Dan stepped out of t-space, and into his old quarters above Neptune. He wore faded blue jeans, a dark polo shirt, and carried his the torture collar in his left hand. He glanced at his surroundings with less than fond reminiscence. The room was exactly as he had left it, empty and abandoned. The walls were just as bland as he remembered, with dull steel acting in lieu of wallpaper. Not a single splash of color existed within. He hadn't noticed just how depressing this place was before. Too caught up in his own head, Dan supposed. He had bigger concerns back then, much more pressing than decorating his bedroom.

Though, not much had changed. His hotel room was much the same as this one on the station; just a warm place for Dan to lay his head at night. He had done little to personalize his surroundings. One could even argue that the Pearson's decor was worse than the ever present grey-scale of Mercury's space station, depending on how much said person loathed Wild West imagery. Dan didn't particularly care; he'd barely even noticed before now, honestly, but that probably said some unpleasant things about his headspace.

Dan needed a home of his own. Not a refurbished storage room on someone else's space station, not a hotel room, no matter how convenient. A real place of his own. Something to call home. This was his life now, it was about time he embraced it.

He made a mental note to follow up on that spark of motivation once he returned to Earth. Now was hardly the appropriate time to go house-shopping. He had an appointment to keep. Dan dropped the melted collar down onto the cot that had once served as his bed, then set off in the direction of Marcus's lab. He was curious to witness what changes the old man had made to the place since he had last been here.

Nothing. Nothing had been changed. Dan probably should not have been so surprised. He'd only been gone for about a month, and Marcus was rather set in his ways. It was just— Eerie. The station was clean as always, its walls and windows were spotless. With only one living being on the massive station, it would be distinctly odd to be dirty, but the place managed to wear its lifelessness like a cloak, draped around shoulders of all-pervading silence. Yes, eerie was certainly the word to describe the atmosphere of this station. Now that he wasn't living here, Dan wondered how he ever did.

He made his way down the empty hallways with more haste than ever, finally finding himself in front of Marcus's lab. The door sensed his approach, opening with a whoosh and Dan got his first look at what the old man's twisted experiments had wrought.

Most prominently, a general sense of cleanliness and order. Dan had once considered the laboratory a shining example of a man-made deathtrap. Jigsaw himself couldn't dream up the horrific dangers of what Doctor Marcus Mercury could build on accident. Traversing the room with any amount of haste took an extreme mix of courage and coordination, or the ability to teleport.

Or rather, that was how it had been the last time that Dan had seen it. Now, the tables had been wiped down, the stacks of junk had been cleared away, and the floor appeared to no longer be covered in acid. It was a definite improvement, and the lab sparkled in an appealing manner. It was almost distracting enough to ignore the floating window into nonexistence hovering at the center of the room.

As soon as Dan laid eyes on it, the familiar numbness of the void seeped into him. He felt a slight chill in the air, that had nothing to do with the temperature. The silence of the room grew deeper, and eldritch figures writhed within the darkness.

Dan pulled his veil over himself, and stood, unafraid (though absolutely prepared to run). He paid them exactly as much attention as usual, that being none. Whatever they were, they were nothing to him. They couldn't reach him here, and if they could, he'd be gone in an instant. He pulled his eyes away from the window, searching for Marcus. No whispers called him back, no monsters came for his soul. The room settled back into its normal state.

"What do you see?" a familiar voice asked.

Dan turned to the entrance, grinning warmly. "Marcus."

The old man looked healthier than the last time Dan had seen him. His body was younger, almost, less weary, less frail. The strength within his body was no longer hidden like before, but clear for all to see. His skin did not sag, though it was still wrinkled from age. His arms were more toned, more muscular, resembling an extremely fit sixty-year old rather than the ninety-something that Marcus was. He had never walked with a hunch, but his back was straighter, proud and firm.

Despite the changes, Dan recognized him easily. The man's hair was still a wild mess, and his eyebrows were as bushy as ever. He still wore his long white labcoat, a stethoscope hanging loosely around his neck, with his front pocket stuffed with pens and scalpels.

Dan nodded to his former teacher with approval. "You look good, old man."

Marcus rolled his eyes and scoffed, "As if that was ever in doubt." The words seemed to escape without the old man's consent, as he paused immediately after.

They stared at each other for an awkward moment, both struggling to decide if apologies were necessary. They had been close once, and were still, but their parting had been... not as amicable as it could have been. Neither knew what to say, and thus they both shuffled awkwardly.

There were emotions involved in their abrupt fallout; ones difficult to decipher, much less deal with. Dan was hardly an expert in facing his own feelings, and Marcus carried more baggage than your average Boeing 747. They each, independently and simultaneously, resolved to ignore the situation and move on.

"So what have you discovered?" Dan asked, breaking the silence.

Marcus hesitated at the question, then shook his head with a wry smile. He approached Dan with an easy gait, hands stuffed in his pockets. "I've discovered that you are just as bad at answering questions as you have always been," the mad scientist lamented. He gestured towards the hole in reality. "What do you see, Daniel?"

Dan frowned, and glanced over with disinterest. He stared into the window for a long moment. "Nothing new," he answered honestly. "An empty void. Darkness." A black hole, minus the gravity.

Stolen story; please report.

Marcus nodded. "You've been spending time in the Gap."

Dan didn't deny it. "My power sorta necessitates that."

"So it does," Marcus acknowledged. He jerked his head to the closest table. "Come, sit. I'll share with you what I've learned."

----------------------------------------

"The first thing you must understand," Marcus began, sitting across from Dan, "is that the Gap is intrinsically connected to us."

The window to t-space lingered in the distance behind him, barely visible over his shoulder. Dan eyed it briefly, before asking his question. "Because of our powers?"

"No!" Marcus exclaimed, throwing his hands wide. "No, Daniel. Remember why your power struggles to affect living creatures! Every sentient being bears a connection to the Gap. They carry it for their entire lives. It is a part of them, of us. I believe, in fact, that this connection is far more active than I previously assumed, even before exposure to cosmic radiation."

Dan shook his head in exasperation. "That's a bold claim, doc."

"Yes, yes, but the evidence is leading me in that direction— Ah! But I am getting ahead of myself." Marcus settled back into his seat, visibly calming himself. "Every sentient being bears a connection to the Gap," he repeated. "This is a result of the nature of the Gap itself. It is... It is change, Daniel. A realm of ideas and invention and choice. It is, I believe, the very source of self-awareness! The first spark of consciousness!"

Dan eyes grew larger the longer Marcus spoke. "You think you've discovered, what, the reason for existence itself?"

"The how, perhaps," Marcus said gleefully, practically bouncing in his seat. "Certainly not the why; that is for philosophers to debate." He shrugged lackadaisically. "Perhaps it was some great cosmic accident that created the connection. Perhaps it was some sort of omnipotent being, breathing life into clay. I do not know, nor do I care. I am interested in what is."

He straightened in his seat, lowering his voice. "The Gap needs structure. This is a reality of its existence. Change is not change, without an underlying structure. There are no rules in the Gap. No natural laws, no physics, no light or sound or anything." He paused, biting his lip as he searched for a way to explain his findings. "It is tied together with the material plane, with our dimension, with all dimensions, because it needs the grounding that we offer. An idea is nothing if it is not expressed. Sentience is the voice of creation. And that is only the smallest fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what the Gap is capable of."

Marcus leaned back, sighing to himself. "I should have seen it, so long ago. I was blinded by natural law, by common sense, by the scientific method. I was applying rules to something that, by its very nature, has no rules, and in doing so enforced those rules upon it."

"I don't understand," Dan admitted frankly. Marcus frowned at him, and Dan clarified, "You're saying that the Gap has no rules, which is why powers can basically overwrite reality, yet it also needs rules to function?"

"The material plane has rules. The Gap can overwrite them, but only because of us. We give the power structure, through ideas, through belief. This is why the second generation of natural powers were the strongest. We were enthralled by the possibilities, by the power that might be. The Gap is shaped by the subconscious, both individual and communal." Marcus insisted. "Upgrades are the ultimate form of this, the beliefs and expectations of millions enforcing their existence. The entire process of researching upgrades, of scientists' belief and trust in patterns, in observation, was a self-fulfilling idea that has become fact."

"So the reason why upgrades can't grow or change," Dan said slowly, connecting the dots, "is because everyone believes that they can't?"

"No," Marcus replied solemnly. "They can't grow or change, because everyone knows that they can't."

"The stronger the structure, the stronger the power?" Dan murmured questioningly, more to himself than anything.

But Marcus immediately halted him. "There is no such thing as power, to the Gap," the old man lectured sternly. "It is change. A binary process. It either does or does not. The stronger the structure, the more defined the effect. It is a matter of properly defining your ability, where power arises."

He paused, uncertainly, before adding, "An old colleague of mine believed that natural powers revolved around concepts. She thought that the ultimate goal should be to rule the concept that you were granted." He smiled wryly. "Mine, according to her, was self. She claimed that, at the height of my power, I should be able to exert absolute control over myself. Not just my biology, but who I am. She told me that I was the ultimate authority of my own existence, and that she envied me for it."

He shook his head. "I thought her ideas were foolish, based more in superstition than science. I thought her lucky, for the power that she had been granted. I saw her as blinded by her own bias. More fool, me. She was more right than I, it seems."

Grandma called it conceptualization, Abby's voice whispered into Dan's head. His mouth felt dry. He swallowed with effort, and asked, "What was her concept?"

Marcus looked at him with confusion.

"Your colleague," Dan asked cautiously. "What concept did she see in herself?"

Marcus smiled wistfully.

"Pressure," he said. "And not just in the physical sense, but also the abstract. She was a fierce woman, even without her power, but with it..."

He drifted off into a memory. "Her favorite negotiation tactic was to continuously ramp up the mental pressure one felt, while talking to her. There were few people who could look her in the eye and not piss themselves." He laughed with genuine regret. "I used to tell her that those were two entirely different meanings of the word pressure, but she would always ignore me."

Marcus started, shaking his head. "But I digress. The nature of the Gap is fascinating, but I'm quite sure you don't care about the details."

"No, this was... enlightening," Dan admitted. It had given him a few thoughts on improving his own power, as well. "I assume that simply knowing this stuff is not the gateway to infinite power."

"I'm afraid not," Marcus acknowledged. "We are still human, and subject to the weaknesses of our kind. Our subconscious will not allow us to simply believe something, not truly, just because we wish to. Even I, with the ability to literally alter my own brain, cannot quite manage that particular feat. Yet."

"You think it's a matter of time?" Dan questioned the implication buried in Marcus's words.

"I think that we are flawed creatures, and that these flaws present an opportunity. Humans have a tendency to normalize things over time. We can't help it," Marcus explained slowly. "I believe that you do not regularly measure how much weight you are transporting when you teleport, and that, someday, you will go past your limit without even considering it. I believe that my own efforts to improve myself will slowly creep past my own mental blocks, until exceptional becomes my new normal. I believe that because I know growth is possible, growth will come. Perhaps a being exists who is capable of simply willing himself past what he knows to be his limits, but alas that being is not I."

"So repetition, basically," Dan summarized. "Repeat until the idea sticks."

"You should also come up with a firm structure for your power. A definition. A fact of its existence," Marcus added. "I have taken to using my old colleague's suggestion. My power is to control my self." He flexed his arm, muscles bulging through his labcoat. "I am strong. Not my body. I am strong. And so, I am." He grinned happily. "I could not do this before, not to this extent. I was so convinced that I had to work within the bounds of science, of this physical reality.

"This is not my limit," he said emphatically, "This is not all that I am. I will be more, and so I will."

"Impressive," Dan said drolly. "Now, I assume you have some sort of evidence to back all this up?"

Marcus smiled. "I am a scientist, Daniel. Of course I have evidence." He leaned forward, looming over the table. "Hear my tale, Daniel Newman, and prepare to be astounded by my genius!"