We're celebrating Klordny Week, Superboy!

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."

I realize I forgot to write about "Teragen Liberation Movement", so here they are now.

December
[Aberrant] Nova Vigilance's last major strike of 2007 demonstrates what Geryon means by "commitment" with the rescue of the [captured] TLM from the grasp of the NYPD and T2MAm.

TLM (actually, no definite article) are a bunch of Terat-wannabees (weeabats?) who spent much of the year making fools of themselves trying to impress the actual movement. Over the last six months, they've been acting like "cheesy OpNet super-crooks" in attempts to one-up major NV actions.

It started when Geryon, with help from Boom-Boom Harmon of the Pandaimonion, trashed the Chicago Rashoud facility, which led TLM to attack a Houston society ball. As Leviathan will tell it later, "The feebs didn't think that those rich folk would mix gala soirees and nova bodyguards like Texans mix pickup trucks and shotguns." Result: eight dead baselines, two seriously wounded novas, and one deeply-peeved party guest by the name of Raoul Cristobal Orzaiz.

NV, in an attempt to show TLM what the game was about, rescued a captive taint-buttered monster from the Utopian cargo plane taking it to Bahrain for study. TLM continued to interpret this as a pissing contest and assaulted the New York office of the DeVries Agency. "They get their ass kicked by nova bodyguards in Houston, and so, they attack the people who represent most of the novas-for-hire on the planet," Leviathan snarks in retrospect. The Agency's on-site Elite™ security, Aggro, mopped the floor with them, and TLM's leader, André "Battle-Cry" Courtmanche, got blowed up real good, "like a Chihuahua in a microwave."

And so the rescue. For T2M: Skew, Ana Graça Texeira, Ricardo Montoya Bernal, Delaney "Firefly" Croft-Martin (a debutante who erupted at a charity benefit) and Slider. For NV: Geryon, Epoch, The Confederate, and Binh "Gauze" Nyugen. It was Gauze who turned the tables for the Terats, "slic[ing] through the support structures of a nearby building." The Tomorrowites, hampered by their foolish concern for baseline lives</sarcasm>, evacuated the humans from the building and set about repairing it "while NV rescued the prisoners", who "ended up making pretty good Terats once they learned a little discipline."

The movement, on the other hand, could use a little message discipline:

In the span of three weeks in December, 2007, Boom-Boom's on the Montebello Show acting like a KISS reject, The Apostle's talking to reporters about the divinity of Mal, and N!'s interviewing Orzaiz about a nova homeland. Every statement or interview made contradicted what some other Terat said. And when a reporter was smart enough to point out the inconsistencies, members like Boom-Boom could only respond: "Yeah man, but Orzaiz blows. I'm Mal'icious." How the hell were we supposed to get any respect when we were acting like a frat party.

The big lizard blames this centrifugal bumble-puppying, at least in part, on Mal's absence.