The Story

December 13th, 1999. From the desk of Hank Foster, contributing columnist for The Weekly American magazine:

Millennialism: (n) the belief in a coming major transformation of society after which all things will be changed.

It is the end of the last month of the last year of this millennium and our society is perched on a precipice. We are waiting for the ball to drop both literally and figuratively at the stroke of midnight on December 31. It doesn’t matter that not everyone follows the Gregorian Calendar; Londoners felt the fires of hell in 1666 regardless of whether they understood the number of the beast.

The last six years have shaken us. At this point, there is no denying that something is happening at the fringes of society. But the changes are like a flicker in the corner of the eye. No one is certain what is happening or who it is happening to. We know there are people with impossible skills, powers, and visions spreading through the largest cities and the most rural backwaters, but it is no one we know. And after the things we’ve seen, no one is holding out for a hero. These gifts, if they are gifts, have been bestowed on the weak, and the angry, and the lost. Is this a revolution? An impossible, magical, terrifying revolution with no discernible political goals and no coherent vision?

Like many children I dreamt that I would wake up one day with super-powers or at least that comic book heroes would be real. But the appearance of seemingly inexplicable powers in the outcasts and loners in our society has led, not to the fulfillment of dreams, but to a sort of general nihilism. So far, “superpowers” are not building an ideal society; they are breaking this one. The recipients themselves cannot handle these powers and have used them for self-aggrandizement, criminal activity, and sometimes, tragically, have caused their own deaths.

But even strange and threatening powers hold a glimmer of promise. If they are appearing on the fringes of society, maybe they will appear everywhere. Maybe there is hope for the future, maybe our children will earn honor and glory with their impossible skills. It is the eve of the new millennium and we are alternately scared and exhilarated. The past six years have ensured a general feeling of Millenialism. The only question is whether we are moving towards a cataclysm of heresy and destruction or the start of the penultimate age.