The concept of Power Rangers is owned by Saban Entertainment, to whom all rights are reserved. Material not owned or licensed by Disney, Saban, or Third Parties is personally copyright to me, including, but not limited to: supplemental history, plotline, suit designs, foreign language, previously unmentioned locations, character concepts and designs, and any other non-copyrighted object applied throughout the course of this literature.
Power Rangers: Cyber Squad
Chapter 0—Intro to Cybernetics
Private Log: Thomas N. Oliver
Date: 01/01/2028
Redact: Unavailable
Encryption: High
Cybernetics.
Just the very word alone screams of the advancement of technology in the modern world – as if it were simply some modern principle created for the advancement of humankind. Like it was computers and networks and machinery all interconnected by steel and cables.
But Cybernetics is more than circuits, gears, wires, and coding.
Cybernetics is life.
As a basic concept, cybernetics is the study of structure and function – so that every single thing in the universe (or, smaller still, the applied group) has a purpose and a goal. It is this very concept that has been ingrained in the smallest strands of biology, or the most indiscernible atoms: the sense of unity.
My name is Thomas Oliver, a former professor at Lower California University—and current principal—at Reefside High School in Reefside, California. I got my PhD from MIT in paleontology, so I'm sure you're wondering when I decided to call myself an expert in cybernetics.
It started when everything ended.
2012.
On the brink of 2013, Earth played host to the most massive war it had ever seen, ushering in the age of Space Patrol Delta and the integration of aliens, now known as Xeno. If it weren't for the Power Rangers, established by my mentor Zordon of Eltar, Earth would be a very different place right about now.
That was why it was time for the Power Rangers to stop acting like their own private army.
Along with several of my Ranger colleagues, we were recuitd to assist in the development of SPD's infrastructure and its link to the Morphing Grid. We used technology to tap into the universal flow of energy.
That's when we realized what Cybernetics really was.
The term itself is greatly misunderstood, often portrayed by robots, computers, virtual reality, and more sci-fi than anything else. And sure, Cybernetics applies to all of these.
More accurately, Cybernetics is the study of applying functions to reach a certain goal. Originating from the ancient Greek word, kybernētēs, the word actually stems from the same root as the English word for Government. So is it really any wonder that it was the governments of the world and their unified support of SPD that led to the most incredible breakthrough in technology and order our generation has ever seen?
Interestingly enough, it was the Greek philosopher, Plato, who applied Cybernetics to government and initiated the world's obsession with function, purpose, and teleology.
Where did the Greeks get it from? How could a civilization that came thousands of years before the first typewriter even existed know anything about the grander scheme of things? How could they know where nature ended and technology began?
In a word?
Aliens.
In ancient Greece, mythology ran rampant like a wildfire, and humans would pay homage and offer undying worship to beings of superior power and intellect called Gods. They weilded the elements like we use pens, and possessed technology that seemed...well...divine.
Now, we know these beings as a race of aliens known as the Cronotheon, or children of Cronus—Titan of Chaos. And while they brought knowledge, tools, philosophy, art, and so much more to the human race, they also brought war. Destruction. Havoc. Slavery.
Cue the good guys.
If the Cronotheon were one side of the proverbial coin, the Eltarians were their foil—benign angelic entities who lost the majority of their godlike divinity in a cataclysmic war known as the Titanomachy.
The two had been at war for eons, and with the end of the majority of the Titanomachy came a covert, "Cold War" like stalemate, where humanity was caught between the two—trapped between a life of unending servitude and subordination to the Cronotheon, and the terrifying Eltarian prospect of unsupervised freedom. To the Cronotheon, mankind was nothing but an experiment—an egoboost of the grandest kind. And to the Eltarians, we were an infantile, helpless breed of humanoid in need of guidance and protetion, but freedom nonethless
Inarguably, our fates became intertwined as both factions began inadvertently shaping the fate of mankind for thousands of years, helping our primative species evolve leaps at a time—learning to build aqueducts, arches, roads, temples, statues, etc. It was only when the Eltarians directly stepped in and opened the minds of humankind that we began to realize we were greater than the tools around us. They were a philosophical race, more concerned with the evolution of the spirit and mind than the body and the material world; and so, they came to represent knowledge, freedom, and independence for Earth.
And, slowly but surely, the reign of the Gods fell to the reign of knowledge.
But what the Cronotheon and the Eltarians had created in humankind's place was a confused hybridized creature. We became strong and cruel, like the Cronotheon, but wise and spiritual like the Eltarians. We evolved into our own powerful group of conquerors, daring to voyage into what we considered the unknown—the universe.
Then, Earth changed.
We were so content in believing we were at the top of our food chain, that we forgot about our alien visitors. Their very existence became hearsay—or worse, heresy. We moved on from the ways of old, and ignored the rest of the universe. Until the universe called out to us in the form of an evil Cronotheon recruit, Rita Repulsa.
It was the King of the Eltarians, Zordon, who came to our rescue from forces beyond our current comprehension. And he bestowed one great gift to mankind—to show the Homo Sapiens that they, too, could achieve supernatural powers.
He gave us the Morphing Grid.
The Morphing Grid was simply a harnessing of the energy of the universe, manifesting in many different and sporadic ways—magic, technology, science. It was all spawned from the Morphing Grid. Once tamed, it could be channeled into devices known as Morphers that could access the Morphing Grid at will. The Grid would then empower the holder of the Morpher with knowledge, strength, agility, endurance, and the capacity to either destroy worlds or save them.
Under the guidance of Zordon, five everyday teenagers were teleported to his Command Center outside of Angel Grove, California, and became Earth's first team of Power Rangers—super-powered warriors known as Orymeka on Eltar. With their help, I was able to free myself from the clutches of Rita as her evil Green Ranger, forming friendships strong enough to fight against the forces of evil instead of for them. But it became obvious that this great power was not without consequence, and over the years, we learned to properly channel the Morphing Grid in pure, honest ways.
But it was a beacon—like a signal to the rest of the universe that Earth was suddenly ready to become the battlefield for the universe. If it hadn't been for Zordon to remind us of the freedom we and all sentient beings deserved, I don't think we would have made it through half as many battles as we did. And slowly but surely, the Power Rangers became more than just a team of superpowered, color-coded defenders—we became an eternal testament to the great selflessness humanity could offer.
I can't say that it wasn't without sacrifice. We lost battles, friends, allies, and family in the colossal battles we waged. With all the destruction caused by our never ending struggle against evil, it was no surprise that the governments humankind spent years constructing wanted control of the inner workings of the Power Rangers. Lightspeed Rescue was the first, which in turned helped spawn the Silver Guardians, and, in time, a bigger organization began to take place.
SPD.
It was 2012 that marked the return of the Cronotheon-Eltarian blood feud to the soils of Earth. It was one battle we couldn't ignore—couldn't cover up with extravagant lies and excuses. It begged the question: were the Power Rangers more dangerous than they were worth?
Eltar offered its assistance in the cleanup, with their newly crowned king having been raised on Earth and having served as a Ranger in 2003. But Earth was reluctant to accept anymore help from Eltar, who was equally as guilty as the Cronotheon were in influencing the series of unfortunate events that had befallen our planet. Instead, we took solace in the foundation we called Hexagon, which would eventually become what we now know as SPD, as it was backed by the Intergalactic Alliance and the original SPD founded by Commander Anubis Cruger. Cruger came to Earth from the planet Sirius in hopes of creating a unified galactic defense against the forces of evil.
But our planet was fragile in the wake of devastation that rocked our confidence in our governments. In our humanity.
The only solution was to cover up the entire year—to erase the massive destruction caused by an "apocalyptic force." We called it the Temporal Protetion Act, or the TPA. After all, Rangers were losing regard for the timeline, hopping through wormholes from other eras, other dimensions, and even parallel universes. So until we could figure it out, the chaos was attributed to the one thing everyone seemed to know as a possibility. The ancient Mayan Prophecy of 2012.
This effectively locked away all the information regarding the entire event, redacting documents, reports, live footage, news coverage, photographs, and anything else that could upset the already shaky planet. For 15 years, we would work on a way to rectify the damage, to explain things far beyond on our comprehension as "mere mortals."
As time went on, we as a species began to form order from the chaos that had been the secret Ranger alliance. First was Revelation X, the official acknowledgement of intelligent life outside of Earth, which we would classify as "Xeno." Under the protection of SPD, we opened our world as a safe haven for Xeno to explore a different way of life—the human way of life.
Meanwhile, the larger portion of the two-part plan was the official publication of The Ranger Documentaries, in which the identity of every Power Ranger ever to serve on Earth was revealed as public knowledge. It was the only way to balance out the power distribution and to eliminate "Evil Power Rangers" from ever resurfacing.
It wasn't a popular decision, as is imaginable, but it was a necessary precaution to protect the world from secret superheroes and to appease the legal systems all around the world. Eltar, not at all pleased with the TPA or the Ranger Documentaries, made a motion to appoint an official Eltarian Representative from Earth to form an official alliance between our planets.
As a sign of good faith, I, along with a team of my former Ranger comrades, helped in the creation of a new type of Morpher—one that would not be able to be taken or corrupted, one that would bond with its user on the most elemental level. One that would channel the Morphing Grid in its purest form and form the greatest union of technology and spirit.
The Cyber Morphers.
Cybernetics, where we began, is much more than just a concept. To the Eltarians, it's a religion. One that, to them, explains how everything in the universe is aligned by one constant ebb and flow of energy that they consider to be the will of the universe. Not a being, but energy, much like the Morphing Grid. Without the Theory of Cybernetics, the thousands of years of warring, and the countless hours put into decyfering the coding of life, we would be lost. And yet, we still struggled to find what exactly Cybernetics really means and how it affects us all.
Cybernetics is not chance. It's not probability or coincidence. It isn't even fate.
Cybernetics is the steering of life to achieve a goal.
Welcome to Cybernetics 101.