Academy #1 - "Terminal Burnout" - copyright 1994 by Dave Van Domelen
                   a Coherent Comics UnIncorporated production
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[cover: A young hispanic man is contorted in pain as energy seems to flow out
of his eyes.  Cover copy, "BURNED OUT!"]

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Excerpt from _Beyond UFOs: A History of Modern Extraterrestrial Contact_,
Academy Press, 2018:

     CHAPTER TWO: KHADAM

     The small African nation of Khadam is exceptional for its early and
frequent contact with extraterrestrials, notably the Scytharians and the Pranir
(see Ch 8 and 10 for fuller treatment of the two races than found in Ch 1).
And it is also exceptional for its abysmal track record in such dealings,
making most of the mistakes it is possible to make.
     Before we cover in detail the heinous crimes of this nation, and it is not
exaggeration to call them heinous, a short history of this odd nation will be
presented for clarity's sake.  The origins of Khadam, and how they seem to defy
logic at times, is covered more fully in texts covering the history of
Violation Physics: this is a mere overview of events, not an explanation of how
they could have happened.
     In late 1902, numerous inhabitants of the small city of Ghat, located near
the border of Algeria and Libya, reported seeing strange lights in the sky.
However, the isolation of this desert community prevented any real
investigation into the claims of (as local records stated) "illiterate nomads
and drunkards."  This strange event was the result of a crash-landing performed
by the Scytharian ore-carrier "Huxxis" (the closest English transliteration of
the name).  All conscious crew members died, although the ship remained 
relatively intact and its cargo shielded from the sands which quickly buried 
it.
     For the next forty years, little happened to disturb the crashed vessel.
We can only assume a rescue mission was launched but failed to locate the ship.
In any case, the next time anyone living would set foot in the ship was during 
the First Heroic Age, when the odd influences of paranormals and popular 
culture favored the discovery of the ship, albeit in a roundabout fashion.
     The year was 1942.  Hauptmann Dietrich Zugmann proposed an African version
of the Maginot Line to secure against Allied invasion: a series of fortresses 
along the eastern border of Algeria.  He apparently had the ear of powerful men
in Berlin, for the project was approved, and the first of the fortresses
started at the more defensible mountainous southern end.  Of course, by the
time even this fortress was complete, the "Zugmann Line" was obsolete.  For
failure to generate any kind of benefit for the Reich, Zugmann was ordered
court-martialled (it's also possible that he'd also lost his Berlin connections
by this time).  Zugmann and a handful of loyal men fled to nearby Ghat.  With
the Allies already advancing on Tunis to the north, the search for a lone 
failure was considered unimportant, and the action of the war shifted north.
     Over the next several months, Zugmann saw the way the tide was turning and
decided to set himself up in a better position than the Allies would no doubt 
have waiting for him after the inevitable loss by the Reich.  He raised a small
army of locals and seized Ghat from the small Italian garrison there.  Once 
victorious, he set about building a facade of democracy that would bring favor 
from the Allied powers, and declared the Fortress, Ghat, and a small area
between the two to be the Republic of Khadam.  No one's really sure why this
name was chosen, although the official line was that it was the name of a
heroic local who died in the conflict to liberate Ghat.  By October a complete
puppet government was installed and work started on making the Citadel (the
fortress's new name as seat of government) more self-sufficient and also more
capable of peacetime exercise of power.
     On October 15, 1944, workers expanding the outbuildings of the Citadel
discovered the buried Scytharian ship.  However, after nearly a year of
uncovering and examining it, no one was able to find a way in.
     This changed on September 2, 1945.  The slight worldwide rise in radiation
levels following the various atomic detonations that summer triggered the
(somewhat deteriorated and hypersensitive) radiation detectors on the ship.
The extra shielding was deployed and several hull breaches were uncovered at
this point.  During exploration of the ship, the cargo holds full of Technetium
(an element not naturally occuring on Earth) were discovered.  In addition, the
technology on board, designed to be used by miners and not scientists, was
accessible enough to be deciphered.  And when several fleeing German scientists
found their way to Khadam, the investigation of the Scytharian technology sped
up its pace.
     In 1948, the United Nations recognized Khadam and granted it observer
status.  Hans Zugmann, Dietrich's elder son, was sent as a representative,
causing a mild scandal when it was discovered that expatriate Nazis really ran
the nation.  At this point, the nickname "Zugnovia" surfaced in reference to
Khadam.
     Despite the scandal, Khadam prospered in its trade of the rare metal
Technetium, and looked to be on its way to buying a certain amount of respect.
It is during this time that the Khadamite scientists first revived the sole
survivor of the crash, an artificial life form code-named DU 3345, intended to
guard the cargo at its eventual destination.  Although unable to control it,
they learned much from its biochemistry and started breeding minor superhumans.
In early 1953, the cover story that the Technetium was in a meteor began to
wear thin, as the amount of pure metal exported already would require a meteor
large enough to wipe out life on the north coast of Africa.
     However, this was pushed from the world's consciousness when Khadam
apparently launched the first unmanned orbiter in 1956, the so-called Z-40.
Although it was revealed in 1994 to have been the Scytharian ship's distress
beacon, launched by accident, the launch set in motion the frenzy of scientific
activity known as the Space Race.  With the major publicity of this event,
Khadam started to attract the finest and most unethical scientists in the 
world.  Suspicion that the Khadamites were raiding alien technology stopped 
many ethical scientists from leaving for Khadam on the first available boat, 
and the reputations of several early "new citizens" turned away many more.  
Still, Khadam was vaulted into the position of scientific eminence and offered
to sell its space technology to any with the price.  Despite official claims to
the contrary, both the USA and USSR (parts of the current North American
Combine and the Eurasian Union) bought large amounts of Khadamite technology
over the next ten years.
     Dietrich's death in 1961 triggered the death of his puppet government as
well.  His son Hans, determining that the nation's position was secure without
the pretense of democracy, declared himself the President for Life.  The
Zugnovia nickname stuck, and stuck hard.  In 1964, fully 45% of those
interviewed in the United States thought "Zugnovia" was the nation's real name.
     Hans began a massive restructuring and modernization program, walling off
the entire nation in an effort to make the Berlin Wall seem puny and
establishing the Upper City.  The Upper City was a technological paradise, a
gleaming white city topped by the spire of the Citadel.  In it lived the
scientists and elite troops, as well as the growing class of those who found it
convenient for lack of extradition laws.  Below, the remains of the old city of
Ghat turned into a walled ghetto, a marked contrast to the Upper City's
splendor.  Meanwhile, Hans's younger brother Karl managed to unlock the
roots of many of the ship's technologies, and started to plot against his
brother.
     Khadam was perhaps better suited than anywhere else on Earth to benefit
from the Second Heroic Age.  It became a haven for "Mad Scientists" and
supervillains and a source for much of the "supertech" of the era.  By this
time, the Scytharian trader was totally shielded from detection from outside
and covered with a facade of buildings.  Eventually, international pressure
forced Khadam to give up most of its fugitive villains, but the most brilliant
or manipulative managed to fake their own deaths and retreated into shadow,
forming the Council of Technomancers.  They were led by Karl Zugmann, who used 
them as a tool in reducing his brother to the status of puppet.
     Over the next decade, advances in actual technology were blunted by
research into Violation Physics, but Karl did make significant advances in real
genetics, breeding his own son Arnold to become a superhuman being without use
of Violation effects.
     When the Third Heroic Age started, Khadam once more became a haven for
villainy.  But to deflect international criticism, the Council of Technomancers
secretly funded the construction of an artificial island in the Mediterranean
and eventually shifted all the more public villains there.  It was known
alternatively as Haven and Upper Zugnovia.  The strength of the villains
residing there was more than enough to prevent any assault, and no proof could
be found that Khadam really built it.
     1998 is when the story of Khadam's involvement with extraterrestrials
really started, and much of this chapter concerns events of these more recent 
years.  When the supernaturals disappeared, so too did Khadam's two main
industries: supertech and harboring fugitives.  Haven itself exploded 
violently: several residents had installed "deadman switches" to ensure any
would-be assassin would die with them.  And with all of these triggered at 
once, the explosion was visible from Malta.  A few salvage operations were 
launched, searching for the treasures supposedly hidden in Haven by its 
larcenous inhabitants, but nothing more than twisted rubble has ever been 
found.  And without supertech, it was impossible to do more than scratch the
surface.
     Khadam was thrown into a panic.  The Lower City tried to rebel, but 
quickly found that the technology used by the elite troops still functioned.  
The Upper City was largely depopulated, but enough remained to keep control.
And it is now known that Khadam had been the subject of numerous Pranir 
overtures over the previous five years...now Khadam finally had a reason to say
yes.  Khadam became a port of call for Pranir smugglers and numerous other
lesser races.  Political turmoil within the Planetary Confederation at this
time (see Ch 4) prevented the Closed status of Earth from being enforced from
without, and the fact Earth was tottering on the verge of collapse prevented
any real enforcement from within.
     Over the last twenty years, Khadam has provided the Pranir with a market
for advanced, and often dangerous, technologies.  A short catalogue of the
greater distasters created by this is listed later in the chapter.  In
addition, the fact that Arnold Dietrich survived the Causality Wars encouraged
Karl to step up genetic research, killing countless women and children in his
quest to create his own breed of superhumans.  The Lower City is no more than a
gene pool for Dietrich's experiments on humanity, and the Pranir have helped
him by supplying Scytharian genetic manipulation secrets.  We only know of the
horrors which go on in Khadam because Arnold's eldest son rebelled and escaped
to tell the world.  Sadly, he was killed by an assassin shortly afterward.
     Arnold Zugmann officially rules Khadam today.  However, the true rulers
are a coalition of Pranir Trade House Elders in concert with the few surviving
Technomancers.  Khadam has been, and remains, the strongest argument in human
history against unchecked extraterrestrial contact.  The remainder of this
chapter will discuss specific incidents and examine them in depth.

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     "Popper" St.James shut the text with a snort and put it back on the
library shelf.  Even compared to modern texts, that was pretty biased, he 
thought.  And the concept of unbiased, objective history texts had been out of 
style for nearly a generation now...compared to an older book that piece of 
tripe was practically anti-Khadam propaganda.
     Granted, he conceded, Khadam still wasn't a pleasant place for the lower
class, but nowhere was anymore.  Not really.  The North American Combine had 
seriously relaxed labor laws in order to compensate for the loss of workers and
technology, leading to near-slavery for the common working folk.  Sure, they 
said things were improving now that the economy had stabilized...but how much 
of that was merely making other nations look worse to boost us by comparison?
And let's not even talk about China.
     Slightly fuming, Popper stalked out of the library.  He didn't know why he
always went there and read that crap...it wasn't as if he wasn't getting enough
indoctrination in his coursework.  All it did was piss him off.
     Heck, treating the words of one lone fugitive as gospel, just because it 
made Khadam look bad!  What kind of academic, or even social, standard was 
that?  For all the world really knew, Khadam could make everyone else look like
banana republics, a shining paragon of technological utopia.  Of course, it 
probably didn't, but the fact that no one even seemed to wonder about it irked
him.
     Still, he knew better than to speak openly about his feelings on this 
matter.  He had no desire to spend the rest of his life under the microscope of
governmental scrutiny just because he had the bad judgment to speak his mind.  
Scarier than the "McCarthyism" of the previous century, the current trend was 
no passing hysteria.  Rather it was a calm and steady government policy, 
supported by the vast majority of the sheep which kept that government in 
office.  No witchhunts, just...watching.  Making sure all you did was talk, and
making sure you didn't talk to the wrong people.  On the surface it was almost 
benign, but the social pressures brought against anyone under observation were 
far worse than any law the government could pass.  Jimmy'd made the mistake of 
speaking out too much in his Junior year, and now he was off in some grunt job
where he "couldn't hurt anyone with his antisocial tendencies."  Feh.
     Emerging into the central core of the underground structure, Popper turned
left and headed up the spiraling ramp to the nearest elevator.  He needed to 
get outside, get some fresh air.  Seeing that the nearest 'vator was nearly at 
the bottom of the shaft, he glanced across the huge open shaft from which the 
nickname "The Pit" had come.  Another elevator was nearly at his level, but 
he'd have to sprint to get to it.
     With the help of a few short teleports, he made it to the elevator just as
the doors were closing.  Rather than hold the elevator, he just "popped" 
inside.  He nearly ended up standing on "Essay"'s bags when he arrived in the 
cab, and tripped over himself trying to get out of her way.
     When he had righted himself, he realized that the normally very vocal 
Angeleno hadn't even cussed him out once for his rather rude entry.  In fact, 
she seemed more downcast than he'd seen her.
     "Hey, Essay...what's down wit' you?"
     She mumbled something, but he couldn't quite make it out.  "Come again?"
     "My little cousin, Carlos, he burned out this mornin'.  I'm gonna take him
home for th' funeral," she all-but-whispered.
     "Oh, damn...I didn't know he was...I mean, I read about the Frosh burnout 
victim, but I didn't put the names together.  I-I'm sorry, Sara...if I knew I 
wouldn't have been so flip about it.  Is there any...."
     "You can shut UP!" she shot back, punctuating the last word by stamping 
her foot on the metal floor of the elevator.  Popper shut up, and cringed a 
little when he saw she'd made a minor dent in the floor.  He was quiet for the 
next few seconds, and then the elevator had reached ground level.  Essay picked
up her bags and walked out.
     Popper decided he didn't want to go out after all, and stabbed the number 
for the grad residential level.

               *              *              *              *

     Normally around sunset, the Observation Deck was a fairly crowded place.  
Atop a tower rising nearly ten stories above the ground, it offered a view of 
the outside welcomed by a community which lived almost entirely underground.
However, most students were still busy trying to get back into the swing of the
academic year, which cut down attendance some.  And the fact that a major storm
had blown in kept more away.
     As a result, only a few small clumps of students and instructors dotted 
the relatively large plex-domed room.  The westernmost cluster of couches and 
chairs was, by unspoken tradition, the lair of the oldest students.  Of course,
with the size of the oldest class having been cut down from several hundred to 
just the Grads, the area would eventually be encroached upon by the new Senior 
Class.  But this hadn't happened yet, and although several Grads commented on 
how empty the area seemed now, none seemed eager to give up the right to the
space.
     A half-dozen Grads sat around one table a few meters from the edge of the 
dome, with one other student a few meters more 'coreward' of them.  He seemed 
absorbed in some kind of research, flipping thought manila files and calling up
information on his portable computer.  The rest were drifting from one topic of
conversation to another, as each tried to steer the discussion to his or her 
pet topic.  At the moment, the largest of the group is talking in somewhat
wistful tones.
     "Y'know, sometimes I almost tink Arin's not innerested in men.  But den 
I'll catch her lookin at Grind over there like he was some kinda god ta her.  
What does she see in dat guy, anyway?  Ta coin a phrase, what's he got dat I 
ain't got?"
     Everyone immediately started listing things, and words like "a brain" and 
"diction" drifted about until he waved them down.
     "Awright already.  You know this is just an act, and so does she.  So I 
like playing big and dumb even if I'm not dumb.  Is dat so wrong?"  He grinned.
     "Sal, maybe your problem is you're being too subtle," suggested the lone 
woman at the table.  "I mean, she's from a fairly sheltered, fundamentalist 
upbringing, she didn't have a social life until her powers manifested and she 
came here two years ago.  She may not know a gentle pass from simple courtesy.
I remember when dufus here," she playfully whapped the man next to her, who
mock-cowered, "was first trying to hit on me, he was so unthreatening about it 
I thought he was gay or something.  'Course, I know better now," she grinned.
     Sal shrugged his mountainous shoulders.  "I dunno, Sarah...I don't wanna 
be too blunt about it, I might scare her off or worse yet, offend her."
     A raven-haired young man with a sadly receding hairline put a finger in 
the air as if to point at his words.  "There's also the possibility she just 
doesn't feel ready for a relationship, so she focuses her attentions on someone
she knows is inaccessible.  That way she can still hope without the danger of 
getting what she wished for."
     The man next to him, wearing a t-shirt that read "SCORCH" on the front, 
nodded.  "Yeah, George may have a point there.  Just wait, Sal.  When she's 
ready to commit herself, she'll stop mooning over Grind there and be in the 
market for a real man.  Which leaves Aaron out of the running, I guess."
     Aaron's expression darkened momentarily before he regained the control
over his emotions every telepath must have when interacting with non-psis.  
"Bite me, Scorch.  Just 'cause you were the butt of a lot of 'flamer' jokes in 
secondary school doesn't give you an excuse to take out your insecurities on 
me."
     "Whoa, Aaron...I felt that psiwave you let out there.  I thought you 
didn't flare up like that anymore.  What's eating you?  And no smart remarks, 
Scorch."
     "Who, me, Jakzak?"
     Aaron sighed.  "Same as usual.  Request to be transferred to MetaPsych got
turned down *again* today."
     Sarah frowned, "This makes, what, eight times?  The Admins must sympathize
with you, or they wouldn't let you keep trying...someone in the DSHA must be 
blocking it, the bastards.  Still, you and Paul are both psis, can't you keep 
in touch?"
     Aaron shook his head and sighed again.  "Not really.  Intensive psi 
training at MetaPsych requires the Talents be shielded from affecting the 
outside world, so they're sequestered for the first few months.  He gets out of
the shields at night, but he's usually so exhausted we can only maintain the 
link for a few minutes at a stretch.  Sometimes I wonder if some fundie at DSHA
found out about us and is intentionally trying to keep us apart to quash our 
'immoral' relationship.  Bah."
     Jakzak frowned.  "Anyone in that kind of position who doesn't know how it 
is with psis and love must have bought his way into the job."
     Scorch grinned and started to say something, but George wrapped his hands 
around his partner's mouth.  Scorch tried to mumble around the hands, and even 
generated flames to try and get George to let go, but George merely turned the 
heat into mechanical work and tightened his grip.
     "Uncle?" asked George.
     "MUMPHL," nodded Scorch, and George let go.  Of course, the whole effort 
was largely symbolic, since Aaron had 'heard' what was practically a mental 
shout from Scorch: "Oh, yeah, the Higher Love of psis, and I suppose the 
condoms were for storing loose change in?"  He pretended he hadn't heard it.
     While making a point of ignoring Scorch, Aaron diverted his attention by 
tapping up the day's local news on the screen mounted next to his chair.
     "Damn," he muttered.
     "What?" asked Sal.
     "Another Burnout.  Essay's cousin went training alone and managed to fry 
his Central Nervous System from overexertion."
     "Shi....  Every year, they warn the new kids to always train with a 
partner, spot 'em fer signs of burnout, but every year someone doesn't listen 
and ends up dead.  Poor Essay," said Sal.
     Jakzak replied, "I guess that's why she was getting ready for a trip
today.  Funeral.  Damn.  She lost half her family in the 2013 Quake, she really
doesn't deserve this."
     "Yeah, if anyone should be a Burnout victim, it should be Grind over 
there," interjected Scorch.
     Apparently he'd been listening, since Dan "Grind" Tracey stood and carried
his computer over to the table.  "Actually, Scott," he stressed Scorch's birth 
name, "I've always wondered why I haven't suffered neurological overload
syndrome myself.  After all, I push myself to the limit, and I've never even 
come close to such a breakdown."
     "So, um, Dan, figure anything out?" asked Sal.
     "I think so.  I've found a very disturbing pattern by reviewing sealed 
medical records for the past eight years on paranormal deaths.  Yes, I know I'm
breaking a dozen or more rules doing this, but I felt my life could be at 
stake, as well as many others.  Apparently, Burnout, as it's colloquially
known, occurs in clusters.  The Academy is the biggest one.  We've lost thirty-
four students to it confirmed, and three other possible.  The Eurasian 
counterpart to the Academy has lost twenty-five.  New York and Los Angeles have
both reported a few isolated cases.  And other than that, no location has had 
more than one incident.  Granted, few other places have paranormals pushing 
themselves to the brink of exhaustion like we do here, which is why no one has 
seriously studied the patterns.
     "But my interest was piqued by the clustering, and I looked for other 
patterns.  My information wasn't complete enough to look for patterns in 
Eurasia, and the other sites lacked enough samples to form a statistical 
background.  But here at the Academy, there is a disturbing pattern.  When 
correlating the age, experience and power levels of the victims against time, 
I found that these factors rose significantly faster than the average values 
did.  In other words, at first only the weakest of us Burned Out.  Generally
only those at Paranormal levels.  In the past two years, however, high 
Supernormal ratings of victims were more common.  It's as if there is an agency
behind the Burnouts, one that is getting more powerful and confident as the 
years go by."
     "How strong is this evidence, Grind?" asked Jakzak, the first to get over 
the shock of the implications.
     "Not very, I'm afraid.  And since the Academy hasn't been around more than
eight years, data from before that isn't very meaningful.  This is too weak to 
go to the authorities with, I'm afraid.  The statistical significance is almost
nonexistent...I'd be patted on the head, told I'm a clever kid, and to leave 
the medicine to the doctors.  And whatever is really killing these students 
must be psychic in nature...it leaves no physical marks, nor any evidence that 
can be found by conventional medical means that it's anything other than 
internal neural overloading.  Sadly, no psi has completed, or even really
entered, traditional medical training yet.  I have the feeling that the killer 
is being careful enough to evade any crude psi investigation...no offense, 
Aaron, but even Paul, talented as he is, wouldn't know what to look for."
     "No offense taken.  What would we be looking for?"
     "I'm not totally sure...I'm not a medical doctor either.  I suspect there 
would be some kind of mental 'entry wound' that a psi could find if he looked, 
a place where the attack first hit.  There might also be a mental scream of
sorts as the victim is attacked.  Could you detect something like that?"
     Aaron shook his head.  "Not without intensive training in external 
sensing.  And all I really get here is training in my more combat-worthy 
abilities.  Sorry."
     Jakzak sat up and leaned forward.  "I guess if the authorities can't be 
brought in yet, it's up to us Grads to be on the lookout for any possible 
killer.  Let's spread the word, but quietly."
     Grind shook his head.  "That might not be a good idea."
     "Why?" asked Sarah.
     "Because, whoever is behind this has been here for eight years.  The only 
reason I mentioned this to any of you is that you all entered during the second
year of the Academy, as Sophomore in secondary education, so you're clear.  But
several of the others are suspects, as are many of the instructors and support 
staff."
     "Even Essay?  She's been here 8 years..." noted George.
     "Yes, even her.  For all we know, she might have killed Carlos to throw 
suspicion off of her.  It may sound callous as hell, but we have to regard her 
as a possible killer as well."
     Above, lightning lit of the sky and thunder seemed to shatter the 
heavens....