With a thought, Emma Bennett brought the pothos back into her room. It was still growing fast enough to see. She glanced at the window. Good thing she'd already drawn the curtains.
She lay on the bed and let her awareness sink into the storage space. A brief wave of dizziness passed. Before her stretched a vast white plaza, its edges lost in the distance.
She sent her awareness through it, feeling out its dimensions. It was a little more than ten times the size of Beijing's Bird's Nest Olympic stadium. And beneath it lay another level.
That seemed to be where the pothos had gone the first time.
Another thought brought her awareness back out.
The plant had filled her room by now and stopped growing. To test her theory, she waved a hand and sent it into the white space.
Flecks of green light gathered at her fingertips and flowed into the pothos. Inside the white space, the plant absorbed them. Two seconds later, it started growing again. Her eyes lit up.
Inside the storage space, time stood still on the lower level. The upper level could hold living things, letting them grow freely.
She took out a notebook and began listing her purchases. Buzz. Buzz. Her phone vibrated beside her pillow. Uncle David was calling.
Her eyes hardened as she answered. A woman spoke in a warm, kindly voice. "Emmy, it's your aunt. Your nineteenth birthday is in a few days, isn't it? Uncle Robert and Uncle David have been talking. We've got a surprise planned for you."
Emma laughed coldly. "Don't bother, Auntie. I've made other plans. I'm going to B City."
In her previous life, they'd used that birthday party to play on her feelings for the family and coax her into signing away her shares.
Both families were rotten. After the apocalypse, they'd even wanted her to sell her body for enough food to keep them fed. When she refused, they sold her to the laboratory.
If killing people were an option right now, she'd kill the lot of them.
You want my shares? You're not getting them. Her pen kept moving. Two pages were already full of supplies she needed to stockpile.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
There was no soil in the space, though. Covering the whole thing would mean stripping the earth from several mountains.
She opened a drawer and fished a business card out from the bottom. The number belonged to the office of Blue Star Technology's president. A rival company.
They'd approached her after she inherited her parents' shares, offering to buy her out. She'd turned them down then. Now, though...
Ring... Ring... Someone picked up almost at once. "Hello, Blue Star Technology..." The voice was sweet and pleasant.
"Emma Bennett speaking. Put me through to your president."
"I'm sorry, the president is busy at the moment. Perhaps you could..."
Emma caught the unspoken message immediately.
"Let me introduce myself. I'm Emma Bennett, of Bennett Technologies. Put me through to your president. You have three minutes. After that, you'll have missed your chance at a surprise."
The company name jogged the secretary's memory. "Of course. One moment, please."
It didn't take three minutes. Two and a half minutes later, the woman's sweet voice gave way to a rich male one. "What did you want to discuss, Ms. Bennett?"
Emma paused. Blue Star Technology's president sounded surprisingly young.
"Forty percent of Bennett Technologies. What's your offer?" No point dancing around it. She had supplies to buy. A lot of supplies. She was going to need a lot of money.
The man seemed taken aback for a moment. "One point eight billion."
"Two billion. We can sign right now, but I want the money in my account immediately." She laid out her terms, cutting past a host of unnecessary steps.
"Done. The electronic agreement is already on your phone." He sounded delighted. A forty-percent stake in Bennett Technologies for two billion would generate far more than that in the future.
She opened her computer and read the agreement. Once she'd checked that everything was in order, she signed. Then came the notification: two billion had reached her account.
The moment the money arrived, she got to work. She started shopping online. She needed too many different things to waste time going from market to market.
Through customer service, she contacted the manufacturers directly. Shell jackets, cotton-padded coats, jackets, short-sleeved shirts, underwear, shoes. Styles for every season, 20,000 sets of each. She ordered the same quantities in men's styles, too. Anything she couldn't wear herself could be traded for supplies later.
Windproof lighters. Flashlights. Rechargeable desk lamps, candles, kerosene lamps, alcohol burners, heat packs, camping tents, sleeping bags, air mattresses. Alcohol, povidone-iodine, saline, hydrogen peroxide, soap, liquid laundry detergent. Thermometers, bandages, adhesive bandages in large and small sizes, suture-free wound closure devices.
Anti-inflammatory medicine, painkillers, fever reducers, allergy medicine, antidiarrheals, ointment for burns and scalds. The selection available online was limited, but she'd buy as much as she could. Once the apocalypse came, even a single dose would be hard to come by.
She bought every bit of medication she could get across several sites, then contacted customer service for every order. Rush processing. The fastest shipping they could arrange.