Waiheke and Ruakawa anomalies are much more intense than Yagoonya. Is that because they are newer? We had no idea how old Yagoonya was. Four months? Six? Maybe eight? Anomalies have only been around for less than a year. Is it good or bad to ‘Enhance’ at a new anomaly, or does it make no difference? Carla, Soph and Ata are all one mutation at a fairly new Waiheke. Ngoi, Neke, and Kai mutated at a six-month-ish Yagoonya. I don’t know how to compare them.

  We are all pure fluorescent blue, whereas they are blue/green, known as turquoise. A dark turquoise. This is a light green/brown. The green is definitely making it easier for the other greens.

  Mutations are different, too. I got poison and breathable skin from the Jellyfish but pure senses from the shark. Plus, the link. Four improved senses: Sight, smell, hearing and electroreception. Carla got none in her mutations. She is all physical. Why? Apart from the fur, Soph is all mental. Ata is half and half, one physical and one sense. Is that somehow to do with the Essence interacting with each individual? There is always going to be a bit of randomness, and I put Soph’s fur down to that.

  Or maybe not. She is mental focussed and grew up with dogs. She went specifically to bond with dogs. The surprising thing is that it worked. Why? It does not appear to be as random as we thought.

  What about me? The first time was just a big surprise. There was no intent. Carla was very intentional, and she did so much it would have killed her without our bond. Why our bond? I had just realised I cared, and then the shark attacked. Did that enable our bond?

  I don’t fucking know.

  How do the mutations from Waiheke differ from the mutations at Yagoonya? Ngoi, Neke and Kai each got a sense—hearing, smell and echolocation. Kai went specifically for a sense, like Ensign Jeong. There is a database of mutations from Yagoonya, which is well over a thousand now, but there are fewer than twenty mutations from Waiheke. I grabbed my laptop and looked it up. There are over ten thousand successful mutations from Yagoonya now. The death rate is hovering around thirty-two percent.

  Close to three-quarters of the mutations from Waiheke included a sense. Less than ten percent of those from Yagoonya did, and never more than one. I wish Waiheke had a bigger sample size. Yagoonya has no one with a bond, like Soph, and no one survived a Carla attempt if they tried it. I am sure someone did.

  I isolate the health mutations like Amanda. About ten percent of mutations are positive health mutations, like Amanda's. Well, over half of the surviving mutations have some sort of poison or rot effect like Neke. The rest are neutral, like Ngoi and Kai. Australia is known for its poison animals.

  I am sure that almost all of the mutated humans guided their mutation. We do have a boatload of animals and plants from Waiheke. Random mutations can be strange. Would anyone have worked out Rich’s mutation without Soph? Probably not, or not for years.

  There is only one human mutation from Ruakawa, and it was a random mutation. I wonder if he had an ‘enhancement’ like Barb’s? Amanda will check as soon as she finds out about Barb. Also, Zeb can talk, so they may already know and are not releasing the information. Zeb might be the new Jesus going around healing the sick. There is good money in religious cults. Maybe I should get him on board and start one. We have Barb. We don’t need Zeb as long as he is not a rival cult. I guess an elderly bearded man has more religious imagery and connotations than a fantail.

  Get back on track with my wandering thoughts. I am thinking in general terms, but light tends to heal, dark colours tend to poison and decay, and maybe fluorescent colours are senses or mind skills. None of that is immediately relevant, but we need to look out for more colours. That probably means travel. New Zealand is a long way from anywhere.

  However, we need to focus on senses, particularly sight, for Ata and myself. We each have a different enhancement for sight. Mine is to see better in the dark, and hers is better over distance. I look up how that is supposed to work biologically. Apparently, eyes have two different types of receptors, Rods and Cones, and the rods work in low light. Hence, my rod receptors have been enhanced.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I couldn’t find much on Gannet's eyesight, but the Hawk has more cone receptors and unique ones, so I am guessing this is how things have been enhanced from a layman's understanding. Broadly speaking. Amanda and Dr Goodwin would correct me at length and incomprehensibly in Goodwin's case.

  Directing essence to our enhanced eyes increases the effect and improves my vision, seeing in the dark, shapes, etc., and for her colour and movement, etc. Is that it? Is that all there is to the eyes?

  The eyes are more than the receptors. There are lenses and muscles to focus them. The photoreceptors must also send the signal to the brain. All of that must have been enhanced. I don’t narrow my essence to focus on the rod receptors because I didn’t know about them until now.

  The receptor also only receives signals in a certain light wavelength, but there are other wavelengths beyond our human vision. Infrared, Ultraviolet. If it is the cone receptors in our eyes that interpret colour, then it is probably Ata who can, perhaps, enhance the wavelengths she can see to see into the wider areas. That is not going to stop me from trying, though. Seeing into the infrared is essentially seeing heat. That is cool. Hot. Whatever.

  Rods don’t deal with colour, so night vision is greyscale. They are activated in less light and take longer to activate as such a movement is not so noticeable. Rods give better peripheral vision, apparently. Now it is night time. Now is the time to test this.

  I shut my laptop and give my eyes time to adjust. I feed Essence to my eyes but only slowly concentrate on night vision. The rods are my major enhancement. I will focus on other parts of the eye later; for now, I will just focus on night vision.

  I am not used to directing the essence with this finesse. The sky is overcast, but I use a shirt to cut down the light level even more. How much can I enhance even the minimal light coming in?

  After a while, I gave up and tried something different. The eye consists of a lens. Can I use essence to change the lens? Our lens is for focussing, but other animals can layer a lens to protect the eye and see better in water, etc. Can I overlay a different lens with essence?

  What I am really hoping for here is to be able to see essence with my eyes, so I am not reliant on Soph to interpret Rich’s skill. I want to see the patterns for myself. Why shouldn’t it be possible? The eyes are mutated/enhanced, so why shouldn’t this just be a different way of using Essence through a mutation?

  I started with lenses like glasses. I figured it would be a type of pattern to fit my eyes. I relaxed everything and let my natural pattern overly it, and… it didn’t work. Why not? Then I tried it as a close fit over the eye lens like contact lenses and… That was it. So easy. The area lit up with the flow of essence coming out from the anomaly. I could see the nearby vines and plums and the essence contained in them. Everything in the anomaly zone lit up, but it wasn’t the light green/tan colour that was almost yellow. Everything seems to be on a blue scale rather than a grey scale. Bluescale/greyscale, huh? I tried the trick to enhance my rods again, and all the patterns and shapes became clear. Oh, this is awesome.

  I try adjusting the essence lens for fine details. There are a lot of layers of patterns as I go finer and finer. I find a comfortable level of detail and start examining different plants and leaves, trying to get a sense of the patterns that Sophia has been building up.

  I moved closer to a leaf and looked for patterns. Yes, I think that is it. I can tell these are from different plants, even though they are next to each other. What the patterns mean is the next task. First, I have to catch up with Soph’s understanding. I head back to the truck, where there are small plastic bags with different types of grape seeds.

  I settle down for the night to examine them.

  “What are you doing?” Carla asks, sitting there with a bunch of grapes.

  I explained the breakthrough with my eyesight and that I could see the essence patterns now. I also explained how Ata might be able to expand her vision past the human norm of light range, and she gets very excited for us.

  She insists I type it up for Ata and Amanda. She can alert Soph to see through her eyes so Ata can get the information now. We can email Amanda about it in the morning at that point, letting the military know about the breakthrough. This is us earning our pay. I drafted an email to Amanda but didn’t send it. It is about 1 am now, and Carla has Soph read it through her eyes and share it with Ata so she can practice. Maybe we are being paranoid. We will send it to Amanda soon anyway. Maybe in a couple of days.

  After all that, it was nearer 2 am, and I wanted to sleep. I had been pushing the long nights for a couple of days now, so I lay down and rested. My mind was still bussing over patterns and possibilities. I tried a couple of calming techniques and eventually started to drop off when I heard Carla say, “If you can do that with your eyes, I can’t wait to see what you can do with your hearing and smell.”