Bright Future Timeline (Forking Paths)

The Road to Redemption

The Bright Future is a realization of the term, "the end justifies the means." While this is a future where the Evolved and Non-Evolved coexist peacefully, where New York has been restored from the brink of chaos, it is a bright future built on the broken backs of those who came before.

In this future, a Global 500 company known as the Pinehearst Corporation controls much of the world's growing biological engineering developments. Pinehearst made, in large part, the restoration of New York City possible with sizable donations of technology and funding.

Pinehearst is headed by philanthropist billionaire Arthur Petrelli and his son Peter Petrelli. The corporation, among its many research responsibilities, also acts as an organization designed to understand and aid the Evolved along their shaky first steps to cohabitation with the rest of the world, and to an extent this is exactly what they do.

However, Pinehearst has a more morally ambiguous underbelly that does not reflect well upon its prestigious facade. Unknown to the general public, the corporation has experimented on involuntary test subjects to forward its genetic research into the Evolved. And in doing so has perfected a synthetic drug capable of granting Evolved abilities to non-evolved individuals. Pinehearst uses this secret formula to control the United States by limiting their access to the drug, and thereby making the nation's military might contingent on Pinehearst's continued growth and influence.

The world at large is entirely unaware of the formula's existence, or that Pinehearst effectively bought its political clout with this research. Despite their amoral means to achieve their goals, however, Pinehearst has assisted two presidential offices with the overseeing of Evolved relations.

The transition from a bleak future where the Evolved were persecuted and hunted to this seeming utopia did not happen overnight. While there are myriad other details that fit between the cracks, the below timeline is the best outline of how this timeline diverged early in the year 2009. The below content comes from an anonymous blog gradually compiled starting in 2008. Much of the content is believed to be conspiracy theory and has been refuted by major media sources. Those who lived the truth, know the truth, however.

And So It Came To Pass…

Slouching Towards the Apocalypse

In late 2008, the world as we knew it was in a pretty bad shape. Pro-Evolved and Anti-Evolved sentiments were burning a hole into our collective heads on every single evening news broadcast, we heard terms like terrorist and extremist thrown out like they were going out of style.

The beginning of the end really started when the government took down the Pro-Evolved "terrorist" organization PARIAH in a blaze of glory and fireworks that had a body count to make most Hollywood blockbusters hang their head in shame. Everyone might have been able to keep their cool, though. After the 2008 election we had a Pro-Evolved president coming in who seemed like a pretty progressive guy, so maybe everything wasn’t so bad after all?

But then the scandal came out where President-Elect Allen Rickham just… stepped down. He walked away from the most important seat of power right when it was in his grasp, and it left the world without any answers as to why. So, while 2008 crumbled away into 2009, we were all left wondering -– when will the next shoe drop?

And boy did that shoe drop.

It was only January when everything really and truly went to hell in a handbasket. An Anti-Evolved paramilitary organization based out of Europe ended up making a series of terrorist attacks on New York as a part of a plan to release a viral weapon into the atmosphere that –- the public wasn't made aware of until years after the fact -– would have wiped out over ninety percent of the world’s population in ten short years. Believe me, it almost happened. We were this close to living in a Cormac McCarthy novel.

But it wasn’t the US government that stopped everything from going tits-up, it was a group of unregistered evolved freedom-fighters called Phoenix. These people were rewarded for their efforts by being dragged by the hair into the custody of the Department of Homeland Security’s darkest secret, the Moab Federal Penitentiary. Imagine a Guantanamo Bay look-alike with claws and fangs and the clap and you kind of have the right idea about what this place was like.

The public at large gets fed this story that Evolved terrorists were responsible, and New York gets locked down under martial law for two months. The National Guard gets called in, we have soldiers in the streets, food riots, rolling blackouts, arson, and mass suicides of Evolved who have been convinced by the media that they're monsters — or just afraid that all their neighbors think they are.

During this chaos, Nathan Petrelli sneaks in as President of the United States through a series of high-profile retirements all the way down the chain of succession. Nathan then appoints one of his former opponents in the election, and a military-brat bigot, Andrew Mitchell as his veep. The world just shrugs it off as a turn for the better, and we’re all about to get the biggest five-finger slap across the face.

By the end of March 2009, the situation in New York is so bad that the entire state is considered a disaster area, and the Army is called in to restore order. The suicide rates keep going up as people are too afraid to Register because people in the registry are finding themselves murdered -– be it by spooky serial killers like the Reaper (who was never caught) or wackjob anti-evolved groups like Humanis First!

Come the beginning of April, the global economy has nearly crashed from the resulting chaos spreading out from America’s worsening financial and social situation. April 16th, 2009, marked the beginning of the worst of the violence in the United States when Humanis First Began a campaign of suicide bombing in hospitals and shelters that welcomed the Evolved.

President Petrelli calls for unity among the citizens of America, and the rest of the world watches on as America burns. But like they say, it always gets worse before it gets better.

Who Needs A Grassy Knoll?

Sometime around July of 2009, an anonymous informant leaks information to the national news media about an organization operating within the United States government called “The Company,” a couple of fringe news outlets report about this clandestine organization, but the major media outlets refuse to cover the story.

People just didn’t believe it, not until the shaky alliance between the United States government and the Company are stained to the breaking point. Most unenlightened people aren’t even aware of this still, but word gets around that a member of the Company absconded with the lion’s share of their private research and crippling information, about how they happened to develop that super-virus that nearly killed all of us when they forgot to lock their little treasure chest.

This all culminates in a government disassociation with the Company in the August of 2009 after it is discovered that agents of Homeland Security were secretly plants placed by the Company in an attempt to subvert government control. The information was delivered to them by a former Company agent named Roger Goodman, who spills the beans about Johnathan Carmichael and nearly one hundred other DHS agents secretly serving the Company founders.

This is the first step towards the collapse of the Company, and Roger absconds with decades of research from the Company while the government turns on its former allies. This firestorm is followed up by a declaration that the Company is an illegally operating organization by the US Government and demands that they shut down their offices.

Goodman goes public with the news, dropping the bombshell alongside the Secretary of Defense in a press conference covered by every major news media outlet in the world. This all hits in a fiery shit-storm that actually makes everyone stop killing each other for just a minute to see what Big Brother was doing behind their backs. With the revelation hitting the world that the Company has been bagging, tagging and cataloging the Evolved for over twenty years, people are notably a bit freaked out.

Where the first riots happened is hotly debated, even years after the fact. But it’s believed that Seattle Washington’s Space Needle explosion was where it all really began. Anti-Government sentiment actually united the people together long enough to start smashing in heads that weren’t their own, but it started to tear the country apart at the seams.

All across the United States, across huge swaths of the world where the Company was discovered like cockroaches living in your walls, outrage was threatening to start up what could have been the next American Civil War. But just before the fires of civil unrest turned into civil war, an even bigger bomb was about to drop. This time, metaphorically.

Digging Out of the Hole

Just when the media war-drums were pounding their loudest, the public gets the biggest shock of all. It starts when Arthur Petrelli — a man who faked his own death in the 1990s — steps out of hiding and proposes a meeting with the media to discuss the Company, outing Nathan Petrelli as a figurehead manipulated by the Company's founders. Arthur drops the bomb that Nathan Petrelli and Daniel Linderman, along with Nathan’s harpy of a mother Angela Petrelli, orchestrated the entire destruction of Midtown as some sick plan to reveal the existence of the Evolved to the world and set the country on some grand conspiracy of a direction where the Company had all the power and control. They reveal that the Company utilized a technopath to rig Nathan’s landslide Senate election in 2006 which brought into question the validity of his entire Presidency.

In September of 2009 in a closed-door congressional hearing, Arthur outlines further details about the Company's activities. Arthur paints himself to be a compassionate and unwilling participant in all of the conspiracy, a humble man and Vietnam veteran who had to fake his own death for fear of being silenced for what he knew. Nathan, Angela, and Daniel are given the quickest trials known to man, and Daniel Linderman along with Angela Petrelli are sentenced to death for treason, while Nathan Petrelli is stripped of his presidency in a swift impeachment — leaving Mitchell high and dry — and is sentenced to sixteen consecutive life-sentences in the Moab Federal Penitentiary. It’s a biting moment of irony where the man who had the prison built gets to sleep in its walls. I hope he likes the amenities. While Oh Danny Boy is being carted off for his final closeup, one of his cronies — Kain Zarek — swoops in and performs a hostile takeover of the Linderman Group, turning it into the Zarek Group practically overnight. In secret, the Zarek Group is a shell corporation of Pinehearst and all a part of Arthur Petrelli's bigger picture. We just didn't realize it yet.

While the dog and pony show of treason is being trotted out for the public, Arthur moves to cement his own influence over the world and meets with select upper-level government officials and secretly reveals the presence of a formula designed by his company Pinehearst that can make any ordinary human have super powers. Arthur offers exclusive access to the formula to the US government, along with all of the private and clandestine information of the Company. No one on the street finds out what goes on in this meeting, but the ripples from it turn into tidal waves that crash down on every city around the world.

The US Government enters into a reluctant coalition with Pinehearst redrafts the FRONTLINE proposal originally put forth to Congress by Senator Andrew Mitchell, which quickly passes through the current administration. Members of Frontline are pulled from Evolved members of the military, law enforcement and Special Forces, along with synthetically-enhanced non-evolved who are awakened to their power, out of the public eye, by Pinehearst.

From The Ashes

By January of 2011, the US Federal Government moves in against the Company, making countless arrests across the United States, with further extraditions made through the UK and France.

During this time, President Andrew Mitchell –- who somehow managed to jump through enough fiery hoops to ascend to the Presidency from his veep status attempts to save face in the light of all of this turmoil by giving Presidential Pardons to the members of the freedom-fighting organization, Phoenix, who were unlawfully imprisoned in the Moab Federal Penitentiary — including Arthur's son Peter — and begins an investigation into the other imprisoned Evolved. Members of the human-trafficking organization the Ferrymen are given pardons as well, but their small numbers and relatively less prestigious acts earn them little to no spotlight in the coming media circus that surrounded Phoenix.

The News media latches on to Helena Dean, Phoenix’s leader, and she’s made out to be a Joan of Arc of the new millennium. She and the members of Phoenix are globally recognized for their involvement in the defeat of the anti-evolved paramilitary nutjobs called the Vanguard and we the fine people of the world finally find out we were all nearly killed in a viral holocaust.

Lionized in the media, Helena Dean and the members of Phoenix become instant celebrities and international heroes overnight. Suddenly everyone starts looking at the Evolved differently, too. They’re seeing these kids — the ones they used to call terrorists — in a whole new light. They're seeing Heroes.

The really violent, racist bastards like Humanis First keep shaking their fist in the air, but they lose a lot of steam and momentum once the Phoenix kids start making the rounds on the news. You know what they say though, they you can’t keep a good skinhead down.

On May 18th, 2011, Helena Dean is killed in a suicide bombing by members of Humanis First along with thirteen others during a speech she was giving at Columbia University in New York. Helena's death and the deaths of what would become known as the Columbia 13 are mourned nationwide. Immediately following this, the United States Government begins rounding up members of Humanis First and throwing them in prisons until the situation calms down. A day late and a dollar short, and a lot of people start questioning why it took so long to turn against them.

Our Future’s So Bright We Gotta’ Wear Shades

By June of 2011, the Company has been decimated, and the United Nations begins moving on the surviving members and facilities around the world, backed by United States FRONTLINE agents.

Having freed his son Peter Petrelli from Moab and having both imprisoned Angela and Nathan for their involvement in the Kibry Plaza incident, Arthur spends the next several years working with his son to better the standing of the Evolved in the public eye.

In August of 2011 both he and Peter actively take part in a re-drafted version of what was once known as the Linderman Act, retitled as the Unity Act, re-mandating registration of Evolved humans but affording privacy and protections unlike any yet seen.

While the going is tough, society is slowly acclimated towards the understanding and education of the Evolved in daily life, and on September 17th, 2011 Arthur Petrelli displays a miraculous gift to the world, by turning the ruins of Manhattan — with the help of his son — into a lush and verdant forest by means of one of his myriad powers.

While the scars of New York are healed behind the scenes, Arthur and Peter continue to offer up the formula to the US Government to keep its cache of Evolved Soldiers at an acceptable level. Somehow in all of this an equilibrium is maintained, and the world finally settles in to a peaceful state. Society collectively unclenches its sphincter.

On November 6th, 2011 the new forest growing at the heart of Midtown is Dubbed Unity National Park, a memorial garden for the fallen lost in the destruction of Midtown is erected. The former Ruins of Midtown become an example by which the tragedies of the past can be changed into the triumphs of the future.

Shortly thereafter, the United States government reveal to the public that Gabriel Gray — AKA Sylar — was framed for the destruction of Midtown Manhattan and the string of serial killings across the United States, and a story is concocted where the Company used and manipulated Theodore Sprague into destroying Midtown while using this conspiracy as a foothold to attempt to wrest control of the United States over from the people. The blame for the serial killings is foisted on his aging father Samson Gray, who FRONTLINE attempts to apprehend but is killed in the process. With Samson dead, the Midtown Man exonerated from crimes he "didn't commit" it feels like justice is being handed out to everyone, even the little guys. For their efforts in saving the literal whole world from a viral apocalypse the exonerated members of Phoenix are awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their service to their country on the Monday following Thanksgiving.

Weird things happened on November 8th, 2011. Weird, weird things. People living in small towns near Mount Natazhat in Alaska reported seeing a spiral-shaped aurora borealis at the same time a phenomenon like that manifested over the city of Cambridge in Massachusetts. Secretly, the government was scrambling to uncover the disappearance of an entire facility up on Natazhat that vanished as if it had never existed at all. Worse, half a bus full of dead people showed up in the middle of Cambridge, on fire.

News reports were swept under the rug, eye witnesses were convinced it was a major traffic accident. But in the shadows, wheels were turning and suspicions mounting. Something strange was happening to our world, and once they started tugging at the threads, it threatened to unravel the whole goddamned tapestry of creation…

Making Darwin Proud

December 2011 marks the opening of the first Evo-Co (Slang for Evolved College) in the United States at Columbia University in New York City, just nine weeks following the opening of the first Evolved College in the world in Kyoto, Japan. Evolved Colleges aren't separate institutions for learning, but rather Colleges and Universities that offer Evolved-Education in addition to their current curriculum.

The United States Government institutes the Chesterfield Scholarship, giving financial aid to all willing Evolved who register under the Unity Act to attend these special schools. Incentives for registered evolved to enter the United States armed forces and other government branches is just a precursor to what would come next.

One of Us, One of Them

The next few years show a marked decline in Evolved/Non-Evolved violence, and the world really starts to shape up. By the beginning of 2012 the global economy has finally recovered and with the Evolved no longer having to hide what they are, some truly miraculous things begin to become reality.

In February of 2012 the Unity Act is amended. Originally, it kept all information on Evolved strictly private, accessible only under certain precisely-defined circumstances; the amendment gave provision first for Evolved to choose to make personal and contact information public, and in so doing to take advantage of the second section of the amendment: making money by way of their abilities. A notable example of this act's effect can be seen in how hospitals around the country clamor for Evolved with abilities that even remotely relate to healing, paying seven figure salaries to these miracle-healers as part of a government-backed financing for the betterment of the world.

On June 20th of 2012, The Zarek Group (formerly the Linderman Group, following a hostile takeover by Kain Zarek) purchases the uninhabited ruins of Staten Island from the United States Government, beginning a plan to clean up the island.

By December 2012, the Zarek Group has officially allowed the FRONTLINE organization to move their headquarters from Fort Lee, New Jersey to Miller Air Field on Staten Island, effectively dropping the world’s most elite Evolved fighting force into a hive of scum and villainy.

Needless to say, the crooks scatter like cockroaches to a flicked on bathroom light.

When 2013 finally rolls around, the Evolved have integrated themselves into nearly 100% of the United States workforce, military and government agencies. The United States becomes the poster-child for Evolved/Non-Evolved relationships as the rest of the world moves to follow suit.

The period of time between 2013 and 2016 represents an era of unparalleled peace in the United States and in much of the world. International governments watch the growing Evolved military juggernaut of the United States, while secretly running black operations to try and steal Pinehearst's most precious secret. This shadow war continues for years, occasionally spilling out into international streets, but never managing to boil over at home. With the United States once again a global superpower militarily and economically, the US begins throwing its weight around on the world stage again. Arthur and Pinehearst push for more Evolved-inclusive rights across the globe, focusing on problem areas like the UK and Russia, with considerable attention paid to an increasingly isolationist and antagonistic China.

EPILOGUE

The Travelers left the Bright timeline teetering on a precarious balance. Arthur Petrelli was long dead and his impostor Samson Gray slain. The conspirators in the US Government who were working to oust Petrelli were revealed in a hellfire storm of documents that would come to be known as the Lonestar File, revealing not only Arthur Petrelli's dark history as a black-ops agent for the US Government, but also the government's complicit role in covering up human rights violations in Vietnam and across the world.

The discovery of the Moab Federal Penitentiary brought a cleansing wave of fire to Washington. President Andrew Mitchell was swiftly outed as a founding member of the Humanis First movement and was arrested on December 13, 2017. During his trial, Mitchell revealed corruption within many echelons of the government, selling out high profile Humanis First operators like Gregory Armond and Georgia Mayes. Mitchell's other co-conspirators, including the black-ops CIA team the Royals were indicted on counts of treason and conspiracy to commit treason the following month. Though two of the royals, Avi Epstein and Desmond Harper, were discovered slain their fellow conspirators Sarisa Kershner and Sylvester Sandoval faced a swift and punishing trial.

In January of 2018, former President-Elect Allen Rickham emerged from hiding to testify against the government and revealed that he was blackmailed into stepping down following the 2008 Presidential elections. After the results of the 2016 election were overturned, President-Elect Jennifer Chesterfield abdicated her position in favor of allowing Rickham to serve his rightfully won term. Chesterfield would move on to become Secretary of State and Rickham would appoint the decorated NYPD officer who broke the Moab story — Kaylee Anne Bellamy — as his Vice President.

By October of 2018, nine months into President Rickham's first term, the United States government is working on updating the verbiage of the Unity Act and undoing the damage caused by the Pinehearst Company, Andrew Mitchell, and the conspirators who would build a darker future. For the first time in decades, it feels as though a bright future may not only be attainable…

…it may have already arrived.

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