Before I head out, I ask the plant if I should do or know anything before I go. He recommends a hundred-pack of neon-pink baseballs because I seem to be able to hit things sometimes. The color will make them easier to find in the mostly green jungle, but no promises. I buy those, a couple extra baseball bats and 4 more heal-gel tubes as well.

Alec also tells me that distance from the clearing is a pretty good proxy for the danger levels in the jungle.

"Wait, dude," I say, "Should I use string to find my way back? Like Hansel and Gretel?"

"It was Theseus that used string, and it was a maze. Hansel and Gretel used bread crumbs. And eventually the birds ate the bread crumbs, showing just how bad an idea it was. If you were looking to leave a trail, I would recommend bright aquarium-style colored rocks."

"Dude. Good thinking. Ship it."

He also warns me of staying out too long. Thaum regeneration is important, and a lack of thaums can kill me. I won't die in a day, and I can pull out my drums if I really need to. But I'm up to about 6 thaums a day under normal circumstances, rather than the one I started with. If I come back in less than eighteen hours, I'll be fine.

That’s also part of why I kept most of my last O-Thaum. I can live on that for several months if needs be.

With all his advice dispensed, I thank him, “Domo Arigato, Mister Robotany.”

He doesn’t bother to reply. Okay. Heading out.

Walking into the forest is like leaving an indoor stadium with fake grass and sunlight, and stepping into the real outdoors. There’s bugs. There’s trees. There’s noise. It takes me 20 minutes to get used to there being life around, besides me and the occasional killer monkey. It’s beautiful. I can hear birds. I think there are monkey sounds, but they're not enraged. There are frogs, crickets and more kinds of birds singing. There are flowers, ferns, and a plethora of plants on the jungle floor. There are smells. Gosh, there’s a lot of smells: flowers; wood; soil, and a bunch of other smells I don't recognize. I’m not seeing any animals though. A lot of that is probably just because they’re still. They’ve gotta be here. Too much life around for there not to be.

I walk through the forest, looking for monkeys. Gosh, I make a lot of noise. I turned up my hearing a bit to take this forest stroll, though I left the max-sound limiters on. It’s crazy to think that there are folks who can walk through the forest silently: Ninjas; Yanomamo; Survival show guys on TNN. I certainly can’t. But ain’t nothing can sneak up on me either. Echolocation is a freakin' superpower.

It’s a little annoying walking through the forest and having to duck so much. You wouldn’t think there would be that big of a difference between my old height of six-two, and the with-mohawk seven feet I have now. But there is. On the other hand, my surroundings are my bitch! I never bump into anything, because I know just how far away it is, and I can sear out of my hair.

In the normal human hearing spectrum, there’s a reasonable number of noises going on in the jungle: birds; crickets; all sorts of things. But it's still medium quiet. Because I can listen into the ultrasonic too, though, there’s a bunch of more stuff. I saw a show once saying that bats and moths and some frogs and some other little guys all use ultrasonic noises. And I can hear it now. This is going to take some getting used to.

45 minutes in, I haven’t gone very far. Looking back at my aquarium rock breadcrumbs, I haven’t gone very straight either. I may have been going mostly in a circle around the clearing rather than deeper into the forest. Whatever. Drums are my thing, not directions.

The trees are pretty tall. I haven’t seen any real wildlife here except for ground bugs. And mosquitos. I should’ve gone back and gotten Alec to give me a hoodie with a mohawk-slit. But the bugs are less dense than I’d have thought. I guess it’s the water. I haven’t seen any on the ground, and that’s part of their lifecycle I think. Anyhow, where the hell are the monkeys.

It takes another twenty minutes of stepping over logs and generally getting further towards lost when I realize that the monkeys are probably up in the trees, and that I would have to look up to find them. I stop, and try it. After a few minutes of looking up, I can start to see motion way up in the canopy. Maybe 100 feet up? There’s birds at least. Five more minutes, and I can tell there’s definitely monkeys up there too. Five more minutes and I think I count 3 in this section of trees. I probably should’ve looked up sooner.

How the heck am I going to get their attention? I need them to come down and fight. I can’t chuck a baseball 100 feet up. It's a bad angle for gravity. There’s branches in the way too. I'd miss at least 99 of 100 throws.

I try yelling. They either don’t notice, or just ignore me. I find some smaller sticks and rocks to throw. I was right. Can’t throw that high through the trees. What if I climbed? Coach Phuc says nope. Can’t fight in the trees. I argue with the voice in my head about using my tail. He wins the argument by pointing out that no practice means no skill. He also says that most of the force applied in human combat is transmitted by legs pushing against the ground. So, in addition to no arboreal combat skill, I’d have no strength either.

Shit. I don’t think I have the ability to actually hunt the monkeys. Maybe I can buy a slingshot from Alec. I turn back and trudge home, following my aquari-crumbs.