The outcropping had a small tree on it, and there was no collected driftwood. The outcropping was about 4 feet wide, with the tree on the outermost side. Not enough room for a fire, and I didn’t want to try to dig into the solid rock face since I only had a rock to dig with.

It would be nice if I could fashion a wood pickax, but the world doesn’t work that way. You’re not going to break a rock face using wood. I might have been able to make a stone hammer, but that was more work than I wanted to do unless I had no other choice in the matter.

Since I knew that I was mostly safe from water rising and could lay down and use the tree as a rail, it was time to work on my camp. First, I drank the rest of the water from my skin. Then dropped the contents of my bag near the tree.

I climbed down with just my stick, empty pack, and water skin. When I got to the bottom, I first filled my water skin and set it down near the water on the sand. Then I started to gather deadwood. It was kind of easy in this type of the area to find the wood, almost always caught on the bank just a few feet higher than the water. It came from when the river would flood, so I knew that because the deadwood was this low, I was right in my thoughts about my campsite for today being safe. After I got wood, I stacked it up in the middle of the sandy spot.

Once again, I noticed the lack of people. Of course, there would be some trash of some sort in most places like this, but there was none. There were no plastic wrappers and no cups, no spoons, nothing to show that people had been anywhere on this river. This made me a bit more nervous as the lack of people wasn’t something that I was used to, and if I would find help, not seeing signs wasn’t a good thing.

After I got my pile of driftwood, I started to make a fire. I pulled out my fire horn and dropped the warm coal into my tender, and started my fire. I knew that I needed a new fire so that I could move a coal again. I’d never done this, but it seemed like my muscles could duplicate what the man in my dream had shown me. As I was working on starting the fire, I looked down at my left hand and saw burn scars all-over my palm and the insides of my fingers. It looked like an old scar which made no sense to me.

I “knew” the best way to make a new spear was going to be with a fire. So I sat down to work the end with the fire heating it up and scraping tit down with a nearby rock. It was nice to be warm and not have to move much after such a long day.

Once my spear was made, I needed to let the fire die down to cook on. But of course, I had nothing to cook, but I could use my spear for fishing if there were fish, and I could also make a fish trap if I took the time.

I looked out in the river to see if I could see anything swimming around. I remembered when I went fishing growing up, and I could always find trout in the slow pools of water behind the rocks. So looking down, I was happy to see fish there. They didn’t look much like trout, but I knew from my ‘other’ memories that kicked in that I could eat these as well.

This second set of memories that I was picking up on was odd. They were like my own in many ways, but they were also so much unlike them. I felt like I’d skills and knowledge that I KNEW that I didn’t have. I’d never been spearfishing, nor had I ever built a fish trap, but I felt like I could and even knew what I needed. Just like cooking fish over coals, I knew with the certainty of experience that I could and what I needed to make it happen, yet I’d never done this. Perhaps these skills and memories were somehow given to me when the HUD was put in.

I gave way to my memories that weren’t mine and stood up with my spear. It was time to get fish. I was about to try to spear one from where I was standing when I felt that I should move forward a bit more and slowly go into the water.

I slipped into the water from the sandy bank, and it was cold. I had to stand still for a few moments on each step as the cold reached up higher and higher on my body. Finally, when I got thigh-high in the water, I was able to move around in the water so that I was between the fish and the rest of the river.

I started to walk towards the fish, and they backed up. Soon they were in a much shallower area that I could spear them. My first attempt scared all the fish more than they were. As one school, the fish darted past me and back into the main river, leaving me cold and still hungry.

I got out of the water, moved to the next area that looked good, and tried again. I got the fish up close where I thought I could spear, and this time I went all in and got one. I pinned it to the bottom of the water with my spear, and as it flopped around, I reached in and pulled it and my spear out.

I picked up a small rock, brained the fish to finish it off, and went to the fire. Unfortunately, it was still too hot to cook on, so I went to the third pool, repeated my fishing, and got myself a second fish.

Back at my fire, I took off my tunic so that it would dry. Then I got a small stick, sharpened a point to it on a rock, and gut my two fish. It took me a good thirty minutes or so to do what would have been all of thirty seconds with a knife.

I went to the bank, got two green sticks, ran them through my fish, and kind of angled them over the fire so that they wouldn’t be too hot and burn but would get enough heat to cook. After that, I climbed back down into that horrid cold water and took a bath using the sand to scrub off the blood from the fish and the dirt from the hike. I noticed that while I was still me, I had callouses that I didn’t have before.

After getting out, I went to my fish and rotated them over. I had nothing to dry off with, so I just had to stay near the fire to finish drying out. Then, I started to make a list of what I had.

I had a secure place from the predators that came out at night, and now I have a bit of food, not much but some. I also had a fire when I needed it with my fire horn, provided that I start one every few days.

The next thing I needed to do was figure out those messages that I got and what all that meant to me. So I ate both of my fish and discarded the head and tail; back into the water. I didn’t want to attract anything that wanted to eat meat.

I packed up a coal into my fire horn, still not understanding how I knew to use one. So while my memories told me to just grab the coal, I used sticks to move it.

I filled my bag with some of the thinner branches of driftwood and headed back up to my sleeping spot.

While I figured that I had been safe where I was, I didn’t want to roll off, so I took the branches and used them and my axe to build a make-shift wall. I hammered in a few of them to be vertical posts and then used the rest to kind of weave between the posts. It was far from a good job, and I’m sure that if anyone saw it, they would laugh. I remembered how I kept waking up because of the hard ground. I climbed back out with just my pack and axe and hacked off a few dozen boughs to use as a bed and help with the walls to keep out the wind. I also would use some of them on top of me to help with some warmth.

About when I finished getting everything arranged, I saw that the sun was down and we were moving into twilight. So I ended my time getting ready quickly and used the last of my driftwood to close off my path with a few spiked sticks that I half made and half broke. I figured since I had to jump a few feet to get to the path and then the ledge was less than a foot wide in spots, I should be good, but if not, then I’d feel better with a few sticks pointed at the ledge.

I settled in, and for the last few minutes of light, I started asking myself those questions that keep everyone awake at night. How did I get here, who am I, what was the meaning of this life I have, and lastly, what the heck those messages were that I got when I looked at the books and why the message said I couldn’t read.

First I knew who I was, I was… “Well, that’s odd; why can’t I remember my name?” I muttered