We're celebrating Klordny Week, Superboy!

Here is a riddle to guess if you can: what makes a monster and what makes a man?

June 5
[Aberrant] Orzaiz sends an encrypted OpMail <12inch@smokingslut.net> to Synapse <burning-candy@hotnode.com> wondering how the net.Terat managed to lose Saxon. "I fear that we're back to square one regarding Fong....If we can find her and confirm precisely how Saxon discovered her whereabouts, we might be able to nail Delorimier once and for all."

I initially had this as the last item, but Orzaiz fears that if the Apostle can bring Shrapnel (and thus the Primacy) into the Cult of Mal, "we'll have a bloody farce on our hands, at least until Mal returns." (It's that last clause that was the clincher.) He also suggests continued attempts to get in touch with Corbin, though admitting that'd be easier if Geryon and Epoch hadn't attacked the Scotsman. "Oh well. This isn't the first time a revolution has attracted idiots."

In a Navajo Daedalus 3 communique to agent Nyeung, Director Thetis gives him his next assignment — preparing "Ishida and Fashoud" (presumably Proteus novas) to support T2M Asia/Pacific at Sop Moei. Thetis also requests an updated full report on the Æon Council, who have recently done some things that surprised her.

The agents' support for T2MA/P's plant closure is to involve "wetworking among the local government and military in order to make certain that the closedown is permanent." Which, well, Proteus.

Divis Mal arrives at the Pantheon meeting to exhort his fellow Terats to seek their true greatness.

He makes all kinds of metaphorical pronunciamenti about the way they're failing to live up to their potential; they're mostly focused on power, but Teras is about

the enlightenment, of which only Jeremiah Scripture and Raoul Orzaiz appear to have attained any modicum. You are not the equals I have been waiting for. You are baselines with undeserved power and boorish, petty natures. When will you speak to the angels with me? When?! My gods feed me blood and mangoes, and I laugh, I weep, I dance. Your gods feed you Kool-Aid and white bread, and you crawl, you buzz and you quarrel like fractious children.

One of the quotes that helped define Mal, for me and probably a lot of other TU fans, came soon after: "I am a visionary, a warrior and a lover of life, but unlike my father, I do not enjoy the role of teacher." At first, I thought the father he was referring to was max_a_mercer; after I learned Michael's surname, that sentence was one of the reasons I determined that md_donighal's father had been one of Max's teachers at Harvard.

"You are my children," he tells the Pantheon, "but in time you must grow beyond me.... The essence of our future is struggle. We must be ready."

NV and the Primacy are to continue as terrible angels, the fists of the One Race. The Harvesters are charged to be the monsters in the shadows, but cautioned not to "so worship the monster in yourselves that you misplace the seeds of your godhood." Scripture and the Mathematician are to continue in a leadership role, "but know that I am back." The Count is to "[g]et them accustomed to honoring us", and Narcosis to "[m]ake them love the One Race more than they love their own."

Enemies again.

June 3
[Aberrant] The Pantheon (consisting, at this point, of the Apostle, the Apothecary, Bounty, the Confederate [filling in for Epoch], Geryon, ibn'Mahmoud, Leviathan, the Mathematician, Narcosis, Orzaiz, Scripture, Shrapnel, Sin-Eater, Swarm Queen and Synapse) meet in council at a hidden retreat hosted by the Count (they are brought in by Blinker, the only Terat with whom Orzaiz shares the location). Topics of discussion include a review of the various Teragen cliques, what precisely is going on with Project Utopia, and how to use Utopia's newly-revealed weaknesses against it.

Actually, this first day is/was mostly about "catching up with fellow Terats we haven't seen in months and meeting newcomers to the movement," as the count will describe it when he opens discussions tomorrow. Today's discussions have been mostly civil, but with tense undercurrents among the various cliques, according to Leviathan's epilogue to the second of two essays circulating among Terats at mid-year. (The first, by Santiago, covered the movement's history from N-Day to the Null Manifesto; de la Rocha takes it from the Halloween Surprise to the present.)

Synapse logs in and out of the meeting, as he is spending much of his time trying to persuade Saxon to join the Teragen.

I'm not sure where I got this impression; the evidence for it seems to have evaporated from my copy of Aberrant: Teragen, even though I swear I've found it on other readings.

Edit June 4: I've since realized wherein the evidentiary basis consists, and it's not much. (It'll be in tomorrow's posting.) We don't actually get datestamps for either day of Saxon's captivity, so in fact, it may already be over by the time the meeting starts.

( Here's what happens during it, anyway. )

In a communique to Director Thetis (double-encrypted, Navajo Daedalus 3), baseline Proteus agent Ruiz gives an overview of his interactions with two Utopian novas: engineer Dr. Piotr Enrikssen and someone referred to only as Cocharin.

Enrikssen's ever-expanding intellect needs new stimulation, and Ruiz suggests "the new games of chance from Hattori's pet project" as an option. Cocharin's on "a schedule that allows her to use her matter-transmutation abilities on a regular basis without any real quantum-bleeding or signs of stress." She's taking Slidergate in a Proteus-approved way, having "expressed worry as to what the 'rogues' might indeed try." He's working hard on being friendly to her, and "regular non-nova company... seems to break down any self-imposed feelings of 'being different.'"

I was going to say "recently" in the TU, but the items labeled "February" may not all have happened yet.

February
[Aberrant] CNN reports that South Africa is instituing a pilot program requiring novas within its borders to wear radio beacons, allegedly due to misbehavior by elites from Nigeria pitching liberties in Capetown. Geryon decides that the man behind the project, Minister of Home Affairs Malcolm Chigwedere, needs to have his head launched, no matter what his Pantheon colleagues may say about no violence, and gets help in the endeavor from Epoch, Leviathan (who later shrugs "telling Geryon not to commit violence is like telling a baby not to piss itself") and the Confederate.

I think that one speaks for itself pretty well. I almost missed including the next two items. Speaking of the Confed...

Natalya "Swarm Queen" Dornova sends a note to Allison "Shrapnel" Hughes warning her that Barry Meldrum is going too far, from his alliance with Alafin Sango to the massacres, of baseline and nova alike, that follow him everywhere he goes.

She understands her (rumored) occasional lover's hatred of baselines and agrees that "[t]hey have to be taught a lesson," but doesn't think extermination of the monkeys is the way to go about it. "I realize that Bahrain must fall and that Tarik is blocking us, but what can Sango get us that we can't get ourselves — besides genocide?"

This month's Scientific American includes the article "Quantum Force Manipulations and the Mind" by Dr. Shawn Worth.

Briefly, Worth theorizes that nova powers merely "magnify and externalize" the manipulation of quantum forces inherent in the quantum-level nature of consciousness.

An internal Directive memo on Pantheon Productions, Narcosis' corporate arm; its entertainment powerhouse status and diversified holdings; and its Teragen ties.

"A number of reports seem to suggest that PP is heavily involved in drug trafficking.... More disturbing is the possibility that PP is one of the leading manufacturers of soma — a fact that makes PP a danger to baselines and novas alike."

February 3
[Aberrant] First airing of History Channel documentary Homo Sapiens Novus.

An exploration of the role of novas in modern society from N-Day to now.

N!'s Beautiful Nova OpCasts live from the Calcutta premiere of Narcosis' new movie One God. It is the last time host Jeffrey Hiens is seen on the air.

Maybe even the last time he's seen alive.

Case-file T2M-020308-TP0019 is filed by Thanorm Prakarnchai, executive assistant to the director of T2M-Asia/Pacific. It concerns what appears to be Heaven Thunder Triad underwriting of Papaver somniferum (opium poppy) cultivation in the highlands of North Vietnam.

Prakarnchai recommends that a T2Mer surveil of the farms to confirm the nature of their crop, then "counsel the farmers on more productive farming methods, using whatever means necessary to persuade them." After that, continued surveillance, "and should they falter in their responsibilities to international law, a team will destroy their contraband crops and will arrest the criminals involved." (Nice bureaucratese there.)

Maria "Rattler" Cabral writes in her journal about the Cult of Mal gathering she recently attended in Paris.

The whole experience is already starting to fade, to become an episode. She suspects something in the communion chalice the Apostle gave her is to blame. On the one hand, there's a lot of truth in his words; on the other hand, he takes those truths in dangerous directions. "If we don't stop him soon, I fear the worst — then again maybe we need to purge our ranks?" Delorimier has turned #13 Rue de Temple into, well, a temple to the Beacon Mal, one where Cabral could almost feel The One's presence.

Having been there from the beginning, Delorimier knows or at least guesses that Mal's eruption predates the Galatea explosion, though he doesn't seem aware of the Donighal's personal responsibility for the event. He warns that when The One comes out of his Chrysalis, "he'll lead those with pure hearts to the Promised Land, casting the rest aside to the baseline lions."

Rattler experienced a moment of doubt, but Marcel's voice washed it away along with the room: "...some hide behind masks and riddles, afraid to take the leap and follow Mal. They may be Terats now, but tomorrow, who knows?... Open yourself and accept the Will of Mal."

And so it begins...

1999
[Aberrant] [Pedro] Santiago, [Raoul] Orzaiz, and new recruits Marcel Delorimier (a French ultra-nationalist convinced of nova supremacy) and Caroline Fong (an Oxford-educated philosopher and business consultant) gather in Santiago, Chile. They will continue to meet every quarter or so for the next several years, joined by a few more like-minded novas every little while.

Great oaks from little acorns grow. And the next item is another example of that.

2000
[Aberrant] Thor Gundolfsson and Brian "Belial" Petford meet at Burning Man.

The counterculture event was starting to go mainstream by that point in TU history, but it hadn't quite been subsumed yet. Gundolfsson (né Letift Morgaanstern) and Petford met up in an orgy tent, shared "a few women and a lot of drugs," and went out into the desert to drop acid (six tabs each).

Gundolfsson, the relatively new jarl of Hagalz Hall (center of Norway's death-metal scene), saw the world consumed by fire, with demons flying everywhere. Five of those demons grabbed him, then beheaded and quartered him. When his blood struck the ground, it boiled into steam, steam that lifted his dismembered body higher.

Petford, the elfishly pale mystic and Lovecraftian, saw himself turn into a dark, towering figure, like Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos, howling with mad joy at the capering hordes beneath him. He saw himself delivering Earth into the hands of the Great Old Ones whose soul and messenger he had become.

( But that was just the beginning. )