The next morning, Jules discovered that gardening was considerably more expensive than the people on TutuBe made it look.
Not because seeds were expensive. Seeds were surprisingly cheap. It was everything else that came with growing them.
She had spent nearly two hours the previous night watching tutorials, and every time she thought she had a complete list, another instructor mentioned something she hadn't considered. Garden forks, hoes, rakes, shovels, pruning shears, seed trays, watering cans, and wheelbarrows had all found their way onto her shopping list.
One woman insisted that a soil-testing kit was essential. Another recommended compost, while a third spent twenty minutes explaining why beginners shouldn't plant everything at once. Jules had watched that particular video twice, mainly because she had already purchased enough seeds to plant a small farm and was beginning to suspect she'd gotten ahead of herself.
Now she stood in the kitchen with her laptop open, comparing gardening supplies while waiting for the pancakes to finish cooking. She had one hand on the spatula and the other on the trackpad when a voice sounded behind her.
"Are we opening a farm?"
Jules glanced over her shoulder to find Jorin standing in the doorway, still wearing his pajamas. His hair was flattened on one side, and he looked as though he'd only recently remembered how to open his eyes.
"Good morning to you, too."
He wandered closer and leaned over her shoulder to examine the screen. "Why do you need twelve shovels?"
"Because I might need twelve shovels."
"Are you planning to grow vegetables or bury someone?"
"Depends on whether you keep asking questions."
Jorin grinned just as Daric entered the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. He headed straight for the refrigerator before acknowledging either of them.
"What are we talking about?" Daric asked.
"Jules is buying enough gardening equipment to start a small country."
Daric paused with the refrigerator door open. "Can I name it?"
"No," Jules answered.
"Too late. I'm calling it Shoveland."
"That's terrible," Jorin said.
"You're terrible."
Jules flipped another pancake and pointed toward the cabinets with her spatula. "Both of you, set the table. And if either of you names my garden Shoveland, you're helping me dig it."
The brothers exchanged a look before reluctantly collecting the plates. Their complaints continued as they worked, although Jules noticed that neither had actually refused.
By the time the rest of the family came downstairs, breakfast was ready. Jules had made pancakes, scrambled eggs, and sausage, along with sliced fruit for Amira and Kaelith. She'd also prepared sandwiches for lunch, intending to place them in dimensional storage until everyone was ready to eat. It was easier than trying to coordinate nine different appetites throughout the day.
Kaelen arrived carrying his tablet and took his usual seat at the table.
"Before anyone disappears today," he began, "we need to discuss the next round of deliveries."
Daric immediately reached for his phone, while Jorin opened the inventory spreadsheet on his tablet.
Jules looked between them. "You two bring that everywhere now?"
"It's called being responsible," Daric replied.
"You were arguing over cereal five minutes ago."
"Responsible people eat cereal."
Kaelen waited until everyone had settled before continuing. "The first shipment of water tanks arrives tomorrow morning. The purification equipment is scheduled separately for Friday."
"Which warehouse?" Jorin asked, already preparing to enter the information.
"The second one. Lira wants the tanks inspected before they're moved into storage."
Jorin nodded and asked for the capacity specifications. Kaelen read them from the purchase order, giving him time to record the details before moving on.
"The generator supplier also confirmed the first delivery for Thursday. The larger industrial units will take longer."
"How much longer?" Jules asked.
"Next week, assuming there are no shipping delays."
She frowned, remembering the suffocating heat that had followed one of the later disasters. "We need more than generators. Industrial air conditioners, portable units, replacement filters, insulation materials, and cooling systems that can operate independently if something fails."
"Already being priced," Kaelen assured her.
"And spare parts."
"On the list."
"And—"
"Jules." Her father lowered his tablet and gave her a patient smile. "I promise we haven't forgotten that you want us prepared for extreme heat."
Serina looked up from cutting Kaelith's pancakes. "How extreme are we talking?"
Jules hesitated, searching for an explanation that wouldn't require describing everything she remembered. "Bad enough that people won't be able to spend much time outside. Heatstroke, dehydration, exhaustion. People will get sick because they can't cool down properly."
Serina's expression grew thoughtful. "Then cooling equipment alone won't be enough. We'll need to account for ventilation, water consumption, and what happens if someone develops heat illness. I'll add it to the medical preparations."
Kaelen returned to his tablet. "There's another issue. Storage space."
Daric looked up. "We still have room."
"For the deliveries arriving this week," Kaelen clarified. "Not everything that's coming afterward."
"What else is coming?" Amira asked.
"Clothing, furniture, bedding, and more equipment."
"Furniture?" Tavian repeated.
"Beds," Jules said, setting down her fork. "We should buy beds. Lots of them."
Jorin blinked. "Are we opening a hotel now?"
"Not just regular beds. Bunk beds, folding beds, cots, air mattresses, mattresses, blankets, pillows, sheets. Everything people would need to sleep comfortably."
"Why?" Daric asked. "People can sleep on the floor."
"For a night or two," Serina replied. "Not indefinitely, especially if they're injured or elderly."
Jules nodded. "And after the flooding, a lot of mattresses will be ruined. Wet, moldy, infested. People won't be able to walk into a furniture store and buy replacements."
As she spoke, images from her previous lives surfaced without warning. She remembered flooded apartments with mattresses floating against walls, their fabric swollen with filthy water. She remembered the smell of sewage and rotting furniture, and a group of survivors arguing over three dry mattresses salvaged from an abandoned building.
Three mattresses for more than twenty people.
She pushed the memory aside before anyone noticed her expression.
"Let's add it," Kaelen said, bringing her attention back to the table.
Daric was already typing. "How many?"
"We'll calculate quantities after determining the storage requirements. I don't want hundreds of mattresses arriving without somewhere to put them." Kaelen made another note. "I'll have Adrian contact the property manager about an additional facility. He can handle the paperwork once we find something suitable."
Jules nodded, then remembered another item she'd nearly overlooked.
"Boats."
Daric stopped typing. Jorin slowly raised his head.
"I'm sorry," Jorin said. "Did you say boats?"
"Yes."
"As in actual boats?"
"No, Jorin. Imaginary boats."
He pointed his fork at her. "See, that's why nobody likes asking you questions."
"Children," Serina warned, although the corner of her mouth twitched.
Jules leaned forward. "We need proper boats, not just inflatable rafts. Something sturdy enough to carry people and supplies through flooded areas."
Kaelen regarded her thoughtfully. "What kind?"
"Utility boats, preferably with enclosed cabins. And something smaller for emergencies. We'll need repair equipment, too, and life jackets."
"Where are we supposed to keep them?" Daric asked.
"That's what the additional facility is for," Kaelen replied.
Jorin looked from his father to his sister. "Dad, we're going to need a parking lot the size of a shopping mall."
"We're working on it."
Jules smiled faintly and returned to her breakfast. A few days earlier, she would have been trying to locate boat dealers herself, compare specifications, arrange transportation, and figure out where to store everything. Now her father was already considering those problems.
It was becoming easier to let him handle things, although she still had to resist the occasional urge to take his tablet and check the list herself.
By ten o'clock, Jules was standing in a gardening supply store, staring at a wall of shovels.
There were pointed shovels, square shovels, trenching shovels, and several tools she couldn't identify without reading their labels. She picked up a garden fork, examined the tines, and put it down before reaching for another.
Why were there so many?
A store employee approached while she was comparing two nearly identical tools.
"Can I help you find something?"
"Probably," Jules admitted.
He smiled. "What are you working on?"
"A vegetable garden."
"How large?"
Jules hesitated. She had plenty of land inside her dimension, more than she knew how to use, but telling a stranger that wasn't an option.
"I want to start small and expand."
"Good idea. What are you growing?"
"Tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, lettuce, beans, corn, peppers. Maybe cucumbers."
"That's quite a variety."
"Is that bad?"
"Not necessarily, but different crops have different requirements. You'll want to plan your planting areas before you start."
He spent the next twenty minutes helping her select basic tools, explaining which ones were useful for preparing soil and which could wait until she had more experience. Jules listened carefully, occasionally asking questions that probably made it obvious she'd learned almost everything she knew from videos.
She purchased several of each essential tool, along with gloves, watering cans, seed trays, stakes, twine, and a wheelbarrow. She also bought additional seeds, despite having promised herself she wouldn't.
The cashier glanced at the total before looking at Jules.
Jules paid without commenting.
Outside, she loaded the smaller purchases into her vehicle and arranged delivery for the larger items. She had learned from her father's complaints about the warehouses that there was no reason to create unnecessary problems by trying to transport everything herself.
On the drive home, she stopped at another store for notebooks, measuring tape, and several gardening books. She also bought lunch after realizing she hadn't eaten anything since breakfast.
Across Clearwater, Daric and Jorin were discovering that professional inventory management involved considerably more paperwork than either of them had expected.
"Why are there six different numbers for the same shipment?" Daric asked, staring at the document in front of him.
Lira Ren leaned over his shoulder. "Purchase-order number, invoice number, shipment reference, receiving record, supplier identification, and internal inventory code."
"That's excessive."
"Until something goes missing."
Jorin looked up from the next desk. "Or until the supplier sends forty-eight units instead of eighty-four."
Daric narrowed his eyes. "Did that happen?"
"Not yet."
"Then why did you say it like that?"
"Because I wanted to see your face."
Lira shook her head and returned to the stack of receiving documents.
They had spent the morning checking a shipment of sealed storage containers and receiving components for the industrial shelving. The brothers had divided the work between them: Daric handled physical receiving and location assignments, while Jorin reconciled invoices and updated the inventory records.
Neither role was permanent. Lira had insisted they learn both, explaining that a reliable system couldn't depend entirely on one person being available.
Now Daric was comparing a supplier's packing list against the actual shipment while Jorin reviewed the delivery schedule.
"Water tanks tomorrow," Jorin said.
"I know."
"Generators Thursday."
"I know."
"Purification equipment Friday."
"Jorin."
"What?"
"I can read the schedule."
"Then why did you ask me where the tanks were going?"
"Because I wanted to make sure you knew."
Lira glanced between them. "Do you always communicate like this?"
"Yes," they answered together.
She sighed. "Wonderful."
Her phone vibrated with a message from Kaelen requesting an updated storage-capacity estimate before the afternoon.
"Your father wants to know how much space we'll have available after the next deliveries," she told them.
Daric leaned back in his chair. "Let me guess. More supplies?"
"Furniture and bedding, apparently."
Jorin laughed. "Of course."
"And possibly watercraft."
Both brothers stopped what they were doing.
"Actual boats?" Daric asked.
"Apparently."
Jorin covered his mouth, and Daric slowly shook his head.
Lira frowned. "What's funny?"
"Nothing," Jorin managed.
"Absolutely nothing," Daric agreed, before both brothers started laughing.
Lira looked at the spreadsheets spread across the desks and decided she didn't particularly need an explanation.
Selina waited until she was certain Jules had left the house before closing her bedroom door.
Tavian was already sitting cross-legged on the floor, eating chips from a bag he'd brought upstairs. He had arrived several minutes after their agreed time, which Selina considered another example of his complete inability to take anything seriously.
"You're late," she told him.
"I live across the hallway."
"And somehow you're still late."
He held out the chips as a peace offering. Selina took a handful before turning her attention to the notebook on her desk.
Its pages were filled with sketches of cartoon characters wearing oversized backpacks, a badly drawn zombie, and a little stick figure holding a flashlight. She'd been experimenting with different designs, trying to create something simple enough to animate without spending weeks on every scene.
Tavian picked up the notebook and studied the zombie.
"Why does it look like Uncle Adrian?"
"It does not."
"It has his hair."
"Adrian doesn't have green skin."
"Not yet."
Selina snatched the notebook away. "Can you be serious for five minutes?"
"Probably not."
She turned her laptop toward him. On the screen, a rough animation showed a cartoon girl standing in the middle of a bedroom surrounded by clothes, snacks, and emergency supplies. Above her head, a title appeared:
SO YOU WANT TO SURVIVE THE APOCALYPSE?
Tavian leaned closer, watching as the character attempted to stuff another can into an already overflowing backpack.
"Okay," he admitted. "That's actually pretty good."
Selina tried not to smile. "I was thinking of making a series."
"About what?"
"Survival stuff, but funny."
"Like Dad's meetings?"
"Sort of." She clicked to the next frame, where the cartoon girl held up a backpack almost twice her size. "Episode one could be about emergency bags. Everyone always says to prepare one, but nobody explains what happens when you pack so much stuff you can't lift it."
Tavian laughed. "That's literally Amira."
"Exactly."
"Are you going to use her?"
"No. I'm making original characters."
"Good. She'd sue you."
Selina rolled her eyes, but she was pleased he understood what she was trying to do.
The idea had started forming during the family's first survival-planning meeting. At first, she'd treated it as a joke. Then she'd begun watching emergency-preparedness videos and noticed how many were either painfully boring or filled with people shouting about disasters.
She wanted something different. Something entertaining enough that people would keep watching long enough to learn something useful.
"Are you going to tell everyone?" Tavian asked.
"No."
"Why?"
"Because they'll make it a whole thing."
"They'll probably just ask questions."
"Exactly. A whole thing."
Tavian considered that while reaching for another chip. "So it's a secret project."
"Yes."
"Do I get a code name?"
"No."
"I'm choosing one anyway."
"Please don't."
"Captain Disaster."
Selina stared at him. "Absolutely not."
"Too late."
She pushed the chip bag away from him and opened a blank audio track. "Fine. Captain Disaster can help me record the voices."
Tavian grinned. "Now we're talking."
She pointed to a line in her script. "Read this."
He leaned forward and cleared his throat dramatically.
"Congratulations! You've packed enough canned food to survive three months. Unfortunately, you forgot a can opener."
He delivered the line in the deepest voice he could manage, drawing out the final words as though announcing the end of civilization.
Selina burst out laughing. "Why do you sound like a villain?"
"Because disaster is coming."
"Stop! I can't record you if you keep doing that."
Tavian tried again, this time with an exaggerated announcer's voice. Selina laughed so hard she had to pause the recording, and he looked entirely too pleased with himself.
Neither of them noticed how quickly the hour passed.
Jules returned home shortly after two.
She carried her purchases upstairs in several trips, setting the smaller bags beside her desk and leaving the wheelbarrow near the bedroom door. Once everything was inside, she locked the door and surveyed the collection of tools, books, and gardening supplies.
She'd bought more than she could comfortably carry into her dimension in one trip. Fortunately, she didn't need to carry anything at all.
She touched the wheelbarrow, and it vanished into dimensional storage. The shovels followed, along with the seed trays, tools, books, and packets of seeds. Once everything was stored, she closed her eyes and entered her dimension.
The familiar landscape greeted her with clean air and the gentle sound of running water. Grass stretched across the land surrounding the cottage, and beyond it, open ground continued farther than she could clearly see.
She took a deep breath before retrieving her gardening supplies. The wheelbarrow appeared on the grass, followed by the tools she'd purchased earlier.
"Okay," she murmured, opening her notebook. "Step one. Choose a location."
That seemed simple enough.
She wanted the garden close to the cottage and within walking distance of the stream. After exploring the surrounding area, she settled on a broad, relatively flat patch of land and marked out a small rectangle with stakes and string.
Then she retrieved her shovel.
Her first attempt went badly.
She drove the blade into the ground, stepped on it, and discovered that lifting a full shovel of soil required considerably more effort than it appeared to in videos. The dirt slid off before she could move it, leaving her staring at the shovel in disbelief.
"Seriously?"
She tried again and managed to turn the soil, only to step directly into the section she'd just loosened. By the twentieth attempt, she was sweating, and by the fortieth, her shoulders had begun to ache.
Eventually, she abandoned the shovel and tried the garden fork.
That worked better.
Beneath the grassy surface, the soil was dark and loose, with a rich, earthy smell. She found no stones and surprisingly few roots. It was almost as though the land had been prepared for cultivation, although removing the grass and breaking up the ground still required more effort than she'd expected.
She worked until her arms trembled, then sat on the grass and drank from a water bottle she'd brought with her. The stream moved steadily nearby, and a light breeze stirred the grass around her unfinished plot.
Her first garden bed was embarrassingly small.
She looked at the enormous stretch of land surrounding her and tried to imagine preparing all of it by hand. At this rate, she'd be eighty before she planted enough vegetables to feed everyone.
"Maybe the videos weren't exaggerating about tractors," she muttered.
After resting, she returned to work with a more practical approach. Instead of trying to prepare everything at once, she concentrated on finishing one section properly. She loosened the soil, removed the grass, and used the rake to level the surface, occasionally consulting her notebook to make sure she wasn't skipping anything important.
When she finally finished, she stepped back to inspect her work.
It wasn't impressive. The edges weren't perfectly straight, and the surface wasn't quite as level as she'd intended, but she'd managed to prepare her first planting bed without destroying anything.
She opened one of her gardening books, checked the recommended planting depths, and began making shallow rows. A small test bed of beans went into one section, followed by lettuce in another. She planted the tomato seeds in trays rather than directly in the ground, remembering the advice from one of the tutorials.
After watering everything, she placed her tools beside the cottage and stretched her aching back.
Her stomach growled.
Jules looked toward the sky, trying to estimate how long she'd been working. Between digging, resting, planting, and making repeated trips to the stream, it felt as though most of the day had disappeared.
She checked her watch.
8:37.
She frowned, trying to remember exactly when she'd entered. It had been sometime after two in the afternoon, which meant she'd spent several hours working.
That seemed reasonable.
She returned to her bedroom.
The familiar walls appeared around her, but instead of evening darkness, sunlight streamed through the window.
Jules blinked and reached for her phone.
2:08 p.m.
She stared at the screen, then checked again.
The time changed to 2:09.
"No."
She opened the clock application and watched the seconds advance before walking into the bathroom to check the wall clock. It displayed the same time.
Her heart began beating faster.
She had spent hours inside the dimension, digging, planting, resting, and working until her muscles ached. Yet outside, only minutes had passed.
Jules returned to her bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, turning the phone over in her hands. She considered whether the device might have malfunctioned, but the wall clock had shown the same time. Unless every clock in the house was wrong, something else was happening.
She opened the stopwatch application.
"Okay," she whispered. "Let's test this."
After starting the timer, she placed the phone on her desk and entered the dimension again. Inside, she retrieved another clock from storage and watched its second hand move.
One minute passed, followed by another. She waited through ten minutes, then twenty, resisting the urge to return early. When a full hour had passed, she left the dimension and checked the stopwatch.
Just over one minute.
Jules stared at the screen before repeating the experiment. This time, she used a shorter interval, carefully comparing the time on both clocks. She repeated it once more to make sure she hadn't miscalculated.
By the third test, she no longer believed her phone was malfunctioning.
The ratio was consistent.
Approximately sixty minutes inside for every minute outside.
Sixty to one.
She sat down slowly, trying to calculate what that meant. One hour outside would give her sixty hours inside. An entire day outside would mean sixty days in the dimension, assuming she could somehow stay there that long.
The possibilities were enormous.
Crops that normally required months could grow while only days passed in Clearwater. She could prepare land, raise animals, build structures, and accomplish work that would otherwise take years. Even a single week inside would consume less than three hours outside.
Then she looked down at her hands.
Dirt had worked its way beneath her fingernails, and her palms were sore from gripping the tools. Her shoulders ached, her back was stiff, and she was hungry enough to eat another full meal.
The time difference hadn't erased the work she'd done. She had experienced every minute of it, and her body had, too.
Still, she couldn't stop smiling.
For the first time since awakening in her ninth life, she'd discovered something that might change the scale of what she could accomplish before the catastrophe. The warehouses and supplies were important, but there were limits to how much the family could purchase and prepare in ninety days.
Inside her dimension, those limits were different.
Jules glanced toward her bedroom door. Downstairs, her family was continuing with an ordinary afternoon, unaware that she'd already spent the equivalent of an entire working day somewhere else.
She considered going downstairs to tell them, but her attention drifted back to the gardening notes spread across her desk.
There was still so much she wanted to do, and she'd barely begun.