META Agency Details

A Brief History of META

META began three decades ago as a healthcare initiative, when activist and medical professional Doctor Clark Cunningham began pushing for a united effort to help metahuman individuals saddled with abilities and healthcare challenges far beyond modern medicine’s ability to handle. Before being known as “META” or “METAs”, the organization was known as the “Cunningham Clinic.” In the first few years, many metahumans registered for the Clinic initiative seeking the promised free healthcare, and benefitting from the anonymity promised by the organization’s efforts. A medical database was created to share research and information between scholarly organizations and medical caregivers, and a legal team was organized to protect the rights of those registering for Clinic care. The Database was called METAs, originally standing for Metahuman Evaluation and Treatment Association.

In exchange for their treatments, Clinic beneficiaries agreed to have their information shared in the METAs database, provided their private identities were not revealed to non-medical personnel. In recent years, however, META’s resources have been overtaken by other agencies looking to use them for law-enforcement and national security, which has created a storm of controversy in the public eye and within the organization.

The nature of the change has been fundamental and profound. With the infusion of government funds and new regulation has come a change in the organization’s title. METAs now stands for Metahuman Evaluation and Tracking Authority. While many scientists and doctors still struggle to maintain the organization’s focus on research and healthcare, agencies such as the FBI, local police departments, CIA, and all branches of the military now depend on the METAs database to deal with the rising metahuman challenges they all face.

For the last fifteen years, the Metahuman Evaluation and Tracking Authority has helped the U.S. government monitor the seemingly ever-increasing number of superhumans and advises local and federal authorities on how to deal with such individuals.  Prior to META’s creation, a few small covert highly specialized agencies such as the Superhuman Assessment Division (SAD) of National Security Agency, The Bureau of Extra-Terrestrial Affairs (BETA), the CIA’s Project Morningstar, and more clandestine agencies focused on specific subsections of the superhuman populace.  These groups also kept many of their findings a secret, sometimes even from the President of the United States.  [JD1]

With META, the whole process went public and for the first time focused not just on tracking or recruiting superhumans, but integrating them into society.  In addition to its evaluation arm that tracks dangerous superhuman threats, META continues to operate clinics providing medical and psychological care, spearheads efforts in various jurisdictions to allow superhumans to operate with law enforcement while protecting their anonymity, and coordinates superhuman-based research and intelligence-gathering efforts for a number of other agencies.

Modern META branches are divided into three major divisions: Adminstration, Evaluation, and Research.  Administration manages resources, deals with other agencies, maintains the META files and database, and performs other similar duties.  Evaluation performs threat assessment investigations, and works with law-enforcement agencies to identify and track dangerous metahumans.  Research performs numerous studies of superhuman abilities and their origins, develops new technologies for law-enforcement agencies, and maintains a collection of genetic material and other substances relating to metahumans.  Research also makes up most of the staff of the META clinics, though Administration and Evaluation provide security and support for those facilities.

META Clinics and the Thomas Act

Dr. Cunningham opened the first Cunningham Clinic in Atlanta, Georgia.  It was a medical facility focused on providing medical care to superhumans and collecting vital data on such individuals, and offered government subsidized health care to any superhuman who would agree to a few simple tests.  These tests were noninvasive and filed under whatever identity or code name the superhuman desired.

Though some superhumans refused to provide DNA or other information to a government agency, the clinic soon helped enough individuals and gathered enough useful research data to be considered a success. As time passed, a dozen more clinics opened in cities around the country.  The expansion slowed somewhat after 9/11 as government funding went elsewhere but in recent years the Thomas Act was passed, providing additional funding to open twenty new facilities.  There are even clinics planned for Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam.