1999 (TU)

Events

 * January
 * January 1: In a media spectacle attended by VIPs ranging from former President Carter to Secretary-General Annan and from Steven Spielberg to Tom Cruise, Project Utopia reveals the nature of the "something big" hinted at in several of Laragione's late-1998 press releases, with the introduction of "Team Tomorrow," a group of novas from around the world organized to implement Utopia's goals of a better future. This first real-world "superteam's" initial lineup consists of Caestus Pax, Lightning, Griffin Armstrong, Ewen "Apollo Kid" Banks, Pratima "Splash" Basham, Ricardo Montoya-Bernal, Alison "Psyche" Pfalzgraff, and probationary members Hiram "Slag" Goldberg, Gvuthbjoerg "Ragnarockette" Danielsdottir, and Christoph "Shadow Artist" Yannik. "T2M" begins to combat global terrorism, organized crime and natural disasters with the cooperation of law-enforcement agencies worldwide, even as Utopia's fledgling Science and Technology Department begins working on solutions to famine and environmental crises. (AB: Unknown book)
 * January 1: The "Thetis Proposal" crosses Laragione's desk. Submitted by an Internal Affairs agent who uses the proposal's name as her code name (in honor of Achilles' mother who sought to render her son invulnerable), it details what she sees as the "risks and harsh steps" (read: dirty tricks and other black ops) necessary to fulfill Utopia's vision of a better world, and proposes a division within Utopia to carry them out. Though resistant to the suggestion, Laragione discusses it with the Æon board, who (to his surprise and shock) greenlight Thetis' "Project Proteus" (named for the Old Man of the Sea who assumed his true form only when hopelessly trapped) and name her its director. (AB: Unknown book)
 * January 3: T2M receives its baptism of fire when it smashes its way into the Al-Burhan, Iran, headquarters of Islamic Dawn. The compound is secured inside three minutes with no harm to the Teamers. (AB: Unknown book)
 * January 8: Project Utopia opens their first Satellite Laboratory in midtown Manhattan, not far from where the Fireman erupted. The facility (the first of a projected series under the overall supervision of Dr. Farah Rashoud) is intended to be a place where nascent novas can go to learn about and explore their powers in a controlled environment; in a press conference at the facility, Pax announces that the labs will double as Utopia/T2M recruiting stations. Over the next decade, dozens of other "Rashoud facilities" open worldwide. (AB: Unknown book)
 * January 17: On CBS' 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace interviews escaped Chinese nova Wing-xao Ji. (AB: Unknown book)


 * February
 * February 2: Dr. Phylicia Cassant speculates on the real story behind the Galatea explosion. "Is it possible that one of the men and women aboard was the first aberrant, and that he or she somehow engineered the explosion to create others like himself or herself?" (AB: Unknown book)
 * February 18: Borin Yeltsin dies, setting off a breakdown of the Russian government. The chaos leads to Russia's total economic collapse. Russia's financial woes spread through already weakened world markets, and cause the world's worst one-day market losses ever. "The Moscow Crash," as it is later termed, plunges the world into a massive recession. (AB: Unknown book)
 * February 18: Mayumi Morioka erupts during a riot at the Nikkei, gaining telepathic and telekinetic powers that help her quell the situation. (AB: Unknown book)
 * February 18: Riots in Windhoek, the capitol of Namibia, and at DeBeers properties in Namibia, are quelled by novas of the recently formed DeVries Agency. (AB: Unknown book)
 * February 19: The World Bank responds immediately to the Moscow Crash by calling for temporary freezes on all international loan payments. International currency markets close for the week due to pressure from the International Monetary Fund. Wall Street and other world trading centers voluntarily close trading for the rest of the week to allow a thorough assessment of the situation, and to allow the panic to calm. Many governments, including the US and the rest of the G7 nations, implement emergency price controls on consumer goods. (AB: Unknown book)
 * February 22: The Namibian government announces the role of DeVries' two novas in quelling the recent riots and grants the agency permission to set up its base around DeBeers mines in the eastern highlands. (AB: Unknown book)


 * March
 * March 1: Project Utopia announces that its nova-employing research department is working on a solution to the economic crisis. It also offers the services of the novas associated with Utopia to the UN, and any government that asks, for relief work. The news leads to a slight upswing in world markets. (AB: Unknown book)
 * March 3: Team Tomorrow and other Utopian novas build a 500-bed homeless shelter in downtown Moscow, taking less than a day to finish the construction. (AB: Unknown book)


 * April
 * April 7: Microsoft becomes the first private company to hire a nova for public relations and research. Mungu Kuwasha of Nigeria is hired for his ability to interface with computer systems. (AB: Unknown book)
 * April 30: World unemployment rates have quadrupled in only the two months since the Moscow Crash. Philanthropic organizations worldwide follow the Æon Society's lead in offering relief assistance. Project Utopia novas help with distribution of perishable supplies, creating the most efficient relief effort in history. Governments enlist nova aid in quelling food riots. Some novas use their abilities to keep basic utilities, such as water and electricity, flowing in areas where they would otherwise be inaccessible. (AB: Unknown book)


 * May
 * May 27: Newly-erupted Palestinian nova Asif ibn Karim destroys an Israeli jet. Utopia's PR department (with a little prompting from a certain Internal Affairs agent) casts enough doubt on the notion of nova involvement that none of the networks really runs with the possibility. Rumors persist, but most people assume that if there had been a nova involved, the media would have been all over the story due to their (and the world's) continuing fascination with novas. (AB: Unknown book)


 * June
 * June 2: The International Monetary Fund announces its inability to ameliorate the global financial crisis. The Japanese take the news especially poorly; the Nikkei index loses 50% of its value overnight. Tokyo newspapers report over 2,000 suicides that night alone. (AB: Unknown book)
 * June 5: Acting on the advice of Project Utopia nova prognosticators, the UN unanimously passes a resolution to freeze exchange rates in the world currency market. The move causes massive inflation in the currency of developing nations, but leads to a gradual strengthening of the industrial powers' economies. (AB: Unknown book)


 * Summer: Chilean nova Pedro Santiago, "The Mathematician," who may have erupted before the Galatea explosion, meets with Count Raoul Cristobal Orzaiz, a young Basque nova who has recently made quite a splash in the European press by vociferously declining to enter a Rashoud facility after his eruption. At Villa Orzaiz near Valencia, Spain, they talk late into the night about the possibility of a "new way" for a new species, an alternative to what they see as Utopia's attempts to turn novas into the slaves of baselines. (AB: Unknown book)


 * August
 * August 9: In this week's Newsweek International, General V.P. Malik, chief of the Indian Army staff, insists there was never any possibility of a nuclear confrontation with Pakistan. (AB: Unknown book)


 * September
 * Santiago, Raoul Cristobal Orzaiz, and new recruits Marcel Delorimier (a French ultra-nationalist convinced of nova supremacy) and Caroline Fong (an Oxford-educated philosopher and business consultant) gather in Santiago, Chile. They will continue to meet every quarter or so for the next several years, joined by a few more like-minded novas every little while. (AB: Unknown book)
 * September 29: Thor Gundolffsson and his "huskarls" attack Hagalz Hall, killing the reigning "jarl" and over half his followers. (AB: Unknown book)


 * October
 * October 14: The corpses of three members of death-metal band "Nails of Faith," along with seven others, are found in a "blood-garden" outside Gjovik -- badly mutilated, impaled on oak spikes, and left for the crows. Ragnar Vargerson, Bjorn "Kin-slayer" Geissler and Thorfinn "Bloodaxe" Hoffmann have all been given the blood-eagle. (AB: Unknown book)


 * November
 * Lambert Asani erupts during a brutal fistfight with his father, Congolese diamond magnate Mente Asani, over whether the family is better off under Laurent Kabila's rule than they were when the Congo was a European colony. (AB: Unknown book)
 * November 21: Japan announces Saisho, "The New Beginning," a series of government subsidies designed to employ novas in high-tech industries. The Japanese government agrees to pay for companies to hire novas for research and development purposes, in hopes that new technologies will salvage Japan's economy. The project is a rousing success, and within a decade Japan regains its position as the premier developer of new technologies. (AB: Unknown book)
 * November 21: As part of the Saisho program, the Japanese government unveils its national superteam, Nippontai. (AB: Unknown book)


 * December
 * December 2: Team Tomorrow announces it will be on call around the world to avert any problems that may come from the Y2K millennium bug. Prime-time television specials aired around the world show novas working with computer designers to prevent the problem, and teams of novas performing disaster-control drills. (AB: Unknown book)
 * December 13: Bill Masters, of the CIA's directorate of science and technology, sends a memo to the DCI, disputing the popular belief in the relation of the Galatea incident to nova eruption. (AB: Unknown book)
 * December 31: Æon Society census reports approximately 1350 known novas in the world population. (AB: Unknown book)
 * December 31: Novas continue to erupt throughout the year, despite falling levels of radiation from the Galatea explosion. This rate of 30-40 eruptions a month continues for at least the first decade of the Nova Age. (AB: Unknown book)