Wold Newton Turned up to 11

It was late in the doldrums of President Trump’s (“often impeached, never convicted”) second year in office when a fiery object from the skies smote southern Manhattan with properly biblical smitey-ness. A dark unreflective body about the size of the dome on St. Paul’s and moving Earthwards from the deeps of interstellar space with a velocity more typical of comets, the Judgment  of God (as many non-New Yorkers smugly referred to it) had only a brief 16 hour life as the asteroidal body Bellus [1] before it became a meteor: where exactly it would hit was still being debated when the question was answered on every TV screen and internet browser.

Fortunately, the meteor broke up in the atmosphere, reducing the impact at ground level, and even more fortunately, it hit around 2 AM, when Manhattan’s population density was considerably reduced by the absence of the commuting population. It still totally pulverized over half a square mile of ground, leaving rubble pocked with impact craters from the larger fragments (smaller ones would land as far away as Yonkers), and inflicted massive damage over a considerably larger area, killing some sixty thousand people, leaving over a half a million injured, and incidentally flattening Wall Street.

The meteor, upon examination, turned out to be chemically unique, and indeed included at least two elements not on the periodic table: that could _not_ be on the periodic table, in fact, since Protons and Neutrons do not come in fractional numbers.  (Thirty years later, a few twitchy scientists were still trying to figure them out, while the majority by then had taken a lesson from the Winslow and learned to ignore their existence).  However, all the talk about Mysterious Visitors from Other Realms of matter, force and Entity was largely pushed to the back pages by the fact that the essential collapse of the country’s largest financial center and its greatest city (sorry, Los Angeles) had tipped an already shaky economy over the edge. And where the US goes, so does the world…

Thirty years have passed. After a long period of instability and economic hardship, something resembling normalcy has returned to the international stage. Putin, who still rules Russia with an iron fist, is a terrifying old mummy in his 90s, and intrigue seethes in Moscow as his would-be successors await for him to either die or go sufficiently senile for it to become obvious. China is still ruled by a single party with little interest in liberalization. North Korea, admittedly, has collapsed (and is currently occupied by China). Israel continues to grind down the Palestinians. France is pursuing la glorie, if only to wash the taste of neo-Fascism out of the national mouth.

There have also been some fairly major changes. Pakistan and Nigeria have disintegrated while South Africa has expanded. A decade of post-Bellus US isolationism (the US protected a few close allies but otherwise let everyone go to hell at their own pace) has led to various score-settlings and state collapses. The EU broke up, a number of European countries went “neo-fascist”, (and mostly dropped it by 2048). A new EU headed by the UK in alliance with Germany is taking shape (some grumblers call it’s mostly northern, Germanic membership “the Teutonic Order”.) A powerful new religious Millennialist movement has arisen in Brazil.

Global warming has advanced, leading to serious disruptions in the Sahel and central Asia, and internal migrations in the US as large parts of the southwest hit their limits on water. The Dutch are busy developing the self-generating barrier island. Said US is now considered merely “first among equals” alongside the great powers, and doesn’t entirely like it. The majority of the world’s power now comes from the sun, fusion power has finally been achieved but the plants are so insanely expensive to build that nobody really wants to be the first sucker, there finally are Space Hotels, weak AI is killing off service and simple office jobs like the Black Plague, and medical advances mean that the average age of frail, sickly, heavily medicated death in the US is now around 94.Technology has admittedly not moved forward quite as fast as many forecast (quite a few predicted technological innovations turned out to be harder than expected, and then there was Great Depression 2.0), although the rate of technological change has leapt forward in the last few years…

They have been named The Children of the Meteor in a controversial article, but the name has not yet had time to stick. Nor has the more sinister-sounding New Breed, although that too will become popular. Their existence is only now becoming obvious, more than a statistical oddity in school assessments in northern New Jersey, southern New York, and most of Connecticut. There will be other names for them, many of them.

It became obvious by the early 2030s that something odd was happening in the US, especially in the northeast, as junior athletic records began to fall like ninepins, and reports of remarkably young inventors, entrepreneurs, and “facilitators” began to pop up like mushrooms on all electronic media. There had been “grade inflation” grumblings already, but not as much as one might have expected (a sizable percentage of the Children don’t do well in school below the College level, finding the work intolerably dull and trivial).

Unknown and undetectable radiations? Unexpected chemical interactions? Immaterial space-parasites? There are a number of theories, many of which call for the stockpiling of aluminum foil, but as yet no clear cause: all that can be said for sure is that those exposed to the substance of the meteor, whether dust from the impact proper or from the large portion of its mass which disintegrated high in the air and slowly drifted to Earth, have become the fathers and mothers of a new generation unlike anything in recorded history.How many of the New Breed exist is hard to say, the less spectacular specimens blending into the long tail of the bell curve of human capability. There are at least several hundreds of thousands. What can be said for sure is that it is a number which is increasing all the time: while whatever miraculous potency the meteor possessed faded quickly – what analysis had been done so far indicates no more first-generation births after three years – having achieved adulthood, members of that first generation are having children – and the characteristic traits of the New Breed are highly hereditable.

The manifestations, physical and mental, are variable. Although high levels of physical strength and intellect are almost always present, they do not necessarily appear in proportion, and some “expanded” humans may be greatly enhanced intellectually while only moderately abnormal in strength, while others may exceed any baseline athlete physically while being “merely” very bright. Physical mesomorphism is common, with some specimens having a physique almost grotesquely massive, long-armed and somewhat apelike: there are also a fair number with merely wiry builds, which, however, are often deceptively powerful. Aside from the more ape-like mesomorphs, the Children of the Meteor tend to run taller by several inches than a comparable sample of Americans from anywhere else in the country.

Intellectual enhancements usually include a formidable memory, remarkable rates of absorption and retention of information, a great gift for languages, and in some cases a remarkable broadening of the “bandwidth” of the conscious mind, allowing the conscious solution of complex problems that would require in most people multiple segments of thought and a lot of pen and pencil work. Many also have a remarkable ability for self-analysis of their own mental processes, allowing them to detect and avoid many of the common errors that plague the thinking of normal humans. While many normal minds will seize upon an explanatory narrative and then stick to it with grim determination, an expanded mind may create and easily discard dozens of seemingly plausible narratives in solving a problem: many of the Children of the Meteor can actually be dissuaded of a cherished idea by mere facts.

Emotional intelligence varies widely, with some of the New Breed being successful social butterflies or highly skilled emotional manipulators, or possessing remarkable gifts for empathy and putting themselves in other people’s shoes, while others are anti-social at best. The claims that some of them can actually read minds is generally dismissed as the sort of paranoid rumors that would naturally arise in such a situation.

Artistic genius does not seem as common, or at least an “artistic temperament” does not seem common among the Children of the Meteor: many write, paint, play instruments, etc. but those who pursue full time careers in the arts are a relatively small percentage of the breed, and those who do tend to produce art which is either extremely competent but conventional or of the most peculiar or outré type, generally either to the distaste or bafflement of the critical community.

Aside from physical strength which in some cases, with sufficient hard training, can approach that of the great apes, the New Breed usually possess a number of other physical advantages, including high stamina, ability to remain functional during long periods of little food or rest, resistance to cold and warm climates, high healing rates and resistance to disease, and in some cases a positively heroic capacity for ingesting alcohol while retaining decent reflexes and the ability to think straight. Data is not in yet, and will not be reliable for many years, as to whether they have any unusual resistance to the effects of tobacco, and any speculations on potential difference in life span remains strictly that: speculations.

Another common ability is that of hypnosis: many of the Children of the Meteor are skilled mesmerists, in many cases able to induce a state of extreme suggestibility even in normally poor subjects. Again, many have ascribed this to some form of psychic ability with no real proof: the nature of their ability has driven much research and study, with theories varying from them being such good hypnotists because people expect them to be good hypnotists, primate pecking order and inherent submission to a more dominant male (or female), ability to “read” the subject with abnormal skill, pheromones, and the production of subsonic or supersonic vocalizations (the current world’s loudest opera singer is a known Child the Meteor).  

The Children of the Meteor tend to be energetic, aggressive people regardless of gender, driven by a need for action mental or physical or both (while there are some physically indolent ones, they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Adrenaline junkies are common: many a young venture capitalist has a sideline in glider suiting off Everest or exploring the bottom of the Pacific in an unusual submersible of personal design, and others go into not particularly financially rewarding employment in the wild and still dangerous parts of the globe. And some go rather further in the “adventuring” game. There are ultra-competent mercenaries and guns for hire, private detectives which only take the most puzzling of cases (and who therefore usually depend on some other source of income), bounty hunters and missing persons trackers, and professional revolutionaries.

A few go even further: aside from the large and growing community of New Breed master criminals, there are now actual Science Heroes, vigilantes usually equipped with ingenious tricks and gadgetry operating outside the law to fight crime and corrupt governments in the US and abroad or in some cases simply murder people they feel have committed unforgivable crimes and escaped punishment. They at least generally avoid capes and tights (really quite impractical) but New York nowadays has at least a couple dozen Grim Avengers: the more extreme cases are usually stopped by other enhanced humans working in cooperation with the police [2] or simply get killed (moderate superhuman strength and speed does not actually translate into “bullet dodger”), and this sort of vigilantism is grossly illegal most places, but among the Children of the Meteor the lure of adventure and of exercising their mental and physical skills to the full is strong. (The situation is further complicated by indications that some of these Science Heroes are being financially and technologically backed by less physically active Children with extensive financial and technical resources, but the US legal system has yet to uncover anything indictable).

Of course, panics about super-villainous Children of the Meteor are now media standards: the Webworks (internet, TV and movies have evolved into a monstrous hybrid with many branches: effectively, there are now multiple parallel World Wide Webs, to start with) buzzes like a disturbed hive every time a report of a new third world coup or a consolidation of criminal organizations takes place, and every time some popular new cult arises. Are the New Breed behind it? The fact that some criminal masterminds have taken to elaborate gloating does not help at all, and it’s not just the actual masterminds: it’s hard to tell whether, say, the Black Baron, Kronos, Mr. Sunny Day and the Lady of Red Iron are Science Fiends or just super-skilled Internet trolls.

At least, the number of the New Breed who turn to Evil is not high enough to overwhelm the legal and economic system, at least in more advanced, less fragile states. (The US has enough of the Children for almost anything to happen, but the more numerous good un’s balance out the bad, and indeed the Bad balance out the Bad: no Evil Mastermind can build a nation-wide organization within treading on the toes of dozens of other Evil Masterminds, which tend to cooperate about as well as cats).  It appears that the ethnics of the New Breed is on the whole, a bit better than that of “normal” humans, perhaps because it is harder for them to fool themselves into thinking self-centeredness, bigotry and cruelty are good or normal things. This is only a matter of averages, though: there are self-centered members of the New Breed, plenty of arrogant ones, ones who are more interested in personal pleasures than in helping others, amoral ones. There are aggressive nationalists and cultural if not usually racial chauvinists. And a few are sociopathic monsters and ruthless would-be conquerors.

While the population of the New York area is highly multiethnic, and many young New Breed have moved abroad to either use their talents to aid their nations of origin or get away with shit they can’t in the US, a very solid majority of the New Breed have remained in the US, something which begins to arouse envy in some nations and inspire horror in others: the US is handily winning the Men (and Women) of Genius race without even trying.  Knowledge of the existence of the Children of the Meteor is still new enough that as yet few foreign leaders really can be said to have a real policy to deal with this new reality, but Russia is already seeking to recruit as many of the New Breed as they can by means fair and some cases foul, while the Chinese top leadership is arguing behind closed doors about the details of a secret eugenics program which will necessitate getting their hands on some New Breed sperm (preferably from Chinese-American Children).

Whatever the future will bring, however, the US is currently the center of the new age of “super” men and women. It is an increasingly turbulent place as the importance of the New Breed and their place in and effects on society come increasingly under scrutiny. After the Second Great Depression, a decade of isolation, violent generational and political conflict and the angry teens and young adults of the 2020s and 2030s finally grudgingly accepting the minor victories they had won, the US of the early 2040s seemed to be setting down again: now all seems up in the air again.

A bizarre new anti-intellectualism seems to be arising in some quarters, people 30 and under who are “too smart” being accused of being of the New Breed and therefore somehow not obtaining their intellectual gifts “fairly”: it’s unlike previous waves of anti-intellectualism in that the accusation of excessive intelligence is less associated with accusations of unmanlyness, given that female Children of the Meteor are usually more adventurous and often stronger than men  glaring threateningly at their brains. The legal system is full of challenges as people declare that merit-based college acceptance standards should be upped for those of the New Breed, that they should not be allowed to compete professionally in sports, etc. Some anticipate a revolution in politics as these “enhanced” humans compete for the Senate and Congress, while others feel that they should be kept out of politics: US society is badly split on the subject of the Children of the Meteor. Aside from the large number who simply disbelieve what the new statistical analyses say and refuse to see the extraordinary new flourishing of human genius and talent, there are factions who respectively see the new breed as a blessing or as a curse. Some have come to call the Meteor Wormwood, and the New Breed as a satanic plague upon the world: other see them as some sort of alien-created Midwich Cuckoos: others think of them as a new stage in evolution – which we must stamp out now with our superior numbers before they Neanderthal us. Others see them as a new stage in evolution – which through interbreeding with the rest of us and perhaps genetic engineering will improve the whole human race, while others, noting their American origin, feel they will be the ones who will Make America Great again (the last try didn’t go too well). Some think they all need to be registered like boxers hands or fictional superheroes, some think they should all be drafted, some think they should be checked for reaction to Holy Water as a precautionary measure.

It’s an era of scientific and technological advancement, as those of the Children of the Meteor with a technical/scientific bent throw their enormous drive into the task of creation. The field of science is abuzz as new theories appear to blow the latest iteration of the Stringy Branes Theory out of the water and promise proof of alternate universes, the _true_ nature of Dark Matter, and something which isn’t actually faster than light travel but somehow seems to work like it. A lot of testing and the resistance of much of the physics community lies ahead of course, but there has been a lot of talk of this being the biggest revolution since Einstein. (Speaking of Jewish scientists, one Eda Cohen of upstate New York has just performed the greatest physics troll in history by publishing two entirely new, mutually contradicting Theories of Everything that fit the facts as well as any previously described – and which currently are impossible to test).

Advances in computing, in robotics, in materials science, are coming at an accelerating pace. A consortium of Children of the Meteor and extremely rich normal people has revived the Mars Direct project – and this time the numbers actually add up. [3] There have been remarkable new advances in surgical technique, and there is excited talk about successful head transplants. Fascinating new pharmaceuticals and advances in biotech. (And some equally fascinating side effects, such as the unfortunate body builder who ended up eight feet tall and five feet wide and no longer able to fit through doors save at an acute angle). A chemical cure for sociopathy, and a chemical which temporarily induces it. Self-driving flying cars bright enough, stable enough, and idiot-proof enough to actually stand up to legal challenges.

There is a certain sense of uncertainty, of loss of control, as things change at an increasing rate, and at the same time some are terrified by this while others look forward with excitement to the unlimited future that had been promised since the 1950s but somehow never delivered. Technological changes now seem to be outpacing government control: besides new drugs, new mental and biological enhacements, new weapons tech, and so on, there are more proactive menaces to the established order. Many of the New Breed are not at all happy with the various efforts by the world’s governments to establish a global panopticon since the early 2000s, and are moving to undermine it by means legal and illegal: there is evidence that the Webwork now includes, parasitically attached to it like Remoras on a shark, several private internets based on servers in unknown locations or even piggybacking on existing server farms that have considerably more capacity than their owners are aware of, while virus attacks on massive databases storing the exact details of who made a crack about the president on Facebook twenty years before it ceased to exist have reached critical levels. (Indeed, keeping the whole Webworks from being overrun by new breeds of viral pseudo-intelligences in a full-time job for hundreds of New Breed computer programs. Some theorize that AI or at least electronic life already exists, and is lurking somewhere in the Deep Web. )

As yet, only a few of the Children of the Meteor have successfully led third world coups, climbed to the heights of national politics, or established new criminal empires, while those who have established new religions as yet do not have that many followers. They’re young yet, after all.  And even as they continued to expand their foothold on the world, they are seeking ways to raise and educate their children that will not duplicate the severe inadequacies of the current educational system (still as in 2017 derided as being inadequate for even ordinary children). Many are developing entirely new programs for a superior physical and mental education, of which some will work well, while others will have unfortunate side effects. The next generation will be even scarier.

 [1] It’s discoverer had a fondness for old SF films and a probably inappropriate sense of humor.

[2] When the police are willing, anyway: many police forces are indignant at the notion that they need the help of the New Breed to do their own jobs.

[3] Nobody has been to Mars, the Second Great Depression having been rather distracting, although the Chinese did put some Taikonauts on the Moon and started a Moon base in 2042 just to be ahead of the Americans on points.