The Age of Heroes

For two decades they soared across the skies in plasma suits and gravity-defying capes — vigilantes, genetically enhanced defenders, state-funded climate responders. Schoolchildren collected their holograms and traded cards. Ministers competed for photographs beside them. Sumati’s mother kept a shrine to Vayu, the wind hero who promised clean air.

The achievements were real, and that is the difficult part. The Quantum Corps turned three cyclones away from Mumbai. The Delhi Climate Brigade built a micro-climate shield that protected the capital from the worst heat waves. Captain Indra single-handedly evacuated thousands during the 2055 Bangladesh flooding, when the angry Teesta turned eastern India into a marshy wasteland.

Every one of those sentences is true. Every one is also the setup for what the analysis found afterwards: the cyclone diversions manufactured the droughts, and the shields masked rising temperatures rather than addressing their causes.

Nobody asked the difficult questions. Nobody looked too closely at the corporate logos discreetly embroidered on the suits. Nobody wondered why, despite the miraculous interventions, the fundamental problems only worsened.

Then the tribunals. Statues toppled, murals defaced, and in their place new memorials:

Never Again Shall We Surrender Our Power to False Saviours

Climate education changed with them. Where children had once learned about heroic interventions, they now studied how the superhero phenomenon delayed meaningful climate action for decades, diverting resources from unglamorous but effective community-based solutions.

Sumati’s class saw it at the Fallen Heroes Museum, in front of the simulation that turns the southeastern states blood-red with drought while the coast glows a deceptive, reassuring blue.

But they were trying to help, weren’t they?

That’s what most of them believed. But intention doesn’t protect you from misinformation.