Operation Genesis

Operation Genesis was a terraforming project initiated by Project Utopia in 2009 to transform parts of the Sahara into fertile land. It followed on from the hugely successful Operation Eden, which had similarly transformed Ethiopia.

Publicly announced on August 7, 2009, Operation Genesis was based in Niger, and intended to help feed the nations of northern Africa. Like practically all of Utopia's ecological initiatives, Genesis was under the direct supervision of Spencer "Antaeus" Balmer. He determined it would take five years to complete the operation, though no completion date was initially announced to the public.

Utopia had hoped that Operation Genesis would provide enough publicity to elevate them in the public eye following the scandal with Jennifer "Slider" Landers and André Corbin, but they did not get quite the response they were hoping for. Anxious to capitalise further on the project, they asked Antaeus to step up the program so it could be completed in two years, and to show some major progress in the first few months. Antaeus refused, since he believed such targets impossible to meet and quite possibly ecologically disastrous.

Utopia decided to accelerate the Operation without Antaeus' approval, and did so in secret by bringing in other novas and pushing them to their limits to force the project to proceed faster. Project Proteus monitored the situation as it became clear the constant use of quantum powers accelerated the accumulation of Taint.

The most prominent nova to be publicly added to the project was Nigerois local Marshala "Harmattan" Kader, whose powers involved the control of the desert sands and winds. He created headlines again when he disappeared in a sandstorm only two weeks after joining the effort; he was declared dead after he remained missing for five days. Antaeus disappeared from Utopia's Addis Ababa headquarters very shortly after Harmattan was declared dead.

Antaeus eventually reveals himself by created a tropical oasis in Djado, a town in the Niger desert, and invites select novas from various factions to speak with him. Eventually he chooses not to return to Project Utopia, but to continue working on Operation Eden independently; the Project spins this as an "extended leave of absence" and advise that the operation's pace will be slowed, in line with Antaeus' original projections.