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.