xp_logs | Wake up call

One day... the pieces just don't add up anymore...

As they entered the room was filled with sound, chairs being pulled from their tables and bags moving over the ground. 'Almost like ho..." Trance stopped the thought immediately, instead focusing on getting out her note book and on Scanner in front of the smartboard.

Sarah waited until the room fell silent before she started to speak. "Okay. Today we're talking about something important. More important than the last lessons, I think, because it's our history and our present. It's what we, as mutants, have to always carry with us as a reminder of how the others view our place in the world."

"Today," she touched an icon on the smartboard, revealing a map of Africa, "we're going to talk about Genosha." She zoomed in to show a satellite view of the island nation.

Profiler raised her hand but didn't wait for Scanner to call on her, "Will this be covering the history lead-up to the recent incident there, or-"

"Yes," Sarah smiled approvingly at profile, "although that leads me to my next point. History gets told by the people in power at any given time. The version you've heard, that's told by the humans in charge. There's a lot that happened on that island that didn't get out."

Sarah noticed another hand start to go up, and she shook her head. "Questions can wait, please." She paused, looking at the map before looking back to her class.

"Genosha's a small island. No more than a million people - certainly not now, probably not ever. Small place, small mutant population, as anyone with a working knowledge of demographics might suggest.

"Sometime around 50 years ago, when this country was in theory becoming more enlightened about progressive civil rights, Genosha decided to go the opposite direction. It needed those mutants need to be enslaved. Separated from society. Moved to a separate space, and put to work."

She touched the board to change slides, showing a black-and-white photo of mutants shaking hands. "That's not how they sold it, of course. This was an impressive display of mutant-human cooperation, they said. The country would be built on the backs of this new cooperative order. And that part - the emergence of a nation - that's what happened."

Gabe guffawed. "On the backs of mutantkind."

Trance had startled as soon as the topic of today's discussion had been mentioned. She knew about this... she had heard about it from her fellow students in her previous life. Carefully taking a deep breath she blanked her face and tried to keep her attention on what Scanner had been telling.

"Don't forget the "mut‎ant tax", and how they stripped mutants of all their worldly goods, bank accounts, whatever," Suki added bitterly. "Raise their economy, put their own people leading formerly mutant organiza‎tions and reaping the benefits. For a small country, it really became a business leader practically overnight." the same thing had happened to her family, and Suki could still feel the anger and resentment, having to go from a valued position to working underground, joining the mafia. She shuddered. "Those poor people..."

'That didn't quite seem right...'

Sarah didn't comment on her students' words - didn't react, didn't flinch. She changed slides to show a graph tracking Genosha's GDP from its independence, comparing it to several other countries in the region. "As you can see, Genosha had unprecedented growth, especially for an African nation. In a globalizing economy, international investors flocked to the country, making the government - and the country's elite - wealthier and wealthier. Mutants, stuck in their own little Genoshan ghetto, didn't benefit. They were the working class. The oppressed.

"To keep the money coming, Genosha needed mutants who could power industry. Power growth. Power the money. People like me, people who could become intangible, we couldn't do anything for them. We didn't have super-strength, or super-speed or anything. So the Genoshan government did what they thought best: genetic research. They perfected a splicing procedure to change mutant powers. To augment them when they wanted more productivity. To destroy them when they thought mutants might get out of hand. They played God. They played with fate.

"After pulling a mutant workforce together, these rich humans culled from the list. They took a group of mutants they thought were useless and tried to change their gifts. Some people might call that genetic enhancement, but for one thing." She switched slides to a stock photo of a genetic sequence. "Genosha didn't just affect powers - they turned mutants into zombies. They altered the chemistry of their brains and bodies so that mutants would become docile servants, slaves to the rich who weren't capable of independent thought. Mindless worker bees they could drain to make a quick buck."

This was the first Eyespy was hearing of any of this, of course. She took her notes diligently, listening with rapt attention. She couldn't keep the disdain off her face as she looked up from her notebook. "That's absolutely disgusting," she commented to no one in particular. "And people just let this happen?"

"Sure did." Sarah switched slides again and then glanced at the board. "They'd planned to do it to their whole population, too. Why not just eliminate Genosha's whole pesky mutant problem at once? And afterwards? Well, Genosha's an island. Not too hard to bury the bodies. And that's what they started to do. They might have gotten away with it too."

She paused for dramatic effect, because she'd watched enough Law & Order to know the value of a well-placed pause. "They didn't." Sarah tapped on the board, changing slides. "A small group of mutants had escaped the ghetto. Angered by the subjugation of their people, they'd been hiding, working in secret, training. Building their powers. Building their strength. It was only a handful of them, but it was enough to destroy the genetics programs, free their mutant brethren and end the tyrannical reign of self-styled human overlords."

Sarah stepped away from the board. "Nobody came to help the mutants of Genosha. The governments of the world, the investors of the world who knew what was going on - nobody helped. The so-called human rights groups turned a blind eye. It was the mutants of Genosha who had to strike back and fight this appalling atrocity." She looked from student to student as she spoke, making eye contact. "The humans didn't care. They do not care about us. They will try their best to destroy us. To use us and end us. And the only way we can prevent that is to fight them back."

Trance her eyes widened. This was not true... it had been hidden, with much of the world having no idea what exactly had been going on. Human rights groups hadn't had much chance... And there had been people who tried to help... She remembered her former... no... fellow students and other mansion inhabitants telling people who had died to protect them.

There was a raised hand, and Gabe broke the dramatic silence. "I feel the lesson here is quite obvious — no one is going to help Mutantkind but Mutantkind —but how much did Genosha's relative isolation lend to its problem?"

"That's a good question," Sarah nodded. "You know, Genosha's not as isolated as a map would have you believe. Sure, it's an island, but it's very interconnected with the regional economy, and as its economic wealth grew, it became part of a worldwide economic system. International developers, wealthy businessmen and heads of states all traveled there. And Genosha was proud of its mutant labor system, so it showed it off."

Sarah shrugged. "It's unfathomable to think the outside world didn't know what was going on. There were letters from mutants in Genosha, and photographs. And those rich people kept throwing money at the country anyway. Plus there are diplomatic cables and a financial paper trail that suggest a few of the more industrialized nations had asked Genosha for their documentation and had wanted to start exploring similar programs of their own." She waved a hand dismissively. "Pretty disgusting stuff."

"Indeed," Profiler said, almost disinterestedly. In truth, she'd stayed silent since her initial rebuke, keeping an eye on her rivals to judge their reactions to the information. Most were eating up the information, having their beliefs reinforced, two of them were more interesting though. Scanner wasn't telling the whole truth- there was something being twisted or omitted, but she didn't know which bit was the fib. Trance was more interesting, she was practically screaming that Scanner was wrong- but was hiding it from the group leader well. "Indeed," she said again, it was a most interesting development.

"It's awful." Eyespy sounded slightly sick. It was no surprise that nobody had helped - of course nobody had helped. Nobody cared about mutants. But this was just...on a completely different level of disturbing. "What happened to all the mutants? You said they struck back...but you never said what happened after that."

"Ah!" Sarah nodded. She'd been distracted. "Well, they've started to, you know, rebuild a new society. One for mutants, one where mutants' needs aren't suppressed, and they can use their gifts without fear or repercussions."

'They were building a new society indeed.' Hope suddenly remembered. 'But one where was a place for both mutants and humans. And people she cared about... had fought to make that possible... were still fighting to make that possible...'

From her front row seat, Profiler watched the discussion continue, quite certain Scanner was leaving something out and twisting the truth to suit her needs. It wasn't as if the girl formerly known as CJ could turn her mutation off, but she knew that using their abilities on each other was frowned upon. "That's...good, then. That they are making things better now I mean." She awkwardly started scribbling notes down too the blank page in front of her. She would need to talk to the Archduke later to see if he knew why her powers were on the fritz...surely he would know...surely Scanner wouldn't mislead them on purpose.

"So, like Attilan." Gabe's answer really wasn't a question, but more of a statement. "Except there has been no press about Genosha taking mutants in."

Sarah frowned, looking down at the rather unmemorable young man whose codename she could never bother to remember. "Surely you'd understand Genosha's reasons for wanting to keep their grand plans quiet. The human elite worked hard to keep the mutants of Genosha suppressed. It stands to reason they'd worry about being burned again, especially since they don't have the lore of a monarchy to give their government apparent legitimacy."

She moved in front of a desk she'd positioned in the room and leaned against it, her arms crossed and her lips pursed. She was quiet for a moment before finally speaking. "Look. Here is the thing of which I've been trying to remind you quite a bit: History repeats itself. We can pretend that coexistence is equality, but it's not." As she knew first-hand.

"The fallacy of coexistence is just subjugation under another name. In the best case scenario, that means submitting yourself to discrimination by humans until they get around to overthrowing the status quo. In the worst case scenario, it's a mutant slaughter. There has been no positive outcome for our kind, except where our people have taken control of their fates and commanded them." Sarah set her eyes on Trance. "You would all do well to fully understand that."

The unmemorable student piped up again. "Point taken, 'mam." His tone carefully tiptoed that line between exasperation and patient respect. "You must feel like we have gotten the point." And to that there was an imperceptible, intoxicating resonance to his voice as if the chairs and the walls and the very air were all eager to lend Gabe their support.

"True. I have nothing more to say, anyway." Sarah turned and glanced at the board, then glanced back at her students. "Class dismissed, I suppose. You all have places to be."

As people moved around her, Hope remained seated, her eyes kinda lost to the world and her mind far away. No one could see the shifting tracks in her mind...