The story takes place in the year 2040. 2040-15= 2025. The first experiments were occurring in early 2025.
There has been a gradual shift in the demographics of the world. There is more multiculturalism and there are a bit less Yamato Japanese due to travel. Many American citizens left for other countries, such as Japan due to the strict censorship that is occurring due to a AI run dictatorship.
The characters in the story are born in the year 2025. Most of the parents of these kids were in their twenties when they had them. In January of 2025, there was this experiment done by a group of scientists in Japan that ended up creating the first genetically modified humans known, most of the subjects in the first experiments were volunteers. These are the Mutants that are mentioned in the book. The first Mutants were given traits that weren’t as deviant (different eye/hair color, more attractive faces, physically stronger), so they weren’t under the radar of the government at the time, in fact they were seen as a great development in science and were applauded for their contribution. In addition it inadvertently also helped with raising the declining birthrate.
The decision made was that Mutants were going to be used in the military and that it’ll put Japan ahead of most countries at the moment, to make a new group of humans that could be used as the perfect soldiers for the army, through willing participants. But a new market opened up with mutants being bought like dogs at a mill. Trafficking of mutants was a big thing between the ultra elites. Becoming a mutant was marketed as a cure for healing any illness that was inherited, and it was pushed onto struggling families at a higher frequency in comparison to more middle class families. This caused the market for mutants to grow way beyond Japan, with trafficking rings for orphan mutant children popping up in all throughout the global south.
That is until there were Mutants that started to present traits that can be deemed dangerous. These traits produced would be called superpowers in comics, but ultimately the government felt that these new developments in Mutants might pose a threat to Japan’s security as a whole, and at a greater scale, the world at whole. As time passed these subjects were mostly orphaned teenagers and grew up impoverished families. Several bad actors have made so many Mutants to sell that some abilities aren’t known, instilling a fear in the Japanese public.
Due to all of this, there was a big divide in the government in their initial plan, and there was huge discourse whether or not these abilities might continue to serve an advantage in the military or that it would put the country in a dangerous position as at the time they peddling this innovation they weren’t fully aware of the risks of creating genetically modified humans before they mass produced them. A lot of the Mutants that were created had children, making their population grow. In the years following the discovery there was much pushback on the notion of using Mutants as weapons in war as they were found to possess the same consciousness as regular humans and in using them as weapons it’ll be a human rights violation.
These discoveries dispelled the notion that these Mutants felt no fear or grief, thus making them more suitable to handle the traumas that war brings. This led to protests by the youth of Japan, their aim was to overturn the decision of what the government had put in place due to their moral conviction that Mutants should be given the same rights as other human beings, the right of self autonomy. The issue of whether or not Mutants were to be classified as Japanese citizens relied on them being recognized as part of the human race first. It was argued that they were something else entirely thus they cannot be granted the same rights as a citizen would because they’re not Yamato Japanese nor are they human.
In September of the year 2025 there was a protest that escalated to violent as police cracked down on the people involved, of the protesters who were there, the majority being Mutants. The media coverage of the story wasn’t as widespread as expected which caused even more outrage throughout a wider audience. There was a lot more journalism on online platforms but not from the major news outlets, and on social media is where the incident circulated the most.
This was not the first or the last protest to be had, as protesters started getting more violent as a response to being attacked. The governments response was to add mass surveillance in predominantly Mutant communities, because they are automatically deemed a threat. State media confirms this notion.
In the year 2040, there is little to no acknowledgement the previous admirations mistakes, and the issue was successfully maintained within Japan, leaving the outside world oblivious, yet tensions are still high between civilians and government.
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