frenzied and violent (How quickly will this pack of saber-toothed Marlyuks devour this live Cammit gor?!?). But its crown jewel is its operation on a tiny, oxygen-rich water-heavy planet. There, the native fauna -- though admittedly with a low predator-to-prey ratio -- is exotic, even for the jaded wealthy. Massive reptilian creatures stalk the land and soar through the sky; vicious, giant fish swim through the planet's shallow, warm oceans. Even the prey creatures are intersting; millions of years after IBF deflected an asteroid that threatened to derail its whole operation on the planet, the hairy, bipedal creatures have shown that they're able to use tools. With battles between overwhelming brawn and sly, furtive wit, the viewership -- and betting -- has shot through the roof.

IBF maintains the interest in a variety of ways. First, it takes pains to help keep the most terrifying and vicious of creatures alive and reproducing. If disease takes its toll on a favored creature, IBF inoculates its offspring. If any one predator begins to dominate, then IBF tinkers with another to make it that much more daunting. With just a little bit of ingenuity, some elbow grease and a handful of precise genetic changes, IBF has ensured that not only is this planet one of the most dangerous locales in the galaxy, but it's also got the most vicious, awe-inspiring battles seen.

There's a dark secret, though -- IBF has had to take extensive measures to control the bipeds in recent millenia. It's not willing to decimate the population, since biped v. massive lizard beast battles are among the most popular and high-earning, and it's not willing to tinker with the creatures' intelligence, their only real tool against slavering monsters. However, the creatures have proven too cunning. More than once, IBF patrols have had to destroy settlements -- settlements, as if the creatures thought they were people! -- and reset the clock on agricultural developments. This is, of course, all highly illegal, so IBF black ops personel have had to be very careful in how they remove all traces of intelligence that rise to levels protected by intergalactic law.