Standard Timeline

1967: Amanda Sykes absorbs ‘dark energy’ and unwittingly passes it on to her husband and daughter.
1968: Amanda reveals her powers and goes to fight in Vietnam, accidentally passing on dark energy to several highly-placed people in the US government and military, along with several others in the Vietcong and NVA. Those Vietnamese use their powers to bring the war to the US mainland.
1969: A metahuman named Cynthia Carls creates her own island, calling it Atlantis. Tina Shaw creates ‘Shavians’ or ‘Shaw Monsters’ as a side effect of her healing powers.
1970: Atlantis grows as a criminal named Jack Grimes, bearing the power to transform matter on a massive scale, claims to be ‘Carlos Moses,’ an Atlantean ambassador to the world. North Vietnam is effectively under the control of Nguyet Cam and the philosophy of Progressive Harmony.
1971: Atlantis factionalizes. The US passes laws against using dark energy to alter opinions and consciousness. The Vietnam war spills over into Laos, precipitating a massive battle called “The Laotian Götterdammerung.”
1972: After a Vietnamese metahuman kills the First Lady, the US threatens nuclear retaliation. With the election of Richard Nixon, and the show trial and execution of the Vietnamese assassin, tensions ease between the nations.
1973: Jack Grimes is forcibly deported and imprisoned in the US as a prelude to democratic Atlantean elections. The Irish Republican Army fields its own metahuman assault force, “Glóir.”
1974: A terrorist group called “Remember November” murders Tina Shaw, the sole creator of Shaw Monsters.
1975: The USSR deploys troops armed with laser pistols. Amanda’s daughter, Amy Sykes, attacks a millionaire she believes to be the driving force behind “Remember November.” Abe Sykes organizes a group of metahumans for disaster relief. It eventually takes the name ID/EA.
1976: A US corporation begins building light-based computer chips. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia form the “Indochinese Economic Gestalt” or IEG.
1977: The USSR deploys a satellite capable of redirecting sunlight.
1978: Åism begins taking action in Africa. The IEG goes to war against Indonesia, seizing Halmahera island.
1979: Amanda Sykes attempts to intervene during the Iranian hostage crisis, instead precipitating a bloodbath.
1980: The market for home computers grows massively. The IEG begins building a space elevator on Halmahera island.
1981: Provoked by the psychic disease Selar M., a group of metahumans attacks Amanda Sykes.
1982: The IEG completes its space elevator. It’s self-sufficient in food, water, and oxygen, all of which helps its crew survive for years when its tethers to earth are destroyed in the war a year after its completion.
1983: A single low-powered metahuman provokes a conflict between the US and USSR. Though Amanda Sykes prevents any nuclear warheads from detonating, the combination of conventional weapons, bio-warfare, syntergenic attacks and metahuman clashes produces a body count of roughly 1 billion people. It’s known as “The Metapocalypse.”
1984: The world rebuilds. The US president suspends the elections. Atlantis falls into anarchy. A syntergenic attack on the US drastically increases the population of bisexual men.
1985: The US government organizes “Patriot Spring” by soliciting many metahumans to use their powers to rebuild.
1986: Violence escalates on Atlantis. Amanda Sykes shows signs of paranoia and megalomania.
1987: The middle east convulses with violence. A group of psychics attempts to form a ‘shared mindspace’ which instead produces mad, broken, psychic gang-entities.
1988: Amanda Sykes creates her own Atlantis-like island. The US attacks Iran.
1989: The Åites announce their intention to spread beyond Earth and colonize the stars.
1990: Jason Weeks offers the world a high-temperature superconductor and a device that permits Shavians to reproduce, and says he will release both if human-on-Shavian violence ceases for six months.
1991: The space elevator gets reconnected after its base was destroyed in 1983. Amanda gets in the middle between the US and and occupied Iran. Shavians reproduce after another Hyperbrain figures out how to build the ‘brood chamber’ Weeks described in 1990. Airborne HIV breaks out in the Dakotas.
1992: Laos and the Åites both find treatments or inoculations against A-HIV. Atlantis becomes the frontline of the battle between Shavians and their human enemies.
1993: Amanda Sykes makes herself the most beautiful woman in the world, or possibly forces the global beauty standard to confirm to her. She also condemns Progressive Harmony.
1994: The IEG nations join with other Progressive Harmony countries to form the Global Philosophical Alliance or “GPhA.” GPhA forces head for Atlantis on a “peacekeeping” mission.
1995: Å is assassinated and Åism schisms. GPhA forces seize the Atlantean brood chamber.
1996: The massive Åite “world-ship” launches. China invades Taiwan. Violence flares on Atlantis against GPhA occupation. Amanda announces her intention to evacuate and sink the island if they can’t reach a consensus. After the brood chamber is destroyed, peace is doomed. In November, Amanda sinks Atlantis. Atlantean refugees flood the US, many settling in San Francisco.
1997: Amanda declares herself a living goddess and heir to the Åite church. A Vietnamese psychic encounters another intelligence during a deep space probe and is so horrified she kills herself.
1998: Defying a State Department request that she travel through official channels, Amanda teleports herself to San Francisco, transforms into a giant and declaims about her divinity. Jason Weeks, having foreseen her madness, deploys 35 metahumans against her and her dozen most powerful followers. The US military also gets involved in The Battle of San Francisco, which knocks Amanda into a coma. As soon as she’s comatose, all metahuman powers fail, throughout the world. When she recovers and powers return, Abe Sykes physically and psychically regresses her to the ‘self’ she was in 1970.
1999: Amanda Sykes leaves Earth. So do the Shavians.
