Smell and Hearing. Hearing has to do with sound waves so we will keep that until later. Smell has to do with olfactory neurons, so I am going to treat them like the eye cones. I directed my essence to enhance them carefully, and then I slowly increased the level, and my smell improved more and more.

  Then I realised all I was doing was enhancing my smell with essence like I always did, and it was just more controlled, and I noted, more efficient. But it wasn’t anything different.

  I put a lens over my eyes to see the essence. What if I put a lens or filter over my olfactory nerves? I did the same as I did with my eyes and left it a natural filter. I thought that later, as I understood the patterns more, I could tweak things to get different results.

  Like my eyes, my smell suddenly opened to a whole new area. Essence. I could smell essence. The pervading green/tan smelled…. Like green/tan. That doesn’t make sense. I am not sure how to describe it. But it was unpleasant. It was annoying, like the smell of disinfectant at a dentist or hospital. It grated on my senses, but it was a clean smell. All the mutated plants and animals had a slightly different green/tan smell variation on the disinfectant variation. They all were annoying. I focussed on Carla’s scales in my vest. That wasn’t annoying. It was a comforting smell. Like a roast dinner or freshly mown grass. Smells that I like. That is interesting. It must be my incompatibility with this green/tan anomaly.

  I turned on my vision at the same time and tried to match the smell variation to the patterns I could see. My vision didn’t grate or hurt. Maybe because it was all in bluescale? Was I filtering it? If I had enhanced my colour senses, would it be grating? I am not sure. The visual patterns and the smell must be related. I am going to figure out how. Could one give clues to the other? I am sure the pattern is the key. Does each pattern give off a different smell, indicating how it is unique? That is an interesting thought. I will work it out.

  While I was here, I put the same filter over my ear drums. It appears essence has a sound as well. There is so much sound. The prevailing sound was from the Anomaly. It also grated, not as badly as fingernails on a chalkboard, but it was annoying and persistent. I focussed on the sounds coming from Cala’s scales; it was comforting and calming again. I ‘listened’ to the ‘sounds’ around me, and the vines, trees and grass all gave off slightly different variations of the sounds.

  Wait, yes, there is Barb. Barb was also green/tan but was not as grating. It was like it was muted, both smell and sound. Is that because she is bonded to a fluorescence Blue like me? I went back to the tents. Rich was asleep near the entrance, and he smelled multi-flavoured. He was a comforting crystal clear blue with a green tinge and a little darkness. That is what he smelled like, and he sounded loud. Much louder than Barb. Much louder than the two in the tent. Was it because of his double mutation? Maybe, probably. I need to listen to Neke and see if she is as loud. It is lucky I can’t hear myself if that is the case. Rich also had a strong sound, like a heavy drumbeat that you felt with your whole body. Over the heavy drum was a lighter tingle, like someone playing the triangle above the drum. Were these sounds his two mutations/enhancements? The heavy drum being his strong physical mutation and the triangle being his essence sense? I don’t know, but it made sense.

  Where is Barb again? I listened to Barb. Her essence sound was similar to her chirps, light and pleasant. It wasn’t very strong. Her smell was unpleasant from the foreign essence, but her sound was light and pleasant. Even her disinfectant smell was clean, whereas Rich's was darker and unclean. Not filthy, just less clean. Not like his dogshit, but like used dishwater unclean. But there was crystal clear water mixed in. Rich was weird, and I guess it came from his mutations from different anomalies.

  Carla and Soph are in the tent. Carla is a stronger heavy metal type sound, but Soph is softer, varied, and almost orchestral in nature. What does that mean? Carla is strong, but Rich is a level stronger, so I think I am hearing the strength of multiple mutations. However, Carla is stronger sounding than Soph, who is more gentle listening music from multiple instruments. These are clues to how the essence has changed them. Both Carla and Soph smell clean and pure to my nose. Their essence is soothing and cleansing to mine. Carla’s has a touch of grit to it, whereas Soph has hints of other essences, probably through her bonds.

  I am getting the sound. Loud equals the strength of mutation. Harsher sounds mean physical mutations. Gentler sounds are more mental or enhanced senses.

  The smell was different. The smell was all about the essence type. Cleaner smells seemed to be from the lighter essences, although that did not necessarily make them pleasant for me. Whether they were pleasant to me was all about my compatibility. Was I being immunised to the essence, muting the unpleasantness? Maybe? That would need more testing. Dirtier smells come from darker essences, like Yagoonya’s dark turquoise. That would need testing, too.

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  Soph and Rich can sense Essence. This seems to be a direct sense rather than through the enhanced sensing organs. I need to find out more about how much detail it gives. I know it senses colour and patterns, but I can see a lot of depth now. Can she?

  Humans have five senses. I am missing touch and taste. Wait a minute. No, I am not. My Skin is enhanced. What would happen if I overlay essence on my skin, like on my olfactory senses? I try it on my hand. It is not working. Why? It worked on my nose, eyes and eardrums. Why not on my skin? The enhanced skin came from a different source, jellyfish rather than shark, but does that matter?

  Wait a minute. I have had trouble before using essence outside my body. By trouble, I mean I haven’t been able to do it. Yet Buck could. Eardrums and eye lenses were outside the body. Wait. I tried to make glasses-type lenses first, and they didn’t work. Then I fitted them like contacts to my eyes, and they worked. It is back to my old trouble of using my essence outside my body. My eardrums are inside my head. Olfactory senses are inside my nose. Contact lenses are under the eyelids. Technically, it could be argued they are inside my body.

  This is not a technical argument we are having. This is an actual thing we are working out. Essence is something. I am not sure it is physical, but it is a thing, entity, or force with rules under which it functions. I have to figure out those rules.

  What do I know? One, it only affects living things. Two, it seems to be affected by the environment it arrives in. Blue water, green/brown orchard, Green/blue river, brown/red mud and people from Chennai? What was the dark pink from Korea? Don’t get sidetracked now.

  This means the interaction is not all one way. It mutates living things, but the living things affect it or affect how they interact with things. Hence, mutations are not always random but are influenced by the person or creature mutating. It is not always true, but there is influence there.

  Once you survive mutation, you have an essence pool. This essence pool can be used to defend against further mutation and enhance mutations in various ways. The essence forms a pattern unique to each creature, which can be sensed in various ways. Sight: see patterns and colours. Smell: sense purity or impurity. Sound: sense essence strength and type of mutation. These are simplified but generally true.

  Therefore, touch is a sense, and there are nerve endings that transmit the sense to the brain. I need to focus my essence on the nerve endings, not the skin. The skin has layers, and the nerves are under the top layer. With that knowledge, I tried again, and my skin came alive. The green/tan essence of the anomaly was rubbing like fine sandpaper or a mild burn. It was everywhere. I touched Rich, and he felt cool to my touch and not irritating. This is a touch-based sense, so I touched a vine and felt its essence. This vine was more irritating than the general essence in the air. Does this mean it is harmful to me?

  I left the vines and went to the seeds Carla had collected. They were labelled positive, neutral or negative, depending on her reaction. I got a seed from each and touched them in turn. The seed from the positive was silky smooth and nice to touch, and the neutral one was neither good nor bad, and the negative hurt. So I can go along the row of vines and identify what was good just by touch. That is pretty handy. I did just that, focussing on the ones already identified by the research teams. My results matched theirs pretty accurately. There were other touch senses I had not worked out. That one felt warm, that was rough, that tingled. What did they all mean? I don’t know. Yet.

  Then there was Taste. My taste buds were not enhanced, but I tried it anyway. Tasting the good grapes identified by my touch did not bring in any new information. It was worth a try. I wonder what Neke will taste when she tries this.

  I was about to call it a night, having covered all the five senses, when I realised I had a sixth sense. My electroreceptors were also a sense. I could sense close electrical fields and the earth's electromagnetic field with surprising sensitivity. I carefully applied the essence filter and looked around. The vine I was next to was alive in the sense, but it was just there as a constant. Nothing unusual that I could not hear, smell or see through other means. I stretched out the sensitivity to the earth’s field, and the electromagnetic field was there, but there was more. There was a flavour or a colour to it. Was this how the earth was changing as a whole? The sense I had was predominantly green/tan, as that was the essence being released here, but the earth was just tasting of different flavours. The world is changing.

  None of that was immediately relevant, but it will help me navigate to different types of anomalies. I was not going to tell anyone that, or they would just use me as an anomaly detector. No, thank you.

  I moved back to the tent. All three ladies were in there now, and two were asleep. I headed to my little popup tent, and as I walked past Rich, my electroreceptors flared to life as he raised his head. This wasn’t just them sensing the electrical impulses in this neck to use his muscles. No, this was an essence pulse. He used his Sense Essence skill on me, and my electroreceptors told me it was in use.

  Oh, this is awesome. I can sense skill use around me. I looked around. Everybody was asleep. No. I looked down, and a hole appeared in the ground with Skill use. Murray popped out and dashed past Rich to Soph’s side. This is good. I am not telling anyone about this. This is an ace up my sleeve.

  I went to bed with a smile on my face.