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The world's population is 5,609,678,819, all gifted. It is the year the first private empath academies begin to open. It's the year a firestarter in Buenos Aires makes international headlines by giving his life to save a hospital from burning to the ground. And it is the year that the contamination of a prenatal vitamin causes massive numbers of premature births between August and November.
It is the year Sophia Hu is born and like so many others born during the Panola outbreak, the gift she is born with will never quite work right.
The problem of schooling Panola children has become a topic of worldwide focus. It's one of the main topics of conversation at the 36th G8 Summit in Heiligendamm. While world leaders debate how to include children within educational curricula not designed with their special needs in mind, a chance meeting of two individuals in Larvik, Norway changes everything. Later, the media will report that the incident was caused by a lone Panola child who lost control of her powers. Of the 41, 364 inhabitants of Larvik, only 1,209 survive the explosion. The city itself is reduced to rubble. In December, the incident repeats itself in Paraguay and then Singapore. The problem of the Panola children becomes a crisis.
The Tristan Institute for Education and Skills Development is opened on one of the Tristan da Cunha islands. With no land flat enough to build an air strip, the only access to the island for the Panola children sent to attend at the institute is by boat from South Africa. A multinational, cooperative effort, the Institute is meant to address both the issue of educating Panola children and properly containing the threat posed by their poorly understood and difficult-to-control gifts.
The students at the Tristan Institute for Education and Skills Development rebel. For three months, all contact with the island is lost.