It was back in Rolla, back in the Dantian Seeker offices, as I helped carry the several hundred tightly packed MREs in shipping boxes, that Ash asked the question I was trying to figure out how to phrase.

"Are we just supposed to live off MREs and pray everything else is taken care of before they run out?" He dropped the box he was holding onto the stack of others. "Because I really feel like we're just pantomiming life still working. Even if the alien gave up right now and left, the world is still pretty fucked."

Brent stilled where he was standing.

"I got notification this morning with my schedule for classes next semester. Classes. Are there even going to be teachers? Did an automated system just click the next checkbox and send it out? What about my parents in St. Louis. What happens to them in another week when anything left in the trucking system runs out and all the grocery stores come up truly empty? Riots, or everyone just dies starving?"

"That's what the activation was about." Brent turned. "I know I drew a grim picture yesterday, but as bad as everything is? There's more infrastructure still running here than after the worst natural disasters. If we were in California I'd be worried because it's likely a massive wasteland of destruction. But we literally still have running water and power here without even a boil water notice. If people don't panic and continue with their lives, there's a fair chance life will continue. It's only if everyone panics and causes more panic that we're going to be in trouble."

"So how fast until we hit that point?" Danny asked. "Because previous worldwide emergencies have shown we're not going to be sane about this for much longer."

"Depends on how well supply lines are visibly maintained for the illusion of normalcy. It's ironic but probably not the worst thing the Secretary of Commerce ended up President." Brent sighed. "If anyone needs to leave to family, they're welcome to. I'm pulling all the strings I have to keep everything here in working order, but all those strings rely on the government maintaining authority."

~~~

The next almost two weeks were touch and go in a lot of ways.

The rains continued pretty much nonstop and the retention ponds started seriously filling up. I found that there were several places downtown that had bad drainage and volunteered my time helping clear things up. Having gone through five breakthroughs, my biggest issue wasn't the currents that were created, but getting to things to find the appropriate ways to leverage my impossible strength without causing additional problems.

The sight of my good, albeit wet, Samaritan work at least blunted the complaints of the idiots that wanted to blame me or anyone else for the alien's actions. It's really hard to sling mud at someone already covered in it trying to help keep downtown from flooding after more then thirty inches of rain in four days.

I'd somewhat fallen out of the news cycle anyways as the press took the time to eviscerate the government for both their lack of response to a developing crisis and for the activation of the reserves and Guard to attempt to handle the crisis. Even though they didn't usually bring both those points up in the same breath, it was still hard for me to believe that people didn't call that out. Or maybe some did but just didn't end up on whichever news was running at the time.

I was just happy that there were plenty of undeveloped ground around the city to absorb the rains. I was purposely keeping out of touch with what was happening in bigger cities that relied solely on drainage and normally light rainfall. The internet never truly faded out, but there were lots of people that no longer showed up on any of the dantian sites I'd been tracking. I hoped they were just busy and not dead, but I couldn't know. A few people had commented on my post about sensing the different parts of power, so there were people still out there at least.

I called Mom and Dad daily, half to check on them and half to give them assurances we were doing decent. Dad had never quite gotten over the COVID-19 paranoia, and ever since day one of the alien showing up he'd had several months' worth of dry goods reserved for what he'd at the time called a rainy day. I grinned and bore his daily complaint to me that having my head in the clouds was bad because I was short enough everyone else was getting wet now too. Dad had made a second breakthrough as well, though Mom was just barely into her first.

The flow of food and goods stuttered in, never quite stopping but the shelves emptied pretty much as quickly as they were stocked. Meats quickly became much scarcer though.

~~~

April 14th​

Really, it was the lack of meat that had prompted Ash to grab a few others of the Seekers to head out earlier this morning to the Mark Twain National Forest to try their hand at hunting anything. I'd heard talk of trying for deer, pig, or even turkey. I wished them luck and tried not to guess at how many people were probably already out there with the same idea.

I was sitting out the second floor window, staring out over the interior of the Seeker building. If you weren't interested in food or things that could help in the day-to-day apocalypse panic, it wasn't impossible to get things. Brent had finally managed to get a few pieces of medical equipment into that section and the gym section had a few dozen pieces of equipment for training on and testing max capabilities.

My balance beam run was still set up though, which was fun to watch people try to mimic myself or Melissa on it. Power did not mean balance and coordination, so we'd lost a few of the aisles as people attempted the same runs they'd watched me do and they crashed, bringing the gear down around them.

It was now recommended to be at least second breakthrough to test yourself, if only because the inevitable crash was causing injuries and the last thing anyone wanted right now was more than scrapes and bruises to happen. Especially since all but the heaviest gauge needles apparently bent on even a first breakthrough person's skin. No one had figured out a way to safely draw blood at the second breakthrough for medical purposes and I shuddered at what would probably be necessary for me if I ended up needing shots. I know Brent had mentioned blood tests and I wasn't sure how that was going to work now.

Danny had come through though and found several personal trainers that ended up without a job and were available to work with people. Brandon from the hospital had very reluctantly, and I think at a good payraise, accepted the first job running the equipment and being the general first aid on duty person.

One of the screens in the receptionist area showed a cleaned-up scan of my dantian and breakthroughs, the fourth and fifth half embedded in each shoulder blade and connected to all the major muscle groups.

We even had a singular IT guy now, currently flirting with Tasha below as he was doing something to her computer. Mine had already been joined to the network he was setting up. It hadn't changed much as far as I could tell, but that wasn't my field.

All-in-all, the Dantian Seekers really felt like they were coming together nicely even in the face of the world trying to descend into madness. What we were coming together into I wasn't fully certain, but at least we were moving forward into something.

My pocket buzzed and I pulled out my earpiece, now riding on the network wireless here back to my tablet. "Ash? What's up? You guys back already?"

"Yeah, we're outside around back. We got a pretty big boar that one of the guys is stripped for cooking, but also found something pretty odd. Can you come open up the loading dock?"

"Sure, give me a minute." I dropped down from my perch, startling the IT guy but making Tasha laugh this time, and headed back.

Hitting the button on the loading dock gate, it opened and I saw Ash's truck backed up. Instead of a pig like I'd expected, there was instead an entire bush with a lot of soil piled in the back of the truck. Huh, blackberries. Didn't the berries not grow for another couple of months?

"You brought back a blackberry bush? Are we going to make jam?" I joked.

Ash shook his head. "Check the power coming off of it." He said.

Power? Off a plant? I cycled in with my next breath, explicitly feeling the energy around me. Something I had to do instead of everyone on that external energy who could apparently always minimally feel it after their second breakthrough.

Earth and fire separated first, the heavier energy from the first block still strongest. Water that echoed all the rain. Tainted earth that was concrete and pollution. Wood-

"Wait, why is this thing by itself giving off enough energy of wood that I feel like I should actually be in the woods?"

"OK, I'm not crazy then. The others couldn't understand why I wanted to dig this thing up in its entirety. There were a bunch of piglets eating the berries and I'm fairly certain with the way they were eating, this thing should have been stripped bare already."

I just looked at the unassuming bush for a moment. "Alright! Let's figure out how to replant this thorny mess and find someone who actually knows how to be a gardener. If it's going to grow berries like that and feel like an entire forest, maybe not the entire world is trying to kill us. Was this the only one? Were there more?"

"Only one I could find. I don't think I would have found it at all if one of the piglets that ran off didn't kinda feel like a moving bit of earth energy. That's how we found momma and got her."