Newtype Human

History

Since the before the Calamity War scientists and philosophers have theorised that future humans could develop enhanced mental abilities and empathic powers. It was believed that this would be the next step in humanities evolution as a species and may be triggered by our colonization of space. The respected philosopher and stateswoman Racha Zum Zien first coined the term New-Type in the 0020´s and popularized the idea that humans had the potential to evolve into a more compassionate and emotionally sensitive race in the form of the newtype human.

It was not long until anyone with even low level empathic or psychic abilities were labeled as newtypes, even if the science behind this phenomenon was poorly understood. As with anything new, people labelled as newtypes by their environment were often feared. Rumors spread that a newtype could control the minds and feelings of others, or that they had supernatural intelligence and uncanny reflexes. Some even thought that the most powerful newtypes could see into the future.

In 0039 the Federation senate signs a declaration stating that the human genetic evolution known as "Newtypes" are not to be recognized as the next evolution of humankind. Instead the newtype phenomena is to be treated as a genetic abnormality that could be both dangerous to the species as a whole if left unchecked. The Federation maintains a close watch on anyone exibeting newtype traits in their government agencies and military, but can do little to watch for newtypes in the wider public.

Newtype traits

Newtype ability manifests differently from person to person but tend to share some common traits:

• The person is able to sense the emotions of the people around them, and in the case of powerful newtypes; project their own emotions unto others
• The person can detect other newtypes and given time or familiarity, create bonds with them that let them communicate concepts, intentions and sometimes even memories telepathically.
• The person exhibit supernatural reflexes and/or superior intellect
• The person is emotionally vulnerable, sometimes to the point of physical pain.

Newtype ability is most commonly found in spacenoid youth. This commonly agreed upon to be as a result of humanity adapting to space. Why it is found in younger humans is unknown, but some believe that newtypes that reach adulthood without discovering and exploring their newtype abilities subconsciously suppress their empathic powers to better fit into society and to cope with the stresses of adult life. With the Federations stance on newtypes (see below) there is little funding for newtype research outside of classified military research.

Science and the Federation

There are tests that can be performed to find out if a person is a newtype and also measure the power of their abilities, but these are lengthy, require specialist equipment and usually only produce accurate results if the test subject is willingly participating in them. So far the easiest way to detect if a person has newtype abilities is with another newtype. Any newtype can almost always feel the presence of another newtype with a relatively close distance, a few hundred meters at most. With time and practice a newtype can single out every other newtype in a crowd and sometimes even communicate with them telepathically, although with limited expressionality.

The Federation special operations group Behemoth is believed to recruit and train newtypes that are found in screenings and use them to hunt down Zeon-remnants. Behemoth is also rumored to target spacenoid newtypes in particular, these are then either recruited or eliminated, depending on their attitude towards the Federation.

Cyber-newtypes

Although rare and highly controversial, there are artificial ways to give a standard human newtype abilities. These artificial newtypes are called cyber-newtypes and has in the past resulted in exceptionally powerful individuals, but often at the cost of their health and sanity. A cyber-newtype is made by taking a child or young adult and subjecting them to lengthy and intrusive surgery, hypnosis and gene therapy. The process is not an exact science and poorly understood, leading to many failures and trauma for those who survive the modification into a cyber-newtype. The process can take years and works best on willing subjects, but there are cases in which unwilling subjects have been mind controlled or forced into becoming cyber-newtypes, these almost always result in broken and insane individuals. Even those willing to go through the modifications suffer from mental health issues afterwards, many becoming paranoid, egomaniacal, losing empathy or becoming detached from humanity altogether.

Cyber-newtypes were first created by Neo-Zeon funded, private laboratories based on genetic research done by the Martian Republic in the later years of the Calamity War . The hope was to find a way to speed up humanity's evolution into a space based species and at the same time convince the Federation that its unofficial "planets first" policy was flawed and obsolete. The experiments failed to find a reliable method of creating newtypes, but did result in powerful but flawed cyber-newtypes. The few cyber-newtypes created by Zeon before the labs were closed proved to be very capable MS pilots and gained a notirity fighting under Char Aznable in his rebellion.