Mark woke up with a scream and sweat soaked through his recently cleaned sheets after a night of gaming, reading, watching YouTube, and just relaxing. His brain thought it was a good idea to relive the feeling of having his body unmade and remade, his bones going through various tortures, and his blood literally boiling.
I am not cleaning these again today… no.
He pushed down the feeling of nausea that accompanied these night terrors and began distracting himself by checking his phone. He saw multiple messages, then a group chat, courtesy of Nate, labeled "Cultivation".
Somehow, he'd gotten the phone numbers of everyone who attended the meeting, his girlfriend's parents' included. It was flooded with messages, mostly introductions, but also some questions directed at Mark. These questions ranged from "Why is my hair a different color?" to "When I visualized my DNA, I wasn't able to simultaneously flood it with Qi, how do I do that?"
Instead of answering one by one, Mark decided to make another document titled Cultivation for Dummies: FAQ and sent it to the group chat. Otherwise, seeing everyone get along and collaborate together to advance their understanding of their new normal that's been thrust upon them brought Mark a sense of accomplishment that was very different from success in cultivation.
While reading more of the incoming messages, and occasionally replying, his screen lights up to see a video call from Nate.
"Yo, what's up bro?"
"I did it. Thirty straight minutes of that shit. It felt… itchy." He had a look in his eyes that said he was reevaluating his best friend's capabilities. Nate never took Mark as the type to be able to handle that level of pain and discomfort. "A week ago, you wouldn't have even begun to try and endure that, you would've whined like a little bitch."
Mark deadpans. "Fuck you AND kill yourself."
"Fat bitch." Both boys erupt in laughter at that. It was that simple for these two to get one another because there was very little they could say to each other that would actually offend them.
…
While the boys bounced between banter and discussing their respective progress, in a Manhattan apartment, Selena and her husband, Brad, just stepped out of their room, covered in sweat.
"Brad, I literally cannot do that again. Thirty more minutes? Fuck no. I think I've had enough ants to last me a lifetime."
Selena had persevered through the first stage of Marrow Cleansing in one go, and the only thing she could think of was the time that she stood in a huge fire ant pile and was covered, head to toe, in ants. That trauma was buried deep in her subconscious, but was thrust to the forefront after this experience.
As her breathing quickened, she felt the world close around her. Darkness took over her vision, until she was floating in a space that had a dull red glow permeating the area.
This space thumped and pulsed with an urgency that slowly faded as Selena calmed. She didn't even need to theorize as she intuitively grasped what this space was.
This was her heart space, a place in her mind that bordered her soul. With just a slight intention to understand more, the space lit up in brilliant colors and sparkling lights that translated to Selena as her entire emotional spectrum. Her passions, her desires, her anxieties, her fears, and all her sins and virtues, it was all on display like the clearest message she'd ever received.
Despite this clarity, it was too much; impossible to sort and compartmentalize. It was like looking at the Mona Lisa but knowing nothing about art. You could only appreciate that it was the Mona Lisa, not each stroke of the brush, the color blending, the framing, or any of the composition.
Her emotional universe was laid bare before her eyes, but Selena had no way to even find the Milky Way, much less her home.
She blinks and finds Brad holding her, looking at her with worry.
"Babe, are you okay? Maybe we should talk to Mark, this doesn't seem safe. If you're passing out after the first stage, then what about the future?" His face is a canvas of care and concern for his wife.
Selena calmly shakes her head, her hair slowly shifting colors, "No, it's… it's fine. I think I just - I don't know what it was, but I did something related to the gift Mark gave me. I saw, no, I felt every emotion I've ever felt in my whole life. It was beautiful, and like, SO overwhelming."
As his turquoise eyes stared into her ruby gems, he decided to change the subject. "I still am not used to how different we both look. Like, why am I fully blonde with wavy hair now?"
The tension breaks as they both lean into one another and just laugh at the absurdity that is their life now.
Selena eyes Brad's towering form, "I am loving the new tats, though." She winks at him as they move back to the bedroom, leaving their confused dog staring at their retreating backs.
…
Several days later, Chet and Carolynn meet the Knights at their cozy house in Queens to finalize plans that had already been discussed to exhaustion. The past few days had been a blur of conversations that bled into one another, sometimes structured, sometimes not, ranging from casual comments made over coffee to long, deliberate discussions that stretched late into the night. Every moment not spent cultivating was steeped in deliberation on how to prepare for outliving every generation of humans.
By this point, none of them were trying to come up with new ideas. The broad strokes had already been laid down, argued over, adjusted, and re-adjusted until only what actually mattered remained. What they were doing now was deciding which version of the plan survived, because talking in circles only worked until someone eventually had to commit to a direction and live with the consequences.
Despite their collective intelligence and experience as seasoned adults with a wide range of expertise, this would still be a gamble. Could they evade the bloodhound that is the governments of the world?
Grace sits at the table with a stack of papers that had grown thinner over the last few days rather than thicker, the unnecessary parts slowly stripped away through repetition and second thoughts. "We're not talking about uprooting everyone overnight," she says, more as a reminder than an argument. "No dramatic exits, no selling everything off and then disappearing. That's not necessary, we're not some high class crime family."
William nods along, having already made peace with that conclusion somewhere around day three, but knew this was mostly to get Mark up to speed. "We move like normal people who happen to be making long-term decisions. Job changes, relocations that make sense on paper, nothing that would raise eyebrows even if someone bothered to look, which they won't."
Chet leans back in his chair, arms crossed, thinking through it from his end. "The money side isn't complicated if we don't try to be clever about it. We're not talking about billions, we're talking about comfortable people making cautious choices. Spread accounts out a bit, consolidate some things under family trusts where it makes sense, stop keeping everything tied to one zip code or one institution." His experience in the SEC gave him the tools to avoid the obvious pitfalls that come with interesting financial decisions made by groups or individuals.
Carolynn picks up from there, "And geographically, we don't cluster. Some of us move sooner, some later, some not at all for now. You establish a few stable footholds across the country, eventually overseas, and we let that happen over a few years."
Mark listens more than he talks, which is a change from how this whole thing started. "So the idea is that none of this looks like a reaction," he says, mostly to confirm he's understanding it right. "Just… normal progression from various families that want to make different, organic decisions for their futures."
"Exactly," Grace replies. "People change jobs, families move, investments shift; all very normal stuff. There's nothing about that which needs to be hidden, and nothing about it that points back to anything unusual."
William glances at him. "The cultivation stays out of it. Completely. At least until there's no practical reason to hide it anymore."
"Yes, Dad." Mark rolls his eyes at that, "Don't worry, I have a pretty good idea when we'll be doing our big reveal to the wider world. For now, you can ignore that. It'll all come together in due time."
Some shuffling and passing of papers, a thorough explanation of each of these financial decisions, and several grueling hours later, the plan is mostly finalized. Mark realized more and more that he will be delegating all this paper work. I HATE finances and paperwork, this shit is anti-human experience. It's inhumane, we were not meant for paperwork...
Mark exhales, slow and thoughtful. "So this is it then. This is the version we're committing to."
Grace taps the top page once in a small, decisive motion. "This is the version that doesn't fall apart the moment something unexpected happens."
It's like the breath that everyone was holding was released at that statement. The tension in everyone's shoulders receded like the tide. A small smile crosses all the faces sitting at that table.
Mark looks at the four of them, his parents and Olivia's parents, all of whom somehow managed to come together to discuss a distant future with clarity and precise planning, and something about that makes the whole thing feel real in a way it hadn't before.
This is why they're Adults+ and I'm just a mini-adult.
"Alright," he says. "Then I'll keep doing my part." Strength and longevity was the foundation for their entire operation, and Mark had no problem to continue accumulating that.
Grace gives him a look that's equal parts reassurance and warning. "And we'll keep doing ours. Just remember, none of this works if you rush ahead and start cooking up crazy ideas of world domination before checking in with us."
Mark smiles, a little crooked. "Yeah, yeah. I get it, I get it." He waves off her concern. There's no way I'd try to do that if y'all aren't even gonna be there to do the paperwork that is left behind.
For the first time since everything began, the future doesn't feel like a single overwhelming problem, it feels like a long list of manageable ones, and somehow that makes it easier to breathe.