resistanttodarkness

[resistanttodarkness]

A Brief Summary of Immortals, by Nathan Barrow

Hello, dear readers! Can you believe it’s been a whole year since President Della Frienze’s crazy inauguration speech? Life has certainly taken some turns since then!

I feel I would be failing in my duty as a journalist if I did not recap this historic event. And besides, this post can serve as a nice little summary of the world of Immortals as a whole! I’ll have Josh pin it to the main page! (Editor’s Note: Nate made this thing too damn long to pin it to the main page. It’s a mess as it is. I’ll make it a separate page on the site, or something.)

When President Frienze took the stage, everyone thought it was going to be your run-of-the-mill celebration speech, going over campaign promises and the like. Boy were we wrong! Out of nowhere, she drops this bombshell- “While I know this is meant to be a celebration for myself, my party, and those who voted for me, I must deliver an important message. Magic is real.”

Insane, right? I don’t think there was a sound on Capitol Hill for five minutes straight! Why’d she wait that long, anyway? To show she was serious? To check the audience for some Immortal agents? Boggles the mind, right? Anyway, she continued-

“Since nearly the dawn of human civilization, there have been people with the ability to perform inexplicable feats. Creating fire, water, lightning from nothing. Flight. Speaking with animals. The list goes on. These people are Immortals, named as such due to their unaging forms.”

To think she didn’t elaborate on that bit! Unaging! Bit hard to hide that for so long, right? I had to dig this up on my own last year, if you’ll recall. Turns out it’s more complicated than simply being “unaging”. An Immortal ages normally, and can even choose to pass away from old age if they so wish. But, they can also “reset” to the age of 25 from any age past it. Wild! 

The memory of seeing it in action still gives me goosebumps. Back when I interviewed Blake Ravitz over at the dam- The work was getting to him, even at only 35 years old. I guess Immortal powers take a lot to use. But I’ve seen 40-year-old Immortals do similar jobs just fine. Maybe some Immortals have more power than others? I’ve gotta make sure I ask the next one I interview about that!

This next bit’s real juicy- “However, at the end of a grueling war between Immortals in the Dark Ages, Mortalkind forced them into hiding. No longer. I welcome the Immortals of the United States of America to reveal themselves, and I urge my fellow world leaders to do the same.”

And then she just left! Didn’t let a single person interview her! 

It took a few days after that, but shows of Immortal powers started popping up everywhere. Every single news channel in existence just had hours of B-roll playing of people doing crazy things! I think the media bigwigs were in just as much shock and awe as the rest of us!

Since then, things have been weirdly calm. Sure, you have the occasional anti-Immortal protest, but I think the type who like to punish people for being themselves tend not to be as powerful as they like to pretend they are when faced with firebending, lightning-shooting, flying wizard people!

Otherwise, you mostly have Immortals just… Living life, but with the option to use their powers. I mentioned Blake Ravitz working at the dam, but I’ve also heard about psychic warehouse workers, and zookeepers that make the animals the happiest anyone’s ever seen them!

And the best part? This isn’t ruining the workforce! I mean, there aren’t really any Immortal abilities I know about that can help you flip burgers or run the register, so we aren’t fully out of crap jobs, unfortunately. But the thing is, Immortals have always been among us. If anything, the workforce kinda just got shuffled around a bit.

There is one sticking point, though- While law enforcement now has Immortal powers to work with, so do criminals. As such, things on that end have been a rapid cat-and-mouse endeavor trying to match the right Immortal cops with the right areas of jurisdiction to best deal with whatever powers the criminals there have.

And, unfortunately, my lovely home of San Francisco has been one of the places that hasn’t quite caught up on that front. We’ve been dealing with a rash of bank robberies that the SFPD can’t pin down. 

But, that’s not for this post. I’ll be doing a deep dive on that particular story in my next article. Who knows, maybe the problem will be resolved before then!

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