As a long time employee of Project Utopia and the prestigious Team Tomorrow, I worked for many years to "build tomorrow with the power of today." This was a position I felt fortunate to be in, and I believed that it was possible make improvements to the world through the wonder of quantum expression and quantum intellect. In time, while still believing that we could make the world a better place, I came to feel conflicted on certain points that Project Utopia represented, and in what some consider the biggest mistake of my erupted life, expressed these feelings to Zach Bronstein in a candid interview.

In simplest expressions, I said that I don't believe nova and baseline are the same species, that I don't believe that novas are human in the same way that baselines are human. I continue to believe this. I didn't fully realize the proverbial can of worms I was opening when I said it. Saying that I don't think I'm human is one thing, but what does the word "human" mean?

Before N-Day, human would generally mean what is now known as baseline life. Many transhumanists and members of the Teragen would say that this is the proper definition of the word. The Zurich Accord, and Project Utopia, would say that novas are "human," and mean that novas are no different from baseline life except for one distinct advantage. Dr. David Smith, also known as "Dr. Troll" and currently a member of Project Utopia, has conversed with me on this point and has suggested that to him the word human shouldn't mean baseline or even baseline/nova so much as it means a thinking, intelligent being: a definition meant to include all handicapped, infirmed, extraterrestrial, nova, baseline, and even artificial life. Moralists will say to be human, one must be humane, and that it doesn't matter what species you are; you're human if you demonstrate humane behavior. Many people claim the Teragen is inhuman because many in their membership demonstrate inhumane behavior.

When I said what I did to Mr. Bronstein, I must confess I had the ideas of Raoul Orzaiz, Wizard, and Ashnod on my mind, which should come as no surprise considering I listed them among my Bronstein Top Ten list. Novas aren't human because of biological differences, and by the sheer difference by which having the ability to use quantum changes us. I was thinking of human in the sense of a baseline life.

For those of you that aren't familiar with who I am, I manipulate and create electricity. In my early years, this was limited to biological electricity, such as nerve impulses, currents in the mind, and similar energy. Since then, I've grown to be able to control ambient electricity such as lightning in storm clouds, directed electricity such as the power grids in cities, and even more recently, create electricity out of raw quantum. I'm capable of completely transforming my physical body into an electrical state where my consciousness survives without biology to sustain it, and recreate my body out of that same electrical energy.

I was a teenager when I erupted, and was still a teenager when I joined Project Utopia. Initially, I thought of these abilities as nothing more than "powers," something that might be similar to what characters in Marvel Comics or Japanese anime possess. A character has an energy blast that he emits from his eyes and it helps him defeat a costumed foe, but that energy blast is nothing more than that: a single advantage that might grow in strength but it will remain nothing more than eye beams (unless a new writer comes along and decides the character needs revamping and makes radical changes, but that's a different scenario).

I thought of my abilities as powers, like eyebeams; an advantage that made me special but in the end, was it really all that different from someone who was a crack-shot with a bow and arrow? Take away that advantage, and I’d still be the same person, right? It was just something I could do, but it had nothing to do with who I was.

As I’ve said, my abilities have grown to where my previous limitations are no longer limitations. I can feel, sense, and manipulate all electricity, not just biologically-based electricity, and I furthermore, I am able to create electricity as well. My understanding of how this energy can be used has grown beyond what was initially told to me when I visited the Rashoud Facility that very first time, and far surpassed what my T2M paraphysicians told me to expect after my first year with the team. Odds are very likely that this power and understanding are only going to increase as I get older if the curve of my growth to this point is any indication. That’s both daunting and exciting, I have to admit. I’ve found myself contemplating what further increases will mean for me.

Juri “Salamander” McClendon, a nova student at the University of Alabama Huntsville with fire-based abilities, once wrote that she can envision a time when she could be aware of every fire on the planet. While I personally think that kind of awareness would drive one crazy, I have to agree with her assessment. I can see my abilities growing to the point where I could be aware of any movement of electricity at any given point in time if I but concentrated hard enough. That’s daunting, isn’t it? Any electricity on the planet… I’m not there yet, but such a thing might be possible. As it is, I’m aware of it over a great distance already, and can manipulate it within my range of awareness. If I could not only be aware of electricity on a planetary scale, but could also control it on that scale… Obviously, I’m not anywhere near that kind of power now, and I’m not trying to make myself a target for paranoia by saying all of this, but I do think it needs to be considered.

I wish language had words to describe the interconnectedness my kind of quantum expression allows me. I’m aware electricity around me, networks, storms, flow of current and beam, and yes, since biological life uses electricity, that as well. I see the sharing of energy between living beings, and the sharing of it between living beings and non-living matter. I feel and see the world in terms of this interconnectedness, and it’s absolutely beautiful. Hypnotic even, enough so that I often break down crying if I stare at it for too long.

I’m going to share something with you that until this point I’ve shared with no one, not even other novas who believe as I do. The moment I knew I wasn’t human came a few months previous to my interview with Zach Bronstein. Contrary to what some people in the media have said, it wasn’t when my two-year relationship with a baseline soured and ended, though I won’t deny that did influence me toward thinking I wasn’t quite what people were telling me I was. I’d taken some time off from work, and just went into the mountains to explore the limits of my growing quantum expression. As I let my awareness expand outwards, sensing around me and feeling the interconnectedness, I had my epiphany.

That epiphany is this: if I can see and feel the interconnectedness now, at some point, my control over electricity and bio-electricity is going to be strong enough that I can travel across it. I'm going to be able to transform myself into electricity and move through it. I'm going to touch everything and everyone. Have the potential to be part of everyone and everything. Possibly...BE everyone and everything if only for the duration of that transformation. But then again, as I've experienced, my endurance for keeping my quantum expression active has increased, so by the time I developed to that strata of understanding and control, that duration could be a very long time.

And furthermore, if I'm possible of such a feat at some point, at the risk of making all the doomsayers more paranoid, that possible kind of quantum expression, while it may take a form other than mine, resides within every single nova on both erupted and unerupted. We might not choose to pursue it, but it is there, waiting for us to seize it.

I know a lot of people in the metaphysical community will say that this type of "ascension" is within all intelligent beings, and I don't really want to debate the religious or metaphysical implications of this. What I do find important, though, is that while understanding and enlightenment may bring me to that point, it is available to me through a biological manifestation, the Mazarin-Rashoud node, where most in the metaphysical community would say for those without a node it is made possible through a spiritual path. At least before N-Day and the advent of quantum expression. Again, I'm not going to debate the benefits or detriments of one over the other, but I will say that the two are different. Sufficiently different, that when taken with the sum total of all the other reasons that split nova and baseline from each other, it's clear that we aren't the same at all.

Or, as I said to one Mr. Bronstein, the Zurich Accord is wrong. Novas aren't human, at least in the definition of human meaning baseline.

I find the all-encompassing definition of Dr. Smith somewhat misleading. When Randall Portman was interviewed by N! before he became President and declared "Of course, I'm human!" I don't believe he was saying that he is another intelligent, sentient, emotional being, but that he was like the everyday man on the street. Or, like the previous comparison, just an ordinary, average guy who just happened to have eyebeams. He insists with the word human that he shouldn't be thought of differently than someone without powers.

Dr. Smith has also asked why I feel it matters if I’m recognized as being "not human," and why I care what anyone else thinks regarding my decision. Free speech being what it is in the United States, I'm certainly free to say I'm not human, but the Zurich Accord currently says otherwise. This is both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because it affords me protection and rights as a natural born citizen, but a curse because those rights and that protection comes at the price of a lie.

Further, because of the paradigm insisted upon by the Zurich Accord, I'm frequently met with scorn despite every positive example of transhumanity I'm trying to convey. I don’t have Count Orzaiz’s charm, and I haven’t received the warmest of welcomes into the world of transhumanity. Since my interview, people at restaurants I'd visit that once treated me kindly and probably because of my Team Tomorrow employment, have since come to refer to me as "one of those people." I'm assuming that means the Teragen, since they're the most visible representation of the Zurich Accord's opposition. Potential employers, even those who desire to have a nova on their payroll, have answered my inquiries with explanations of how I couldn’t properly represent the image they’re trying to convey.

Eyes that were once welcoming are now suspicious. The most brutal example of this was driven home mere hours after Bronstein's interview aired, when I walked back into the Americas Team headquarters and everyone looked at me as though I were an alien or a contagion carrier. Ricardo refused to look at me, just stoically made certain I was aware the Director wanted to see me immediately. Ana Texiera's expression still burns into me to this day, that look of both betrayal and disgust one saves for the most serious of slights. Poltergeist gave me the "have I really worked with a monster all this time" look, like all those shocked and dazed neighbors of a recently captured serial killer suspect. And I have to say, I felt like someone innocent accused of being a serial killer. No denial can be sincere enough to assuage the doubts that arise simply by being accused.

I'd lived, worked, and fought side by side with these novas for years, and just with the simple statement that I felt the Zurich Accord wasn't accurate, all of that vanished. Saying that the label of human is meaningless, in my experience, is flat out wrong. Regardless of what the true definition of the word is, most people have very strong attachment to the word human and their personal definition of it includes very positive connotations. Saying that you're not human carries a lot of assumed negatives.

Where this becomes dangerous is that treatment like I’ve just described is probably what drives many novas like me to organizations such as the Teragen: we appear to have no alternatives but the Teragen. Nobody wants to acknowledge that we exist, after all, if you oppose the Zurich Accord you simply must be a Terat terrorist because only someone who wants to be kill with impunity would say such a terrible thing as saying they’re not human! We’re lumped into that stereotype even though the only thing we have in common is our acceptance that novas aren’t human.

For transhumanists like myself who desire a partnership with humanity there are no options currently within the system except to accept the system. Several questions inevitably arise whenever I bring this up.

The first is whether or not I agree with the Null Manifesto, at least as far as novas being outside of baseline law. I'm of a mixed mind on this point. Yes, I do believe that novas should govern themselves, and I do believe if nothing else there should be a body of representation for novas if a full government isn't possible. I don't believe the "every nova is a nation unto him or herself" rhetoric, and I believe that if a nova decides to live within baseline society than he or she is responsible to obey the laws of the nation they call home.

That generally leads to the next question, which is why I feel I can’t simply live with the way things are. This is where the matter becomes significantly more complex. You see, as an American nova, I have a democratic view of the way government should be run. But my ideas aren’t necessarily applicable to other nations because of the way their governments are arranged. Short of a complete restructuring and revision of the government to include equal representation by both species, which I’d prefer, smaller changes could be enacted.

Currently, I’m not represented in the United States government. There are representatives for the state I live in, of course, but these are unerupted individuals who probably don’t have the potential to erupt. There are novas in elected office, yes, but these novas, like my former teammates, believe that nova and baseline are the same. The legislation and decisions made by these elected officials are meant to govern baselines, and novas that live with the belief that they are just normal people who happen to have eyebeams.

Essentially, I’m concerned that one day legislation will pass that limits or affects the behavior of novas and I don’t want this to be created solely by those who will never erupt, and those who continue to believe that they aren’t different from the unerupted. While I’m certain many of you will think me racist for saying this, I want you to keep in mind that we had a law passed in Florida that made it a crime for a nova to be within the city limits, prompting a quick and brutal response by the Teragen. Now, however ugly and illegal this law was, it was passed and it was enforced, and the organizations that performed the enforcing were my former employer and the local jurisdictions of the nation in which I live.

I’m not approaching this from the perspective that novas should be able to do what they want when they want just because they’re not baseline. I do want equal representation in the government by novas officials, however, and I want this not to make sweeping changes but just to make certain that novas have an equal say in what is to come.

I’d like to see the Bill of Rights amended so that possession of an M-R Node or the potential for one to develop cannot be grounds for any kind of discrimination. This right does not currently exist, anymore than it does for gay, lesbian, or transsexual individuals.

Nor do I feel the Zurich Accord should be considered the authority on what novas are or aren’t. I’d like to see a new accord reached that would state that novas, while not human, are still considered citizens of the planet and citizens of the nations they reside in.

On the world scale, I’d like an end to nova persecution in certain Eastern and Third World nations. I’d like Project Utopia authorized to take a more active role in preventing and ending these atrocities, and I’d like the United Nations to investigate this more thoroughly. I’d like other nations to reconsider their current legislation regarding nova citizens, and to consider agreeing on the aforementioned new accord to replace the Zurich Accord.

While I know I don’t have the power to enact any of this, and I understand that what I desire to see changed seems simple, I know it’s actually quite an undertaking. I believe it’s a necessary one, however. The Teragen (or a few of its membership) have boasted that the Teragen is the result of baseline/nova tensions and not the cause of it. I happen to agree with this, and I think it’s vital that we do what we can acknowledge that we’re not the same and that trying to pretend that we are is doing more to break up apart than keep us together.

This needs to be more than offering absurdly competitive salaries to the quantum-born, paying them extravagantly for the miracles they perform while those unable to compete with quantum expression are employed at far less for not being born with that potential. This needs to be more than using nova proxies on the battlefield because the loss of a few nova lives are considered more humane than the loss of several hundred or thousand non-nova lives.

I think pretending otherwise is going to keep driving a wedge between our peoples, and it’s going to cause movements and organizations worse than the Teragen and the Church of Michael Archangel to form on both sides. The events in Ibiza recently are, I believe, a direct result of this wedge. The weight of all of confusion and fear is hammering down upon it. And it’s going to keep driving until it splits us completely apart.

It’s not inevitable, we can prevent it, but it’s going to take more than appealing to our greed and our narcissism.