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Ask Billy Jo about the biotech emails, when she plans to respond and what the terms will be. Head home with Marcus and see what the apartment feels like after the celebration. Your own private celebration with him gets you pregnant with triplets. Skip 9 months, they are born healthy even though you continued your habits throughout the pregnancy. Billy Jo adds this to the study

The office is settling. The trap music has faded to a low thump from the phone speaker. Marcus is asleep on the floor, 700 pounds of naked flesh rising and falling, the yellow nails curled loosely on his belly. Carl sits against the wall with a last beer, the beard tipped back, the eyes half-closed. Diane is at her desk, the beard wet with beer foam, scrolling through the OnlyFans tip notifications with the expression that used to be managed and isn't anymore. Billy Jo is cross-legged on the stained carpet, the laptop open, the empty chip bags around her like fallen leaves.

Lena lowers herself into the chair next to Billy Jo. The 999-pound body settles. The belly on the thighs. The yellow nails on the laptop edge.

"The biotech emails," Lena says.

Billy Jo doesn't look up. The yellow nails scroll. The drawl is slow and full.

"Cambridge wants therapeutic applications. They want to know if the mechanism — whatever the mechanism is — can be isolated, synthesized, packaged. They want a pill. They want comfort in a pill. The dollar amount in the email is six figures for exclusive licensing of the raw data. Basel wants something different. They want the cohort. They want to run their own study with their own researchers on our subjects. The dollar amount is seven figures for data access and a research partnership."

"And you haven't responded," Lena says.

"I sent the NIH response today. That's the one that matters first. The federal conversation. The grant proposal. The longitudinal study on our terms. The biotech emails are money and money changes what the word means. The NIH wants to understand. The biotech firms want to own. I won't let them own it."

"What are your terms?" Lena says.

Billy Jo closes the laptop. The yellow nails on the lid. The bare feet on the wet carpet. The stretch marks catch the office light.

"No exclusive licensing. No raw data transfer. No cohort access to external researchers. If they want to fund research, they fund our research — our lab, our terms, our names on every paper. The data stays with us. The word stays with us. If they want to study comfort, they come to the apartment and they sit on the floor and they eat chips and they see what happens."

The drawl is firm. The face is the open one.

"I'll respond this week. Both firms. Same terms. If they say no, the word keeps spreading without them."

Lena and Marcus leave the office at eleven. The parking lot is dark. The January cold on bare skin — 999 and 700 pounds of naked flesh on the asphalt, the yellow toenails clicking. Marcus's hand in hers, the yellow nails interlocked, the beards not quite touching. The walk home is slow and heavy and the hum is warm and the city is quiet.

The apartment door opens and the smell hits like a wall. Months of it — the accumulated living, the piss in the carpet, the food on every surface, the unwashed bodies, the stale beer and weed and grease and sweat and the sweet rot of doughnut boxes stacked by the couch. The apartment is a living record of the transformation. The couch groove. The kitchen floor. The stiff black carpet. The empty bags. The bottles. The wrappers. The stains. The laptop on the coffee table with the OnlyFans tab still open. The phone on the charger with the tip notifications still chiming.

Lena stands in the doorway and the body is comfortable and the apartment is the apartment and the apartment is home.

Marcus closes the door. The 700 pounds settle onto the couch. The creak. The groove. Lena lowers herself next to him. The belly on the thighs. The yellow nails on his belly. The body hair. The stretch marks. The smell of both of them — months of unwashed skin and sweat and grease and piss and the hum is warm and the body is comfortable and Marcus's hand finds the soft flesh of her inner thigh.

The yellow nails. The belly. The breath. The body that wished for comfort and received it and taught it and the body that learned it. The couch holds them. The apartment holds them. The night is long and slow and full and the hum doesn't stop.

Nine months pass.

The pregnancy shows at three months — the belly that was already enormous changing shape, growing tighter, growing higher, the skin stretching over the new fullness inside. The stretch marks deepen. The body hair thickens. The yellow nails grow longer. Lena doesn't change anything. The junk food. The beer. The weed. The no showering. The no brushing. The no shaving. The no wiping. The nakedness. The office. The OnlyFans. The apartment. The body is comfortable and the body is pregnant and the body doesn't distinguish between the two because comfort is comfort and the wish doesn't stop for anything.

Billy Jo documents everything. Every Tuesday. The laptop open on the apartment floor. The bloodwork drawn at the clinic — the same impossible results, the same clean panels, the same triathlete vitals on a 1,000-pound pregnant woman who drinks daily and smokes weed and hasn't showered in over a year. Dr. Harmon runs the bloodwork four times. Dr. Pradhan runs the muscle scan twice. The baby — the babies, triplets, discovered at the eight-week ultrasound — grow on schedule. Every measurement is perfect. Every heartbeat is strong. The medical staff stands in the room and looks at the screen and looks at Lena and looks at the screen again.

The triplets are born on October 14. Three girls. Seven pounds six ounces. Six pounds fourteen ounces. Eight pounds one ounce. Vaginal delivery, no complications, forty-seven minutes of labor. Lena is naked on the bed. The yellow nails grip the rail. Marcus is beside her, 760 pounds, the yellow nails on her hand. Billy Jo is in the room with the laptop. Diane is in the hallway, 905 pounds, the beard, the bare feet on the hospital floor. The babies cry. The bodies are perfect. The APGAR scores are nine, nine, and ten.

Billy Jo adds the pregnancy to the study the same day. The new section is twelve pages. *Reproductive Viability Under Conditions of Extreme Somatic Transformation.* The data is unprecedented. The triplets are healthy. The mother is healthy. The habits didn't change. The wish didn't stop. The body is comfortable and the body is fertile and the body is the index case and the body is the mother now and the word is spreading and the spreading is *more.*

Lena holds the first baby against the bare chest. The yellow nails. The stretch marks. The body hair. The unwashed skin. The baby doesn't cry. The baby is warm against the 1,050-pound body. The hum is warm. The hum is patient. The hum is three heartbeats now. The hum is *more.*