1859

Nathaniel Essex stood excitedly, having possibly found his eureka moment. There was some evidence, though nothing concrete, to support the idea of a rapidly evolving human genome. Not in the sense that it evolved in front of his own eyes, but that it was evolving quickly in every new generation. He estimated that in a hundred years or so, they could be looking at men and women who were beyond their peers in ways he couldn’t fully imagine. Imagine! A man faster than his friends, a woman who could hold a horse high above her!

Or perhaps there was more. Control of fire or one's body, perhaps?

He would label the ‘Essex Markers’, and it would be a part of his legacy. Were it not buried.

If only the others understood this as he did. His hero figure, Charles Darwin, cast a gaze on him that was not of approval but of disappointment.

And that had cast him from the circle he had connected himself to. His wife saw the change in Essex, but stayed with him. For love was too strong, but she didn’t understand the ramifications that would occur in the future. But who could?

She would often recall an event from years earlier, during a time of pregnancy when she would stumble upon a fragment of bone or fossil from the garden. Excitedly she would show it to Essex. Who would come to dismiss it as a mollusk, or less important creature.

“Forgive me, husband, but surely that is impossible. Father told me that Ussher worked out from the Bible itself that the world started only four thousand years before Christ.”

“The Bible is wrong. There is no God. Though, if my theories are correct, some humans might, in time, evolve into Gods!”

In time Essex would return, drawing upon Darwin’s theory of evolution, he goes on to explain further that humans have the ability to “undergo startling transformations” within the space of a few generations if the “offspring of certain racially superior individuals” were combined. These humans would “within a hundred years or so, mutate”.

Essex then pulls the cloth back from a large display, revealing a monstrous creation, a body of a supersized human being with wings grafted onto him to present an example of a mutated human, of “human parts…Fused… With anatomical regions of animals and other inorganic materials”.

He was laughed at, seen as a madman. A dangerous man, who would do more harm to the world than good. In time they would be right.

“You cannot bring your son back. You cannot change the past by attempting to manipulate the future. Your work is in many ways breath-taking -- But you go too far.”

“No! I must go further. I would if I could only free myself from this blasted so-called conscience that still pollutes me.”

“But if you did...You would be a monster, sir. A monster, like your creation!” “If that is what is required for Science to progress...Then let me be a monster!”

Essex would retire to the bar. Where he would meet Cootie Tremble. A young woman, and a precursor to Mutants.

“Allow me to lead you to the Marauders. A collection of freaks and fools I think you may be interested in.”