Aeon Flux

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Æon Flux is superhumanly fast and agile. Whether her strength is superhuman is unclear.

Her acrobatics seem to defy gravity to some extent. When she starts flipping, jumping, crawling, cartwheeling, etc. her body seems to weight but 25 kilograms or so, yet animated by her full muscle power and slightly floating in the air.

She has been able to perform stunts which are obviously impossible for a person with her normal weight. One example is preventing herself from falling by applying pressure on the barest footholds.

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Other assets

When crawling, with her belly almost pressed to the ground, she moves like some sort of ferret and is faster than a running man. She can perform this type of lightning-fast, animal-like crawling even when climbing.

She is also an extraordinary fighter and weapon specialist, easily able of killing men in armour with her bare hands.

One of Æon’s eyes includes a microscopic vision filter, making her able to see individual molecules. She rolls her head backward and shake it to have the jet black lens, covering much of her eye, slide into position. Her upper right ear includes a relatively short range radio implant, which glows red through the skin when she is receiving a transmission.

Vision-conference capsules

Those capsules are the basic communication device among Monicans. Those are biodegradable and filled with a highly advanced drug. The capsules are normally used by being swallowed, and the drug will be released within the organism within seconds.

The subject then experience a vision and enters telepathic contact with a pre-programmed user — usually the coordinator of the Monicans, Handler. The telepathic communication proceeds just as if the subject was standing in Handler’s room.

Both Æon and Sithandra (and possibly other Monican agents) had an emergency capsule just below the skin of their back, close to the spine. By cutting the skin open and twisting the capsule so it would break, they could enter the Handler’s space.

Apparently the Handler had the means to remotely trigger the release of a similar drug in the glasses at Æon’s apartment.

Video

720p version of the trailer, with the ever-stunning Ms. Theron.

History

In 2011, a virus derived from an industrial disease killed 99+% of the world’s population. A scientist, Trevor Goodchild, managed to develop a cure before humanity would die out. The five million survivors took refuge in the last city on Earth, Bregna.

However, the vaccine had an unintended side effect – sterility. It became obvious to Goodchild that, despite his best efforts, he was witnessing the last generation of human beings. Desperately looking for alternative reproduction purposes, he developed groundbreaking cloning methods to use on humans.

He and his scientific team thus made up an elaborate charade. They never told the truth to anybody, fearing that the shell shocked survivors would be unable to handle it. Instead, the used food additives to induce occasional chemical “pregnancies” in sterile women. Once they got to the hospital to “give birth”, an actual embryo was implanted.

The genetic material used for the embryo was a faithful copy of a recently deceased Bregnan. Thus, the population of five millions was unknowingly replicating itself over and over again, under the rule of Goodchild and his brother Oren.

Amidst the hostile forest

Outside of the city, plant life was growing at an alarming rate and developing new and dangerous life forms. Eventually the Goodchilds had Bregna walled, and defended by cannons spreading powerful defoliants 24/7.

This lasted for 7 generations. The scientists could re-express the memories from their “previous lives” so they could spend those lifetimes looking for a cure to the infertility. They simply created a younger self and personally taught them when they reached adolescence.

Reexpressing memories proved surprising easy. The cloning process was somehow transferring shadows of memory from previous lives in the subject.

Thus, the population of Bregna was subject to regular, disturbing feelings of déjà-vu. They also experienced bursts of unexplainable emotions when seeing the face of somebody who had great significance to then in a previous life. As consecutive lives began to pile up, the issue became increasingly troubling for Bregnans.

Despite 400 year of effort, the researchers consistently failed – even under the genius of Trevor Goodchild. But eventually, he succeeded. One of Trevor’s test subjects, Una Flux, became the first woman to become truly pregnant in 4 centuries.

The treason

However, Oren Goodchild had decided that he would rather rule as the eternal emperor of dupes. If humanity reclaimed its freedom, cloning would be abandoned and he would die. Oren’s conspiracy grew in support within the ruling, cloning-aware elite.

In 2415, Oren had his brother’s test subjects, including Una Flux, covertly murdered. Oren Goodchild also had several persons who suspected the truth disappeared.

Meanwhile, a group of rebels, the Monicans, organised in the shadows. Unaware of the truth, they simply thought Goodchild was a tyrant keeping humanity in a gilded, emotionless cage. In their view, humanity should be free to confront the outside dangers.

A secretive, strange organisation, the Monicans used advanced biotech for stealthy communication. They modified many of their agents to be more than human. However their best agent, a woman named Æon Flux (Una’s sister), sported no obvious biomodification.

Even Æon was oblivious to the fact that the Monicans were manipulated by Oren Goodchild.

Æon on a mission

The night Una was killed, Aeon was on a successful mission to disrupt a Goodchild surveillance system. Within hours, she discovered the murder. Æon was then summoned by the Handler for an unique mission – kill Trevor Goodchild. Coldly angry after losing her only family, Æon aggressively accepted the mission. But it actually had been triggered through Oren’s manipulations.

For this strike she was paired with the second best Monican agent, Sithandra, who had bio-engineered hands for feet. Although a close comrade of Æon, Sithandra was eager for the day where she could prove herself to be as skilled as the top agent. She chiefly worked with Æon so she could learn from her and surpass her.

Both women managed to cross the innocuous but deadly defences to the central perimeters. These included trees whose low-hanging fruits shot streams of darts, or blades of grass that morphed into actual blades.

However, when Æon reached Goodchild to shoot him point-blank in the forehead, both experienced a gripping flashback to their previous life as husband and wife. As Æon stood there confused, she was knocked out by a guard and thrown into a cell. Unlike her, Trevor Goodchild understood where the flashback was coming from.

Æon escaped within hours, but felt increasingly troubled by the emotional flashbacks triggered by seeing Goodchild. She also strongly suspected that there was a mole within the Monicans, and that the death of her sister hid secrets. Her understanding that something was wrong with Bregnans was also growing.

Trevor Goodchild sent her a chemical message to meet him in an unsecured place, and Æon decided to get there.

Déjà vu

There they again found each other overwhelmed by flashbacks and soon had sex, then fell asleep together. When she woke up, the confused Æon choked Trevor into unconsciousness, then explored his living quarters. She found a photo of herself as Catherine. She also found Trevor’s research notes regarding the sterility issue, including the results with Una.

Hounded by Freya, Goodchild’s security chief, Æon had to escape.

Oren used a video of Aeon’s and Trevor’s night to convince the rest of the scientific council that Trevor was a traitor. Meanwhile, Æon realized that here was a traitor within the Council. She decided that Trevor was probably not the good target, in part because she was more interested in finding out who had killed her sister.

Her refusal to follow her previous orders led to a fight with Sithandra, which Æon handily won.

From Trevor’s notes, Æon deducted that the Relical, a sort of jellyfish-like blimp floating above Bregna as a monument to the loss of billions, was closely involved with the cloning process. Through daring acrobatics, she breached inside the Relical.

There she learned that Una had been “reassigned” and born as one Sasha Prillo. Æon decided to find the baby who was her reborn sister.

Everything collapses

At that point everything started to collapse. Trevor, obsessed with Æon/Catherine, tried to locate her. Meanwhile his brother took command of the security forces to hunt him down. Handler, alerted by Sithandra, declared Aeon a traitor and assigned three Monican assassins and Sithandra to kill her.

While retracing Æon’s steps, Trevor learned from the Relical archives about Una that she had been killed by his brother. Freya, who had remained loyal to Trevor, then told him about Oren’s take-over.

As Æon was holding the infant clone of her reborn sister, Trevor caught up with her. He told her the whole truth about mankind. They fled together, pursued by Bregnan soldiers, but Trevor was determined to counter the coup so he could save his lab and his research.

Æon and Trevor convinced a group of soldiers to stay loyal to Trevor and allow them to re-equip. As they walked back to Trevor’s quarters, Trevor told Æon that she was Catherine Goodchild, his wife. Catherine had died seven generations ago during the days of the industrial disease. She was thus never cloned, making Æon’s existence a mystery.

However, by the time they made it to the lab, it had been destroyed. Freya had died trying to defend it. Despite the potentially fatal loss for humanity, Aeon became determined to destroy the Relical. To her the terrible, flashback-ridden lives of the Bregnans was Hell as they were all ghosts. Trevor opposed this, but lacked means to stop her.

Back to flesh

However, before she could reach the Relical, Æon and Trevor were surrounded by Oren and an army of guards. As he confronted Trevor, Oren revealed that while Una was the first, other women were now spontaneously recovering their fertility. The unintended secondary effects of the vaccine were receding.

Sithandra and her team then reached their sniping post. Using Monican technology, Æon contacted Sithandra and convinced her not to kill her – but to open fire on the guards instead. A huge firefight erupted between the Monicans, the guards and Aeon. Both Oren and Trevor were wounded. Oren killed Sithandra despite his wounds, but was in turn shot by Æon before he could kill Trevor.

As she reached the Relical once again, she talked with an incredibly old man living within, the Keeper. He was a scientist who was old even in the days of the virus but was kept alive by special equipment.

The Keeper had been the one who made the decision to save Catherine Goodchild’s DNA after she died. That was despite Oren’s orders. Oren wanted to prevent Catherine from ever coming back. He though his brother’s love for her would distract him from his research and possibly doom humanity by preventing him from finding a cure.

Eventually, the Keeper decided to have Catherine be reborn in order to reach Trevor, as he saw how untenable the situation of humanity was becoming. Thus Æon Flux was born.

Æon crashed the Relical into the walls of Brega, opening the city to the outside and letting the population recover their humanity and their mortality.

Description

Æon is a particularly beautiful woman with a distinctive (but very Bregnan) haircut.

She moves with a slightly weird body language, like a professional dancer putting too much strength and intensity in every movement while standing stiffly upright. She has a swaying, sensual but too forceful way to walk.

Personality

Æon is at heart an idealist. She wanted a “true” life, no matter how hard, instead of the safe, rigged and overprotective life in Bregna. She also was proud that she was a woman brashly confronting the problems and putting her own life into the line rather than conveniently ignoring them like everyone else did. This made her feel superior.

However, in a typical Bregnan fashion, she comes across as oddly stiff, unemotional and aloof. When her sister Una died she just stood there shocked, trying to cry yet unable to shed a single tear. Æon could express cold hatred, though.

As she discovered the truth and gained memories back from her previous life, she became increasingly able to react as a person instead of a highly disciplined and aloof killing machine. The emotions and sensitivity she kept gaining led her to the decision to destroy the Relical so the terrible, flashbacks-ridden life of the Bregnans could end once and for all.

Quotes

“We’re meant to die. It’s what makes everything about us matter.”

Sithandra (referring to the modification of her feet into a second set of hands): “You should have it done.”
Æon: “I like my shoes.”

“I had a family once, I had a life. Now all I have is a mission.”

Æon: “You should have sent me in earlier.”
Handler: “That would have been suicide.”
Æon (scowling): “Not for *me*.”

(To Trevor) “Why do I know you ? WHY ?”

“That’s what we are ? Copies ?”

“Now we are free. To live. Once. For real.”

DC Universe History

A possible future for the DCU — if the virus was strong enough to kill even superhumans. Trevor would be Niles Caulder aka the Chief – having recovered the use of his legs after the first cloning – and Æon would be Rita Farr – minus her powers after the first cloning.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Aeon Flux live action movie (starring C. Theron).

Helper(s): Mike, Roy Cowan, Tom Eilers, Ethan Roe.