I drove off to Anawhata shortly after that, alone at last. For all our talking ourselves up, we were a long way from being a badass fucking threesome. Soph couldn’t project anything out of her body except through the bonds, and that was just communication. Making everybody love her or scaring the shit out of them was a long way off.

Carla was the most badass of us, as demonstrated in the attack. Getting her some decent fight training was going to help a lot, although her enthusiasm for guns is a bit scary. I am pretty sure her shark form will be scary. It remains to be seen how useful it is.

Me? My poison is my main weapon. Other than that, I am the sensing platform. What I need to do is crank those up. I have all this essence - five to six times what the others have. I need to learn how to use it. I have two weeks to work it out.

Bucks Estate looked unchanged. I moved my supplies in and spent some time just enjoying the silence. There was no motorway noise, no dogs, no bloody women. I could just relax. That is what I did. I went for a swim in the afternoon in the moderate swell, ate a simple dinner, sat outside, watched the stars, and listened to the night. Bloody awesome.

After my morning swim, I spent the next day sitting on the porch browsing the internet. Several new anomalies were recorded, and the database had information on some of them. It was the colours that were bugging me. What do the different colours mean?

The Waiheke Anomaly was a fluorescent blue. We verified that colour's emotional portion and assumed a water association. The water association has not been verified. The land animals and plants that mutated show no water connection. We got a lot of water mutations because we used sea creatures to guide the mutation. Soph’s dogs show no water abilities. Are we making an error, and is the blue group mind-focused? Mental Bonds and Emotions.

I read the updated articles on the New Zealand Enhanced, half of which were written by Dr Amanda Mohan. No particular mental abilities were mentioned.

The US Anomaly was the most documented anomaly. It was found in the Davy Crockett National Forrest between Dallas and Houston. It was a dark green colour. A wide variety of mutations were listed, but it was noted the plants seemed to be more aggressively mutated than the animals. Some of the trees seemed actually to attack those who came near. A lot of plants developed poisons, both when touched and shooting spines and releasing poisonous gasses. Did that mean it was plant-focused or poison focused, or both?

South Africa helped Botswana with their anomaly. It was in the southern Kalahari Game Reserve. They had to dig it out of the ground to expose it, as it was buried about ten meters down. They mapped it from the mutations, but a squad of six soldiers were exposed before they found it. Three survived. It was light brownish in colour. There was a wide variety of mutations, but the general trend seemed to be making the creature more durable, with some almost creating exoskeletons or protective shells on their skin. One of the soldiers that survived had his skin permanently caked in dirt, but it was part of him and grew back when removed.

Is Brown an earthed-based anomaly, and if so, what is the difference between light brown and darker browns? I don’t know. The trend seems to be there, but there is a lot of variation and a lot of nuance we don't know.

The Canadian one was the clincher for me. It was found on the north side of Hudson Bay in Inuit-owned lands. It was a very light blue, almost white. There were a lot of Ice and snow mutations. Resistances to cold and frostbite. Slowing of bodily functions without dying.

I realised that the anomalies were adapting to their surroundings. This may or may not be intelligence-driven; it may just be the way they were. Blue in the water, Yellow fire, Brown earth, Green plant, white or ice colour for cold/snow. The general trend is there, and the mutations have a trend toward the element in which they appear. Then I found a paper postulating the same thing, written by a fellow who had a lot of letters after his name, so he must be important.

That reiterates that the Waiheke Anomaly has something to do with water. How? I can’t see it. But what I need to do is to ponder this while in the water. It is time for a swim.

I sat on the ocean floor for a while, playing with my essence. Whirlpools, waves, big and small, a river in one direction, keeping it as still as possible. It was in the stillness I noticed something. I always seemed to be tapping into the Essence pool. I guess I was breathing through my skin, which is not an entirely natural process. I am using my essence for what I assumed was a passive mutation. I guess that was a faulty assumption. It was probably a dumb assumption. What human breathes through their skin?

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Mutations tap into the essence pool as it is needed. What about my other senses? My primary ‘unnatural’ senses are my electroreceptors, which I have largely ignored. I can always sense where the south is, and I know there is some variation as I move east to west. I can sense other electrical fields close to me, within a meter or a bit further.

I concentrate on the sense. It is like my other senses and always on, but I tune it out most of the time. I can sense the earth's magnetic field, and I notice the essence pool dips a bit as I concentrate on it. It might be a natural sense for sharks, but it is not for me.

It draws on the pool as needed. Can I push essence down the link to empower the sense more than is unusual? This is scary. If I do it wrong or too much, I might cripple myself. I spend some time concentrating and relaxing the senses, trying to get a handle on how or where it is drawing the essence.

I think the electroreceptors are in my face, somewhere near my nose. They must be a physical mutation like my skin, not an essence mutation like my needles and poison. I guess the skin is part physical and part essence, as are these.

I gently coax the smallest part of the essence I can to where I think the sense was drawing the essence.

Nope, lost it.

Nope, slipped away on me.

Shit, this is not easy.

Ok, it is going to need serious practice before I will even know it might work. This is good for my essence control, though.

OK, I have thirteen days.

I have gotten way off track, though. I was thinking about Blue Essence and water.

I can’t see Rich’s or Buck’s essence when they use it. How water-like is it? I assumed Buck’s essence attack was sound-based, but having experienced it, I don’t think it is. It is just the way Buck triggers it.

Water and Essence. There has to be a link.

I head back to the house and get some dinner, letting these ideas percolate in my brain.

Twelve days to go. I am getting better and moving small slithers of essence. A regular pathway for the essence to travel would make it easier. Shit. Shut up, you stupid fucking Bob. This is not a bloody cultivation novel with Qi bloody pathways through the body. Next, I will be wanting to break open nodes or some shit. This is the real world, not a bloody cultivation novel.

However, I do want to get Essence to a specific part of my body in a controlled and regular way. Creating a path for it does sort of make sense. I play with my essence some more. Can I make a tube?

Not easily, it is too fluid. It is too fluid. Fluid.

Fluid.

I am a Civil Engineer, and controlling and directing fluids is part of my job. Usually, it is Water supply, stormwater and wastewater. Getting a liquid from A to B depends a lot on gravity. If you want it to go uphill, you need to apply pressure in the manner of a pump. Is Essence subject to gravity?

It doesn’t seem to be as the anomaly created a sphere of influence. So, how does Essence hold together? Viscosity is the measure of the internal friction in a liquid, in other words, how easily it flows. How easy does Essence flow, and how is it held together? I have no instruments to measure this, but there seems to be very little internal friction. It slips out of my grasp easily.

If essence has a low viscosity, which is a low resistance to flowing, then it does need something to direct it rather than trying to move it by hand. I can’t use it as a channel or pipe, as its viscosity is too low. It will never hold together. The only other factor here is my body. I am back to creating channels in my body… or… or… or using existing channels in my body.

My body is riddled with channels called arteries and veins. They go everywhere, supplying blood, oxygen, and nutrients. Why wouldn’t they also supply Essence? The pump is already installed, even if Essence does not need it.

What is Essence? I assumed it was like radiation, but it wasn’t. My essence is acting like a fluid. The essences of other anomalies may be different, but this is my essence- or ours if I include everyone mutated by this anomaly, including the dogs.

Blood pumps around my body automatically. I don’t control it. If it breaks out of my body, I keep it in by applying pressure until the body fixes itself. I control essence. I can create waves and whirlpools and send them to Carla. If I flood my circulatory system with essence, I am flooding myself. I have visions of turning into a Jellyfish. But I don’t have to flood myself. I control it. I can create the links and direct the flow to the desired mutations.

Why direct the Essence to only the mutations? My circulatory system goes everywhere. What would happen if I sent essence to my muscles? I don’t know. I know my senses are mutated, so essence has changed them. Let's start there.

Oh, Oh, Oh! Carla’s whole body has been changed by essence. Oooh, that’s exciting.

Me first.

Oh, I missed lunch, and it is now dinner time. Let's calm down and let this percolate overnight and see if there are any flaws in the logic. Tomorrow, we will start experimenting.