Divide and Conquer

Holding her breath, Sadie gently dropped the heavy gold and emerald bracelet into her spatial storage. The second the precious metal crossed the invisible threshold of her mind, a profound shift reverberated through her skull. She closed her eyes, watching in awe as the pristine white room inside her consciousness physically stretched. The invisible walls groaned under some unseen, monumental force, expanding outward like a massive shipping container unfolding. When the movement finally stopped, she quickly measured the new dimensions. The space had grown by a massive 500 square feet.

She opened her eyes and let out a ragged breath in the tight confines of the van. "It worked."

A collective, heavy exhale of relief washed over her parents. The oppressive tension that had gripped them since her apocalyptic confession broke just a fraction. Without a single second of hesitation, Diane began stripping off her smaller rings, her matching earrings, and the delicate gold chain around her neck. She fed them into the void one by one. Sadie felt the space pulse again, successfully adding a few dozen more crucial square feet. Every inch mattered now.

Fully convinced of the terrifying reality that the apocalypse was bearing down on them, Gareth decisively stepped up. His sharp business acumen took over, his eyes hardening as he calculated their immediate strategy.

"We don't have much time. Here's the plan—we split up," Gareth announced with absolute authority. "I'll book a flight back to Oakhaven immediately. Traffic is light, so I can make good time. I'm going to aggressively liquidate our city condo and the two hardware storefronts on Elm Street. If I push the buyers for fast cash, I can raise a critical two million dollars."

He pointed a finger, mapping out the logistics. "While I handle the real estate and get our old apartment fortified, I'll personally take charge of buying up every available antibiotic and medical supply in our hometown. I know a few pharmaceutical distributors who owe me favors. Diane, Sadie, you two stay behind here."

Gareth locked eyes with his wife. "First thing tomorrow morning, withdraw all our physical precious metals from the bank. Maximize the spatial upgrades. Then, finish the massive food stockpiling."

Before he could turn for the van door, Sadie firmly grabbed his arm. Her grip was tight, desperate. "Dad, wait. Do not undersell our vast hardware stock. Keep the tools, the nails, the raw materials. In the ruined future, those things will possess immense, life-saving trade value. They will be worth more than gold to people trying to rebuild."

Gareth registered the gravity in her voice. He gave a curt nod. With their roles defined, the family sprang into frantic action.

Gareth booked the fastest flight out. Diane leveraged her decades of logistical retail skills to drastically modify their pending orders. She got on her phone, her voice a rapid-fire cadence of demands and bulk requests. Hearing Sadie had only planned for a small amount of grain, Diane waved it off and increased their raw grain purchase to an overwhelming 30 tons of rice and flour. Next, she aggressively mass-purchased heavy-duty shelving units, pallets of freeze-dried survival foods, huge varieties of canned fruit, flash-frozen seafood, and massive drums of cooking oil. She didn't just stick to the basics; she ordered hundreds of pounds of apples, peaches, pears, berries, and expensive luxury fruits like mangoes and coconuts. Then came the seafood: thousands of everyday freshwater fish like catfish and bass, alongside premium hauls of shrimp and lobster.

Meanwhile, Sadie took the wheel of the van and hit the rural countryside farms outside the city limits. The dirt roads rattled her teeth, but she kept her foot heavy on the gas. Her first stop was a sprawling hog farm. Negotiating with hardened, dirt-stained farmers, she bought 50 full-grown pigs. The sheer cost made her wince, but she paid a premium to order the immediate processing of the animals—instructing the butchers to clean the intestines, package the meat, and preserve the blood. The farm owner immediately called in his relatives, promising the haul would be shipped straight to her warehouse by nightfall.

She didn't stop there. Sadie drove to a massive poultry operation down the county line. Walking through the deafening noise of the barns, she purchased thousands of live chickens, ducks, and geese. The smell of feathers and feed filled the air, the chaotic clucking grounding her in the reality of the task. She ordered vast, fragile quantities of eggs—ten thousand pounds of standard chicken eggs, a thousand pounds of duck eggs, and huge, heavy crates of smoked and pickled eggs to cover every flavor preference for the dark years ahead.

Crucially, she secured trays of fertilized eggs and specialized incubators. When the grocery stores ran out and the world stopped producing, they would need a sustainable protein source for the decades ahead. Hatching their own flocks would be the only way to survive the long haul.

She topped off her massive agricultural haul at a local cattle ranch and a dairy processing plant. She secured thick sides of beef and lamb, demanding the heavy cuts be wrapped and ready for transport. At the dairy plant, she remembered the severe, agonizing malnutrition that plagued the survivors in her past life. Calcium and vitamins would become mythical luxuries. To combat this, she bought hundreds of heavy 30-quart barrels of fresh milk and sealed cases of long-lasting, near-expired milk pouches the factory was clearing out. Money bled from their accounts in a relentless river.

By the time Sadie finally navigated the heavy van back toward the city limits, the sun had long set. The sky turned pitch black, offering a cold cover for their operation. She pulled up to their rented warehouse and found the loading bay bathed in harsh floodlights.

Diane stood with a clipboard, managing a relentless, chaotic stream of delivery trucks. Pallets of goods towered over the concrete floor, casting long shadows. The sheer scale of the setup was staggering.

Sadie parked the van and jogged over to help her mother sign manifests and direct the drivers, not even taking a moment to rest.

A particularly curious delivery foreman hopped down from his cab, wiping sweat from his brow as he eyed the mountainous stacks of provisions. He crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow at Diane. "Are you folks opening a supermarket or something? This is an insane volume for a private setup."

Diane didn't miss a beat. Years of running retail shops gave her an ironclad poker face. She smiled warmly, answering with smooth deception. "My daughter is graduating soon, but she's stepping into a brutal job market. Jobs are hard to come by now. So, the family pooled our life savings together to open a large, independent supermarket for her. It beats having her work some grueling nine-to-nine job for barely any pay."

The foreman let out a sympathetic sigh, his suspicion dissolving into commiseration. "Ain't that the truth. My boy graduated last year and couldn't secure work. Now he's stuck at home studying for government exams."

Diane sighed in agreement before the man climbed back into his truck and drove off into the night.

Working deep into the exhausting hours of the night, the mother and daughter executed the next phase of their plan. To keep any lingering eyes off their true motives, Diane cleverly drove the empty van in and out of the warehouse bay. She acted as a moving decoy, creating the illusion that they were hauling the supplies away to another location.

Inside the locked building, hidden from the world, Sadie went to work. She stood before the towering pallets, reaching out to touch the heavy boxes. With a thought, she continuously and secretly transferred the mountainous piles of goods into her newly expanded space. The heavy drums of cooking oil, the freezing sides of beef, the fragile crates of eggs, the towering stacks of flash-frozen seafood—all vanished from the concrete floor and reappeared inside her mind.

She utilized her mental connection to meticulously organize the towering shelves Diane had ordered that afternoon. It required immense focus, sweat dripping down her temples as she manipulated the layout of the void. She arranged the heavy-duty racks into perfectly neat, easily accessible supermarket sections. Grains and oils went to the far left aisles. Vegetables, the massive varieties of fruit Diane secured, and household goods lined the back rows. The massive dairy reserves, frozen beef, lamb, and poultry took up the right flank. It looked identical to a high-end, fully stocked commercial grocery store, existing entirely within the confines of her consciousness.

Every time the warehouse floor cleared, Diane would roll up the metal door, back the van in, and they would wait for the next late-night delivery to arrive. They ran on pure adrenaline, fueled by cold lasagna and fruit juice eaten in frantic bites between shipments.

They finally locked up the empty warehouse well past midnight. The city streets were dead, illuminated only by the rhythmic passing of yellow streetlights. Sadie slumped into the passenger seat, her muscles aching and bone-tired. Her hands shook slightly from the physical and mental toll of moving tons of cargo with her consciousness.

Diane kept her grip steady on the steering wheel, her eyes locked on the dark road ahead.

Sadie pulled a thick stack of crumpled receipts from her jacket pocket. The thermal paper was endless, covered in faded ink and astronomical totals. She flipped through them under the dim glow of the dashboard lights, tallying the numbers on her phone. The agricultural buys, the incubators, the thousands of pounds of meat, the endless pallets of food—the numbers climbed higher and higher. The fruit alone had cost a small fortune, and the processed meats and dairy barrels drained their accounts with terrifying speed.

When she hit the final equals button, she stared at the screen, her chest tightening.

"Mom," Sadie sighed heavily, her voice rough with exhaustion. "Just today, we spent over 900,000 dollars."

Diane kept driving, her expression tight.

Sadie leaned her head back against the cold window, her mind reeling. She realized their total expenditure had already surpassed a million dollars. Their liquid savings were virtually decimated. The heavy financial toll left the family entirely reliant on Gareth's success back in Oakhaven. If he failed to liquidate their remaining assets quickly, their prepping journey would hit a fatal brick wall. They needed that two million dollars more than ever.

Yet, as she closed her eyes, trying to push the anxiety away, she felt the vast, silent space in her mind. It was no longer an empty room. It was packed with dense provisions, towering racks of food, water, and survival gear. She ran a quick mental calculation of the calories, the proteins, the sheer volume of sustenance she had meticulously organized into those supermarket sections.

They had enough inside that dimension to sustain their family of four comfortably for thirty years.

The suffocating, heavy knot of apocalyptic terror she had carried in her chest since the moment of her rebirth finally eased, just a little. For the first time, a profound, bone-deep relief settled over her.