The next few days were, if nothing else, pretty boring. The doctor was true to his word, and had begun the process of having me discharged, being met with surprisingly little resistance by the Coalition. They made things tough for him at first, and I’d assumed that would be the least of their interference, but after pulling out a veritable mountain of paperwork for the doctor and I to work through, they fell silent. In the end, we both had to work through entirely too many legal loopholes trying to keep me ‘committed’ but the fact that I was coherent and, in Strenns’ words, not a danger to myself or any others any longer meant that we went through it all rather quickly.

During that time, I got in touch with Marcus again, although finding his contact information was frustratingly difficult. He had been staying on Luna, though, and so actually getting through to the man once I had found him was comparatively simple. Us being on the same mass made things even better, too, and we could make a simple phone call, instead of one of the many other pricy and less reliable methods available for planet-to-planet talks, much less the singular method we currently had to get information from the Sol System to the Proxima System and back.

Marcus had almost been as difficult to speak to as the Coalition at first, though. While we had both severed ties between ourselves and the Family, it seemed Marcus had done so on much more friendly terms than I had, if essentially spitting on centuries of tradition in order to try and make it big in an utterly new field of research that had technically been failing for far longer than the Johanssons had even been established could be called friendly.

Regardless, me asking him to book me a spot at the estate made things supremely difficult. Apparently, when the black sheep of the Family is trying to pull strings and get the forsaken, crippled, and deformed sheep a place back in their ranks even temporarily, it draws trouble. After much convincing, he did manage to have a small, by our standards, building reserved for a single occupant, but not long after he’d done so he mentioned that a handful of other people made snap decisions to visit the Lunar Estate, most worryingly, my parents.

And of course, while all these little headaches were going on, Strenns and I had kept on working on my control over my ‘qi, psi, and prana’ which, surprisingly, was being met with very mixed results. I found a lot of things out about this Everything Energy, most importantly was that it was incredibly eager to do anything I wanted.

Whereas prana and mana need conscious thought or intent to control, muscle memory and mnemonics designed to help make this conscious control instant, this stuff needed no coaxing or working at to make it respond to even the slightest intent. Meanwhile, unlike psi and qi, which are uncontrolled at first and respond to the subconscious or the peripheral nervous system directly and need work to bring under active control, my new supply of power could be goaded into action by the slightest willing desire, or spurred into motion through even the most basic bodily impulse.

Of course, having an energy so very willing to work for me sounds good in theory, but the problem comes from what it is. It seemed that no matter what I tried, I could not get any consistency in how this energy reacted once it was used. While intent in other energies is the most important aspect when creating a ‘technique’ it means nothing here. Trying to form a ball of floating water, for example, resulted in half a dozen unique, unpredictable outputs that had no pattern before I gave up on that line of trial, at least in the control department.

I got everything from a perfect sphere of ice so cold that the temperature in the room plummeted just by materializing it, to a crumpled piece of paper with a lake drawn on it, to a small raincloud over the palm of my hand. There was not a single connecting idea beyond water and roundness somehow being tangentially related to the product, and I had no time to experiment more with any of these outcomes before whatever part of my body I was drawing this stuff out of started to fade, or sink as I called it, getting pulled away from me in some direction I could loosely describe as ‘down.’ Of course, it didn’t look to be moving down, only starting to get hazy and heavy, rippling and shimmering as my hand, or anything else I used, slowly vanished, the sensation slowly creeping further along my body.

So, if casting fireballs and magic missiles, or any form of conjuration at all, wasn’t the best answer, then my next guess would be internal strengthening, like psi or qi. I quickly found that this was easily just as nonsensical. I tried to start simple, one of the first things a qi user learns to do is something they so aptly call ‘ironskin’ which is as simple as it sounds. Try and force qi to the surface of one’s body in order to strengthen the skin. It sounded simple enough, to me, and I thought it might have been even easier given that I had no need to even draw qi out of my core, delicately keeping my control over it while it fought to revert to my body’s unconscious needs. After all, the energy was right there, permeating every facet of myself, and it responded so easily even if it was wildly rambunctious when brought into the world.

I focused on hardening the back of my left hand, or I guess, performing this ironskin technique, and immediately had to stop, when a patch of skin between my knuckles almost immediately turned grey, then black, a garish splotch of discoloration. I found, with no small amount of horror, that it was literal iron. In fact, it was a block of it that extended all the way to the bones in my hand, worming tendrils of the ferrous stuff that drilled their way into my metacarpals and took root.

Thankfully, it seemed my friend was still looking out for me, because the block of inorganic metal was quickly reverted back to a patch of intensely discolored skin, black and bruised and almost rotten looking that hurt only marginally less than having turned myself into metal for a moment. I only realized that it was the Every-Thing messing with my hand and not some unconscious desire of my own to just ‘fix it’ because its visceral voice was yanked into the forefront of my mind as it reverted back, sounding a little disappointed but also a bit proud.

“Extremity so attending objection as engrossed gentleman something. Improved property reserved disposal do offering me."

That hadn’t been the first such ‘correction’ the Thing had performed, only taking the initiative to do so when something had directly gone wrong with my body, or worse, my mind. Its own actions seemed much more controlled than mine, in the sense that it could take a severe injury that I had done to myself in whatever way, and turn it into only a major one that would be taken care of by whatever it was that allowed me to heal so quickly. That said, every time it reached out to correct me in that way left me feeling out of it, utterly ill for minutes or even hours depending on how big its ‘patch’ was. Not nearly as bad as how I was when I had come to, but I had a feeling I knew what had kept me ‘safe’ until I was recovered, and why I spent so long just getting over that initial sickness.

My trial and error wasn’t completely without success, though. While I had no luck, and I do mean none in the slightest, at getting my makeshift spells, techniques, or anything at all really, to be something resembling consistent, I could at least occasionally produce consistent results. I don’t mean in the sense that I could make something I wanted and have it perform for me, but at least, I could vaguely decide on an outcome and this energy would work to make it happen.

For instance, when I was panicking about the pain in my hand and lit up a bit more of the energy almost without thinking, I felt a few sudden snaps in my arm, and then my hand was totally numb. The problem was, as I soon found out thanks to a healer, that I had removed every nerve beneath my elbow, which then had to be grown back while I was healed. I hadn’t known this before, but regrowing nerves hurts.

But, despite the pain I caused myself, that whole incident as Strenns was quick to call it helped me at least understand the nature of this stuff a little better. Normal energy works by giving it directions, forming it into shapes or guiding it into places in order to make something happen, creating what is basically a tool for a job I want. Energy pulled from the Everything is wildly different. I only need to give it a job and let it make the tool for it, but it all comes down to luck on how many liberties get taken. At least, that was the best way I could describe it then.

Creating something like a fireball would be inconsistent and dangerous but forcing the idea that something needs to be set on fire would work, although how exactly that would catch fire was up to the whims of chance. Of course, I could hardly even do that. The best I could do is imprint some vague idea onto this body of solid possibility within myself, the idea that I need to do something in hopes that it would produce some not overly detrimental effect, which was a crapshoot at best. And through it all, I could still only do so very little before my very body started to fall apart.

Still, I had an idea. I had a tentative road forward, and while I’d have to make up every single step as I learned and grew, it still meant that I could grow. It really started to sink in on one Tuesday morning, now weeks after I had first started working on an unnamed outpost in deep space, at the very edges of communicable territory within the Sol System.

Doctor Strenns knocked on my door, the same as he usually did, but this time he wasn’t alone when he swung it open. Standing beside him was Marcus, a subtle mix of worry, relief, and curiosity behind his carefully maintained stoic mask. It was clear he was here this time as Marcus Daniels Kalem Johansson, here to pick up one Sylvain Henry Camille Johansson. It was hard to pin a word to, but his entire countenance had changed, and his wardrobe, while similarly casual to the last time he was here, was obviously of a much higher quality. Even Strenns seemed a little thrown off by how marked the difference was.

He had with him was a set of similarly high-end clothing, no doubt so that I wouldn’t show up to the estate wearing a hospital gown, and I stood up to meet them. Despite my self-destructive testing over the past few days, I had almost fully recovered. My body was stiff and sore in some places, others still scarred or bruised, but even these marks were slowly disappearing. Occasionally, I’d end up with freckles or acne for a few hours and then nothing at all, not even a blemish. With hardly a trace of my previous ailments left, I strode over to the door, taking the clothes and slipping into the bathroom to change.

When I stepped out, I had tried to keep up appearances in the same way Marcus had, changing my posture and controlling mannerisms in the way that anyone from a Family is taught and expected to act. I hated every bit of it, but I had to maintain appearances now, and until I could lock myself away in the house Marcus reserved for me this was who I had to be. A proper Johansson.

But instead of wallowing any further, I pushed my personal pity party to the bottom of my stomach and walked up to the doctor. I held out my hand, which he took immediately, and as we shook hands he spoke up.

“Well Sylvain, I must say, of all the patients I have worked with suffering from an eldritch enlightenment, you were certainly one of the most interesting. I am still genuinely surprised at how quickly you’ve healed, and while you’ve still got a long way to go before you’re anywhere near the proficiency I’m sure you were at before your voyage, I’m certain that if anybody could succeed, it would be you. If you ever run into any problems in your recovery and need advice, or you simply need somebody to talk to about anything troubling you, you have my contact information. Unless you find yourself somewhere in Prox, I’ll be available just about any time.”

I smiled, a real one, as I replied. “Thank you, Doctor. You have helped me get my life back on track and even if it takes me my entire life to recover, I owe part of that chance to you.” I kept it short, trying to be genuine but not sounding overboard, and if the shorter man’s bright grin was any indication, it worked.

I said one final goodbye before following after my cousin, moving through jagged twists of the clinical halls, walking an almost unnerving distance before we reached an elevator that took us up five floors, and went through it all over again until we reached the lobby. It definitely concerned me that I was being kept underground, but the fact that I was being let go so easily helped soothe my worries some.

Then we stepped out into the crisp air of a terraformed world. At first, one could almost be mistaken for thinking it to be back on Earth. After all, it had all the same concrete jungles, buildings of glass and stone that towered high above. The ground was similarly industrial, with asphalt roads that stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction. Everything seemed just as grey and black as any other city, but looking up shattered any other similarities. Despite the natural sunlight clearly shining down, being bounced off windows and metal alike, the sky was as black as night. Stars shone weakly even as the sun glared down, and the inky murk stretched from horizon to horizon.

There was no atmosphere here, despite plenty of energy users now being more than capable of outright creating one, it was only a loose collection of artificial environments that covered huge portions of the moon. The reason was simple, Luna was kept so ‘primitive’ for symbolic reasons. The first ‘real’ colony man had ever created, and it was nothing more than a simple climate-controlled dome that a small handful of people lived, and an even smaller few were born.

Since then, we have come so very far, and those energy users who travel with colonizing missions can directly terraform entire swaths of a planet, enough to set up a similar setup on a much grander scale right after to keep their changes contained while they ‘fix’ the rest of the planet, slowly expanding the territory of man until the dome can be done away with entirely. It has been many years since a colonizer was needed, true, but they yet lived, waiting for the next time they were needed to expand humanity’s control.

Mars and Luna were different, though. They were kept as they were initially settled, which means on Mars, they keep it scarred and demolished. Vast amounts of damage were inflicted to the icecaps to release the gasses and water needed to make the surface habitable for plants, and doing so meant that asteroids were ripped from the belt and pointed at the formerly-red planet.

For Luna, that meant covered in some truly vast domes, each state of the art and utterly impervious to just about anything, or so they say. The Johanssons’ estate is contained in one such dome, although not one of the larger ones. If a map I passed on the way out was to be believed, we were currently in the Serenity Dome, named so for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, the dome we were headed to was almost directly northward, the Aristoteles Block. It was hardly a tenth the size, with a rough diameter of ninety kilometers, and even though we only had a claim to a portion of that, it was still a sizeable affair.

I thought about this, and much more as I got into the sleek black sedan Marcus had brought, the door closed behind me by a sharply dressed butler. He always was a little too obsessed with vintage vehicles, but considering everything else going on, I’m glad he didn’t arrange to have us go through a Portal Port instead. With everything that had already gone wrong, I didn’t want to consider what might happen if I did.

I quickly settled into my chair, and it may have seemed like brand new, hard leather, but even that was plenty for me to drift off to sleep in. I could tell Marcus was eager to start asking questions, but between our chauffeur listening in and myself wasting no time in shutting my eyes, he never got the chance to do so. When I opened my eyes again, we had just crossed through the gate to Aristoteles, leaving the underground tunnel behind us. Our destination was just ahead, the green of the large patch of open, actually well-maintained land setting it apart from the rest of the dull monochrome, and I was thankful that it really did seem mostly empty aside from a few groundskeepers working and Family members roaming.

We pulled up to a two-story cabin on the edges of the grounds, it was short and simple compared to many of the other homes scattered around the estate but honestly, I much preferred it that way. Any way I could avoid even the slightest bit of attention was crucial. As these, and many more thoughts raced through my mind, the door was opened for me, and I stepped out, walking up to my new home, wishing nothing more but to be as far away from here as I could.