Information is always to be treasured, Raul. It is behind only love and honesty in a person's attempt to understand the universe.
- Dan Simmons, "Endymion"
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These are some articles written by players or the GM dealing with the world. Submit 'em as you want :)
| Breakthroughs in Super-biology |
To have arrived on this earth as a product of a biological accident, only to depart through human absurdity, would be the ultimate irony.
- R. Leaky, "Origins"
Research has proven that super powers are a gene in the DNA of humans. Many researchers believe that this gene was added into the DNA of humans by some type of pollution or radiation. The gene in question is present in every human in the world. Though there is little chance of a normal human of having a super child, there are, however other types of humans who are what the scientific world has dubbed “Carriers of the super gene.” What does this mean? Normally if two humans mate there is a 0% chance of having a super child. And if a super mates with a human, there is a 25% chance. Two supers, 50%. The carrier, though, gives a 50% chance alone. The gene is much like the mail/female gene having the y and x chromosomes. This gene has what they call Beta and Gamma chromosomes (B & Y). The Beta chromosome is dominant over the gamma, much like the male and female chromosomes. A B - Y type would be considered a super, a Y - Y is a normal human.
There are cases where the beta chromosome is not dominate though, and will create a carrier, the beta chromosome that is not dominate has a greater chance of being a part of the child and making him a super. So if two carriers breed? There’s a 100% chance of getting a super, but there is also a 50% chance of getting a mutant super. What makes a mutant super different than a normal through DNA? The mutant supers have two beta chromosomes. Much like the dangers of inbreeding causing like parts of DNA to cause mutations in a normal human, two supers and two carriers have a high chance of having a mutant super child; two supers, though, only have a 25% chance of this happening. But with more beta chromosomes comes more power, science has proven that mutants have generally more overall power than normal supers.
So how is the power of the child determined? Like stated earlier, every human has the super gene. It is believed that the mother has a slight link through the gamma chromosome to determine the child’s power. How can the mother do it without knowing she’s doing it though? This is answered by the maternal nature of the mother wanting their child to have the best. The mother that wishes for the athletic runner will get a child with super speed, or super strength. The mother that wishes their children to move worlds will have a child with telepathy. Even the smallest desire of the mother will determine the power. It has been proven, though, that the greater the desire, the stronger the power, it has also been proven that mother’s with mental instability have much greater desires than other humans, and will create the most powerful supers of all. Does the father have any say in the power? Not really, though there has been study on the father meditating over a desire for the child before breeding to see if the desire will transfer through the sperm of the father.
Why does it sometimes take longer for some children to see their power? Sometimes the beta chromosome is dormant for many years, science has not discovered why, though they do know that if the child’s mother had no desire for the child to accomplish anything, the beta chromosome has nothing to create for the child and will lay dormant until given a desire. It has been proven that guardians or adopters with desire for the child in question, and the slightest bit of telepathy can change or introduce the desire the beta chromosome needs to become active, though it has been tested with just strong telepaths, it seems that only those with a maternal or paternal instinct toward the child in question have the right type of desire to cause the activation of the beta chromosome.
| Tattooing Foreheads - science claims we're a gene |
The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt against the reality!
- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943
So now everyone is superhuman genetically, it seems. Once again, the scientists are trying to boil everything down to “it’s our genes” - as if everything had to be genetic. Once again, they remove the human element and turn everything into genes and “beta chromosomes” that everyone has. If everyone had them, why are there only superhumans now? Of course, the article doesn’t discuss that! The authors are being too full of themselves in citing the proofs of it, even claiming that parents somehow choose what powers their children will have.
The obvious inference is that if you hate yourself, you’ll have a mutant. Hooray for broken families and warped children. To make matters worse, the authors claim that mutants are more powerful than other supers. Why not just say: “they’re more dangerous” and be done with it? For the learning impaired who were educated stupid, science gave racism a scientific basis last century, based on skin tone and the shape of people’s heads. Which, of course, led to Hitler and Eugenics!
And now they want to do it again! How many had to die before Hitler was stopped? How many more will have to be victims of hate crimes for having “beta” chromosomes? Why don’t the just come out and call it “alphas” and declare the human race on the verge of extinction for added fanfare and publicity? Just like all the other misguided, anachronistic attempts to find out the meaning of the powers and give them a genetic basis, this one has already failed by claiming to use telepaths, who can obviously make your results be anything they please!
And what if these narrow, in the box thinkers are right? Anyone seems able to be a super - there’s no common denominator: it’s spread across the work force and race and the world like real democracy in action, random choice, quantum writ large. And if we’re all super, why is the government hiding away drugs that can make us into superhumans and free our hidden potential? “Users of FactorX die,” they claim, but offer no proof as to why they die, or even allow anyone else to examine the drug!
This is just another example of the intolerant, bigoted mentality of humans who want mutants dead. It’s obviously a failure and just as obviously meant to inflame hatred against mutants. If everyone was super, mutants wouldn’t be all that different anymore. And if everyone can become super, the government is covering up the truth!
The scientists are all liars! The powers are obviously outside their logic and they can’t admit it so they keep trying to shove it inside the framework, not caring about those who get hurt or killed because of their misguided beliefs. Science can’t explain the Mysteries we’re part of! We need to go beyond their ideas and explain it ourselves, before they trap us into believing their lies! We need to find a truth of our own, an eternal one that can ignore their foolishness and prove to them that we can explain the why, and they never can!
Mutants, rise up and tell them what you really think! Tell them that we don’t believe their lies, that we can’t fit into their pretty boxes and their outworn logic! Speak out before the concentration camps close in and we find we can’t speak out anymore before they’re gassing us! Revolt against their reality!
| “Science Strikes Again!” A special for the Mutant Monthly. |
When all you have is a screwdriver, everyone seems to have a screw loose.
- Alcar
Well, they’ve done it again. The scientific community claims to have discovered a gene that creates super humans. Of course this ignores why there haven’t been superhumans around all the time, if everyone has the gene. “Beta chromosomes,” indeed. I’m amazed they didn’t call them “Alphas” and say that they were going to take over the world and that humanity was on the verge of extinction. That might be the next paper, I bet. Who else remembers the horrors science caused with racism? Let’s step into the present.
“But with more beta chromosomes comes more power, science has proven that mutants have generally more overall power than normal supers.” Can anyone else think of a better introduction to a war on extermination than that? Mutants have it hard enough already without scientists claiming they are more powerful than most supers. They’re just easier to spot *as* being something other than human, and most of them are dangerous - they need to be to survive.
Besides testing on telepaths - their “proof” as it were - is notoriously fickle. It’s hard to find out if they don’t make you get results they want. The idea of parents somehow moulding the powers their children have could have merit, but many mutants came from loving families. So are mutants the dark side of families and people given physical form? Sure, it’s an idea, but it’s too simplistic. Lots of theories, genetic and otherwise, have been put forth by science to explain powers - and not one of them has been proven.
The reason should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it: science can’t explain things that lie outside it. Logic falls apart when faced with the reality of super human powers. And beyond logic lies religion, and perhaps the Church of Eternal Truth does have it right, that superhumans are gods. It’s easier to accept than “latent genes” or “alien intervention” or “pollution” as causes of super humans. Until we think outside the box, until science can widen itself to include things beyond it’s logic, all it will do - all it can do - is cause more problems than any it solves.
Look at the world, and think about that stupid article, take it seriously for a moment.. If you *could* have a super human child, if your desires give them their powers - what does that make you? Science is trying to make us the creators of our gods, and divorce us from the responsibility we’d have to them. Don’t believe it. We do what we do because we want to. If you end up in a mob to kill a mutant, it’s your fault! The mob doesn’t draw blood from stones: it can only get what’s already there .... and the thought that you might have made a freak, shown your inner ugliness to the world. Well, that’s all the excuse you’d need.
Me? I’m off to church. At least the Church of Eternal Truth isn’t trapped in the dogma of the past and systems of thinking that should have been discarded when the first super humans appeared. The CET doesn’t claim to have the answers, merely to be offering a paradigm to look at to explain the powers, to explain where they came from, and to be open to debate about new ideas. The only eternal truth is that we may solve the mystery of the powers that how exist, because we’re part of that mystery, of the very universe itself. And that is one box we can’t think out of, by any means.
We are a part of the mystery we are trying to solve, and we’ve forgotten that some mysteries are best left unknown. Logic can only take us so far, and where it does take us in it’s bleakness seems to be extermination, and war, and fear. I pray we have the courage to think outside of logic and maybe then, when we understand that super humans are human as well, and maybe that it’s the human part that is scary, will we finally begin to understand what they mean.
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