Saturday, July 1, 2025, Canada day Union day.
Who knew the apocalypse would have a sense of irony.
The meteorite hit the central lawn of the pentagon just as the largest volley of fireworks were fired off at the Whitehouse. Noone even heard it, except for people working in a window office, inside the pentagon.
Except, it wasn't a meteoroid. It was a space ship. Or what was left of one. It had come to warn us.
Barely a week later, the actual meteorites landed. Thousands of them. And that was just the first wave.
The ship that hit the pentagon's fabled hot dog stand broadcasted a message. It seemed to have been recorded just before the ship entered our atmosphere. Its [person in the message] was not human.
// Citizens of Earth, I come with a warning.
// I have reached your planet in roughly seven of your earth days ahead of a cloud of meteors, numbering in the thousands. Their unique composition, similar to attributes of my vessel, have likely cloaked them from your sight until now.
// they carry with them a unique element, brought forth from the center of the universe, the location -of- what you call the big bang. It is best described as raw, crystallized, creation, or life. My people called it Origin, others called it Foundation. From what I know of a subset - - your cultural mythology, some of you may call it Eden.
// It will bring great power, but it will also bring great ruin. I have begun the automatic broadcast of a data package containing all the information I can provide you on its nature.
// I had hoped I would - - able to guide you through this trying time, but my injuries have worsened and this may unfortunately be the best I can offer you.
// I am putting myself in stasis in hopes that I may be rescued in the future. If one of you manages to reach the necessary skill level - - - - , and would have the kindness to heal me, I will impart any wisdom I can and - - - to aid you in your fight.
// Good luck. //
The message caused havoc and panic across the world. Among assorted doomsday cults and similar groups, nearly a million people reportedly died across the world in the first 48 hours. A dozen different terrorist groups or more launched their various jihads or dogma-specific attacks on their enemies. Wars even broke out as different dictatorships and extremist governments took advantage of the panic to launch their arsenals of missiles and oppressed war machines. Even domestic political groups used it as an opportunity to vie for power, often the political parties who housed the majority of their countries' ultra-nationalist population. It almost seemed like the message had been intended to destabilize the world in preparation for something.
But then the meteorites hit. Across the globe, the meteorites destroyed city centers, agriculture, and wildlife indiscriminately. The shower lasted the entire day, not even allowing the populations on the other side of the world to be spared. And then the true threat emerged.
From the glowing blue mists emanating from the impacts, hordes of beasts of all sizes emerged, slaughtering anyone they could find. The energies of the mist began to warp everything around it as well. All across the globe, unbelievable phenomena occurred. Entire buildings had their materials changed. In New York City , an entire skyscraper was turned to golf. In Mumbai, an apartment building was turned to lead. In Shanghai, a factory was turned into wood. People began to change. Those close to the impacts began to exhibit supernatural abilities. Some gained immense strength, some were gifted blinding speed, some could even breathe fire.
And then the really weird things happened. The mist began to warp reality itself. In a farmer's field in France, a Roman Legion suddenly appeared, in the middle of a charge towards an army of Gauls who were no longer there. A fleet of German warships from World War 2 emerged in the middle of the ocean, right next to a US Navy battlegroup. A herd of dinosaurs appeared in the middle of a college football game. And amidst all of that and more, some doors began to open up to the wrong place.
What the mist, and the alien for that matter, brought to humanity for the better was pretty astounding as well though, and the supernatural enhancements were just the start.
AlsoBefore we go any further; Can you believe people started calling him Bob? the alien I mean. We don't even know their gender, or if their species even has one, but that didn't stop people. They saw a lack of "female-presenting nipples", and just thought, "DEF'S A DUDE!". Yeah, the news anchor who came up with that was from Box news, who would have guessed. Gotta love the American education system! For what it's worth, dude was jacked, though I can't say for certain if that was because of how little food he had in that tiny spaceship, or from exercise. His physique looked like an early 20th century German eugenicist's wet-dream-hybrid between an Olympic swimmer, vegan crossfit proselytizing influencer, rock climber, and an ultra-marathoner all in one. And he was over seven feet tall! If he didn't have greyish blue skin and all the other features that, you know, screamed "I'M AN ALIEN!", obviously.
The source of the mists quickly became colloquially known as Eden thanks to Bob's initial message. The Eden was a glowing blue rock that was found in every single one of the meteorites. Along with the other extraterrestrial materials we found in the deadly space rocks, the Eden was quickly found to be extremely useful. It could be useful in pretty much anything, but especially as an energy source, and a further source of those powers.
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Before I forget, I should mention that the folks who got those powers started being categorized as "awakened humans". At first, people were just using the term gifted, powered, enhanced, and so on, but we realized that quite often, the powers seemed to actually be connected to the person's personality in some way. I had heard of one Italian-American guy about my age in Veil City who got some weird prophetic ability. It sounded amazing until I watched him interviewed on CNN. Apparently all his hunches and visions and what not just pointed him towards important things, regardless of if it would be good or bad. It had nearly got him killed twice in the first month. The interesting thing though was that he had been in therapy for anxiety because he worried about his future so much it was hampering his school work. Around 50% of the awakened were reported to have gained abilities that related to them personally in some way. Although that was only pertaining to those who were awakened on E-day (emergence day), and only those who had been confirmed to have awakened during the shower. By the end of that first month, as militaries around the globe battled to hold back the tides of monsters along side the handful of newly enhanced humans, the mists had carried on the wind and reached every corner of the world, resulting in roughly 10 percent of the world's population finding themselves suddenly gifted with supernatural abilities, even me.
Who am I? My name is Rowan Blackwell, and I'm not really anyone special.
I'm 21, a second year arts major at Veil City University. I had no idea what I wanted to do after graduating highschool, even after taking an extra year so I could coast and goof off in the library for half the day. I had wanted to become a video game artist, but I was never really proactive about it so I found out far too late that I had been doing all the wrong things to get into those kinds of schools. As it turns out, even if you stack a good 10 art classes into 5 years of highschool, you actually need to practice outside of school to build up a portfolio. Who knew! Basically everyone but me probably.
So of course, I was stuck taking a generic Bachelor of Arts history curriculum, sitting in massive lecture halls taking notes alongside countless other lazy nerds, and the equally large handful of communications and kinesiology majors. I did sign up for a good number of computer science classes though. My parents had bought me a 3D printer for my 18th birthday, and I immediately fell in love with that budget Chinese open source knockoff as soon as I saw the janky text reading Epic 3 on the side or the box. They'd had to soundproof my bedroom so they didn't hear it whirring all the way across the hall every night. And so they didn't have to hear me cursing every time I had to re-align or re-level it seven times a print. They'd given up trying to chastise me for the foul language. It created a whole new obsession for me that tanked my grades so low I nearly missed the bar to get accepted to university.
I'd say I'm, at best, mildly attractive, based on how often I'd get rejected by girls. I'm just about six feet, with dark, nearly black hair. Most people just call it black, but in the right sunlight or with good summer sun-bleaching, the dark brown hues come through, with little flecks of red. In highschool I used to tell people I was six feet, but in reality I was about a quarter inch short. And believe me, any guy who's nearly six feet tall, knows exactly how far he is from that magic number. I'd grown just barely half an inch in the two-ish years since graduating, so at least I wasn't lying any more. Yes, of course I measured.
But then on e-day I'd got a faceful of that glowing mist and suddenly grew two inches. Yeah, I'm one of those Enhanced folks. Don't worry though, like I said I'm definitely nothing special. In the power-ranking system that was quickly created after e-day, I landed solidly in the bottom tier. F rank. Basically everyone who gets Enhanced gets at least a mild base improvement to their "physical stats", kind of like a really bad knock off super-soldier serum. Basically a ten percent boost to strength, agility, and durability along with arguably faster healing from injuries. Congratulations, me! I basically got the equivalent of putting in a basic effort on the gym's "thirty minute cycle" a couple of times a week. Yay, I saved myself a couple of hours a week doing something I wasn't already doing.
I didn't really get any extra abilities except for the default physical boosts. My eyesight got a bit better, in as such that I would no longer need reading glasses when I'm sixty (that's actually how the doctor described it to me if you can believe it), and my hearing improved a bit. Now it was harder to not hear people when I had earbuds in. The icing on the cake was the Synesthesia. You know that thing you've maybe heard of in passing once or twice where some people have different senses tied together? Like you can hear colours, or taste sounds? Yeah, I got that. Yay. Was it useful? Guess. Mostly, I tasted better, yipee! Ok, that wasn't such a bad power, I do certainly like food.
When did this all happen to me, you may ask? Well after an entire highschool career of zero luck with girls and my only physical contact being a brief dalliance held over two summers of sleep-away summer camp (first as campers then the next summer as junior counselors, late night staff room visits heyo), I finally got a girlfriend, sort of. I had bumped into the girl I had a crush through pretty much all of my teenage years, and apparently I didn't say enough stupid things on that first meeting because she agreed to get coffee with me. I know, the highschool sweetheart trope, it's been done. Don't worry! Because that's about as far as it went.
I was sitting outside of the building where she had her last class of the day trying to look as "effortlessly cool" or at least nonchalant as possible leaning up against my dad's car (borrowed after sufficient grovelling and agreeing to pay for a full tank of gas) when one of the rocks plowed directly into her building just as a wave of students started coming out the double doors. The only saving grace was that she didn't end up seeing me through the crowd. I'd seen some security footage of the impact on the local news later, and I looked like an idiot.
Thank god I'd already filled the tank. I was maybe three strides from the car and the moment I saw those monsters come out of the wreckage, I turned right around and drove off as fast as I could. I grabbed both my parents, forced them into the car, and drove three and a half hours away to the cottage my dad bought after the divorce. My mother freaked out when I first tried to get her, panicking all "oh what about your brother?!" etcetera, etcetera. My brother had been in Peru for nearly two months now. I stuffed our two cats into the carrier, thankful for the gloves I'd been wearing, and grabbed the dog by the collar while dragging her out the door. Let me tell you, it was an interesting first week as we shut ourselves away in there and watched the chaos unfold on the news. It hasn't helped that my mother had no idea he'd bought the cottage (or that he could afford to). I spent the next few weeks trying to message as many of my friends as I could to see if they were alive, and putting up with a mix of my dad's terrible jokes about how even the universe doesn't want me to get a girlfriend, and my mom doing a terrible job of consoling me with generic hallmark platitudes and pats on the back. I didn't even know I was enhanced till they did general testing six weeks later.