W O R L D

With an unpopular war and the growing movement for civil rights, the 1960s would likely have been turbulent enough. Mix in the public confusion over the Metahuman phenomenon — not to mention the increasing number of criminal enterprises involving the Gifted — and you have a decade that was on the verge of anarchy in America. Desperate city and state governments petitioned the administration for a federal agency to oversee the Metahuman registration act and enforce its mandates. In 1967, Johnson responded with the Metahuman Registration Enforcement Agency, placed under control of the Department of Justice. Working in conjunction with the FBI and local authorities, this new agency was tasked with investigating reports of unregistered Metahumans, capturing those in violation of the law, and combating renegade metahumans who use their powers in criminal enterprise.


LYNSEY ADDARIO/CORBIS FOR TIME
Congressman Thomas Howell (D-OH)
Two years later, the MREA announced its first Metahuman agent: Alistair Aeneas MacDougal. His abilities — superhuman strength and an iron-like skin — are generally regarded as second to his skill in boosting the MREA's public relations. As the new MREA spokesman, he urged responsible use of Metahuman powers in a media campaign that spanned televisions, newspapers, magazines, and highway billboards. Even so, a vocal minority among the Gifted population considered him a turncoat. "He's a traitor," read one 1969 letter to the New York Times. The anonymous author severely criticized MacDougal for joining a government agency dedicated to "hunting down his own kind."

However, the majority of Metahumans at the time believed it was the responsibility of the Gifted to police their own — a sentiment echoed even today. This concept gained even more favor after the Metahuman attack on the U.S. Capitol Building on April 18th, 1972. When a group of eight Gifted burst into the offices and took 16 hostages — 4 of them U.S. Senators — they demanded an immediate repeal of the Metahuman registry. Their ultimatum went unfulfilled. A team of MREA agents stormed the building and captured the terrorists, freeing the hostages without a single loss of life. It was only later revealed that many of the members of the government strike force were actually civilian Metahuman volunteers who had offered their unique talents in order to resolve a dangerous situation. Still to this day the names of those volunteers remains a closely guarded secret.

The Capitol Building attack gave form to the specter of coordinated, organized criminal activity by Metahumans. In response, the MREA established special divisional enforcement teams in major cities across the United States. The teams and their official MREA code names are:

  • Sword — New York City, New York
  • Axe — Chicago, Illinois
  • Arrow — Seattle, Washington
  • Knife — Los Angeles, California
  • Rifle — Houston, Texas
  • Spear — Washington, D.C.

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These special teams, comprised primarily of recruited Metahumans, were created specifically to counter the rising amount of Metahuman crime across the country. At the same time, other smaller bands of weaker Gifted often banded together in various other cities with and — more commonly — without local government sanction. Public opinion on even the official MREA teams was mixed. Polls at the time revealed only a 37% approval of their creation, as compared to 31% of the population opposing the idea. "Metahumans with badges is the very model of a poor idea," remarked Representative Carl Munce (R-WY) at the time. The current administration, as well as MREA spokesmen, vocally supported the plan.

Public opinion of Metahumans later sank even further when the Washington Post broke news in 1977 of a Soviet plan to build military squadrons of Gifted. They later also leaked a Pentagon memo detailing America's own strategy for military Metahumans, though any specifics on these plans still remain confidential. Many political pundits feared that the Gifted would become the next "arms race", while members of the public began to suspect any Metahuman could possibly be a Communist agent.

On the contrary, the threat was not to come from political ideology, but a religious one instead. Before 1978, probably only a handful of people knew anything about the Apostles of Prophecy Church. When its Metahuman members stormed the New York Stock Exchange building — killing 5 and wounding 23 — the world immediately took notice. Not only was this an organized terrorist attack by Metahumans, it also targeted the economic infrastructure of the United States. Markets around the world felt the attack, dropping in value by as much as 27% in a single day. Utter financial catastrophe was only prevented by the swift response of Sword, MREA's New York rapid deployment force. The team retook the building in a widely-televised media event, capturing 6 "Apostles" and killing 2 others. Within the end of the week, the NYSE had regained nearly 83% of its losses.

Even while the law-abiding Metahuman community staggered from this latest blow to the Gifted's image, they were to face further challenges in the next few years. In 1981 a wrongful termination suit filed by Charles Plinkton alleged that his former employee had fired him because Charles was discovered to be a Metahuman. In a landmark decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Metahuman was not a protected class under anti-discrimination laws. The resulting pro- and anti-Metahuman protests devolved into fighting and riots in New York, Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Two members of MREA's Los Angeles-basd "Knife" team were killed in the fighting, and Chicago's "Axe" had one team member murdered during the riots.

After a Colorado Springs area serial killer was caught in 1983 and subsequently discovered to be a Metahuman, several prominent members of the Gifted community decided to take action. The American Council of Metahumans, a private organization, was founded in attempt for grassroots solutions to dealing with rogue Metahumans and the rising anti-metahuman anger among normals. Alistair MacDougal was almost unanimously elected chairman at the group's first convention. However, the ACM's governing board found itself torn between several possible course of action, and very little of substance was accomplished for several years. The group's only real victory in the 1980s was its mobilization against a proposed bill that would have opened up the national Metahuman registry to the general public. In part because of the urging of MacDougal and the ACM, Ronald Reagan promised a veto should the bill pass, and it died in committee. This was not before the proposed law sparked several more violent rallies in major U.S. cities. It is believed that the failure of the bill prompted the establishment of The Purity Project, a fervently anti-Metahuman organization with known ties to the Ku Klux Klan. The group's claims of responsibility for terror attacks against Metahumans leads to the administration declaring it a terrorist organization.

THE APOSTLES OF PROPHECY CHURCH:

The Apostles of Prophecy Church is a fundamental religious sect centered around a man who refers to himself merely as "The Prophet." Very little is known about this religion's creed, organization, or even its origin. The few teachings that have been made public have been a mishmash of Judeo-Christian, Muslim, and Hindu beliefs, with a generous dose of original fantasy. The primary belief of the Apostles of Prophecy is that Metahumans are "God's chosen people" and therefore are not just entitled to rule; they are commanded to do so. "The Prophet" acts as the leader of the church and sometimes releases recorded statements to the media.

There is a great deal of speculation about the man's identity. The general agreement among experts is that "The Prophet" is a Metahuman, though no concrete evidence exists yet to confirm this. "With a name like 'The Prophet,'" says Dr. Eric Bradford, "my guess is that he sees some kind of visions. Whether or not this is a part of his Gift or he simply hallucinates, I couldn't say." World authorities do not even know which country "The Prophet" calls home. They do know that his followers can be found in almost every nation, and it is believed that he communicates through Metahuman talents, making his communications nearly impervious to interception.

Europe up until this time had had very little noteworthy news on the Metahuman front. All of that changed in 1985 in the city of Florence, Italy. Though few solid details are known, it is believed to have started as an attack on a government building by members of the Apostles of Prophecy Church. When law enforcement officers and government Metahumans responded, a fierce battle ensued. No one is sure exactly what happened next, except that a tremendous explosion occurred in the skies over the city. In the ensuing fireball, 4,305 people died: either from burns, shock, or in the rubble of collapsing buildings. A shocked world reacted with horror. While faraway nations sent aid, their governments began to debate the escalating threat posed by Metahumans. Several European nations placed heavy restrictions on the talents of the Gifted, and four years later the European Union as a whole passed a law completely banning the use of any Metahuman talent by an unlicensed individual. Alternatively, in the United States the tragedy lead to quite a bit of debate but little change.

With the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1990 and the end of the Cold War, America faced a new problem: former members of the Soviet Union's Metahuman corps going into mercenary service. This was no more evident than during the first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, where United States military Metahumans faced off against similarly-powered mercenaries on the sands of Kuwait. Their brief but magnificent battles, recorded by war journalist camera crews, were watched all over the globe. The mercenary survivors, overwhelmed and beaten, retreated back to the international underground. Though pursued by INTERPOL, only a handful were brought to justice. With this type of situation in mind, a United Nations Security Council resolution to establish and maintain a Metahuman U.N. peacekeeping force was proposed in 1994. It failed to pass when China — the nation with the highest population, and therefore the highest theoretical number of Metahumans — exercised its veto power.

Growing unhappiness with the progress of "Metahuman rights" by those in the Gifted community led to a shakeup within the ACM. In March of 1996, Joshua Mancer was voted to replace Alistair MacDougal as the head of the American Council of Metahumans. With new leadership came new focus. Mancer lead a new public relations campaign, soliciting informational advertisements on television, radio, periodicals, and even road-side billboards. The new message: "We are all human." The organization also lobbied state and city governments to charter groups of Metahumans to aid in law enforcement, especially against any who use their unusual talents in crime. Though only a small number of such groups — some think of them as Metahuman SWAT teams — were established, Mancer at the time considered it a victory. "It's important that everyone knows that we believe all people are equal under the law," said Mancer in a 1997 interview, "and we will do our share to help" maintain "law and order, no matter who the culprit is."

Two years after taking control of the ACM, Joshua Mancer was to gain an important ally. In a landmark event, Representative Thomas Howell (D-OH) revealed to the public at a special press conference in 1998 that he is in fact a Metahuman. Howell, a member of the ACM, vowed to use his position to protect the civil rights of Metahumans while supporting tough laws to punish criminal misuse of powers. The nation exploded at the news. Some of his constituents went so far as to organize a recall vote (which due to an insufficient number of signatories, did not pass) and a Congressional vote to remove him from office failed by a 2 to 1 margin. The worst response came one year later when members of the anti-Metahuman Purity Project made a failed assassination attempt towards Rep. Howell. Even before seven individuals were convicted for the attempt, random violence on both sides continued to rise. After the convictions, hate crimes increased further, despite impassioned pleas from the ACM. At the same time, an international treaty to ban the use of Metahumans in combat failed to garner the support of any influential nation. Debates in the U.N. Security Council raged on without resolution.

Many in the ACM consider 2000 to be a watershed year for their cause. In that year, Thomas Howell was narrowly re-elected over challenger Michael Urbanks — a politician who focused his campaign on the fear of Metahumans. Howell, in his victory speech as the first known Gifted elected to Congress, announced that the vote represented a new bond between all people, Metahuman or not. Still, monitoring of registered Metahumans increased throughout this time and additional federal manpower was being continually devoted to tracking down violators of the MRARA.

The past few years have raised many more questions and provided few answers. Though few can overlook the sacrifice that New York's Sword team made during September 11th — the Metahuman group lost half of its members when the Twin Towers collapsed — the investigation into whether or not Metahumans (such as the Apostles) were involved in the attack is ongoing and might never be answered with complete certainty. In a move that Joshua Mancer called "ominous", the Metahuman Registration Enforcement Agency was one of several government organizations placed under the umbrella control of the newly created Department of Homeland Defense in 2002. And only two months ago, that same agency announced to the world that it had developed a technology which they claim "completely neutralizes the unusual talents of a Metahuman." No real details have been forthcoming though. Says MREA spokesman MacDougal: "This is not a reason for any law-abiding person to fear, Metahuman or not. What we've done is to simply make it possible to properly imprison the most dangerous of criminals. What we've done should be applauded by everyone."

However, not everyone agrees. "Alistair is a good man," says Joshua Mancer, "but in this case I think he is deceiving himself. If this claim [of Metahuman neutralization] is true, I question whether the government can be trusted not to abuse it... not to mention keep it safe from those we absolutely know will use it against our law enforcement and military."

Trust remains the key issue in human-Metahuman relations, on both sides of the fence. Each group cannot help but view the other with fear and suspicion. If the past is any indicator, relations are likely to remain tumultuous for some time.

So what is the future of Metahumans and their place within our society? Although they have been slowly finding more acceptance, many Metahumans still stand out in a way far beyond past trivialities such as skin color, language, or culture. And still no one completely understands the phenomenon, though there are plenty of theories (some more credible than others). Divine gift? Cosmic radiation? Alien interbreeding program? Others suggest it is simply the next stage in human evolution. Unfortunately, none of these theories stand up to scientific examination and testing (at least, those than can even be tested). Until we, as a world, can finally understand the cause and source of Metahuman abilities, the future is likely to be turbulent at best.

From the Jun. 07, 2004 issue of TIME magazine

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June 7, 2004 Vol. 163 No. 23








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