So yeah, there I was.

With the sketchiest meat-on-a-stick known to man, a shirt stuffed with fungus, and the enthusiasm of a tax auditor.

Living the dream.

I’d marched my way back to where my stash of grass rope was by now, and my dinky pile of rocks helped guide me.

I’m counting that one as a win.

Now it was time to start a base.

No clue how.

At least I’d managed to win the fungus roulette once or twice, so I wasn’t starving.

Just circling the drain.

Brimming with the false confidence of a man who once read a survival wiki at 2am, I decided to make a lean-to.

Basically you tie some sticks together and pray it stops the wind.

Not great if a mutant ant shows up, but hey- baby steps.

Well, that and a fire.

Truly the MVPs of survival.

Right. Back on topic.

I really had no idea what I was doing so I decided to rummage around.

Ended up yanking some sticks, logs, and anything else that seemed vaguely useful.

Like a small piece of flint.

Helpful?

Sure.

But why?

First step? Drag it all back to camp. I figured having everything in one place and organized would keep me motivated.

Seeing everything lined up made me feel oddly accomplished. Like I’d actually done something.

Yeah I know.

Setting down sticks isn’t exactly an achievement, but I’ll take it.

I picked up one of my rope strands and tried tying together two pieces of log in a cross pattern. Tightened the knot. No slack. Rock solid.

The logs immediately rolled apart.

Of course. The universe saw me struggling and pulled up a chair.

I shook my head and tried again.

This time I stuck one end of the logs deep into the dirt to keep them from moving. It kinda worked- right up until the rope snapped, and the whole thing collapsed.

Just like my will to live.

Shit.

Why was this harder than getting a refund from payroll?

I kept trying. I kept failing.

In a fit of genius (or desperation), I chucked some mud at it.

And… it held.

Oh.

Oh no.

Was I really losing a battle to dirt?

Leaning into my mud-based engineering degree, I crammed sticks into the gaps and slathered on more mud like glue.

With enough elbow grease, I finally had something that resembled… a wall? A panel? A wooden disaster held together by pure stubbornness?

Didn’t matter. It was mine.

I leaned it up against a tree, using some leftover logs as supports.

Oh. That’s why they called it a lean-to.

I see.

At this point the sun was setting. I could see the copper horizon from here, looking over the plains.

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The view was breathtaking.

My suffering? Less so.

I knew the signs. Raw throat. Cement limbs. Brain on dial-up.

Somehow, I’d built a shelter. No clue how. My thoughts crawled at an inch a minute.

Water.

Need it.

Ground?

I turned to the hole I’d dug for mud, and sure enough, there it was.

Pure, brown, undrinkable sludge.

I stared at it. It stared back.

I couldn’t believe I was about to do this.

I cupped my hands, scooped up the sludge, and forced it down.

It tasted like regret. Like dirt. Like every bad decision I’d ever made.

Did it help?

No.

Did I have a choice?

Also no.

I choked down another handful, draining the little well dry.

Fuck me.

But at least I wasn’t going to die. Not yet anyways.

Besides, if Wikipedia wasn’t lying to me, I had one more day before dehydration turned fatal.

Tomorrow I’d have to find water.

But tonight… food.

I tossed some grass in a pile, grabbed my flint, and struck it with a rock. Fire-making 101, right?

Minutes passed. No sparks. Then my brain finally loaded in: ‘flint and steel’ required steel.

Where was my lighter when I needed it?

Stupid HR goddess not even sending me here with a simple survival tool.

I did the trusty pocket tap, back pockets, then front pockets. And found nothing. Shocker.

So how was I supposed to make a fire?

Oh! Right—friction!

That generated heat, and I’d seen another survival show where they made something called a ‘bow drill.’

Did I know how to make one?

No.

Did that stop me?

Also no.

I grabbed a stick, some dried grass, and a flat piece of wood.

Close enough, right?

It was starting to get dark, so I had to move quickly or risk another cold night.

Grass, stick, wood. Easy. I spun the stick between my palms like a caveman discovering fire for the first time.

I felt like a genius.

20 minutes.

30.

An hour.

Still nothing.

My forearms were burning. My grass wasn’t smoking. I had completely, utterly failed.

For the first time in my second life I felt absolutely defeated.

Tech layoff levels of defeated.

I didn’t know what I did wrong, I didn’t know anything really.

I was just a guy trying to get by.

Then it hit me.

Water-deprived, brain fried — I’d forgotten the key to everything.

Rhythm.

So I started whistling. Off-key, off-pitch, completely terrible.

But it gave me a beat.

Something to follow.

I matched up the stick with the rhythm and rubbed.

It still took forever.

30 minutes at least.

But eventually?

A wisp of smoke. A tiny ember.

I scrambled, feeding it more dried grass, blowing carefully.

The sun had almost vanished, making the ember’s glow stand out against the dark.

I fed it.

Blew.

Fed it again.

The ember pulsed, a heartbeat in the night.

Then—flame.

Just a small one. But a flame all the same.

I sat there, barely breathing, staring at the flickering light like I had just invented fire myself.

Then, in my excitement, I lost balance and landed straight in my muddy water hole.

Great.

But the fire didn’t go out. If anything, it was growing.

I crawled out, wiped off my face, and fed it some more fuel. Carefully, I arranged sticks around it, adding tufts of grass to keep the flames hungry.

The night closed in, swallowing the landscape in shadow.

Except my little corner.

I kept feeding the fire. More sticks. Bigger pieces. It grew and grew, until eventually…

…I had an actual bonfire.

I sat there, dumbfounded.

I’d actually done it.

Fire.

Real, burning, life-saving fire.

Then I realized what this meant…

…I had to cook the mutant ant.

Shit.

I hesitated, not wanting to go near the damned thing.

But I had to steel my nerves. If I couldn’t even do this then how the hell was I going to survive the coming days?

I stuck out the ant-stab-inator 3000 and waited, slowly turning it over like the world’s ugliest marshmallow.

The smell was sickening at first. Made me seriously reconsider every life choice that brought me here.

Then, somehow, magic happened.

The ant’s disgusting smell faded.

No more burning rubber and wet dog. No more ooze from the stab wound. Everything firmed up, even the legs started to look appetizing.

Guess starvation really is the ultimate seasoning, because I swear upon the goddess’s name—I actually started drooling.

After about 10 minutes I assumed it was finished.

The outside of it had taken on a nice colour (compared to before, anyway) and the legs had stiffened up.

Now the real question: how the hell do you eat this?

I decided I didn’t want to think about it and just took a massive bite out of the midsection.

It wasn’t bad actually.

Wasn’t good either.

But definitely… not bad.

It kind of tasted like the driest, blandest chicken breast known to mankind.

The texture was gritty, the aftertaste was strong, and overall it was fairly bitter, but I was able to keep it down.

And that counted for something in my books.

I had a shelter. I had a fire. And I had some unpleasant, but edible, food.

Not the dream life, but at least I wasn’t stuck in a cubicle.

But at the very least, I knew that today had been a win. And I was proud of myself for it.

Tomorrow’s mission: find water. Hopefully without dying in the process.