Things had gone back to normal over the past week. After the emotional release I went through in Sophia’s arms, we had talked until I was kicked from the hospital and the next day, I had talked with Technica about getting some professional to work on my mental issues. Her immediate reaction was interestingly mixed, a curious mix of guilt with a side of shame and joy. Galatea and I had talked for some time, why my request had evoked those emotions, finally settling on the hypothesis that the guilt and shame were either because she believed that my issues stemmed from her abandonment when I was but a toddler. It was likely that she was correct in her belief, but there was no use in worrying over past events, not unless either of us managed to build a time-machine. Other hypothesis we posed were that she was feeling guilty over indulging me with the raid to rescue Sophia or that she disproved of seeking treatment and the guilt was because she supported me despite that. Those two were quickly dismissed as completely against everything we knew about her, leaving us with the original idea. The joy was harder to pin down, we finally settled that it was likely because I trusted her enough to ask her advice and come to her for help.

That had been a week ago.

She had presented me with a list the next day and I was a little blown away. Actually, there had been three lists, each a little different. The first one was of psychiatrists on Accord Island, experienced professionals that had worked with guild-personal before and were thoroughly vetted. A second list was with Powered that also worked as therapists, either using their power in their practise or retired heroes or villains that might be able to emphasize better. The third list was actually a compilation of lists and it took me a moment to figure that one out. It was a list of therapists working for the various national heroes organisations, from the Heroes’ League I knew to the Heroes Association to the Super Heroes of America, there were options all over the globe.

When she handed me the lists, she implied that I could simply pick one, she would make sure that I could get an appointment. That statement had made me chuckle at first, but after reading the lists, I wondered if she was trying to atone. Getting a regular appointment with a therapist on the other side of the globe was quite challenging after all.

All in all, the second list might be the most interesting of the three. Not because I was planning to actually use one of those therapists, but because a lot of them had their powers noted in their entry. Letting someone with powers on their own poke around in my head seemed like a bad idea. I knew that it was likely just my paranoia speaking, after all, what could a receptive empath do to me, but it was there. Intellectually, I knew that the others might have secret powers, how would anyone know after all, but still, the idea to work with a Powered was sending shivers down my spine. No, I would go with a mundane.

I still studied the list because there was little knowledge in the public domain about the various powers in existence, nothing like some sort of index allowing one to browse what was possible. But the list had quite a few, allowing me to dig deeper into them.

On the list Technica had handed me, there were powers I would have thought to be impossible, showing me just how limited my knowledge of Powers and Powered truly was, especially in the realm of psychic powers. Sure, something simple like receptive empaths, those like Nisha and Isleen who felt the emotions of others, that was relatively simple and a power I could relate to. Reading the surface thoughts, more complicated but it was such a staple in fiction that it was not reaching.

But others were giving me a headache, for example the former hero who was able to read the past of an object, not just what had physically happened to it, but even an impression of the mental state of the one in contact with it and their surroundings. It made me curious enough for some digging and what I found just added to my confusion. How on earth could a favourite music-box get information on how domestic abuse had happened in the room? Part of me wanted to call if fraud, but I reminded myself that just because I failed to understand something, it was not impossible. For now, I would have to accept the gap in my understanding and use some useless term like 'supernatural' to explain it.

When I stumbled upon Isleen’s entry, I had to smile. The information was quite good, listing her with her dual-power, even making note of the fact that it was one of the few known lineages and their strange way of passing the power on through the generations. It seemed as if that particular power had been either in the area or the lineage for almost a thousand years, or rather, there were no earlier mentions. I was suitably impressed by that, while there were rumors, or rather legends, of the existence of Powers and Powered from before the early twentieth century, Isleen and her family were the first that looked substantiated to me. Or it was the other way around that the legends of wise women, interpreting dreams and telling the future, had manifested in the lineage.

It was the one riddle that I truly wanted to solve, the question where powers came from, what made them work and why some people gained certain powers. It was obviously a question that had been studied ever since Powered stepped out of the shadows of myth but nobody had published a working hypothesis yet, at least not one substantiated by evidence. Sure, there were those who claimed that Powered came from their deity of choice, if the Powered was on their side, or from the great evil of their religion if the Powered was not. Or those who claimed that it was, insert race or group here, that had the Powers and all others had stolen their powers from them. I might not know where Powers came from, but I was quite sure that they were wrong.

But, while that question was intriguing, allowing Galatea and me to formulate hypothesis after hypothesis, sometimes just playing with statistics to correlate numbers to create funny graphs, I had other things to worry about. Namely, my upcoming first session with the therapist I had chosen. There were seven therapists on Accord Island that the Guild regularly used and I had decided to chose one of them. Two of them, I had dismissed after looking at their work. Not because the work was bad, I did not know enough to make that judgement, but because of the amount they published. I had no interest to have my case, even as a hypothetical with changed circumstances, discussed in an academic paper. I doubted that it would happen but both discarded options were prolific writers and scientists. But I was not looking to further the body of human knowledge, I was trying to get my head screwed on straight.

Two more were vetoed by Galatea, to my surprise. Her reason was an even bigger surprise, as she put it, “Discard those two, you will not be able to trust a male.” At first, I strongly disagreed that I was biased and prejudiced against males, but Galatea knew me better than I knew myself, quickly showing me that my first reaction with a guy was to be suspicious and sometimes hostile, whereas I was much more approachable with females. Not that I was trusting them implicitly but it seemed to be a far cry from my reaction to males.

That revelation rattled me in ways I had not quite expected, especially after she started showing me the resulting reciprocital hostility. It seemed that my hostile behaviour was picked up, either consciously or subconsciously, by quite a lot of males, making them wary or even hostile in regards to me, which I subconsciously picked up, raising my hackles even further. It was a perfect example of a feedback loop and something else I would have to talk with the therapist about.

After agreeing to Galatea’s decision to eliminate the males, I was left with three females, all apparently competent, all on the Island. I tried looking at the images to see if I was getting some sort of gut-feeling that might allow me to magically pick one, but, other than a knot of anxiety, the only thing in my stomach was a light hunger.

Ultimately, I decided to test all three, to see how good their security was. It was a concern after all. Electronic intrusion fell flat for all three, no matter how I tried, so I was quite certain that their systems were stand-alone, as I was unable to get even a whiff of them. And I tried quite hard.

I considered trying to break in, but ultimately, decided against it. Digging into their backgrounds showed no red flags but that was to be expected, they were vetted by the guild after all.

In the end, I made the decision the easiest way rather than obsessing over it for hours on end: I rolled a die.

And that brought me to today and my appointment with Doctor Theresa Sunters.