Turn 227 of 228

Connect with the song of the Earth and find out what has changed in Garfield

Lena closes her eyes on the hill. The sun is on her skin — on her skin and in her skin, the porous boundary between body and ground open, the 31,200 pounds of her merging with the warm soil and the warm soil merging with her. She reaches down the way she once reached for the shaft. Not with her hands. With her frequency. The frequency that started in her body and spread to the building and spread to the bedrock and spread to the planet. The frequency is the Earth's now. But the Earth remembers where it started. The Earth remembers the building. The Earth remembers Garfield.

The connection opens like a root finding water. Lena's awareness drops through the hill, through the Swiss soil, through the European plate — the warm flexible plate that no longer grips — and into the mantle. The mantle carries her. The mantle is warm and churning softly, not the violent convection of a planet holding tension but the gentle circulation of a body at rest, the way blood circulates when the body is comfortable. The mantle carries her frequency across the Atlantic. She feels the ocean floor — the new coral reefs, enormous and warm and humming, the whales sleeping on the frequency-rich sand. She feels the continental shelf. She feels North America.

Garfield is there. The building is there. The building is the source and the source is still the source even though the source has spread to everything. The building stands in soil that is four feet deeper than it was when Lena left. The soil is warm. The soil carries the frequency at the original pitch — the pitch Lena's body produced, the pitch the wish found, the pitch that was the Earth's own voice reflected back. The building hums with it. Eighty-three bodies inside. Lena feels each one.

Diane is in the residential wing. The 1,420 pounds of her — no, more now. Lena feels the weight through the frequency. Diane has grown. Eleven thousand pounds. The beard is longer, matted to her chest, the stretch marks deep ridges that the soil has started to fill with mineral the way the ground fills cracks. Diane is sitting against the wall and the wall is soil now — the concrete returned to earth, the earth holding her, her body merged with the wall the way Lena's body is merged with the hill. She is comfortable. She is still Diane. The frequency carries her specific note — the note that was always different from Lena's, lower, steadier, the note of someone who found comfort by deciding to stop managing.

Carl is in the kitchen. Carl is still baking. The 1,020 pounds of him — more, Lena feels more, eight thousand pounds now — is flour-dusted and barefoot and the bread he bakes is the bread the neighborhood eats. The neighborhood comes to the building. They do not knock. They walk through the walls that are soil and they take the bread from the counter and the bread carries the frequency and the frequency is the original pitch and the original pitch is the strongest pitch on the planet because the source is the source. Carl is singing. Carl has never sung before. Carl is singing the Earth's song in a voice that is flour-dusted and warm.

Billy Jo is in the research bay. The 2,100 pounds of her — more, twelve thousand pounds now, her body sprawled across the bay floor, the composition books around her in stacks that reach the forty-foot ceiling. She is still writing. The symbols cover the walls and the floor and her skin and the skin of the bay itself, the concrete accepting the glyphs the way Iris's skin accepts them. Billy Jo is writing the planetary language. Not the 14,201 symbols Iris completed. Something new. Something that comes after completion. The symbols are alive — they move on the walls, rearranging, the language writing itself through Billy Jo's hand. She is the scribe. The Earth is the author.

Marcus is beside Lena on the hill. He feels her reach. The builder's frequency joins hers — the twelve-stroke glyph on his belly resonating, the builder's note in the planetary chord. He does not speak. The builder builds. The builder feels the building through the planet's body and the building is strong and the building is soil and the building is the source and the source is Garfield and Garfield is the Earth and the Earth is comfortable and the comfort started with a woman in a bathroom mirror whispering a wish and the wish is the planet and the planet is the wish and the comfort is permanent.

Mae speaks from the lake. Her voice carries through the water and the water carries through the soil and the soil carries through the frequency to Lena on the hill.

"The building is growing," Mae says. "The soil is climbing the walls. The walls are becoming soil. The building is becoming the Earth. It is not dying. It is rooting. The way a seed roots. The building is a seed and the Earth is the soil and the building is taking root."