S.A.F.E.
SAFE stands for Safeguarding Against Future Exploitation. Broadly, the first mandate is to protect humans from being exploited by Omegas. The second is to educate humans about Omegas and so protect them from humans as well. Imagine if you woke up one day with the ability to walk through walls at will and see-through skin. Your family is poor, your dad just got laid off from work and now everyone stares at you with no clue what to make of you. neighbours whisper about demons or freaks or the justice of God and you have nothing to say against it, having no clue what happened to you. Further, there is a bank six blocks away and you know that slipping into the cells to nab safety deposit boxes would be a piece of cake. You might not want to, not at first, but your dad can’t get a new job and you blame yourself, Then the neighbours lose some money kept in a jar, and they decide you took it.
From there, the end of the story writes itself: crime, suicide, or running away. SAFE wants to permit Omegas to start over, make different stories, find better paths and uses for their talents when we can. The police will arrest, detain and possibly kill Omegas. Our job is to fight them if we must, but after to offer choices, to try and understand and offer up options. To that end, our field team is deployed to stop threats and problems the police are not equipped to and other members exist to defuse situations before they reach the point of intervention, or to find Omegas and educate them about themselves before they make the wrong choices.
Everyone screws up. But we believe people deserve second chances, and even third chances: SAFE even hires Omegas (with rather good wages offered) if their talents and personality fit the group, help them to find jobs and plans to work with other kind of outreach groups to prevent disasters before they happen. Make no mistake about it: An Omega can be a natural disaster if pushed too far by the world, and by word we mean people:
* If people think you are a criminal, it’s a hard thing to keep fighting against that and not eventually give into expectations.
* If people name someone a monster, they can help to create a monster.
* If the world seems to hate you, it’s terribly difficult to not internalize some of that hate.
But you wouldn’t? Or never would? Perhaps not. But we are not assuming Omegas are going to be saints, or that they should be judged by higher moral standards than anyone else through no fault of their own. If we can educate Omegas about their nature, the world about Omegas, and stop the few bad apples among us from tainting the rest, then the world will be safer for everyone. It isn’t an easy job, and it won’t ever be an easy calling, b ut no one ever made the world a better place without striving to make people better people. And the only way to make a better person is to educate away ignorance and fear.
No comments:
Post a Comment