The "Aberrant Life" thread is hereby retired.

[aberrantangels]

Seriously. Now that I'm experiencing real RP, this solo RP looks like the wankery it is. The next post from Hugh Boone has been sitting in an unfinished state for almost two months past its original sell-by date. Here's what I managed to write before being struck by an overpowering sense of "Why am I bothering?"

Well, I'm sure you're wondering why I'm not celebrating Red Ribbon Day like the rest of the world — why, in fact, I haven't even deigned to blog about it for over a month. Frankly, it's because it makes me feel like a fucking Sonderkommando.

You all saw the OpNews, of course. The World Health Organization declared October 7 to be, in honor of my cow-orkers at the Triton Foundation having an AIDS vaccine ready to go. With a little help from national and local health organizations, they hope to have 90% of the planet's population vaccinated within three months.

And to think, it wouldn't have been possible without certain parties' research into "the nature of eximorphic mutation". Like the cure for breast cancer they developed in 2000 and for prostate cancer the year after that, it all stems from our silent partners' investigation of a problem most of the planet isn't even aware of.

Of course, for the first four years (give or take a fast month) of its existence, prior to N-Day, the other Triton didn't have access to those notes. But they were extensive notes, going back to 1981 and beyond.

And, if you just tuned in, that's getting much the same "Bitch, are you for real?" reaction I'd get if I told anyone below Epsilon access level that I erupted in 1986. In which case, let me refer you to where I've already mentioned that the new humans didn't begin with N-Day, and that Aeon has no desire for this to become widely remembered.

I think I made a passim mention, there, of the problem we call taint. Simply put, channeling too much quantum energy for too long changes a nova. The stalwarts of the 1920s didn't have this problem, simply because they weren't drinking as deeply from the quantum spring. (Well, with the exception of Subject Alpha-001; then again, he's an exception to a lot of rules. But I'll get to him on his birthday.)

There was a series of novels, in the late '80s and early '90s, about superhumans in the "real world" (publicly operating ones, that is, the kind the world didn't see between the 1940s and N-Day). These particular superhumans — known as "aces" — had been created by the accidental release of an alien virus over New York City. Only one person in a hundred thousand was vulnerable to the "wild card" virus. Ninety percent of those affected would die instantly — "drawing the Black Queen" as it was called. Only 10% of the survivors (1% of total incidences) became aces, and their powers were as variable as those of novas (albeit explained by psi, which Aeon's scientists currently believe to be a separate force from the quantum energies we use). Some aces were of relatively low power levels, like Timothy "Mr. Rainbow" Wiggin (who could turn his skin any color imaginable, including canary yellow and sky blue) or the woman with just enough telekinesis to roll a penny across a table — "deuces" they were ironically called (from Wiggin's words when he was called before HUAC as a dangerous ace: "If I'm an ace, I'd hate to meet a deuce").

The rest (90% of survivors, 9% of all wild card cases) became "jokers" — subject to deformities as variable as the powers of aces. Some jokers got a power or two out of the deal — reptilian appearance was supplemented at least once by neurotoxic venom, for instance, and that world's leading sex symbol had wings — but most were total freaks of nature. And sometimes, even those jokers with an ace or two in hand couldn't control it — the hunchbacked Quasiman was afflicted with a body whose parts were subject to phase in and out of reality at random. And one or two weren't quite right in the head — of course, in Quasiman's case, this was more down to bits of his brain phasing than anything else.

After that, he was going to use jokers as a metaphor for tainted novas. Admittedly, a lot of jokers seem to have a great deal of taint and very little power — but that's not without precedent in the Æon Continuum Trinity Universe. (Cf Giuseppe "Sloppy Joe" Benatti from Aberrant: Teragen.) He was also going to rant on about how, no matter how long he showers and how hard he scrubs, he can never quite cleanse his skin of the toxic film of working for Æon.

And that was what killed it. I wanted it to be a chronicle of his disaffection, as a nova working for Æon, knowing things about what it does that most of the TU itself will never know. But he was getting too disaffected too fast.

Also, I wanted to lead up to my theory about why Æon are so desperately determined to retroactive-amnesia the Adventure Era off every fucking mind screen on the planet. But it's a variation on a theme first expressed by ezrael in this article for Pyramid, and I thought about what might happen if I asked his permission and didn't get it and realized I didn't have a good alternative lined up.

So no more. From now on, I'm going to do the Nova Age timeline as a straight-up "This Day in Trinity Universe History" like I thought about doing in the first place before deciding the RP format would make it come to life. Today, for instance, instead of Paul C. Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield getting the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging like in OTL (our timeline, or mine anyway), Henri Mazarin and Farah Rashoud are taking it home in Biology for their studies of nova physiology and, specifically, of the node that bears their name.

(Okay, there is one other in-character post from Hugh coming up, but it's based on a true story, so I'll put the untrue parts behind LJ cuts.)