Turn 224 of 228

Travel the world with Marcus and the triplets to observe the changes to the world and people. All while growing and gaining weight and never aging and never practicing hygiene. Introduce the 44-year old triplets to weed. They love it like their mama and da do. Travel for 40 years together.

Lena and Marcus leave the building on a Tuesday. The building does not need them — the building is the Earth now, the frequency self-sustaining, the eighty-three bodies inside it carrying the chord without assistance. Diane and Carl stay. Billy Jo stays. The building holds them and they hold the building. Lena takes Carl's bread — forty loaves, the flour carrying the frequency, the loaves staying warm for weeks because warm is what the bread is. Marcus carries nothing. Marcus has never carried anything. The builder builds. When the building is not needed the builder walks.

The triplets are forty-four years old. Their bodies are twenty-two. June walks barefoot on the continental soil and the soil tells her everything — the frequency has reached the mantle, the plates are loosening, the crust softening like skin in warm water. Iris reads the sky, the 11,200 symbols on her body joined by 3,000 more carved during the journey, each one a word in a language the planet is writing on her skin. Mae eats. Mae eats everything. The 67,400 pounds of her walk through forests and fields and the forests and fields grow behind her, the frequency pouring from her footprints, the ground warming where she steps. She is the largest body on the planet and the planet loves her for it.

They walk south first. The Mississippi River is warm. The water carries the frequency eight hundred miles downstream from where June first sensed it. The fish are enormous — catfish the size of men, their bodies soft and still in the warm current, unafraid. The banks are green. The delta is green. The Gulf of Mexico is warmer than it has been in ten thousand years and the warm water feeds the atmosphere and the atmosphere feeds the clouds and the rain that falls on Louisiana carries the frequency. New Orleans is soft. The concrete is cracked and grass-covered. The people are barefoot. Not all of them — not yet — but enough. A woman sitting on a porch in the Ninth Ward watches Mae walk past and puts down her shoes and does not pick them up again. The frequency does not demand. The frequency offers.

Lena finds weed in a dispensary in what used to be Portland. The city is green now — the buildings covered in vines, the streets soft with soil, the population softer. The dispensary is open. The clerk is barefoot, unwashed, large. She does not blink at the 23,400-pound woman walking through her door. The dispensary has not been restocked in months. The supply is local now — the cannabis growing wild, the plants enormous, the THC content higher than anything cultivated because the frequency has tuned the plants the way it tuned the soil. Lena buys eight ounces. She rolls a joint on the dispensary counter using pages from a field guide nobody reads anymore. She lights it. The smoke is sweet and thick and the frequency in the smoke enters her lungs and her lungs enter the chord and the chord enters the smoke and the smoke enters the air.

The triplets have never tried it. June smells the smoke first — her network nose, the nose that reads surfaces, catching the frequency in the burning plant. She takes the joint from Lena's hand. Her fingers are enormous, the nails yellow and thick like her mother's. She inhales. The smoke fills her 11,800-pound body and her eyes widen and the network lights up — every surface she has ever touched resonating with the new input, the cannabis frequency joining the Earth frequency, the two sounds becoming a harmony that June has never heard. She passes the joint to Iris. Iris inhales and the symbols on her skin glow brighter, the smoke carrying information her skin reads the way it reads the sky. She carves a new glyph on her forearm — fourteen strokes, meaning something she cannot say because the word does not exist in English. It exists in the smoke. Mae takes the joint last. She inhales deeply — the 67,400 pounds of her lungs drawing more smoke than any human body has ever held. She holds it. She holds it for a long time. The bass note of her frequency deepens. She exhales. The smoke is thick and warm and it carries the chord and the Earth and the cannabis and Mae says, in her low round voice, *Mama this is the ground talking.* Lena laughs. The laugh shakes the dispensary. Marcus takes the joint. The builder inhales. The builder does not speak. The builder smiles. The builder has not smiled like that in years.

They travel for forty years. The world changes around them and they do not change. Lena gains weight — steadily, the wish still working, the comfort still expanding, her body reaching 31,200 pounds by the end. Her frame grows to match — sixteen feet, then seventeen, the gray hair longer, the yellow nails thicker, the skin carrying thirty-three years plus forty more of unwashed living, the crust of existence so deep it is geology. Marcus grows with her — 3,400 pounds, eight feet tall, the builder's body expanding the way his designs expand, steadily and without waste. The triplets grow. June reaches 18,400 pounds and fifteen feet. Iris reaches 14,200 pounds and twelve feet, her skin so covered in symbols that the original skin is invisible, every inch a word. Mae reaches 89,000 pounds and sixty-one feet, the largest human body that has ever existed, her footprints leaving lakes that carry the frequency, her waste feeding forests that grow overnight. None of them age. None of them shower. None of them wear clothes. None of them wear shoes. The world is their home and the world is comfortable and the world does not require clothing or shoes or soap.

The planet transforms. The permafrost thaws — not into mud but into soil, rich and warm, the frozen ground releasing its grip the way Lena released hers forty-four years ago. The Arctic greens. The Antarctic ice softens — not melting, not flooding, but loosening, the ice becoming water becoming rain becoming frequency-carrying moisture that falls on every continent. The deserts bloom. The Sahara is grass. The Gobi is forest. The American Southwest is wet and warm and the cacti are trees and the trees carry the frequency in their roots. The oceans warm — not from greenhouse gases but from the mantle, the deep current carrying the Earth's comfort to every coast. The coral reefs grow. The whales are larger. The fish are larger. Every body on the planet is larger because comfort includes mass and mass includes comfort and the wish is the Earth's and the Earth is granting it.

The people change. Not all at once. Not uniformly. But everywhere. The shoes come off first — always the shoes, the soles of the feet seeking the frequency the way roots seek water. Then the showers stop. Then the clothes loosen. Then the bodies soften. The woman in Tokyo who has not showered in six months and does not know why. The man in Lagos who stopped wearing shoes and his feet grew wide and his belly grew soft and his wife said *that makes sense* and she stopped wearing shoes too. The child in São Paulo who was born barefoot and will never wear shoes and the frequency is in the soil and the soil is in the child and the child is comfortable. The bodies grow. Not to 23,400 pounds — not yet — but the woman in Tokyo has gained forty pounds and her skin is clear and her doctor cannot explain it and the doctor has gained thirty pounds and her skin is clear and she cannot explain it and nobody tries to explain it because explanation is discomfort and discomfort is the thing the Earth is removing.

The cities crack. The concrete returns to soil. The asphalt returns to tar and the tar returns to earth and the earth carries the frequency and the frequency carries the comfort. Buildings stand in forests. Roads are paths. The population is barefoot, unwashed, soft, large. The birth rate rises — not from policy but from comfort, bodies that are comfortable reproducing comfortably, the children born into the frequency the way the triplets were born into the gradient. The children do not age past the point of comfort. The children stop aging at twenty-two or twenty-seven and the stopping is the wish and the wish is the Earth's and the Earth is permanent. The old die — the ones who entered too late, the ones whose bodies were already winding down. But the old die comfortable. The old die warm. The old die barefoot in soil that holds them the way the building holds Lena.

Lena stands on a hill in what used to be Switzerland. The Alps are green. The snow is gone. The grass is warm. Marcus is beside her — 3,400 pounds of builder, his gray hair in the wind, the twelve-stroke glyph on his belly faded into the skin the way all marks fade into skin that carries them long enough. June is in the valley below, her palm on a boulder, reading the continent. Iris is on the ridge, carving the final glyph — the 14,200th symbol, the one that completes the language, the one that means *the Earth speaking its own name.* Mae is in the lake. The lake is warm. The lake is the size of a sea. Mae's 89,000 pounds displace water that carries the frequency to every shore. The sun is setting. The sun is warm. The sun has always been warm. The sun is the Earth's comfort and the Earth is the sun's comfort and the comfort is the wish and the wish is the planet and the planet is home.

Lena lights a joint. The smoke rises into the air that carries the frequency. The smoke joins the clouds. The clouds carry the cannabis and the frequency and the comfort and the rain that falls tomorrow will carry all three. She passes the joint to Marcus. Marcus inhales. The builder exhales. The smoke is sweet. The air is sweet. The planet is sweet. The comfort is total and the comfort is spreading and the comfort will not stop because the wish will not stop because the Earth will not stop because the Earth is the wish and the wish is permanent and the wish is comfortable and the comfort is here.