The World
It was August 12th, 1939, the day we woke up to discover that the gap between possible and fantasy had closed. That day, a young man appeared as if from nowhere when the City of San Francisco passenger train derailed, saving the train and its passengers from their fate. None saw his face clearly, and he left immediately after the train was safe, but the news spread. Something amazing had happened, and it would change everything about our world in short order.
The mystery man would make other appearances, as would others, in the following years, but it was the Second World War which named them. Both Axis and Allies had such beings in their ranks, but the German Wehrmacht employed them openly. These brightly dressed and charismatic men and women of the Reich were incredibly powerful propaganda tools, so the Allies decided to make their own super-soldiers public. Taking their call-signs and codenames as their new public personae, the Mystery Men became public figures for the first time. And when Churchill made reference to allied superhumans as ‘Our Unique Soldiers,’ the name stuck. The Uniques had arrived.
Uniques fought many long, bitter battles during the course of the War, but they were not the only revelation awaiting us. During the Battle of the Kasserine Pass, US forces discovered a vessel believed to be extraterrestrial in origin. The Taskforce, a US team of Uniques, secured the site and the contents of the vessel for Allied scientists. The influx of this incredibly advanced technology made possible several new innovations, including the Countryman Project - the first and only successful means of giving Unique abilities to ordinary men - and the fast-tracking of the Manhattan Project.
World War II ended, and a time of peace came. Many of the costumed heroes of the War returned home to continue fighting for justice, and their grateful nations welcomed their efforts in most cases. Laws were passed allowing Unique crimefighters to operate independantly, requiring that they register with the government and become licensed through passing a series of tests and meeting rigorous standards. Subsequent laws added provisions for teams of heroes, sidekicks and young heroes, provided they met similar standards and operated by certain rules. By all accounts, this was a golden age of super-heroism. The 40’s and 50’s saw the birth of many successful and valued Unique heroes and heroic groups.
During this golden age, the global balance between the Super Powers of England, the Soviet Union and the United States was precarious at best. During World War II, we had battled facism and won… it now seemed that communism would be the great threat facing the world. Wars large and small were fought as lines were drawn in the sand, Democracy against Communism. Ultimately, open conflict proved difficult for all sides to maintain, and a Cold War of escalating tensions reigned. Not only were weapons stockpiled on either side of the conflict, but so too were Uniques, who were treated as little more than living weapons by either government - Persons of Mass Destruction to be levelled against the enemy as an overt threat.
As we looked for shadows all around us, growing social problems were allowed to fester. Uniques were awe-inspiring but could also be frightening. It didn’t take many self-styled ‘Super Villains’ before ordinary men and women, or ‘Typics,’ began to fear and hate the Uniques among them. As civil unrest grew, legislation was proposed and passed to keep Uniques and Typics separate - even to deny Uniques the same legal protections Typics held.
For this reason, many Uniques hid the source of their abilities. Some claimed their power came from other sources--suits of armor, magical or alien artifacts, and even extraterrestrial ancestry. Others simply hid their true nature to ‘pass’ as Typic. Despite the best efforts of the Uniques, it became a commonly held belief that Uniques were somehow less than human and, as such, not worth of the same rights as the rest of us.
Things came to a head during the escalation of the Vietnam War. In 1965, the United States began its ground war, and Uniques were called in for duty. They were drafted at incredible rates, and standard age requirements were ignored - children as young as fifteen and adults as old as seventy were drafted with impugnity. The belief that the special abilities of this group of people would make them effective soldiers at any age, ultimately caused a change in the conventional guidelines for recruitment into the military. For example, teenagers, who were normally considered unfit for duty, were assigned to combat units without sufficient training if they possessed a useful ability such as the capacity to glow in the dark.
As a result, fatalities for Uniques were astronomical. The war effort suffered, and General William Westmoreland’s assurance to President Johnson that the war would be over by 1967 proved far from the mark. Unrest at home grew exponentially as the situation continued to worsen. A Civil-Rights campaign in the United States had been underway since the mid-1950’s, but as the war grew darker, so too did the struggle for freedom at home. There were riots and violence in the streets at the same time as peaceful protestors marched on Washington seeking equality for all, regardless of race or ability. Their contention was that, no matter the color of your skin or the shape of your body, black or white, Typic or Unique, all people were created equal.
President Johnson brought the cause to congress, leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, securing legal equality at the very least. Intolerance continued, however, in towns and cities if not the capitol. Despite it all, Uniques and others continued to press on, fighting for those who hated and feared them.
As Vietnam fell apart and the war came to a close, pictures began to arise of the horrors there. Timothy Best, a 17-year-old boy sent to war because he was born with white eyes and blue hair, was killed in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, and the photo of the young boy in death became worldwide news and put a face on the tragedy of the war. America elected a new President, hoping to end the fight, but it would continue on for another seven years.
In the wake of Vietnam, the possibility of equality between Uniques and Typics went from bleak to inevitable. These people had died by the tens of thousands in a war most had come to detest. By the end of the decade, the need for true and lasting healing was recognized and codified. In 1979, the 27th ammendment to the Constitution was ratified, stating that Uniques were human beings and protected by all the same rights and protections as all people. It had been a huge victory for the League of Seven, one of the most renowned Unique teams in history, and for President Carter who had been a strong supporter of the ammendment.
Ultimately, Uniques are still ordinary people. With the ratification of the 27th ammendment, the future of the United States and the world changed. In short order, other countries made similar laws, and the Uniques were at last brought into society as brothers, neighbors, and partners. The ensuing boom in technological growth has been unprecidented, leading to amazing new inventions and advancements several decades ahead of their time. The world had changed, and continues to move toward the stars at an amazing pace.
And yet old conflicts persisted. By the late 1980’s, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was growing hot. The Soviet Union had been using Uniques to power its infrastructure for decades, and was powerful enough that the economic pressures put against it were slow to show results. The United States refused to back down from their position, financing many smaller conflicts with the Soviets, most notably the Soviet-Afghan War. By 1990, neither side was backing down, but the Soviet Union was beginning to show cracks. The Americans pushed harder, hoping to force a conclusion, but only succeeding in further inflaming Soviet leaders. President Bush, however, pushed for an accord between the nations. Many believed that actual peace could be at hand.
The tipping point came with the assassination of the American President. The assassin took his own life immediately after, and though he was not himself a Soviet, enough evidence was found on his body for the assumption to be made. On the heels of this attack, the CIA gave word that the Soviets were positioning missile batteries, potentially as a first-strike option. The mood of both nations was dire, having come so close to resolution only to be hurt so deeply. Now-President Gingrich committed American forces, and USSR General Secretary Gorbachev did the same with seeming reluctance. As both armies readied for war, a group of Uniques led by Mentor and Kinetic of the League of Seven and Countryman of the Taskforce worked in concert with the Soviet super-man Comrade and the Proletariat to try to prevent a nuclear strike from either side.
What they discovered was a plot by a renegade General of the Soviet military trying to ignite the war he believed inevitable and topple the United States. While he was fought by the heroes, Mentor and Kinetic, along with their young daughter Telepath, used their telepathy to communicate the truth to the leaders of both nations. In the end, the General was defeated and all-out war averted.
The Soviet Union dissolved over the next year, having lost the military industrial complex that had supported its failing economy for too long. The country collapsed under the weight of poor management, and the reformer Gorbachev used the opportunity to end Communist rule of the territories and republics under the Soviet banner. Democratic elections were held for the first time in many regions, and a new day dawned for the people of Eastern Europe. Nuclear disarmament treaties were ratified by several of the leading nations of the world, with more expected to sign in the coming years, with diplomatic engagement. New laws were passed to further guarantee a place for Unique heroes to act independantly of governmental control - it was the independence of Mentor and Kinetic that led to the prevention of the war, after all. For their part, Mentor, Kinetic, Countryman and Comrade were awarded high honors by their countries and became even greater symbols to the world than they had been previously. Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize, and an end to the conflict was finally at hand.
The world as of 1994 is looking forward to a bright future. So much has happened in the last year that many can hardly believe it possible. But together, Unique and Typic, we are building the path onward to a tomorrow that we couldn’t have imagined in our wildest dreams. It is on the anniversary of the end of the Cold War that the greatest heroes and political leaders of the world gather at the United Nations to celebrate how far we’ve come, and just how far we might go. In this moment of reflection, anything seems possible…