Today, I'm going to talk a bit about the American, British and Soviet Todkinder programs.

The Nursery

The American Todkinder program was initially backed by the CIA, which mainly provided the financial resources necessary to fund the operation. It was discreetly listed in the agency records as the Department of Auxiliary Operations, but those in the know referred to it as the Nursery.

Started in 1950, this CIA connection was progressively severed and by the time the first batch of American Todkinder were ready, there was no official or extra-official link between the two agencies. The black budget funding, special recruitment procedures and secret facilities had already been put into place and the Nursery was its own beast.

Located in the wilderlands of Montana, the Nursery collected the promising candidates of its satellite recruiting offices spread throughout the United States. There, the children — or 'pillars (from caterpillars) — were shaped into paranormal weapons and gained codenames based on songs, like Mr. Sandman or Hound Dog

The Kennedy problem

The Nursery operated through most of its history without a hitch, although a few snags occurred along the way. The biggest threat to its existence came relatively early in its life, when president John F. Kennedy was briefed on what was the Nursery.

The American Todkinder program had been created under Harry Truman and continued by Eisenhower's administration as a way to counter the Soviet program. However, when Kennedy was sworn in, the Nursery's leaders refrained from briefing the new president on their work.

They were close to having the first field operatives and thought that presenting a successful first batch of Todkinder could improve the chances of Kennedy looking favorably on the Nursery.

They were wrong.

Kennedy was appalled by what was going on at the Nursery. He was worried not only about the children, but also about the repercussions to his image if any hint of the Todkinder program saw the light of day. He suspected it might be a new plot to make him look bad and wanted to terminate the Nursery and everything associated with it.

That was July 1963. Nursery lobbyists within the government used all their sway to keep the program alive, trying to convince Kennedy that terminating it would leave them defenseless against Soviet Todkinder. This was a maneuver to stall the president.

Although some of the Nursery's top officials preferred a peaceful solution to this crisis, most of them concluded that Kennedy had to be eliminated. A plan was set in motion and culminated with 'pillar Poison Ivy mind-controlling Lee Harvey Oswald into assassinating Kennedy and Jack Ruby into killing Oswald.

Despite rumors to the contrary, the Nursery had nothing to do with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. However, they did have a plan to murder or discredit him if he followed on his late brother's footsteps.

Twist House

Although Winston Churchill had access to the Nazi Todkinder files at the end of the war, he left office before being able to organize any British response. His successor, Clement Attlee, had other problems to contend with in the postwar United Kingdom and preferred not to torture children to ensure the safety of its country.

This changed with the Soviet Union's rise as a threat to Western Europe. With the help of his Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, Attlee laid the foundation for and greenlighted the British Todkinder program.

Although at first there was a movement to fold the program within the Security Service (MI5) structure, Attlee and Bevin concluded a project like this needed to fly very low under the radar of possible scrutiny. It was listed as an inconsequential project under the Home Office, where, as the years passed, it was buried by successive layers of red tape.

Its facility is located in the Scottish highlands and is informally known as Twist House, both because of its subjects, called "olivers", and what goes on in there ("twisting"). British Todkinder are named after faeries, like Jenny Greenteeth and Tommyknocker.

Going Midwich

In 1957, emboldened by their success in producing their first olivers, one member of the Twist House management had what he thought was a great idea: if psychologically abusing children gave them paranormal powers, twisting them in utero would probably make them even more powerful.

A second facility, codenamed Midwich, was set up to conduct this experiment. Young single mothers were transported there and subjected to stress-inducing treatments that left nearly all of them insane and caused many to miscarriage. The surviving children, eight in total, were raised in Midwich by specially-assigned handlers.

When these olivers were two years old, it became clear all of them suffered from a form of autism spectrum disorder similar to Asperger syndrome. All of them displayed special abilities as well. Three years later, the handlers were surprised — and a bit scared — to learn the children had formed a telepathic network between themselves.

The Twist House management was so happy with the Midwich program it failed to perceive the signs that led to disaster. Seven years after their birth, the children lashed out against their handlers and the Midwich staff, slaughtering them and creating a psychic backlash that was felt in far away communities.

In panic, management ordered Midwich carpet-bombed and initiated a massive spin campaign to handle the fallout from this fiasco. Everything connected to the experiment was destroyed. Although unaware of the specifics, the Americans and Soviets found out something bad had gone down in the UK.

To this day, the expression "to go Midwich" has been associated with Todkinder operations that fail, usually in a disastrous way.

Gorod Prizrakov

Ever since he laid eyes on the files about the Nazi Todkinder, Josef Stalin dreamed of a race of superpowered citizens that could further his plans of expansion. Not burdened by many of the secrecy constraints of the American and British programs — although he did keep this project covert — Stalin devoted the required resources and more to establish the Soviet Todkinder program.

A village in Siberia was evacuated and used as the main installation for the program. It was called Gorod Prizrakov, the city of ghosts, because it would house the prizrak, the Soviet superpowered specters, whose codenames were chosen from Russian literature. Only Stalin and a handful of associates knew the exact location and purpose of the city.

Gorod Prizrakov and its ghosts were not included in Nikita Khrushchev's speech that denounced Stalin's legacy. Khrushchev — as well as his successor, Leonid Brezhnev — recognized the value of the prizrak and used them extensively

Glasnot and perestroika

In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, official monitoring of Gorod Prizrakov decreased, allowing two handlers, Boris Dekanozov and Anatoliy Gaznayev, both ex-KGB agents, to go rogue with three prizrak in tow.

They sold the Russian paranormals' services to whoever afforded their rather high prices, creating the first freelancer Todkinder. Dekanozov and Gaznayev still had contacts inside Gorod Prizrakov and were able to approach two handlers while they were on field missions, co-opting one and killing the other to take control of two more prizrak.

Dekanozov and Gaznayev had a few years to enjoy their success in the paranormal mercenary business, before the FSB went after them with a fresh batch of prizrak created specifically to eliminate them and their rogue Todkinder.

It is said that the conclusion of this manhunt was the closest thing anyone had ever seen to a super-human war.

Other countries

As the years went by, other nations caught on to what was going on. Curiously enough, the second-tier countries in Todkinder technology were South American ones, which took advantage of the presence of top echelon Nazi officials, like Mengele, within their territory.

These escaped Nazi had contacts in the armed forces and when these nation's governments fell to military coups, used these connections to increase their power by offering to help the juntas establish Todkinder programs.

Early negotiations took place in the late 1960s, with full-on implementation by the early to mid 1970s. Argentina, Brazil and Chile had independent programs, but often collaborated, with the Brazilian program having a slight edge due to Mengele living in S„o Paulo. The South American programs employed street kids and the children of assassinated dissidents

The juntas in these countries made a special effort to conceal their Todkinder projects from the CIA officers who were providing assistance to the regime. This was helped by the distancing between the Nursery and the Agency, which by then had made the American program so secret even their spies had no clue what went on in Montana.

By the mid 1980s, the first operational South American Todkinder arrived in the field. Today, these programs are still going strong, although with a two-decade lag when compared to the American, British and Russian programs.

China also came late to the game. The Chinese government first had contact with Todkinder in the late 1970s after a botched mission in Shanghai left a comatose prizrak and a wounded American handler.

Extensive interrogation of the handler plus medical examination — and later dissection — of the prizrak provided the seeds of the Chinese program, which yielded its first Todkind in the early 1990s. Despite this late start, China has been catching up quickly and it has already reached South American levels of technology.

Spontaneous Todkinder

It takes a humongous volume of constant abuse to create a Todkind. That's why you don't see kids erupting with powers left and right whenever an earthquake destroys a city or an army bombs an enemy country.

Still, it happens, usually in places with protracted conflicts that involve ethnic cleansing and genocide. In the last 50 years, Nursery, Twist House and Gorod Prizrakov officials have found unconfirmed reports of Todkinder appearing in several African nations as well as the Balkans.

None of these children have been found, but that's not unheard of. Most Todkinder die during their eruption or shortly thereafter, as survivors from the initial manifestation, who are not fleeing from the child, usually strike back with extreme prejudice.

Those Todkinder that survive are more often than not lost in a psychotic haze from which they never emerge. The few that remain functional disappear in the wilderness (almost) never to be heard again. Given this, it's understandable that no one had heard of Todkinder before Eli Kaplan's eruption.

Some scholars in the Todkinder programs postulate that deathchildren might be behind some of the ancient mythologies and supernatural tales, but given how few of them exist now, most officials find it hard to believe there were enough Todkinder in the past to foment so many stories.

I know I promised story seeds for this installment, but I realize now I could use another column to wrap things up. So next month you'll get the seeds, plus sample Todkinder and discussion possible identities for the Friend.

I hope you liked it. Feel free to share any comments, suggestion and criticisms on the forum.