AD 2037.03.20.
The first day in the globally accepted calendar.
On this day, something changed in the world. People didn't notice it at first, but all living beings born after this point started to develop unnaturally fast, as if hundreds of years of evolution played out in just a few months.
The changes weren't drastic. A chicken was still recognizable as a chicken but keeping them as farm animals became a lot more difficult when they could bite your fingers off.
This change also affected humans, although in a unique way. Aside from generally improved physical performance they also gained abilities that are best described as superpowers.
The first superpowers, though convenient, were nothing special. One person might be able to warm up a bottle of water, another could maybe see through a thin sheet of paper. However, over time as people's abilities became more and more powerful, they became an essential part of life.
The biggest change happened when the first geniuses were discovered. They were people whose abilities influenced their intelligence in some capacity. Their appearance accelerated various scientific fields.
Most important among these fields was space travel. The terrestrial planets Mars, Venus and Mercury were made habitable alongside the dwarf planet Ceres which was later designated as a prison planet.
An advancement that was less flashy but similarly important was the wide availability of synthetic food. It wasn't an urgent matter, but people were understandably worried about their dinner becoming increasingly hostile.
The expertise of these geniuses was enough for nations to start wars over with their newly super powered armies, causing a rapid decline in the population and a major headache for cartographers.
Although the largest conflicts ended after a few decades, the largest powers that survived the conflicts remain hostile towards each other to this day.
What the wars did achieve was a complete destruction of all forms of infrastructure leading to famines in the initial years, which forced rapid reconstruction. Thanks to this, new technologies were implemented in everyday life a lot faster than they would have been in peace times.
After things have calmed down life became peaceful again, maybe even more so than before the so called Emergence.
Most problems humanity faced could be solved with new scientific advances, or simply brute force.
The most pressing issue became finding the source of the Emergence and an explanation for its aftermath. The most obvious proposition was to try and find a scientific explanation to things, but no amount of research brought any satisfactory results.
Due to the absence of a proper explanation, people started looking for answers in the supernatural. The spread of various religions hit historic highs and a number of strong individuals started to establish cults, claiming to be apostles of their own gods.
But aside from some minor conflicts between smaller groups, nothing out of the ordinary happened, until one fateful day.
AE 300.1.01.
On the 300th anniversary of the Emergence.
122 553 children were born over the course of 48 hours.
These children became orphans almost immediately since their mothers died shortly after giving birth, and their fathers went inexplicably mad. Most of them ended up killing themselves, and the ones who did not were in no condition to take care of children.
The children themselves were unnaturally weak, even by old world standards, but surprisingly none of them had any physical disabilities and almost all of them ended up surviving infancy.
A lot of nations decided to take care of the children, declaring that it was their moral responsibility. In reality they did it mostly for research purposes.
The date was too special and the circumstances were too unusual for all of it to be a coincidence.
Over time they came to the conclusion that the kids were simply unlucky. None of them seemed to have any special abilities, their unnatural weakness didn't change, they had even bigger problems with their faculties.
The most noticeable problem was their growth. While ageing generally slowed down after the emergence of superpowers, these unfortunate souls seemed to age at an accelerated rate.
After this conclusion was reached most of the children were either transferred to regular orphanages or simply thrown on the streets with nothing to their name.
One country that tried to do this but wasn't able to, much to their annoyance, was the Norden Alliance who had to deal with a mostly self-inflicted problem.
Initially they made a pretty big deal out of their treatment of the children and even allowed a young news reporter by the name of Anthony Williams to observe their upbringing. Anthony took a liking to the kids, and by the time the officials wanted to get rid of them, he became the country's most famous reporter, meaning that any mistreatment of the children could cause a riot.
After realizing they couldn't simply get rid of their responsibilities, the next best option was neglecting them. Less medical examinations, cheaper food, fewer caretakers, anything that wasn't too obvious to a regular observer.
Our story begins here. With a child whose life should have been a living hell but who managed to avoid it by either pure luck or a twist of fate.
AE 312.3.51.
No.441 was a quiet kid. Even more so than his siblings. He never really took an interest in anything and it didn't seem like he wanted to. If someone replaced him with a potted plant most people wouldn't have noticed.
The little time they were allowed outside he mostly spent either in his room or leaning to the wall in the shade of the roof, making his complexion worryingly pale.
The only person he would frequently interact with was No.281 but everyone suspected that it was more like No.281 dragging him along.
The first time he showed any form of excitement was when their caretakers let them choose a book all to themselves. The list of books was unreasonably long with more than 300 separate options.
Most of his sibling chose something at random since the list was too long to get through and even if it was shorter, they didn't have any frame of reference regarding what they should read.
No.441 afraid of making a wrong choice asked one of the caretakers, Mrs. Amy, to choose a book for him.
Mrs. Amy, surprised at the kid showing interest, recommended one of the books she read as a child, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She hoped that the tale of the adventurous little bunny's story might inspire him to be more active in the future.
A week later the books arrived and the first thing No.441 did was grab his own and rush to his room.
The room was lifeless. Not a single decoration in sight.
Aside from the lack of anything personal the room was also padded throughout. Soft walls and flooring, all corners rounded, flat surfaces everywhere else. You couldn't get injured even if you wanted to. The entire building followed the same design philosophy. Perhaps it is no surprise that the books were also printed on flexible sheets of plastic instead of paper.
Obviously this didn't bother the sole resident of the room since this is where he lived his entire life, this was the only thing he knew.
And just like that, No.441 wasn't seen for the rest of the day. The caretakers believed that he would finish his book first based on his sudden enthusiasm and the fact that he got one of the shorter stories. And they turned out to be right.
On the same day, way past lights out, No.441 was holding the last plastic sheet he was given, trying to read it by the dim night lamp built into the wall. When he was finally done he tried to put it down on the floor when he saw something unexpected in his view.
[Achievement unlocked: Learn to read.]
[Reward: INT +0.1, Access to interface authorized]
No.441 was struggling to understand what he was seeing and he didn't have time to do so because he suddenly heard an unfamiliar female voice.
{I'll be taking care of you then!}
Our hero was even more confused than before since they would usually be told when a new caretaker arrived, and he still couldn't wrap his head around why he wasn't able to see the mysterious lady, so he asked the obvious question.
"Excuse me miss, but who are you?"
He didn't know what answer he was expecting but certainly not the one he got.
{I'm your guardian angel silly! The better question is, who you are?}
No.441 was caught off-guard by the answer, even more so by the follow-up question, but he decided to be polite and answer.
"My name is 441"
{That's not a real name, you must have something better!}
No.441 didn't understand the self-proclaimed angel's problem. Other than the caretakers, everyone had names like him. In the end he decided to say one of the few proper names he knew that didn't belong to someone else.
"You could call me Peter if you want."
The voice seemed satisfied with the answer she got and continued to speak.
{That's a lot better! Well then, Peter, it is time for you to see the world, and if anything bad happens just remember, your guardian angel is always taking care of you!}
And just like that the voice seemed to disappear. Peter, more confused than ever, decided to check the thing all of this started with.
After reading through the floating text he could understand most of the individual words but still had no idea what they were supposed to mean. When he decided to touch the text it suddenly expanded. Although this didn't help him understand it, he finally had an idea where to find out because the distribution of the text was very familiar to what their supervisor, Mr. Daniel, would look at on his office computer.
Before going to bed Peter read the whole thing just so he wouldn't have to deal with it in the morning.
[Name: Peter]
[Health: 100%]
[Stamina: 73%]
[Level: 0]
[Experience: 0/100]
[Strength: 0.20]
[Agility: 0.15]
[Endurance: 0.10]
[Stamina: 0.15]
[Intelligence: 0.50]
[Magic: 0.01]
[Abilities: Heart of night LV1, Absorb]
[Patron: Nyx]
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