Dear reader, I apologize for skipping some days in my tale, with the passage of time, my options in this world multiplied, and my story would be an endless description of my endeavors in primitive technology. With every stick or stone I picked up, with every bone I carved, with every time I used the duplicators, I was rewarded with new inventions that could help me survive.

For one, I found a way to start this journal. It was during the second week of improving my shelter. I had hit a difficult point in my attempt to build the back and the front wall that could include a sturdy door and some form of a chimney or an opening to let the smoke out. I took a small bit of scrap silk, probably a discarded piece from my early tailoring experiments, and used a burned tip of a greasy stick to draw plans on it, so that I could make a design plan and adjustments to my measurements before actually doing the hard work of cutting logs to shape.

My drawings were soon joined with commentary, which led to a list of to-dos, which in turn led to snarky messages to myself. Before I knew it, I was lost in thought and scribing down a stream of consciousness onto the page. I abandoned carpentry for that day and kept on writing. Halfway through, I got annoyed with myself and tossed half of the pages into the fire. I was not or rather wanted not, to be the kind of a man who breaks down emotionally and vomits his feelings on paper. What I was, was a meticulous old nerd who liked things neatly ordered. I started anew, turning my experiences of the previous weeks into a story. I wrote by tallow candlelight, and had to duplicate the writing stick many times. It was as crude as a crayon and smudged, but I did not care. It was the content that mattered, not the form.

When my diary reached the current day, I stopped and thought: who was I writing this for? I was all alone and thought I would likely die not seeing another human being again. And yet, even if there was a one-in-a-million chance of being found one day, Ar at least the diary remaining after my death, I felt I had to keep writing and find a way to preserve my story. Somehow, just surviving for the sake of seeing another day was not so motivating anymore. I had to survive long enough to either somehow go back home, or to solve the mystery of my predicament, or at least give clues to whoever finds my corpse so that they had a greater chance of survival.

I stacked my pages neatly and sewed them together. An idea struck me, and I ran to get the elk hide from the smoker. Smoking made it dark brown, and the fur was slipping off in clumps. I scraped it clean and tried to bend it to make a cover for the book. The hide did tan a bit and got much more pliable, but it was still not enough. Wetting it was out of the question, but I could use something else. I remember odd, half-remembered bits from the books and the internet on how to tan a hide, but none of them seemed plausible. Rub some yolk on it? Cover it in a mushed animal brain? All these traditional methods, however true the might have been, sounded more than a little bit nasty, and like something that would only ruin the leather, when done by an amateur. Actual tanning was traditionally done with, well, tannins, which came from some kind of a tree bark, but which one?

I decided I had little to lose, as the hide was useless otherwise. I boiled some bark tea out of willow and oak. Cooled it, and soaked the hide in it. It darkened and the hair fell off completely to the last, but it was not yet truly tanned, as it turned stiff again when drying. At the very least, it was pliable enough to be rolled and duplicated dozens of times. I buried one copy in a pile of wet bark. Another I slathered liberally with my lard-and-pitch mix. Third, I covered with both. Fourth, I soaked it through with melted fat, and beat it with a stick, then kept on rolling and unrolling it in various directions until I could not feel my tired hands.

I fell asleep on a pile of dirty hides. In the morning, my hands were dyed brown and black from all the experiments of the night before. Of all the hides I worked on, three were useless, but the one I tortured the most did become quite soft, or at least not stiff as a board. I reapplied some more fat and tallow, and tried to stretch it as well. It did not give, but it did seem more leathery afterwards. I duplicated the result, and used a flint axe to chop out a crude rectangle for a book cover.

I never imagined myself as an introligator, much less a primitive one in the woods, but here I was, binding a book instead of looking for fresh food, water or keeping the fires lit. But before the end of the morning, I held a big, ugly notebook in which my scribbles were safe and organized. I’ve built a shrine-like box out of stones and clay to hide it in, so that it could survive longer in case of my death. Before I put it in, I proudly waved the notebook at the surrounding wilderness.

“Behold! Civilization!”

I decided then, that I refuse to die without leaving a mark on this land. My thoughts were violently anti-environmentalist. I vowed to chop down the forest. Carve “Jacek was here” on every available surface. Make some cave paintings if I ever find a cave. Pave the whole place with concrete, once I invented it.

The lack of proper tools chafed at my carpenter’s soul. I visited my neighborly hedgehogs, and reclaimed some of the elk bones. I could see ways these could be turned into various awls, spearheads, needles, or even a dull knife but none of those would be useful tools for carpentry. Finally, I took the elk’s mandible, knocked out the teeth, and put a big shard of chert in their place, which I glued-in and tied securely with silk thread soaked in pitch. I multiplied the resulting axe a dozen times, predicting it would break easily.

The elk axe was too lightweight to chop down actual trees, but It helped me cut saplings and branches, which I wove into a lattice, not unlike the cloth I made earlier, only on a much bigger scale. This allowed me to make the back and the front wall of my hut relatively easily, though the lattice would do nothing to stop the rain and the wind.

I knew ancient people lived in adobe huts, which they made by smearing clay over the lattice walls. I tried it, but my experiments failed miserably. The clay just fell off in clumps. I tried mixing it with dry grass, with silk threads, and even with glue, to no avail. Finally, I simply pressed as much clay into the lattice as I could and sewed panels of cloth all over it, to prevent the clay from falling off. Did the same for the roof as well.

Now my hut looked like a giant quilted sofa flipped upside down.

I laughed at the absolute ugliness of my new dwelling, but had to admit it looked sturdy enough. The padded walls were almost half a meter thick, and insulated near perfectly. In fact, I had to carve some of the padding out at the top of the back wall so the smoke from my hearth could escape properly, and sunlight could get in.

I made the door out of branch lattice as well, but covered it in elk leather, and made hinges out of it as well. This made them stiff enough to close with a tight fit.

Finally, to further secure my abode, I added another circle of sharp stakes around the hut itself, and a short palisade around my entire camp. Further out, another circle of spikes appeared, each spike connected to its neighbors with silk rope, tied into multiple loose hitch snares that would trip and entangle approaching animals. I hung bundles of sticks on the ropes, to bangle if the rope was pulled.

I did not kid myself that my fortifications would stop a creature as powerful as the terror bird, or a bear, or even the wolverine. But it would slow them down and the noise would warn me. What I would do exactly, once warned, was another matter.

The best I would be able to do was to light the fires quickly and wave a torch around, hoping that the animal would be deterred and go away.

Luck would have it, I had a visit from a friend the very same night. The sticks rattled at the witching hour, and I sprung up from my nest of blankets and grabbed a spear reflexively. The bonfires died down to embers, but my giant fat lamp still smoldered, so I lit a big bundle of torches off it.

Approaching the palisade slowly, I tossed a few lit torches over it, onto the grass strip outside.

“Hello there!" I greeted the trespasser, who either due to ignorance of the Star Wars lore, or out of sheer rudeness, did not respond with the customary ‘General Kenobi’.

Oh well.

I climbed the top of the palisade, to gain the higher ground. Too much advantage never hurts anybody.

As could be expected, it was the damn wolverine again. It was nosing around my spike field and pawed curiously at the stick bundles, again reminding me more of a giant housecat than a prehistoric mustelid. It squinted at the sight of my giant torch, and backed off a bit.

“Yep pall, this is fire. A nasty thing, I tell you. So grab your weasely ass and stroll the fuck away from here. Sho!”

The thing just walked in a small circle, and sat on its rump. I raised my spear as if to throw it, and Logan tensed, flattening its ears and raising its hunches, but did not move. Only then I did I notice that its left front paw was handcuffed with a tight knot, the rope pulled taut like a guitar string, but preventing the animal from escaping.

What was I to do? I could throw spears at it, maybe injure it, but definitely not kill it easily that way, given that my spears were just sharpened sticks with no actual spearheads on them. The only thing that would accomplish is piss the damn thing off, and it was already plenty deadly as it was. If our previous altercation did not teach it to leave me alone, being trapped like that and assaulted ineffectually would not change its mind either.

If I really wanted the thing dead, I contemplated, I could toss handfuls of tallow at it, then follow up with lit torches, and burn it alive, hoping it gets injured badly before the silk rope burns through, setting the thing free.

Meanwhile, as I was planning its grisly demise, the wolverine decided I was not that much of a threat at the moment, safely ignored, and started gnawing at the snare. For a second I hoped it would just cut itself free, and go away, but I underestimated the strength of the spider silk. A few minutes in, Logan got impatient with the lack of progress and started thrashing wildly. It actually managed to pull out the stake tat the rope was tied to, but that same stake was also tied to another, and that to another, and yet that to another in a sturdy web. It lashed at the spikes, at the ropes, and even pounced at me, almost reaching the palisade before its leash stopped it, nearly wrenching its paw off. In its rage, it dismantled the whole front of my spike field, but in the end sat exhausted, panting and mewling in distress.

It made my guts roll in self-disgust, but I had no choice but to kill it. It could not free itself, nor could I go outside the palisade and try to cut it loose. In fact, I could not go out at all until the thing was gone. If I had the time to make actual spearheads, or perhaps a bow and some arrows, I could give it a more merciful death, but at that point, the only certain way I knew I could kill it with, was fire.

I ran back to the duplicators, and multiplied handfuls of tallow, fat, and resin, filling my backpack with it.

Disheartened, I climbed the palisade again, and started tossing globs of fat at the wolverine. It did not even react to the projectiles, It was already shaking in wide-eyed terror. Soon, it was splashed all over in flammable goop, which was pooling around it as well. All I needed now was to toss several pitch-filled torches at it, and the beast would go up in flames like a candle wick.

I lifted the first torch over my head. Logan looked at me with wide, golden-brown eyes. It growled a challenge, which petered out to a terrified croak.

Fuck. Fucking fuck! I could not do it. I was being a weak, sentimental, pansy-assed idiot, doomed to die by his own scruples. I was defying the iron rule of nature, kill or be killed. That thing there, was a dangerous predator that already stalked me more than once. It was a menace. I could not feel safe with it lurking around. And yet….

I sighed and lowered the torch. Self-defense was something I was ready for. So was hunting for food, If it came to it. I managed to mercy-kill a wounded animal, but a brutal execution of another creature, by roasting it alive no less, was something I had no stomach for. Maybe this wild world revolved around pain and death, but I would be damned if I added to it needlessly.

“Hey! Furball! I have graciously decided to spare your life. I'm giving you time until morning to try to gnaw your way free out of this. But if you go after me or try any funny business, I swear I will barbecue your ass. Nod if you agree.”

The damn thing actually cooed back, a strange, almost conversational response, that suggested it tried to communicate. It freaked me out far worse than its previous growls. Angry snarling from a trapped animal was understandable, but this sounded more like a particularly smart dog trying to act cute to avoid punishment. How intelligent are these things?

I hopped off the fence, relit all the fires, and locked myself in the hut, spear in hand. Every once in a while, I would hear a yelp or loud rustling from the animal’s direction, but as the morning came, it became quiet and I dozed off.

I woke up in one piece and not devoured by a vengeful carnivore, but the day somehow still managed to start with a nasty surprise. As I opened the door, I was not greeted by the usual smell of smoke from my fires, but a stench orders of magnitude worse. My eyes watered, and I had to bite on my sleeve to not barf.

Spear in hand, and covering my nose, I climbed the palisade again.

Simply put, the wolverine had shat itself. However, it would be more fair to say its backside has exploded. The dumb thing seemed to have eaten all the rancid tallow and pitch mixture I threw at it, then achieved the expected result of lubricating its digestive tract so excessively. Worse still, it seemed to have panicked throughout the process, and coated itself all over in its own refuse. I thought its territory-marking piss smelled bad, but this stench was downright satanic in its potency.

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Its trapped paw was swollen and purple, and the last joint looked dislocated.

“You dumbass, what have you done?!”

The long night and rude awakening made me more grumpy than afraid. Not only had the beast failed to free itself, but it made the situation so much worse for both of us. I immediately reduced my high opinion of its intelligence.

If I were a cruel man, I would burn it alive on the spot, just to get rid of the smell. The events of the previous night, however, had shown that I was a faint-hearted Granola Hippie with a soft spot for murderous, shit-covered prehistoric monsters.

I had to free it myself. And that meant going outside of my palisade and within its striking distance.

With that grim realization, I started preparing. First and foremost, I wrapped myself in as many layers of silk canvas I could put on and still move. I added a dozen of kerchiefs over my hands and face, leaving only a narrow visor, and a tiny hole for breathing. If the beast attacked me, I would have dozens of layers of protection for it to bite through.

I needed some bait as well. The wolverine was likely not as hungry as it would normally be after its disastrous meal, but I hoped a handful of smoked venison would distract it.

Finally, I needed a way to cut the snares quickly to release it. Sawing through it with a flint blade would take too long, and force me to get uncomfortably close. Instead, I tied a torch to the end of my spear, and decided to burn through the rope from a safer distance, which would hopefully keep the animal at bay as well.

I hopped over the bonfire protecting the entrance to my camp and pushed aside the wooden obstacles I put in the front. Logan snarled at me, and backed off, tautening the rope. I put the torch far in front of me and approached slowly.

The sudden slack of the rope warned me a split second before the animal lunged at me. It crossed the distance in a single heartbeat, and swiped my spear aside, ignoring the fire in its rage. The only reason it failed to disembowel me was because its lamed paw could not support its mad dash forward, and it skidded sideways.

I scampered off, but it was clear that Logan was at the end of its rope, figuratively and literally. It laid there, wide-eyed and panting. Its leash held firmly and it could not reach me.

“Shhhh. Eaaaaasy boy. Eaaaaaasy." I said, and cooed at it, trying to copy the sound it made last night. It pricked up its ears, and softened the snarling rictus of its maw.

Without any sudden moves, I took a handful of smoked meat out of the bundle tied to my belt, and tossed it gently towards its snout. Logan growled, startled by it, but did not have the strength left to get up. It did, however, sniff loudly, catching the new scent.

I circled it as slowly as I could, minding the circumference of the circle the snares allowed it to cover. It looked back at me, alarmed by losing the sight of its enemy, but kept going back to nosing the venison. Being suddenly fed in the middle of an apparent fight for its life had seemingly overloaded its simple brain. The battle between its fear, aggression and gluttony was finally won by the ravenous appetite. As it munched on meat, I sneaked as close as dared and touched the torch to the taut rope holding my prisoner. The silk, while impervious to the powerful pull and bites of the creature, snapped in seconds when burned through.

This time I was ready and did not underestimate Logan. The moment the rope slacked loose, I jumped back and shielded myself with the torch. The wolverine nearly instantly turned around, and pounced, stopping inches away from the fire.

This time I did not try to scare or antagonize it. The creature was clearly at the end of its wits anyway. Confused, it reared up like a bear and snarled gutturally. I held my ground and maintained eye contact with it. It fell back into a lopsided crouch, nursing its injured paw. Without losing sight of me, it backed away and scooped as much of the venison as it could fit in its maw. Then, after a tense moment, I felt a primitive understanding formed between us, and Logan limped off into the woods.

I ran back behind my palisade, vaulted over the bonfire, and darted towards my hut. Shutting the door, I sighed in relief. I was drenched in sweat, and not just because of the dozens of layers of clothes I was wrapped in. Of the three encounters I had with the wolverine, this one was the only one in which the creature truly wished me harm, and would kill me if not for the rope. I hoped the offering of venison would somehow have appeased it, though I suspected that paw injury would kill it anyway. After all, the snare was still handcuffed over it, cutting off the blood circulation.

Weirder still, I felt bad for it. It was my enemy, but I felt guilty lameing it like that. With such a serious injury, it was either going to die due to sepsis or be unable to hunt and starve. The more cynical part of me argued that this removed one giant predator from the neighborhood, leaving only the terror bird, which I did not think was a local. I never saw it, or its prints before that fateful evening, and a beast like that likely had wide roaming grounds that it traveled, following the herds of prey. That is at least what I hoped was true, based on my meager understanding of environmental sciences.

One way or another, I had to upgrade my defenses. The concept of silk-rope snares was sound, it worked better than I hoped, at least against the wolverine. I duplicated countless bundles of pre-made snares, much wider than the ones that covered the foreground of my defenses. I strung them between nearby trees, at various levels, including on what I imagined was the height of the bird’s head. Every space between trees could not booby-trap this way, I covered it with giant, waist-high caltrops made of five spears tightly tied together.

It took me two days to turn the entire area of my camp into a maze that looked as if a bus-sized spider made it its lair. The traps were laid so thick, I had to mark the only safe route to my fort with giant arrows painted on trees, so that I wouldn't become a victim of my own snares. I added another layer of a palisade connecting my house with the natural pier of the fallen pine, so that if the worst came and my defenses were breached, I could run that way and jump into the river.

I wanted to trap the route to the ravine the same way, but the distance was much too long. I opted to put several caltrops and rope clotheslines along the way so that if something big and nasty chased me, obstacles would slow it down.

Finally, I turned a section of the gulch itself into a giant punji trap, with countless sharp spikes at the bottom, and a thin bridge over it that I could cross, If I walked foot after foot like a rope-walker, but a big predator chasing me would not be able to fit on and fall to its death.

Nothing tried to eat me along the way. In fact, the woods were suspiciously quiet as of late, as if all the noisy birds and furry bush critters that normally scuttled around hid.

I could not understand why. The weather looked perfect, with no thunderstorms lurking on the horizon. If the terror bird returned, It could have inspired fear in the woodland mammals, but why were the birds, completely safe high up in the canopy, gone as well?

I absentmindedly scratched a sudden itch on my neck, thinking about it. Then, I felt a similar itch at the back of my hand. Slapped a big, fat, dark mosquito off it. Then another. And another. I started slapping myself frantically because my body was suddenly peppered with black, buzzing dots. One bit me on the eyelid, and soon another one tried to crawl into my ear. Screeching in pain and revulsion, I ran back to my camp, patting myself wildly.

Before I made twenty steps I was covered in a thick layer of blood-sucking monsters. I had to scrub them off my face to even see where I was running. My clothes managed to protect me, but my exposed hands, face, ankles, and neck were bitten so many times in the few seconds that they felt as if someone had beaten me with a wire brush.

I ran into my hut and closed the door, but the monstrous swarm was already inside!

Blinded and panicking, I rummaged all over the place, wrapping myself in blankets, and covering my face with several layers of hoods and kerchiefs. I left a small hole to breathe through, but this only made the stubborn insects crawl into my nose, and bite it from the inside.

Desperate, I threw whatever I could grab into the fire. Blankets, grass clumps, handfuls of reed and weeds, until I stood next to a pillar of dark smoke coming from it. Only when the amount of smoke in the air threatened suffocation did the onslaught of mosquitoes lessen, but never cease. Choked by the damp, the insects could no longer fly, but still crawled spasmodically all over me, feebly trying to pierce my clothes with their proboscises.

It kept switching between near-asphyxiation and inhaling bugs every time the smoke was scattered by the wind. I could not imagine how this must have felt like for creatures that had no clothes or fire to protect them. If I was naked and unprotected, I would likely drown myself in the river to escape the madness.

The torture lasted up until early evening when unsuspected help came. As I watched the swarm covering the sky in desperation, I noticed two kinds of shapes swooping in from above, darting through it. Sparrows, or perhaps swifts, started a massacre of the damned insects, shooting above the clearing and scooping their prey. Not long after, bats burst from their hiding holes in the canopy and started their bloody work, like tiny helicopters of vengeance.

I cheered them on, but barely dared to peek from under my hood. My face was swollen and sore, and my hands felt like boxing gloves covered in bite marks.

When I arrived in this world, I wondered why the mosquitoes were so docile. Now I knew. Fuckers were bidding their time to strike. Maybe it was a life-cycle thing, or maybe it was the calm weather that set them off. Another lesson painfully learned. Living by the river had its perks, but also its drawbacks, and this was the mother of all of them.

Soon, a peculiar splashing noise came from the river. Wrapping myself in additional blankets, and carrying a smoldering torch to shroud myself in smoke, I climbed on the pier to check it. The previously calm surface of the river was now positively boiling. Countless tiny fish jumped out, catching low-flying mosquitoes in a feeding frenzy.

As I watched more closely, I saw much bigger things, possibly large fish or maybe otters, lurking around and hunting the small jumpers, with only a V-shaped wave and a sudden loud splash announcing their presence.

The river was swarming with life, to an even greater degree than the woods were. It dawned on me that after my unfortunate misadventure with the clams, I was ignoring a near-limitless food source.

In my youth, I was an avid angler. Many times I returned with a catch so bountiful, that I fed my entire family with a load of perches, or a big pike. And that was what I could catch in the overfished and poisoned lakes and rivers of the modern world. Who knew what tasty leviathans prowled the depths of this prehistoric river?

Despite the sun being long gone over the horizon, and only gracing me with an orange rim around the edges of the far shore, I set to work.

In my old life, I used a fishing pole made of carbon polymers, with countless high-tech doodads. But none of it was actually necessary for fishing, it was just for convenience. I cut down a thin, long maple sapling, about twice the length of my body. Wrapped silk thread over it and looped it tight over the end, so that even if the pole snapped, my catch would not swim away with the line. The fishing-line itself I did not need to worry about. At about one millimeter of thickness, the spider silk thread was stronger than steel wire and I could pull a plesiosaur with it, if I hooked one. I did hope though that this river did not have actual plesiosaurs or any similar monsters though, as I wanted to cross it safely in the near future.

What else was needed? Some kind of a sinker, a bobber and a hook to put the bait on. Sinker was easy, I just rolled a ball of clay in my hand, pierced a hole through it, and baked it red hot in the fire. I promised myself to spend some time working on pottery soon, but at least this task was not beyond my means. For a bobber I used a bit of pine bark, and stuck the tip of the terror bird’s feather in it for visibility.

Making a hook was the real challenge. I tried using bush thorns, but they were not sturdy enough. So was a shard of a clam shell, it was the right shape and sharp, but snapped easily. Finally, I did it the hard way and carved a hook painstakingly out of a piece of elk bone. With only crude flint tools to work with, it was a real challenge, and I cut myself many times in the process.

In the end, I had an oversized narrow hook with a large barb. There was no way I could use it to catch perches or roaches, if the river had them. It was bigger than my thumb. By default, I had to use it to catch big fish, or none at all.

What could I bait a big fish with? The river was swarming with bugs, leeches, mosquito-eating jumpers, and every kind of crawling nasty I could think of. Thus, I assumed baiting the hook with a worm was likely useless, it would not stand out at all on the Smorgasbord table of wriggly snacks the fish could pick from.

In the end, I decided to bait it with a bit of smoked venison that had gone bad and smelled. Plenty of fish were consummate scavengers, and carrion would smell delicious to them.

I was finally ready. It felt a bit silly, trying to fish by torchlight, but I was too enamored with my newest idea to consider such details.

I climbed all the way to the end of the fallen pine. The mosquitos had either been decimated or laid low for rest, allowing me to unwrap my face. Full of hope and salivating for my future meal, I cast the bait as far as I could, and waited, staring at the bobber barely visible in the dark.

Minutes passed, and the whole contraption moved downriver without any action. I recast it several times with no effect, and finally settled on letting it flow with the current until it parked itself by the reeds and stopped. Damn.

Angling was supposed to be a calming, relaxing experience, but I was impatient. After about an hour of frustration, I was ready to quit.

As I started reeling the lure in, I saw a pair of silvery dots in the distance, staring at me from right above the water. I slowly put away the rod, and lifted the torch up. The shiny dots turned out to be big, curious eyes. The eyes were spaced far apart, and belonged to an equally big, silky brown head emerging from the reeds.

At first I thought it must have been a seal, but I was almost sure seals did not live in sweetwater rivers. As the creature silently swam closer, and was joined by its brethren, I realized it was an otter.

An otter the size of a crocodile. And not just one, I counted at least five, and the commotion behind them suggested there could be more. In the torchlight, their faces looked adorable, just like the ones of their smaller cousins, but I was not fooled. The adventure with the unicorn, and my feud with the wolverine taught me that no matter how cute, and beautiful these creatures looked, they were still wild animals, much more powerful and dangerous than I was. And otters, no matter their muppet-like mugs, were vicious predators closely related to weasels, and the wolverine itself. I had never seen them before during the day, nor my overnight stay on the pine. This did not mean they hadn’t seen me.

I slowly backed off along the pier, keeping the torch between me and my visitors. Let them have the river and the night, I could keep to the land and daylight from now on.