exsilium | video ; backdated to the 26th (before the scouts' departure)

[Last time Jaime posted as Blue Beetle, he kept to text. This time, he thinks that people might need a face - masked as it may be - to match to the words. His voice is put through a technological filter, just distorted enough for him to keep from being recognized. He's in the VR room in the most professional looking room he could think of, which is essentially a large table with wall-to-wall windows behind him looking out onto San Francisco - potentially recognizable to some canonmates as a loose copy of the Titans Tower meeting room, which is fairly generic anyway.]

So... hi. I'm Blue Beetle. A bunch of you already know that I've been trying to dig up as much info on the Chimera Project as I can - those are the cloned children, for you new guys - and I think I've got enough information to get going. Thanks to everyone who helped me out with this, by the way - you know who you are. I know everyone must be really tired of hearing people give long speeches by now, so I'll try to keep it short. [He smiles at the camera for an instant, a flash of white, human teeth behind the armour]

[He's making an effort to sound professional, but he's not used to public speaking. Sometimes, he looks down at his lap instead of the camera (consulting his notes as if he's giving a speech for class if he's honest about it) and he's stiff, uncomfortable, but his voice is even and steady. Small victories, and victories born of actually rehearsing.

Are you ready for a fun history lesson, Transports? Because you're sure as hell going to get one.]

If we're going around in time, then that's the way we've gotta look at this: as a timeline, not just something that popped up right before the nuke did. Most of you will have already seen the guys people call the Masked around here. They're clones too. Not clones of us like the new ones are, but they're proof that the UE had the tech for them long before they had our genes, like dozens of years ago. This round of testing is what they call the Chimera Project. According to the data we've got, most of the UE's funding went into messing with genes of people who were born normally and clones so they could adapt to different environments for colonization and for soldiers. They wanted to use people from different worlds first, but they couldn't work it out like the Initiative could. Everyone they brought from our worlds died. Before you ask, we don't know which worlds, or even how many people. I know you want to know. I do too.

[He is silent for a moment, letting that sink in.]

This project started after one of us got kidnapped, way back before Elmer's world was destroyed. He had powers, and the UE - well, the UE has eyes. They started getting ideas. It seems like they started getting obsessed with creating, like... the perfect human being. That's why, when they introduced the supervirus back in June, they went ahead to target the children directly in the hospital.

Once they knew one of us had powers, they wanted more. Most of you will remember when the UE kidnapped a whole bunch of us, right before we came up here? After that, they did a bunch of tests on them, and they made clones of them. Of us. They worked, but not that well; they've got a whole morgue of the ones that didn't make it. When the rest of us went to go rescue the guys who got captured, the clones broke out of their tanks and fought us. They couldn't have been more than nineteen days old, but they still looked around eight or nine, something like that. It's only after we fought back against the UE - and their new clones - that they decided to nuke Exsilium.

I know some of you are gonna suggest just wiping out cloning period, but before you do, you need to understand that there are a couple problems with that. One is that they've been using cloning for a long time for food and for organs, before the UE even came into power. We get rid of that, who knows how many people will die? The second is that the clones are people too. Children. They were attacking us, but not because they wanted to. Inside - [and here, the professional veneer wanes a little, but he covers it up by glancing back down at his lap, as if consulting his notes, before looking back up at the screen] - inside, they were begging for help, for us to get away from them. I know just by going back in time, we're erasing people, but this would be actively doing it. And if they do end up getting erased... they deserve to be remembered as more than what we saw. They do.

So that's what I've got. If you want the more detailed lists of powers and all that, let me know and I'll send you my notes. If you've got more info but want to share it in person or whatever, or want to meet with a bunch of other people to talk this out, I'll be in the VR room.

[If you had previously ICly requested to receive a copy of the notes before now and haven't gotten a note from me in your inbox by now, let me know as Jaime ICly sent them out prior to making this post! Please feel free to respond via action or network - and if there's enough interest in sort of a mingle group log, I will toss one up!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Include the clones in any talk about their future. They didn't get much choice in being what they are, but they can get a choice for what comes next.

That's why I said we'd try to talk to them. Even if the UE hasn't taught them any sort of language, we already have proof that they can speak telepathically.

As part of those abilities or something else?

No, as a part of our telepaths' abilities.

What else?