Yet Another Story Background Idea
May. 13th, 2009 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stickmakerI'd love for people with more knowledge of biochemistry and modern slang than I have to evaluate the ideas here and make suggestions.
Yes, it's another super powers world. Whereas in Masks supers have been around for millennia, and costumed heroes for decades, and in Flamma Argentea are just showing, the situation in Heterosis is a between state.
The presumption is that there have been legends and myths of superhumans for thousands of years, of course, but only in the past half century - less than forty years, actually - have they been confirmed and scientifically studied. Like in both those other worlds - and unlike Weave of Life - powers come from genes. In this case, genes scattered around the world. When brought together by modern travel (which explains why superhumans are far more common these days than previously) you get a hybrid vigor, or heterosis. These people are therefore usually called Hets, Hybrids or Mutts. (Feel free to suggest other names.)
Hets are striking in appearance. They tend to be tall and muscular, with blond or coppery hair and light eyes, yet with dark or "bronze" skin. Some researchers call male Hets Clarks and females Pats after Clark Savage, Jr. and his cousin Patricia.
About half are born with their abilities. About half experience a "double-bump" puberty, where their Het natures only become apparent in the mid to late teens. Those born Het begin puberty early and have rather a rougher time with it than normal humans.
Those Hets born with their abilities active will be a bigger handful than normal children, and only partly due to their physical enhancements. Active Het babies tend to be born more developed than normal infants. They will usually have a full head of hair, and it will be very light, possibly darkening some later. Depending on the parents, this could lead to accusations of infidelity.
The double-bump Hets not only have to deal with a worse puberty than normal - starting early, then restarting just when they think the worst is over - but with the possibility that their hair and eyes will change color. A kid with a Hispanic mother and east Indian father who starts showing blond roots at seventeen will face some hard times.
A handful of Hets are "Latents." They seem to be normal humans until some great stress - an accident, some emotional shock - triggers their Het abilities. They immediately gain low-end Het abilities (described below) as the latent biochemical pathways activate. Following activation, over the next few months they will experience a rapid gain in height, weight, bone density and muscle percentage, as well as acquiring a full measure of the other Het characteristics. Post-activation Latent abilities are the same as those of other Hets, and have the same distribution as to level. The youngest age at which activation is known to have happened is thirteen. The oldest is twenty. (And if you don't think undergoing a second puberty at twenty is difficult...)
No matter which of these three ways the Het comes into their heritage, Hormone levels during puberty (or following activation for Latents) skyrocket. They aren't quite double normal, but they're high enough than in an adolescent not a Het they'd be considered unusual to dangerous. Somehow, they handle
these levels with few side effects, beyond being even more intractable than normal teens.
Hets are generally three to five times as strong as normal human maximum, determined by athletic records. Though such things are more difficult to evaluate, their increased toughness also seems to be in that range. Their speed - both reflex and gross movement - is two to three times normal human max.
However, some Hets have levels of ability beyond this. A few go well beyond. Very few of these "super-Hets" have been documented, and those have all been less impressive (though still impressive) than the more extreme reports. These people have only recently begun to be quantified, and explanations as to how they can have such extreme abilities are little more than guesses.
Hets also generally have heightened senses. None can scent as well as a dog, or significantly surpass human hearing in range and sensitivity. However, with practice nearly any Het can identify bill denominations by touch, and some can even read print by sliding their fingers across a page. Eyesight is typically 20/5 and extends slightly into the UV and IR. Many Hets have complained that colors in photos, movies and television images are off. Examination has shown that they have receptors for two - and in a few cases, three - additional colors beyond the RGB of normal humans.
Hets tend to heal more quickly and completely than normals, though they lack true regeneration. They also have few genetic ailments. This combination makes them the fittest and healthiest group of humans on the planet. Average IQ is about fifteen points higher than for the general population. Few Hets have neurochemical imbalances or other organic causes of mental illness. Because their brains are healthier, their memories are better.
Nearly every Het familiar with family history will know tales of a grandfather or great-uncle or distant cousin who was remarkably strong and healthy, well into what most consider old age.
So far biology has only explained part of these abilities. The discoveries made by studying Hets have revolutionized not only the biological sciences but materials. Even these revelations cannot adequately explain the top two or three percent of Hets, though. So far.
While all Hets have all their physical abilities enhanced, some are balanced generalists (about half) while the rest emphasize one or more characteristics.
Attempts to introduce Het abilities into normal humans through gene transplants have met with mixed results. Even Latents have the Het biochemical pathways laid out in the womb. Adults show few changes, and teenage norms will only partially express the Het genes. These teens show low level Het abilities, but at the cost of frequent torn tendons and broken bones, and incidents of an effect similar to severe hypoglycemia when they burn up all their energy reserves have been observed. Some have experienced a sort of metabolic burnout. This results in either a quick death, or a few years lingering in a wheelchair or hospital bed.
Bureaucracies are just beginning to address these people and what they can do. The UN has banned allowing Hets in military service, and most nations are complying... at least publicly. In the United States, about fifteen years ago, a government sponsored organization began hiring and training superhumans as an adjunct to law-enforcement and emergency services.
The Bureau of Special Resources serves several purposes. It finds useful applications for the Het resource. It keeps tabs on rogue Hets and works to contain them. It supports research into the Het phenomenon. As more and more people are coming to realize, it also closely monitors every known Het.
Many of the activities of the Bureau are of questionable Constitutionality. A few are blatantly illegal. So far there been few legal challenges to its overt operations, and the most objectionable are kept well hidden.
The associated Institute for Metahuman Studies is a peculiar beast. Ostensibly a private school and research facility, it is definitely under both close scrutiny by and the thumb of the federal government. While strictly speaking attendance by US Hets is not mandatory, anyone under the age of twenty-one who is discovered to be a Het will almost certainly be "required" to attend. (Older Hets - especially those with degrees - are in great demand as instructors.) The exceptions are both few and noteworthy.
Many court cases have determined that parents cannot be forced to send their Het child there, but all are under appeal by the federal government, and in almost every instance the family has been ordered to have the child attend until the appeal is heard. The odds are that most of these cases will _still_ be under appeal after the student graduates.
Dean Josephine Salem is unofficially aware of some of the unofficial activities of the Institute's sibling organization. She is quietly taking what measures she can to prepare for what she sees as an inevitable confrontation between the goals of the Institution and the goals of the covert arms of the Bureau. One of the most controversial is the establishment of an "obstacle course" largely made up of empty buildings and a small park. The Dean actually halted plans to demolish these small, old structures to make way for larger, modern ones, despite the school's desperate need for the new facilities. This facility is designed to train Hets in urban warfare, against both norms and Hets. Students and staff are getting hurt in these exercises, though so far none of them seriously. Only a few people besides the Dean know why this training is being performed. The special training which happens here is strictly voluntary, and spectators are not allowed. Dean Salem does not expect a military-style attack against the Institution, but if it happens both staff and students will be ready.
The Institute offers instruction from elementary school through doctoral programs. The wide range of student ages has often caused problems, especially in the area of sex. The Institute has recently begun a serious crackdown on premarital sex and other "improper behavior." This is due in large part to criticism from several quarters.
The original purpose of the Institute was to offer Hets an education and whatever special training and medical help they needed in exchange for being studied. It was still organizing - taking over the facilities of a bankrupt community college in an isolated area - when the Federal government stepped in. Today, after graduation the former students must perform one year of service with the Bureau for Special Resources for each year of training. This is widely and loudly decried as indentured servitude, but so far all legal challenges have been defeated or stonewalled.
Fifteen years on, the original facilities of the Institute have been hugely expanded, especially the student housing. In spite of this continuing construction both classrooms and dorm rooms are usually crowded. Having built up and out as far as they reasonably can, the Institute is now building down. Though they are trying to purchase additional land adjacent to the current facilities, that is proving difficult. Powerful factions are working to prevent the expansion of the Institute, for multiple reasons. Some of them may be receiving covert support from the Bureau of Special Resources.
Building down has an added benefit: Increased security. Several fanatics - including fundamentalist terrorists of multiple faiths - have physically attacked the Institute. Between these previous incidents, the very real potential for more, similar events and the possibility of a raid in force by the paramilitary security arm of the Bureau, these rooms and tunnels could provide vital shelter for the whole campus.
Yes, it's another super powers world. Whereas in Masks supers have been around for millennia, and costumed heroes for decades, and in Flamma Argentea are just showing, the situation in Heterosis is a between state.
The presumption is that there have been legends and myths of superhumans for thousands of years, of course, but only in the past half century - less than forty years, actually - have they been confirmed and scientifically studied. Like in both those other worlds - and unlike Weave of Life - powers come from genes. In this case, genes scattered around the world. When brought together by modern travel (which explains why superhumans are far more common these days than previously) you get a hybrid vigor, or heterosis. These people are therefore usually called Hets, Hybrids or Mutts. (Feel free to suggest other names.)
Hets are striking in appearance. They tend to be tall and muscular, with blond or coppery hair and light eyes, yet with dark or "bronze" skin. Some researchers call male Hets Clarks and females Pats after Clark Savage, Jr. and his cousin Patricia.
About half are born with their abilities. About half experience a "double-bump" puberty, where their Het natures only become apparent in the mid to late teens. Those born Het begin puberty early and have rather a rougher time with it than normal humans.
Those Hets born with their abilities active will be a bigger handful than normal children, and only partly due to their physical enhancements. Active Het babies tend to be born more developed than normal infants. They will usually have a full head of hair, and it will be very light, possibly darkening some later. Depending on the parents, this could lead to accusations of infidelity.
The double-bump Hets not only have to deal with a worse puberty than normal - starting early, then restarting just when they think the worst is over - but with the possibility that their hair and eyes will change color. A kid with a Hispanic mother and east Indian father who starts showing blond roots at seventeen will face some hard times.
A handful of Hets are "Latents." They seem to be normal humans until some great stress - an accident, some emotional shock - triggers their Het abilities. They immediately gain low-end Het abilities (described below) as the latent biochemical pathways activate. Following activation, over the next few months they will experience a rapid gain in height, weight, bone density and muscle percentage, as well as acquiring a full measure of the other Het characteristics. Post-activation Latent abilities are the same as those of other Hets, and have the same distribution as to level. The youngest age at which activation is known to have happened is thirteen. The oldest is twenty. (And if you don't think undergoing a second puberty at twenty is difficult...)
No matter which of these three ways the Het comes into their heritage, Hormone levels during puberty (or following activation for Latents) skyrocket. They aren't quite double normal, but they're high enough than in an adolescent not a Het they'd be considered unusual to dangerous. Somehow, they handle
these levels with few side effects, beyond being even more intractable than normal teens.
Hets are generally three to five times as strong as normal human maximum, determined by athletic records. Though such things are more difficult to evaluate, their increased toughness also seems to be in that range. Their speed - both reflex and gross movement - is two to three times normal human max.
However, some Hets have levels of ability beyond this. A few go well beyond. Very few of these "super-Hets" have been documented, and those have all been less impressive (though still impressive) than the more extreme reports. These people have only recently begun to be quantified, and explanations as to how they can have such extreme abilities are little more than guesses.
Hets also generally have heightened senses. None can scent as well as a dog, or significantly surpass human hearing in range and sensitivity. However, with practice nearly any Het can identify bill denominations by touch, and some can even read print by sliding their fingers across a page. Eyesight is typically 20/5 and extends slightly into the UV and IR. Many Hets have complained that colors in photos, movies and television images are off. Examination has shown that they have receptors for two - and in a few cases, three - additional colors beyond the RGB of normal humans.
Hets tend to heal more quickly and completely than normals, though they lack true regeneration. They also have few genetic ailments. This combination makes them the fittest and healthiest group of humans on the planet. Average IQ is about fifteen points higher than for the general population. Few Hets have neurochemical imbalances or other organic causes of mental illness. Because their brains are healthier, their memories are better.
Nearly every Het familiar with family history will know tales of a grandfather or great-uncle or distant cousin who was remarkably strong and healthy, well into what most consider old age.
So far biology has only explained part of these abilities. The discoveries made by studying Hets have revolutionized not only the biological sciences but materials. Even these revelations cannot adequately explain the top two or three percent of Hets, though. So far.
While all Hets have all their physical abilities enhanced, some are balanced generalists (about half) while the rest emphasize one or more characteristics.
Attempts to introduce Het abilities into normal humans through gene transplants have met with mixed results. Even Latents have the Het biochemical pathways laid out in the womb. Adults show few changes, and teenage norms will only partially express the Het genes. These teens show low level Het abilities, but at the cost of frequent torn tendons and broken bones, and incidents of an effect similar to severe hypoglycemia when they burn up all their energy reserves have been observed. Some have experienced a sort of metabolic burnout. This results in either a quick death, or a few years lingering in a wheelchair or hospital bed.
Bureaucracies are just beginning to address these people and what they can do. The UN has banned allowing Hets in military service, and most nations are complying... at least publicly. In the United States, about fifteen years ago, a government sponsored organization began hiring and training superhumans as an adjunct to law-enforcement and emergency services.
The Bureau of Special Resources serves several purposes. It finds useful applications for the Het resource. It keeps tabs on rogue Hets and works to contain them. It supports research into the Het phenomenon. As more and more people are coming to realize, it also closely monitors every known Het.
Many of the activities of the Bureau are of questionable Constitutionality. A few are blatantly illegal. So far there been few legal challenges to its overt operations, and the most objectionable are kept well hidden.
The associated Institute for Metahuman Studies is a peculiar beast. Ostensibly a private school and research facility, it is definitely under both close scrutiny by and the thumb of the federal government. While strictly speaking attendance by US Hets is not mandatory, anyone under the age of twenty-one who is discovered to be a Het will almost certainly be "required" to attend. (Older Hets - especially those with degrees - are in great demand as instructors.) The exceptions are both few and noteworthy.
Many court cases have determined that parents cannot be forced to send their Het child there, but all are under appeal by the federal government, and in almost every instance the family has been ordered to have the child attend until the appeal is heard. The odds are that most of these cases will _still_ be under appeal after the student graduates.
Dean Josephine Salem is unofficially aware of some of the unofficial activities of the Institute's sibling organization. She is quietly taking what measures she can to prepare for what she sees as an inevitable confrontation between the goals of the Institution and the goals of the covert arms of the Bureau. One of the most controversial is the establishment of an "obstacle course" largely made up of empty buildings and a small park. The Dean actually halted plans to demolish these small, old structures to make way for larger, modern ones, despite the school's desperate need for the new facilities. This facility is designed to train Hets in urban warfare, against both norms and Hets. Students and staff are getting hurt in these exercises, though so far none of them seriously. Only a few people besides the Dean know why this training is being performed. The special training which happens here is strictly voluntary, and spectators are not allowed. Dean Salem does not expect a military-style attack against the Institution, but if it happens both staff and students will be ready.
The Institute offers instruction from elementary school through doctoral programs. The wide range of student ages has often caused problems, especially in the area of sex. The Institute has recently begun a serious crackdown on premarital sex and other "improper behavior." This is due in large part to criticism from several quarters.
The original purpose of the Institute was to offer Hets an education and whatever special training and medical help they needed in exchange for being studied. It was still organizing - taking over the facilities of a bankrupt community college in an isolated area - when the Federal government stepped in. Today, after graduation the former students must perform one year of service with the Bureau for Special Resources for each year of training. This is widely and loudly decried as indentured servitude, but so far all legal challenges have been defeated or stonewalled.
Fifteen years on, the original facilities of the Institute have been hugely expanded, especially the student housing. In spite of this continuing construction both classrooms and dorm rooms are usually crowded. Having built up and out as far as they reasonably can, the Institute is now building down. Though they are trying to purchase additional land adjacent to the current facilities, that is proving difficult. Powerful factions are working to prevent the expansion of the Institute, for multiple reasons. Some of them may be receiving covert support from the Bureau of Special Resources.
Building down has an added benefit: Increased security. Several fanatics - including fundamentalist terrorists of multiple faiths - have physically attacked the Institute. Between these previous incidents, the very real potential for more, similar events and the possibility of a raid in force by the paramilitary security arm of the Bureau, these rooms and tunnels could provide vital shelter for the whole campus.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-14 01:45 pm (UTC)Now as to the "improved" senses, there are a few problems.
First off many (most) folks with asthma seem to have the ability to hear up to (or beyond) 30kHz. I'm one of them. so I can "hear" ultrasonic alarms and in the late 80s the flyback transformers on monitors drove me *nuts* (newer monitors operate at a frequency even *I* can't hear.
As for vision, humans can already see UV. The retina has no problem detecting near UV. The lens of the eye blocks UV *on purpose*. Not so much because of UV damaging the retina, but because of problems with focusing.
Due to chromatic aberration, you *can't* make a simple lens that will focus a wide spread of wavelengths. Each wavelength focuses at a different distance from the plane of the lens.
You can see this if you have (say) a triangle of bright red construction paper glued to a sheet of bright blue. You'll find that you can't have *both* in focus at the same time. You eye has to change the focus for the two colors.
That's why bees can see UV, but not red. They chose a different center point for their "octave" of vision.
"Octave" works well as a descriptor, because just like an octave in music ends with double the frequency it starts with, the same seems to go for vision. A spread of that much in wavelength is about all a simple lens system can handle well.
Alas, the only way to get a usable vision system that encompasses more than an octave requires an achromatic lens. Which requires the lens to be made of *two* lenses with notably different indices of refraction. And they have to be shaped specially as well.
Getting *that* out of a biological system will be a real miracle.
Oh yeah, don't forget that for a given wavelength, there's a minimum size of the pupil and minimum size of the eye to get resolution equivalent to what we get with visible light. For IR you'll need much bigger eyes (and active cooling of some sort).
Oh yeah, Near IR can be faintly visible in a well darkened room. (An accidental discovery of mine when I was a teen). I saw a faint "pink" glow from the work table in my darkened room. Turned out to be my soldering iron. It would (just barely) melt lead, so you can try to figure out what temp it was. It was definitely below "dull red heat" :-)
ps. The bit about UV being visible was discovered when they first started using artificial lens replacements to treat cataracts. During WWII, some folks with artificial lenses were used as coast watchers to detect UV signal lights.
There was also an article in one of the astronomy magazines (Sky & Telescope?) back in the 50s or early 60s about doing naked eye UV astronomy.
More modern lenses are tinted to block UV, so this doesn't happen anymore. But if you can track down references, it'll be useful for describing stuff.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-14 03:14 pm (UTC)Slang does overlap, especially between different communities. I would definitely like a better name, though. Mutt I'm reserving as an insult, so that leaves just Hybrid so far.
Yeah, I meant only a little bit into UV and IR, and even then not that they could see it clearly, but detect it. (Prolonged exposure to UV lamps makes my eyes itch, and I can also - or could when younger - hear flyback oscillators if they were going bad.)
I remember a discussion on possible alien eyes in which I came up with a creature which used chromatic aberration to discern colors with B&W-only retinas. Someone else came up with a third eye which was a color spot meter, the two main eyes supplying B&W high-resolution to which color from the third eye was integrated in the brain.
I'm starting to think that in the senses area, my creations aren't superhuman at all, just possessing all the rare or uncommon sensory abilities of humans. They'd be supertasters, natch.
I thought the main reason insects saw in UV was that their tiny eyes worked better at short wavelengths.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-15 03:05 am (UTC)Your point about insects and UV may be relevant, but given the size of some insect eyes and those of smaller vertebrates, I'm not entirely convinced.