[ARTICLE - HEADLINES]
MUTANT INFLUX JUST IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN
by GEORGE EVANS
I spent the day down at Central yesterday introducing a bunch of the Awakened to our fair city like any decent citizen would have. Some of them are pretty normal; one even aspiring to be a doctor, but others are far less so. Between a nudist and a kid named Zidayne who claimed his monkeytail brought in all the ladies, a guy who saw dead people and some ladyboy named Primer who told me he was a sentient machine inside the SE, we've got a whole damn bunch of crazies this time. "I am not a freak," insisted one.
Most of them, though, are simply confused and lost. "I... I'm just trying to... find a way to get home..." Said one, while a foreign girl called Eenew lamented: "It still doesn't feel really real." Another thought he was the victim of some kind of prank. Sadly for the newly Awakened, many of the citizens here will no doubt be less than enthused at the presence of more Mutants here in our city. One Jim Raynor, an ex-marine, was very quick to understand that point of view, telling me that he understood the frustration. "You built it, and we come out, ungrateful."
Don't expect all of them to blend in so well. More than one claimed that they couldn't read English, and another claimed he couldn't speak it. "Me do speak English," said one Am Swoop. "Is just... different way. Swoop's brain fine."
Questions are already being asked about the cost of integrating so many newly Awakened at once. Newton's Hostel, usually quite quiet, was a hive of activity, inciting the matriarch Mrs. Newton to offer me little more than harsh comments when asked for her opinion on the matter this morning.
Denial seems to be the preference among the Awakened, choosing not to believe in what one Joshua claimed to be a "shit heap" and another named Liquid Snake insisted was a lie. "You are not going to tell me my memories are false," he went on to say, "because they're not!" He's not alone in this opinion. One Kurosarky Itchy Go, another foreigner, said "My life wasn't fake" before insisting that he could never like "a run down dump like this".
Unsurprising that so few Mutants settle in once released into the city, though a few tried to take a clever tack, questioning our reality instead of their own. A firey looking blonde offered this tidbit: "I'll presume that you've lived your entire life here, so you take this place for granted as real. Surely you'd have doubts if you woke up tomorrow on another world and they told you your life didn't exist?" Sorry, love, but reality? Get used to it.