4338.208 · July 27, 2018 AD
The Arithmetic of Growth
The tent peg won't go in. Karen pushes harder, and something gives—not the way dirt gives, but the way a secret does. Chris is already digging before she can stop him, fingers in the dust, eyes bright with that look she knows too well. The look that means he's found something. In a place where nothing grows, where silence sits heavier than heat, they're about to learn that Bixbus has been holding its breath. And now it's exhaling.
It starts with a stuck tent peg and ends with green shoots trembling in red dust.
Karen doesn't expect to find anything beneath the brittle crust of Bixbus—just more of the same barren silence that's greeted them since arrival. But when Chris breaks through, what lies beneath is alive. Soil. Dark and rich and impossibly responsive. Seeds spill from Karen's pocket like an accident, and within seconds, coriander sprouts push upward as though summoned.
Glenda watches with wonder. Chris wants to chase the discovery to the river's edge. Even Jamie, skeptical to his bones, can't deny what he sees. Hope blooms fast in this place—faster than anyone expected.
But Karen can't shake the weight beneath the wonder. She's spent a lifetime studying the balance of living systems, the brutal arithmetic of survival. Nothing grows without drawing from something else. No ecosystem gives freely.
So while the others celebrate, Karen holds her questions close. What feeds this soil? What will it ask in return?
And when Chris walks off toward the horizon, tent peg in hand, she stays behind—because someone has to hold up the canvas while the miracle takes root.
