[Aberrant Life] Five years in four colors

[aberrantangels]

This entry is from one of those voices I mentioned last time. If he hadn't been so busy, it would have gone up on the day it got to me; luckily, only one thing had to be changed to reflect that. For legal reasons, he can't use his own name here, so please welcome Hugh Boone.

Now five years later on, you've got the world at your feet
Success has been so easy for you...
— The Human League, "Don't You Want Me?" (1982)

Five years [and two weeks] ago, my world changed forever. In some ways, it changed for the better. In others, maybe for the worse.

My world didn't change as much as some on March 23, 1998. I know where I must have been when the Galatea blew up, but I didn't really store it in memory. (It was about 7:30 in the morning, Eastern Standard Time, so I must have been at work or on my way to it.) I think I heard about a space station having gone kablooey from my monitoring of the news (that being my main job), but if I did, it was knocked out of my mind by what happened eight hours later.

Late in the afternoon, when I'd reached the conclusion that the day was going to be like any other, I heard about Randel Portman. In every crowd these days, it seems, there's someone with a camcorder. That someone was ideally positioned to capture a wrecked New York school bus bursting into flames, and a fireman rescuing the kids — and literally absorbing the fires into himself harmlessly. For a lot of people, that was the where-were-you? moment of that first N-Day.

The Fireman was the first publicly documented report. More poured in from all over the globe. Ordinary mortals suddenly being gifted with the powers of the gods — or of the four-color gods who dominated comic books. Well, I thought, this is going to change everyone's plans. It was also going to mean a lot of overtime for me, but that's not important just yet. (And don't call me Shirley.)

The good folks at the Aeon Society swiftly struck up a dialogue with the UN, hoping to channel the powers of "the new humans" (Homo sapiens novus, informally "novas") into the building of a better world. In August, the partners unveiled Project Utopia ("Creating a Better Tomorrow with the Power of Today"). At the start of '99, Utopia in turn announced Team Tomorrow, a team in the tradition of the Global Guardians, fighting organized crime, international terrorism and natural disasters.

At the start of this year, E! Entertainment Television launched N! The Nova Network — all novas, all the time.

I dread living in a world that's a battleground for forces beyond it. If the Dark Ones exist, and the Three and Twenty Wise Ones of Agift, too, fine. That's no concern of mine. But if they choose to settle their differences on this little mudball wrapped in a blanket of air where I live.... I don't know if I can bear the thought of being no more than a pawn in a cosmic chess game.
— Fost Longstrider, in Demon of the Dark Ones by Robert E. Vardeman and Victor Milan, 1982 (The War of Powers: Book Six)

In a lot of ways, the Earth is a better place in a lot of ways because gods are walking it once more. Most of the Mafia familias were broken by T2M at the turn of the millennium. Utopia is repairing the damage previous human generations did the environment, with nova-created technology or just with nova powers; the hole in the ozone layer is healed, and gengineered creations like the Zushima macrobe are regulating further pollution. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably mention that, in my trendwatching capacity, I work for the Aeon Society.) The Triton Foundation, another Aeon organization, is curing more and more forms of cancer, and with any luck, an HIV vaccine will be ready by year's end. The Internet and the voice-net are merging into the OpNet, which literally would not be possible without Anibal Buendia's miracle polymer, eufiber.

But not everyone who questions this is like those Jesus-raddled fuckups in the Church of Michael Archangel. Not all of them are Rushdoonyite loons looking to free the True Sons of Aryan Israel from the coils of khazar-pharisaic-satanic-talmudic democracy. They aren't all like the Jordan McDevitt listeners who think Utopia's high approval ratings are prima facie proof that it's a bad thing and that Aeon has a private fleet of black helicopters.

Some are just people who've read Watchmen and Kingdom Come and similar works. The last Olympics had almost no viewership, and there are rumors that the next one will be a nova-only event, or at least will host nova-only events. The XWF is preparing to hold its first pay-per-view late next year. (That's Xtreme Warfare Federation, for my away readers; nova fighting meets sports entertainment.)

The Olympic Games are going. Will the Nobel Prize be next? The World Series? How long before members of my parents' generation are ambushing complete strangers and asking them the suitably modified question, "Do you ever miss the concept of baselines actually achieving things?"

It might be that the Wise Ones, aligned together, could defeat the Dark Ones and cast Istu back into the spaces between the stars.... And it might be that you should thank me for helping prevent it.... If we fight for your world and conquer it, it will be ours. No longer yours, except by our sufferance.
— Perryn Prankster (goddess of laughter and anarchy) to Fost Longstrider, in Demon of the Dark Ones

And it has other downsides, too. We got a glimpse of that last year, when Kashmir almost boiled over, and the year before with the Equatorial Wars. For better or for worse, like it or lump it (and Anna DeVries doesn't like what's happened to her agency's trademark), "elite" is now part of Joe Sixpack's vocab. Mercenary novas, walking weapons for sale to the highest bidder.

And elites aren't just for military applications. When the Five Families were picked off by T2M, one family rose to fill the void. Its capo made common cause with his Russian opposite number, and the Camparelli-Zukhov Megasyndicate was born. What's kept it alive the past two years is its readiness to use nova resources. I hear the Medellin Cartel is making the same adaptation. Presumably, whichever yakuza gumi and Chinese triad get there firstest with the mostest novas will come out on top of those struggles.

But it may yet prove that the military types are as nothing to the religious fanatics. As a nova, I'm scared by the Michaelite insistence that I'm therefore ipso facto a literal demon from a literal hell. This does not, however, mean I'm any more comfortable with the insistence of the Immanents that novas are the chosen of God (oh, I'm sorry, of the Quantum Unity). That sort of talk plays into Michaelite hands just as much as the Dark Altar's saying "Yeah, Lord Astaroth and his avatars are the Beast of Revelation, what're you gonna do about it?" Ironically, despite that Tokyo subway bombing back in December, I find myself most in sympathy with the Kamisama Buddhists. Bodhisattva Masato is as nonviolent as they come, but he sadly acknowledges that not all novas, nor even all KS-Bs, are going to be that reasonable.

And all that is just the things the people of my world actually know about. There are players in the shadows whose existence nobody even dreams of that isn't already in the know. I could tell you about them, but then I'd have to kill you, or maybe myself. I try to watchdog Utopia, and Aeon, as much as I can, as much as I watch those hidden players. I even try to keep my colleagues in line. But Juvenal said it best:

but who's going to stand guard over the actual guards? — my own easyfree translation of Juvenal's sixth Satire, ll. 347-8 (the last phrase, sed quis custodiet ipsos / Custodes?, is more commonly translated "Who watches the watchmen?")