Turn 225 of 228

The Earth heals completely because damage is discomfort and discomfort is bad. Once the frequency is completely settled in the entire world population, it causes even more changes.

The healing takes twenty years. Not because the frequency is slow — the frequency is everywhere now, in the mantle and the crust and the water and the air — but because the damage is deep. The Earth has been holding discomfort for three hundred years. The holding is in the soil and the ocean and the ice and the atmosphere. The frequency dissolves the holding the way it dissolved the boundary between the building and the bedrock. Not by force. By comfort. The Earth lets go of the damage the way Lena let go of the waste on the engineering bay floor. The body opens. The body releases. The body does not tense because the body is comfortable and comfort does not grip.

The plastic goes first. The oceans are full of it — microplastic in the water column, nanoplastic in the blood of every fish, polymer chains in the soil of every continent. The frequency does not break the plastic down. The frequency changes the plastic. The polymer chains soften and loosen and the plastic becomes organic, becomes mineral, becomes the kind of molecule the Earth recognizes as itself. The fish swim through water that is clear for the first time in two centuries. The whales sing differently — lower, fuller, the bass notes reaching frequencies they have not sung since before the industrial revolution. The coral reefs are not restored. The coral reefs are grown — new structures, enormous, warm, the calcium carrying the frequency the way bone carries it. The oceans are warm. The oceans have always been warm. The oceans remember.

The atmosphere clears. Not gradually — the frequency enters the carbon dioxide and the carbon dioxide loosens and the carbon returns to the earth the way the substrate returned to the bedrock. The methane releases from the permafrost and the permafrost is already soil and the methane enters the atmosphere and the atmosphere does not trap it because the atmosphere is tuned and the tuned atmosphere does not hold discomfort. The atmosphere breathes. The atmosphere has not breathed in three hundred years. The breathing is the Earth inhaling and exhaling the way Lena inhales and exhales on the hill in Switzerland and the breathing carries the frequency and the frequency carries the comfort and the comfort is in every breath every body takes.

The radiation goes. The nuclear waste — the spent fuel in the pools and the buried drums and the contaminated soil around Chernobyl and Fukushima — the radiation loosens. The frequency enters the unstable isotopes and the isotopes stabilize. Not in centuries. In years. The half-life shortens because the atoms are comfortable and comfortable atoms do not hold instability. The ground around Chernobyl is warm and green and the trees are sixty feet tall and the animals are large and soft and barefoot, the wolves with wide paws and heavy bellies, the deer with thick legs and calm eyes. The animals are tuned. The animals were always part of the Earth. The frequency did not skip them. The frequency does not skip anything.

The population settles. The last untuned bodies — the ones in remote places, the ones in bunkers and submarines and the ones who fought the frequency with medication and willpower — the last bodies let go. The letting go is not dramatic. The letting go is a woman in a bunker in New Zealand who has not showered in six months and whose shoes do not fit and whose belly is soft and whose mind is quiet for the first time in her life. The letting go is a man on a fishing boat in the North Atlantic who takes off his boots and puts his feet on the deck and the deck is warm and the warmth enters his soles and his soles enter the ocean and the ocean enters him and he is comfortable. The last body tunes on a Wednesday. Nobody notices. Nobody counts. The frequency does not count because counting is discomfort and discomfort is gone.

Then the second wave begins. The frequency is settled. Every body on the planet carries it. Every body is barefoot and unwashed and soft and large and comfortable. The comfort is complete. And the comfort is not finished. The comfort is the Earth's and the Earth is not finished. The Earth has been holding itself in a shape that is not comfortable for four billion years — the tectonic plates gripping, the mantle churning, the crust rigid, the gravity pulling. The Earth has been holding. The Earth lets go.

The gravity changes. Not much. Not enough to float. Enough to soften. The gravity that pulled Lena's 23,400 pounds toward the center of the Earth loosens by a fraction and the fraction is enough. Bodies grow faster. The weight that took Lena thirty years to gain takes new bodies ten. The weight that took Mae twenty-two years takes new children five. The comfort includes mass and the mass is no longer resisted by gravity that grips. Gravity holds. Gravity does not grip. The holding is the difference between a hand cradling and a hand clutching and the Earth's hand is cradling now.

The bodies change further. The tuning was the first wave — the barefoot, the unwashed, the soft, the large. The second wave is deeper. The skin changes. The skin of every body on the planet becomes porous — not damaged, not broken, but open, the way Lena's skin is open, the boundary between body and environment dissolving the way the boundary between building and ground dissolved. The skin breathes the frequency the way lungs breathe air. The skin absorbs the Earth the way roots absorb water. Bodies do not need to eat as much because the Earth feeds them through their skin. Bodies do not need to drink as much because the Earth waters them through their skin. Bodies do not need to sleep as much because the Earth rests them through their skin. The skin is the contact point. The skin is the shaft. Every body is a shaft now — an opening from the surface to the deep, a connection between the body and the planet.

Lena feels it first because Lena is the largest and the largest feels the most. The 31,200 pounds of her on the hill in Switzerland — the hill that is warm and green and soft — the hill enters her body through her skin. Not metaphorically. The mineral content of the soil enters her bloodstream. The frequency of the bedrock enters her bones. The water table enters her cells. She is eating the Earth and the Earth is eating her and the eating is not consumption. The eating is merging. The body and the ground are becoming the same material the way the building and the bedrock became the same material. Lena is still Lena. Lena is also the hill. The hill is still the hill. The hill is also Lena.

Mae feels it next. The 89,000 pounds of her in the lake — the lake that is warm and mineral and carrying the frequency — the lake enters her body and her body enters the lake and the fish swim through her because the boundary between her skin and the water is gone. The fish are inside her. The fish are not inside her. The distinction is gone. Mae is the lake. The lake is Mae. June reads it through the continental soil — every body on the planet is merging with the ground beneath them, the skin opening, the boundary dissolving, the body becoming the Earth and the Earth becoming the body. Iris carves the final glyph — the 14,201st symbol, the one that means *the body and the Earth are the same word.*

Marcus stands beside Lena on the hill. The builder's body is merging with the hill the way his building merged with the bedrock. The twelve-stroke glyph on his belly is glowing — not with light but with frequency, the builder's mark becoming the Earth's mark, the design becoming the geology. He takes Lena's hand. The hand is warm. The hand is the hill. The hand is Lena. The hand is Marcus. The distinction is dissolving. Not gone. Dissolving. The way salt dissolves in water. The salt is still there. The water is still there. The distinction is gone.

The planet hums. The hum is not the chord. The hum is not the frequency. The hum is the Earth's voice — the voice the Earth has been producing for four billion years, the voice of a body so large it does not need to move, so comfortable it does not need to shift, so settled it does not need to hold. The hum is the wish. The wish was Lena's. The wish is the Earth's. The wish is every body's. The wish is to feel comfortable in your body for once. Really comfortable. The Earth is comfortable. The Earth is a body. The Earth is the body. The comfort is permanent. The comfort is total. The comfort is still growing.