Category: Hero Beat

Between January 3^rd and January 7^th of 2015, the Jihadists known as Boko Haram tore through the Nigerian state of Borno. They overran the Multinational Joint Taskforce military base, and massacred over 2000 people in the town of Baga before Heroes without Borders managed to stop their rampage. While Heroes without Borders have never shied away from controversy in the pursuit of upholding human rights, earning them official condemnation from Russia, China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia among others, this was the first time that HWB’s leader, N’Kondi, spoke before the United Nations about the tragedy. At the 70th Annual General Assembly in New York, she went into unflinching detail about the bloody fighting that included Boko Haram forcing children to wear suicide vests, but she didn’t stop there. She went on to condemn private precognitive firms as being as guilty of murdering the citizens of Baga as the Jihadists who committed the massacre.

“It is the continued privatization of actionable intelligence that has put a price tag on human life, or worse, undervalued it as completely worthless … Had prognostication firms like Sight Unseen or Watchtower Vigilance or Al’Fa Zreniye made public the findings of their visions and clairvoyant probes, they could have saved many innocent lives … But because there wasn’t profit in saving the lives of 2,000 Nigerians, these innocent men, women, and children were left to be butchered.”

Before N’Kondi’s speech, the general public knew little about the shadowy world of private precog firms, firms that used state-sanctioned psychics for the U.S., Russian, and Chinese governments. While the Supreme Court battle continues to rage over whether psychics can be admitted as remote witnesses, N’Kondi’s condemnation exposed the loophole and gray areas that allowed private intelligence services to emerge. It has also raised an even more heated debate over whether psychics can be held accountable for what they see and do not report.

It is that accusation that brings us to the tree-lined avenue in Washington, DC. If you’re driving down New Hampshire Ave NW,  heading southwest off DuPont Square, it’d be easy to miss the five-story building hidden behind the row of holly trees. The steel and reflective glass building houses a number of businesses, but none so intriguing as the secretive Watchtower Vigilance, one of the firms named by N’Kondi as culpable in the massacre.

Watchtower Vigilance is one of several international firms that offer its clients psychic services and protection. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry, and the price tag for their services are often steep. Their clients are a veritable who’s who of Fortune 500 CEOs, Federal agencies including the NSA, FBI, and Secret Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and various DAARPA think-tanks looking to protect themselves from foreign spies. If it sounds paranoid, it’s because Russia, China, and even France run so-called Deep Dive Units that employ metas with mental powers to spy on behalf of state-friendly companies. Forget the good old days when Cold War spies stole military secrets. Todays spies are after intellectual property and corning the market on inventions, capitalizing on mergers and acquisitions, gleaning formulas from biopharma and communication giants. You name it… if it’s a fortune maker, it’s up for grabs.

So how does one even start protecting a company against a clairvoyant’s attempt to read your computer screens, from telepaths plucking ideas from your heads, from precogs reverse engineering the visions they receive. Many of these precog firms start with the basics of teaching the companies how to protect themselves. They offer psychic conditioning classes and seminars, training clients how to recognize the telltale signs of mental intrusion, what the industry refers to as “the tickles,” and how to resist them. There is also a good deal of hard science involved. Reflective glass to block line-of-sight psychics, Faraday Cages to block electromagnetic psychics, and copper, steel, and zinc plating to mask against remote viewing. These aren’t even the top of the line solutions and many companies contract meta-inventors to develop cutting edge psychic intrusion countermeasures.

For these firms, it’s a competitive field and its stars draw seven-digit salaries. They’re rockstars in their profession, and it’s hardly surprising that for an industry that relies on learning information and blocking its theft, that intelligence costs. Is it fair, however?

“No,” David Karvanski, founder of Watchtower Vigilance says. “It’s not fair and it’s never going to be fair. If N’Kondi and Heroes without Borders want to paint on costumes and fight crime, let them. I’m not stopping them. But what I do is well above their paygrade and who I tell is way above their clearance. I don’t owe them an explanation.”

Mr. Karvanski’s blunt approach is legendary among those in his field, but few can argue with the results or his argument. Many companies reputedly do their due diligence by reporting what the industry calls lynchpin or “absolute” events to the proper authorities, but alerting foreign governments becomes a political quagmire when the State Department gets involved. Suddenly, lynchpin events can become about leveraging political favor, or withholding it. And the blowback can be even more difficult to manage. Before the Beslan School Hostage Crisis in 2004, the now defunct Paris firm Priorité Un, tried to warn the Russian Federation of an attack. They claim they were ignored and the Russians claimed there was no actionable intel. When Chechen separatists took 1,200 people hostage in the town of Beslan, murdering 334 civilians including 186 school children, the Russian Federation blamed Priorité Un, saying the precogs actually confused the situation and sent investigators in the wrong direction. The resulting blowback eventually closed Priorité Un’s offices for good when they lost the backing of the French government.

Then, of course, there’s always the danger that warning people about a crisis can cause it to evaporate, and rare is the time when a company can prove it was a threat in the first place. So, the question arises… are these companies actually trying to protect their own credibility by reporting on specific events? Are they reporting directly to the State Department and staying clear of political discourse? Are they too afraid to report on foreign events because the information isn’t clear cut? Are they merely as selfish and self-serving as N’Kondi claims? Or is it, like most things in life, a combination of all factors?

Unfortunately, there is another, more tantalizing explanation for why precog firms don’t offer information for free, one that is so far relegated to rumor and insider urban legend. I was having dinner with a source a short time ago and he related a story under the promise of anonymity. It was a story partially told by superpowered vets when it’s late at night and the whiskey bottle comes out. The story concerns the botched hunt for Bangarang, a costly manhunt for the dangerous and unhinged killer that involved a joint task force of FBI and Homeland agents as well as NYPD’s Armored Mobile Police exosquad, and trusted graduates of the War College. That part was a matter of public record, but the bit that my contact shared was new to me and has since been verified through other sources.

It concerned the psychic game of chess involved in trying to corner Bangarang. Precog firms had been hired to find and track Bangarang (an elusive meta who could turn invisible) only to discover that their target was in fact psychic as well. Every time precogs tried to predict his next course of action, he managed to evaporate in one potential future and went down a different path. When clairvoyants and telepaths tried to tag and follow him, he vanished from their mental scans and reappeared miles away in the blink of an eye. It’s for that reason Bangarang is listed as either a Baker or Alpha class meta, and why he has a list of presumed powers including precognition and teleportation… two powers that he’s never publicly exhibited.

Bangarang brings up the interesting possibility why psychics don’t report on certain events; it’s because there are mentats on both sides of equation, each contributing to an uncertain future where events become harder and harder to predict because both sides are playing chess and every move creates a new board in its wake.

Does any of this matter to the surviving family members of the Baga massacre victims? Probably not, but then did the Baga Massacre ever register as a lynchpin event, or was it the victim of corporate greed and, as N’Kondi put it, the privatization of actionable intelligence? Unfortunately, like many secrets of the precognitive industry, the truth may remain lost in the shadows.

It’s Friday night at the end of a long shift, and Harry’s is packed. Obviously, Harrys’ isn’t the bar’s real name, the officers of the Armored Mobile Police (A.M.P.) and the investigative arm better known as Amplitude Squad like to keep their favorite watering hole a secret. So I’m here on my best behavior, knowing the second I spill the beans about this place, I’ll have to answer to a dozen men and women in five-ton exo-suits.

The NYPD and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department are the most active and successful recruiters for meta-powered officers and exo-suit pilots given the meta-populations in both cities. In the booth with me sits Andrew Rossi, better known as Riot Act. He’s one of a handful of police officers with meta-powers, and I spoke with him about his experiences and what it’s like being a cop with powers.

HERO BEAT: Did you always want to be a cop?

RIOT ACT: Oh yeah, for sure. I actually got into the Academy and everything. I was going to pass on my own two feet when this thing happened.

HERO BEAT: Your trigger event.

RIOT ACT: Class of 2007, the Spring Nor’easter. Flooding, lightning strikes, 18 dead, and me shining like a polished chrome bumper.

HERO BEAT: You tried to keep your abilities a secret at first.

RIOT ACT: Hell yeah! I wanted to be a cop. I didn’t want to get booted. But the eyes. You try telling your training Sergeant why you need to wear sunglasses during drills.

HERO BEAT: So what happened?

RIOT ACT: I told the Sarge and he knew Tango over at the War Academy. They understood, but they said if I wanted to be a cop with powers, I had to go to the War Academy first and then back through basic all over again.

HERO BEAT: That must have been heartbreaking.

RIOT ACT: I thought I was getting railroaded, but the War Academy was all right, you know? I thought I’d be with a bunch of jarheads shouting “Hooah” all the time and getting fed the party line, but there were regular metas there too. It was all about responsible power usage and learning your limits. Normal heroes go just to get vetted to make proper citizen arrests, to learn hand-to-hand basics against powers, to learn tactics, you name it.

HERO BEAT: But you surrender your private identity and if there’s a crisis, you’re on call.

RIOT ACT: I’m on call anyways, and the heroes that’re really serious about being heroes? This gives them a fighting chance to do some good. It builds their connections, it trains them. If it wasn’t for the War Academy, I wouldn’t be a cop right now.

HERO BEAT:  So, what’s it like serving with A.M.P.

RIOT ACT: I love it. I thought I wanted to be a Detective or something, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop serving on the streets. I’m the guy they call in when they have a meta on the loose. Hard to beat that rush.

HERO BEAT:  A.M.P.’s mechanized power armors are pretty state of the art. When do they send you in instead of one of A.M.P.’s exo-units.

RIOT ACT: The exos take longer to suit up—usually it’s in route to a crisis spot aboard one of their V-T Carriers. Me? I’m usually first feet on the ground, or there solo like when some Charlie* decides to try his hand at being naughty.

*Charlie: Slang for Charlie-Class meta.

HERO BEAT: Do the other officers treat you differently because of your powers?

RIOT ACT: Sure. Sometimes. Not in A.M.P. but outside the squad? The young guys look at me and see a loaded gun. Not in the head, but what I can do. I don’t blame them. But the old guys, they’ve seen everything so they don’t even blink. They look at me, chuckle, and say the beer’s on me. When I ask them ‘why?’ They say ‘it’s because you’re a shit magnet.’

HERO BEAT: Do they have a special nickname for you?

RIOT ACT: [Laughs] Yeah. Kegger, on account of my silver skin.

HERO BEAT: And what do you say?

RIOT ACT: Nothing. [Calling out to the bar] I just blind the old farts!

The cheer that comes back speaks of a tightly knit unit. There’s no denying the job is tough and the stress high, but there’s also no doubt that Riot Act is a part of something bigger and that no matter what happens, these other officers have his back.

It’s called “The Tour,” and only a handful know how grueling, how exhausting, and how heartbreaking it can be. The Tour is the two-year average of most heroes who hit the streets before injury or PTSD or burnout bring their careers to a sudden halt. The ones who get back on the horse are the tried and true superheroes who see such stumbles as part of the trade. This isn’t a shortcut to fame, for them, but a calling to help the world. Many more are looking for their 15 minutes of fame to launch endorsement and book deals or acting careers, and they’re usually the ones who retire within their first two years, if an injury or death doesn’t force them out of the game.

It’s Friday night and the tourist trade on Canal Street is brisk. It’s hard to see what’s happening along this section of Chinatown as the crowds ply the stalls and simple storefronts that sell a variety of knockoff merchandise, but D’Mystify has a sharp eye. She’s a Charlie-class hero with limited prescience. She can follow a person’s actions along a limited timeline.

D’MYSTIFY: I can’t see the future like some folks can, but I get flashes and images. Bitch of a thing, though, I’m my own worst enemy. I get involved, I change the outcome. I jump in too early, my visions aren’t admissible in court.

HERO BEAT: Right. The Stranger Witness Rule. A separate, state-sectioned body has to confirm your vision.

Tonight, however, D’Mystify’s watching people of interest, plotting their trajectory as they move through the crowd and trying to figure out where they’ll end up in the next hour.

D’MYSTIFY: Whatever you want—shoes, purses, jackets, lids, you name the brand… down there, they’ll misspell it and sell it.

HERO BEAT: You’re going after counterfeiters?

D’MYSTIFY: I’m going after the warehouses that supply the stores. They got them hidden all over the place here and they see the cops coming a mile away.

Two years ago, D’Mystify crawled into New York-Presbyterian, bleeding from several gunshot wounds that left her near death. It wasn’t the first time she’d been injured during the Tour either. She’d been stabbed, blasted, and beaten before, but this was the first time that she nearly died since her trigger event.

HERO BEAT: So you carry a gun now?

D’MYSTIFY: And body armor. Wouldn’t you? I used to worry about how the armor would look under my costume. I couldn’t afford that expensive carbon-nanotube shit. I thought looking bulky would spoil my chances for my “big break.” I was so damn naïve.

HERO BEAT: How did it change you?

D’MYSTIFY: [Laughs, but without humor] Getting shot? Almost dying? What do you think? I felt like an idiot. When I first got my powers, I thought I was made, I mean set up for the life. I was going to move to New York, Hero Central, I was going put in my two years on the street, and turn that into a book deal. Such nonsense.

HERO BEAT: It took you seven months to recover.

D’MYSTIFY: You know, that wasn’t even the worst part. No, the worse part was being treated like a joke. I made all the talk-shows that week. Nobody talked about the good I’d done for the community or the people I saved. No. They laughed at me because if I could see the future, how come I didn’t predict getting shot? That’s what made them laugh.

HERO BEAT: Then why still hit the streets?

D’MYSTIFY: Pride, I guess. No, you know, that’s not even true. I guess I felt ashamed. I get these amazing powers to help people and all I do is look for the payday. So, as soon as I could move on my own, I came right back out into the streets, trying to do right by other folks first.

HERO BEAT: You’re now in your second tour?

D’MYSTIFY: I am. I’m still working off what I owe the hospital, though some heroes stepped up and ran one of those Fund Me campaigns to help me with the day to day? God bless ‘em, I’ll tell you. My apartment is a gift from a patron who’ll remain anonymous, but she knows who she is, and I get the odd job now and then, but, forget insurance. No company wants to give me coverage. And a social life? You’re looking at my night out right here. But it feels good. It feels right, you know?

HERO BEAT: Do you ever see yourself getting shot? I mean, do your powers show you that?

D’MYSTIFY: I always see myself getting shot. It’s always a possible future on any given night, and some days it makes me want to stay in bed all day and eat ice cream. Pralines, if you’re wondering.

HERO BEAT: How do you do it, then? How do you swallow that fear and come out here night after night?

D’MYSTIFY: By taking it one night at a time. That’s all any of us can do.

Suddenly, D’Mystify spots something that piques her interest. She smiles at me and shrugs, as if to say “interview’s over.” She’s gone a moment later, shadowing her lead along the rooftops.

The photographs are iconic of the 20^th Century, as indelible as the flaming crash of the Hindenburg, and a defiant Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston in the ring. The grainy black and white photos on D-Day, June 6^th, 1944 show Nazi-Kicker and The Honor protecting U.S., British, and Canadian soldiers from machine gun nests; or the battle between The Union Sentinel and Winterkrieg in the middle of Utah Beach. The Invasion of Normandy also spawned two more metahumans including a British soldier who would die an hour after his trigger event.

Flash forward a little under 20 years later, on a rainy Friday in November of 1963, when another image would come to mark the era: The Union Sentinel racing to shield President John F. Kennedy in his motorcade seconds before both men fall to the assassin’s bullets.

This valiant act would trigger the beginning of Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency and the launch of his social reforms that would come include urban renewal, environmental beautification, conservation, Medicare, the Voting Rights Act, and perhaps more importantly for metahumans, the abolition of the National Powers Act on the eve of Vietnam War.

The National Powers Act, a reminted version of the War Powers Act, had placed metahumans under governmental control and authority since WWII. At the time, registered metahumans were required to undergo training at the War College to instill them with “proper values” and “responsible power use,” but the War College’s real purpose was to bootcamp metas and prepare them for eventual battles with Russian and Chinese metahumans in theaters of combat.

So what changed that one war would see heroes figure prominently and another would be marked by their near absence? That President Johnson choose the eve of the Vietnam War as the moment to rescind the National Powers Act was due less to flagging support for the policy and The Union Sentinel’s sacrifice, and more to do with the Schumacher Principle.

An Austrian-born Jew, Dr. Ernst Schumacher fled his birth country before Nazi occupation in 1938 and went on to pioneer the field of Meta-genetics. In developing his Schumacher Principle, he noted the sharp rise of metahumans during World War II, including the rare Able-Class heroes, and posited that conflicts and wars that featured metahumans actually became catalysts for the emergence of even more metahumans. On a sufficient scale, superpowered individuals could serve as trigger events, events normally reserved for disasters. Dr. Schumacher went on to prove that any modern war fought on foreign soil would actually benefit the local and often put-upon populace with more metas.

Suddenly, the notion of using metas in regional conflicts like South-East Asia and Africa frightened superpowers and juntas alike, for the very people being killed or subjugated were the ones likeliest to develop Able and Baker-class superhumans. The Schumacher Principle was the inadvertent catalyst behind the liberation of metahumans, but it also created the first generation of heroes who were deliberately kept out of war.

The Schumacher Principle carried the unspoken caveat that most large nations like the United States, China, and Russia would carry fewer trigger events for emerging metas because conflicts were rarely fought on their soil. And the metas who did emerge from natural disasters or massive accidents like Chernobyl and Fukishima were generally rated at Baker and Charlie-class (rumors persist of Able-Class metas who were triggered by events post WWII, but that has yet to be proven; The Honor remains the only Able-Class metahuman still accounted for). This meant that the world had a vested interest in ensuring that natural disasters and wars did not escalate, for fear they might give host nations a new type of weapon of mass destruction.

Over half-a-century later, the Schumacher Principle continues to protect many metahumans in North America and Europe from military service. Unfortunately, rumors persist, telling of genetic research to isolate the factors that trigger the Crisis-gene, to create a new breed of manufactured metahumans. Were this to happen, it might well spell the end of the freedoms and liberties enjoyed by today’s breed of superpowered individuals, freedoms earned all those decades ago when The Union Sentinel raced to save the life of an American President.

It was April 27^th, 2011 at the height of the Super Outbreak of storms when over two hundred tornadoes touched down across Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi. It devastated towns and killed 355 people over the course of four days. Four of the tornadoes that spawned that day were F5s, the strongest ranking possible on the Enhanced Fujita scale, and the so-called Super Outbreak became a trigger event for as many as three known metahumans including the most famous one today… Grimsta.

HERO BEAT: Thank you for speaking with us today.

GRIMSTA: Thank you for having me.

HERO BEAT: Many of our readers know the superhero, the movie star, the producer: Grimsta. But tell us about Charles Michael Hope, the man who came before Grimsta.

GRIMSTA: (Laughs) Come on, now, Charles Michael Hope is still here. It’s his heart in here, his kidneys, his bones. Hell, I still have his gallbladder scar.

HERO BEAT: So your remarkable regenerative abilities don’t heal everything.

GRIMSTA: No, they keep me together, but they don’t heal what happened to me before my trigger event. My gallbladder is still gone.

HERO BEAT: So tell us about Charles, in his own words.

GRIMSTA: Well, Charles was an athletic kid from Smithville, Mississippi who went on to play College football as fullback for the University of Alabama Crimson Tide.

HERO BEAT: But you got in on a scholarship for Engineering.

GRIMSTA: Yeah, thanks to my Dad. He owned a construction company in Smithville, and every day after school, if I didn’t have practice, I was doing my homework in his office. Dad had a head for math, and he made sure I did too.

HERO BEAT: Can you tell us about that day?

GRIMSTA: Look, I’ll be honest. There’s nothing in that story that makes sense—nothing in there that’s going to tell you why I deserved to have powers. Trust me, I’ve played that day over and over again in my head and it–it was the Hail Mary of genetics. Over 300 people weren’t so lucky. The tornadoes hit and I—I did something stupid. I was worried about my dad and his phone was dead, so I drove through the damn storms to reach him. I hit Smithville in time to watch it get destroyed, like… nothing I’ve ever seen. Just a column of wind and rage, and when the damn thing was almost on top of me? Boom… my crisis gene triggers just as I’m praying for Jesus to save me.

HERO BEAT: So do you believe it was the Crisis Gene that saved you, or God?

GRIMSTA: A bit of both, maybe. I can’t say. All I know is that I got tossed, what, three miles away by that F5? I hit the ground covered in my aura and my cuts and bruises? Well, those disappeared fast. As I made my way back to what was left of Smithville, I just started helping people.

HERO BEAT: And that’s when the television crew started following you around.

GRIMSTA: Right. I guess we both made each other’s careers that day.

HERO BEAT: Having survived a devastating event like the Super Outbreak, what do you think of Storm Chasers… I mean the fans who jump into danger hoping for their own trigger event.

GRIMSTA: I get it, you know. They see me living this life and they want a piece of it. But it’s not worth it. Behind every one of these trigger events is a real-life tragedy, and you’re at the heart of it, saving lives and powerless to save more. You know, I had a chance to talk to Freedom-X at a charity event out in L.A. when I was just starting. You know what he told me? He said: “God only gave us two hands to keep us humble.” The day I got my powers… I couldn’t save the man who raised me. I couldn’t show him who I’d become. That’s what I’d tell Storm Chasers.