Aberrant: The Long March - Events thus far...

[Mr Fox]

Morgan's journal:

So this is my journal. I've decided to start keeping this as a record of what has happened. We've been through alot since it all began. It hardly seems like it's only been a few weeks.

Frag, it was a lifetime ago!

Lets see. It all started when we attended a party in honor of Omar and Marcus. Isabel and another artist named Raina had done portraits of the two guys for an article that Sports Illustrated was doing. We were minding our own business enjoying the party and BAM! The building explodes and several of us erupt. I developed healing and the ability to 'warp'. Omar gained the ability to grow to like four or five times his normal height. The others gained other powers. Well we had already been hanging out even before our eruptions so we all kinda laid low after the party until this woman showed up our doorstep with this hand full of pictures. They were pictures taken in Africa at an archeological dig, but they were like no artwork I've ever seen before. Apparently the explosion at the party was to prevent other copies of these pictures from being seen. A group of government nova thugs killed 30 or so people just to keep this from becoming known. I'm getting ahead of myself though. We didn't know they were government types then. So anyways, we head to Africa and check out the dig site and sure enough, there are these caves that have this artwork on the walls. The caves are like three million years old or something, but the art was like Rembrandt or DiVinci, but better, and it wasn't just on the walls they were part of the walls. So long story short; the thugs had snatched this ancient technology that was inside the caves that was way more advanced than what we've got now-a-days. There was also this one chamber in there that had stars all over the ceiling. That became important later.

So we tracked down the fact that these R&D labs were being destroyed and we figured they were connected to the missing artifacts and sure enough that was true. But meanwhile we discovered that there had been this other cavern discovered beneath the sphinx that the Egyptian government wasn't letting anyone open. Well, you can't hardly stop a nova and his friends when he has the ability to open warps. Heh. It had a chamber with stars all over it too and just like the first cave it had already been looted. Problaby by the same thugs.

Anyway, we fed the star patterns into the computer and discovered a couple things. First, the caves dated to over 3 million years ago. Second, there was a 'star' on the map that shouldn't be there. So Carter, he was a bit of a computer wiz figured out that the star was actually a rogue planet that was now in orbit around Saturn as one of its moons. Iaeptus in fact. Boy is that moon weird too. It has a ring of mountains going entirely around the planet exactly at the equator. The mountains are three times the height of Everest. Plus it has all these hexagonal shaped craters, and lastly about half the surface is covered by some kind of dark material. Well that dark stuff turns out to be the debris from an alien fleet that was destoryed a few thousand years ago. You can even look all that up on the opnet and find out I'm not kidding, it's a really weird place. Well, you won't find out about the dark stuff being from an alien space ships, but all the rest is there in black and white for anyone to read.

So we were busy preparing to go check out that moon one afternoon when we heard something at the entrance to the caves. So I created a warp and we all jump out behind the government thugs. Man were they surprised, it was a real clusterfuck for them. Omar goes mideaval on one of their guys slamming him into the side of the cliff and getting hit pretty hard in return. That particualar bad guy had some mega strength on him. Carter goes invis and sneaks up behind one and sticks a knife between a couple of the guys ribs. Marcus lets loose with some lightning and then things got a little too hetic for me to keep track of. I was busy trying to hold the warp open. Plus it all happened so fast I hardly had time to do anything. Next thing I know everyone is running back toward the warp like they have the devil himself giving chase. They all dived through and I followed and let the warp close. The next think I hear is a massive explosion outside the cave. The bastards that killed Isabel's family and all the others at the party got their karmic comupence.

After that we headed out to the orbit of Saturn and investigated it's moons until we realized it was Iaeptus that was the one that we were looking for. Turns out that there is this freakin big city cut out of a mountain inside a crater on that moon. We warp into the penthouse of this place and meet some old man, he points us to a side room with mosiacs on the floor. We walk in and poof! we're in this massive cavern with a freakin spaceship inside. The hatch is open and and the ladder down so we walk in and head toward the bridge of the ship. Natural enough right? Can you say, big piece of cheese?... and we were the mice! As soon as we walked onto the bridge of the ship the hatch closes and we feel this weird feeling in the pit of our stomachs and then this recorded message says. Congratulations you've wone the booby-prize! Ok, so it didn't really say that but that was the gist of it. Basically, their technology is too advanced and will mess up earth's history if it is discovered right now, so since we know about it, we've got to go. We can have the ship and travel through space and time, but it's programmed not to return to our timeline until sometime in the 22nd century. Just great!

More later.

[Mr Fox]

Ok, I guess I'll continue with what has happened. After we discovered that we were stuck on this intelligent ship capable of travelling through time and space what do we do? Spend a while feeling sorry for ourselves over all that we lost. Yeah, I'm not exactly the most broken up over this since I pretty much didn't have anything to lose. I lost my wife a couple years back and had pretty much given up on living until all this stuff started happening. These days I still think about her often, but I'm not moping around anymore, this is the biggest adventure I could have ever imagined. Evil aliens, time travelling space ships, massively powerful beings that predate the human race... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, there we were floating in orbit around Saturn soaking up the cool view, but not exactly getting anything accomplished, and not filling our very empty nova bellies either. Well, we decided that we'd best not head straight back to an earth filled with other novas since they might take Lorean away from us. Oh yeah, we named the ship Lorean. She likes the name. Anyway, we have her find us a world where there are no novas that is about the same technology level so we can stock up on supplies and hire a crew. Problem is we don't have any money. Heh! Like money is a problem for a group of novas in a world with no clue what novas are. We decided to hit Vegas, and boy did we hit it! While some folks were arranging for supplies and hydroponic equipment, Me, Steve and Carter went gambling. I won a cool 15 thousand and thought I was big stuff. Not even. Steve and Carter won a total of 165 million between them. The folks at the Belliagio treated us like royalty after that. So we spend a week or so on that earth and arrange a job fair where we announce the truth to the applicants. They didn't believe us of course, until we give them a little demonstration of our powers. Oh yeah, and the evening after we won the money we went to pick up some good fake IDs since we might need them and had a couple thugs try and rob us. Dumbasses had a rocket launcher that accidently went off and practically demolished the house we were in at the time. Well, we dropped those bozos off somewhere in deep South America just for giggles. Last thing we did before we left that timeline was to put on a big show in the Belliagio's parkinglot. Omar wanted to show off some. We figured we'd never be coming back so what the heck. He used his strength and sizemorph abilities to stack some busses on top of each other, then we piled into Cody's 'craft' and took off into the sky in front of everyone. I figured they'd chalk it up to special effects and stuff, after all David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear on tv once right? Yeah, not so much. They had to get cranes to disassemble Omar's pile of busses. Couldn't exactly pass that off. Then there were all those folks that we told the truth to that didn't elect to join the crew. But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

More later.

[Mr Fox]

Alright, this is where things start to get a little ugly. See every possible future exists out there and we chose to visit one where the human race was nearly extinct. We figured that 165 million in cash wouldn't do us much good on other timelines and in other times so we wanted to pick up some hard currency. Silver, Gold and Platinum. Good stuff. Anyway, this particular earth had been nailed by an asteriod and we showed up several years after the strike so that we could loot the Fort Knox without anyone objecting. That went pretty well except that while we were in the vault Andrew one of the baseline crew members was searching for useful stuff when a huge pile of platinum bars fell over on top of him squishing him flat as a pancake. Luckily he errupted and went all Odo on us and turned into a puddle of goo. Needless to say he eventually figured out how to turn back into himself more or less. He can shapechange into some cool stuff now. Before we jumped out of that timeline though we discovered that there were three other asteriods on killer collision courses with Earth. One is unlucky. Two a coincidence, maybe... but four? Not a chance! There are some evil aliens out there that took it upon themselves to play galactic exterminators. That's when we decided one of our priorities would be to find out more about them and to arm Lorean so that we can deal with them eventually. Sooner or later we are going back to that timeline and deflect those other three asteriods and deliver some payback.

Meanwhile we had a little discussion about what we wanted to accomplish and what we should persue first. The decision? We wanted to check out the future and see what was in store for the human race, find some weapons for Lorean and look into the problems of Taint and why most Novas are sterile. We did some jumping into the future and discovered what happens to cause the Aberrant War and that it happens on most timelines where novas exist. We kinda let the weapons thing for Lorean drop for now since we found some good leads on the sterilization conspiracy. Fraggin eh, as if novas didn't have enough to deal with, we discovered that most novas are sterile for a reason. It was done to them intentionally. Some of us avoided that since we left earth less than three weeks after erupting. Anyway, long story short, we tried a few things like exposing the conspiracy on one timeline to see what would happen. No matter what we did we couldn't shake anything loose from the tree other than the fact that there definitely was a conspiracy and there was a secret orginzation within Utopia. It was looking pretty much like Utopia had foreknowledge of N-Day and were prepared in advance to deal with it. It was less than a year before the sterility drugs started getting distributed.

Anyway in looking for a cure to the sterility and taint we decided to jump forward on the earth where we picked up the crew. What we discovered in their future was pretty startling. The Aeon Trinity is the government in their future. Apparently our little stunt caused closet novas to come forward and they never had an Aberrant War. Instead the Aeon Society took charge of nova and the other meta-humans, yep that's right we novas have a brother species. Psions or Psiads, or whatever you want to call them. The future of that timeline has all three groups living peacefully beside each other. Not all is as nice as it sounds though. The Trinity rules and there is a major stigma against gaining taint and novas with noticable taint are shunned and treated like lepers and they are pitied. Anyway they have advanced tech and they actually noticed Lorean and were on their way to investigate us so we jumped the heck outta there. Very interesting timeline and worth more investigation later perhaps.

Next we decided to find another devastated earth where we could poke through the Aeon's records to see if we could dig up any dirt. This was the most depressing earth of all the ones we've seen. Most of the human race had been eliminated in a nuclear exchange during the Aberrant War. We found what we were looking for and then some. We discovered a bunker on Mars where the serpent in the garden herself was slithering. Director Thetis. The woman responsible for the sterilization and attempted genocide aginst novas. While Cody was interrogating her on board Lorean the rest of us went down to the planet and visited a village of survivors. They were baselines and novas living in peace and trying to rebuild society led by a nova named Stormbringer and a council of elders. They were good people and it did my heart good to get to know them.

Summary of what we learned from Thetis:

1) She created Project Proteus within Utopia to achieve her own ends.

2) Out of jealousy and hatred she attempted to sterilize every nova and see to it that they all died.

3) She was directly responsible for the situation that led to the nearly complete distruction of the earth on this timeline.

4) Max Mercer and the Aeon Society did not know of her group and Max Mercer is a time traveller.

5) He gained his powers through an accident called the Hammersmith event.

So now we are headed to a timeline to snoop on what happened at the Hammersmith event and to warn Mercer that Thetis is a snake and to avoid her like the plague.