Some nightmares are worse than others. I remembered that I’d get night terrors and not be able to move at all. Those were some of the worst. Needing to fight in sleep but unable to. Then there were nightmares because of how disturbing the dream's content was. Nothing scary, just nothing pleasant either. When I’d wake up the next day, I’d start by saying something like, “That wasn’t a good dream.” Then after a while of thinking on it, I’d change it to, “That was a nightmare.”

I was back on Earth. This felt more like a memory again than just a dream. It was a Saturday at about four in the afternoon, and I was in the office. I was finishing up paperwork as fast as I could. I’d an hour left in the workweek, and then I was gone. I would be going camping. It would be me and my pack and no one else for a whole week. I wouldn’t have to worry about the people in this dumb building or the customers who couldn’t understand simple English telling them they were wrong. My pack was already in the car; I just needed to leave on time to make it to the campsite before dark.

At 4:30 pm, Katie, one of my reps, walked up to me. She had that look they all get when there was a customer that was being unreasonable or that they at least thought was so.

“Arn I got this lady on the phone she wants to talk with you. I tried hard I just couldn’t get her to listen to me. She is just screaming now,” Katie told me.

“Okay what is going on?”

“So her internet is down because of an outage and she wants me to send a tech. I told her that I couldn’t schedule one because she was in an outage.”

I looked at my computer to see how long the call had been going on. “Katie, you’re telling me that you have been dealing with an outage call for over an hour and you’re just now coming to get me?”

“NO! Well yes, it wasn’t an outage when I started the call but it got declared one when I was trying to roll a truck and so I couldn’t finish the schedule. I tried to explain to her what was going on and she wouldn’t listen. She is mad that I wasted an hour and that I ‘Don’t want to send a truck’ I told her that I’d send one if I could just for her but I can’t.”

“Okay so what does she expect for me to do? I can’t send a truck it would just get canceled because of the outage if I put it in system.”

“I told her that but she doesn’t believe me.” Katie sighed.

“Fine transfer her over to me and make sure to note the account.”

The rest of my dream was the worst hour-long call I could’ve had. The lady couldn’t understand reason no matter what I tried to do. She wouldn’t listen to me explain that her area was having a problem and that the problems she had leading up to this were likely caused by the same thing that caused the outage. In the end, she asked for my boss and got even madder when I told her that we would have to schedule a call back since he wasn’t in his office. The guy was never in his office but was always wanting to micromanage everything.

I left work an hour late got stuck in traffic because of when I left. Then it started to rain, and the car next to me lost control and bumped me into the Jersey barrier. My car was driveable, but it was still two hours of waiting for the cop on the interstate. When the guy bumped me, he yanked hard the other way and took out the car next to him, and caused all three lanes to back up. Because of the rain, we ended up with a 12 car pile-up. I was three hours late with a messed up car that, while I could drive, now had a fender hanging off. My hiking trip now had to wait until everything was fixed.

The following day I got up knowing that I’d more work cut out for me. The dream had me down. I never did get to go on that hike because of that stupid lady. I wanted to hike the entire Knobstone trail and never got the chance and ended up moving not long after that. I guess I was getting my hiking time now that I was here, where ever this was. The other thing about the dream that had me down was it was real. I was reliving a memory of mine from earth.

I knew that I needed to set up a schedule to get all my balls rolling that I needed to and still not forget to work on my skills. Today I needed to make a hoe and see if I could get a garden started. I also needed to work on fishing and start to train my body. If the hiking and running skills helped with stamina reduction, I needed to see what else I could get that would help.

After breakfast which was the last of my fish, I built a smoking rack. Then I spent about an hour building a hoe. After that, I selected where I wanted to have my garden. I wanted it near my lean-to and out of the footprint for my future stone house. It would be nearer the ledge so that it could get more light. As I was only putting in about six onions and almost the same number of potatoes, it didn’t take me long to get everything planted. I even took loose stones and made a bed around it so that I’d remember not to walk there.

Next, I went fishing since I needed to get food. I spent a good three hours fishing on my level of the falls. I saw lots of fish, so I wasn’t worried about overfishing right now, but I also felt like I’d want to fish the lower levels more than this one. If something like the dogs came in again, I wanted to be able to hole up on my level and not have to worry for some time about food. That was part of the garden idea too, but mostly I wanted to see if I could get an easy food source for myself.

I took all of my fish back to the fire for smoking. All the guts I hoed under near the garden where I thought I’d expand towards. I even mixed in some leaves with it. I was hoping that since I was high up, I could start doing some direct composting and not worry about attracting unwanted scavengers. I ended up with 20 smoked fish, and I ate three that I cooked on a flat rock on my rocket stove. It seemed to work well for the stove, but I’d need to work out some pots and bowls before I could use it well. I wasn’t wanting to burn what I was doing, only cook a bit faster.

After lunch, I got to work on building my first ladder. Since the cliff was a thirty-foot climb down to the next level, I knew I wasn’t making a full-height ladder. When I climbed up, I did so from one small level to the next, up it with the biggest climb as about ten feet. I figured that If I took a thin tree and cut off the branches, I could have a usable pole ladder. It wouldn’t be the best, but it would be better than trying to climb everything freehand each time. The tree I selected was about four inches in diameter and ended up being about 16 feet tall of useful height. I chopped off all the branches and the ones that I wanted to use to climb. I left about four inches sticking out from them.

I then used some of the vines that I still had to tie the top of the ladder to a tree where I wanted to climb down. I then lowered it down to the next level. I climbed down not on the pole and worked on finding a good place to wedge into and not slide off. I then started up my new ladder. Slowly. I found that it wanted to slide at the top, but my vines kept it from going too far. I didn’t like that by too far, I meant that it didn’t drop me off the side, but I ended up being supported only by the vine by the time I got to the top.

I took it as a good sign that the vines were strong, but I didn’t want to tighten it up since I wanted to use the vine to pull the ladder up to make this more secure. So I got out the stone hammer and started work on the ledge. I wasn’t sure how long I swung the hammer, but it was a while before I got the notch in the ledge where I wanted it. I settled the ladder back into the notch at the top. It now sat about 2/3 of the way into the cliff face. That should keep it from rocking back and forth.

I then went up and down about a dozen times to ensure it would hold. I pulled the ladder back up, lowered it, and put it in place from the top. It was a bit of a trick, but I could get it to line up. The rest of the climb down was in five to six-foot drops, so it wasn’t something that I was worried about doing, even if I was in a rush. In fact, I’d be happier not having something I needed to balance on to get up as it would make it harder for others to follow. Thinking back to the dogs that I’d chased me.

I then went up the ten feet to the next level above mine to look around. This level had less growth and looked more like a stone outcropping. There were a few trees on the slope side, but once again, the slope didn’t make contact with the ledge. The trees on this level were all hardwoods and seemed like they had been there for a while.

The landing was covered in grass and weeds and scrub-type bushes. Growing up here, I saw more of the wild onions and potatoes that I’d found. I also saw dandelions which I knew from growing up I could eat and make wine from. I just didn’t know how to make the wine. I saw what I thought were blackberries as well, but my survival skill didn’t kick in, so I wasn’t sure if they were or not.

As I got closer to the trees, I saw nuts on the ground, so I spent some time picking them up. I just dropped them off the edge down to my level near my camp. I figured that it was better than figuring out how to carry them down right now since my pack was still below.

I looked up at the 50-foot section of the falls and couldn’t figure out how to get up it easy. I was sure that I could go up it with enough time, but I wasn’t sure the risk was worth climbing. I guess I’d need to figure a way up just to see if I’d neighbors, but I didn’t see any smoke, and I’d not heard anything, so I guessed that only animals would be up that way.

I then spent the rest of the day moving two-handed stones from the river over to my future home. It was tiring and horrid but also fun. I was starting to build a house. I got the outline of what I wanted laid out. It would be one room that backed right up to the cliff with a door that opened towards the waterfall. I’d then walk out from that door and be about six feet from the large rock that fell. I’d thought about using that rock as part of my home, but right next to it was a tree, so I didn’t want to go about removing roots since that was hard on earth.

Before the sun went behind the waterfall, I took a bath and then yelled, “Oh great and mighty Sam I Arn have a question for you! What does this necklace you gave me do?” I then went and cooked up some of the potatoes and onions to have with my smoked fish. It wasn’t great, but it was better than nothing.

By your actions today

You have increased your level in

Primitive tools (level 5)

Climbing (level 6)

Spear fishing (Level 3)

New knowledge has been granted to you!

Stone construction (Level 0)

Stone Construction, Grouping non-combative Craft:

Stone Construction is the set of skills needed to build using stone. Low levels let you build low walls using uncut stone. As your skill level progresses, so does your wall height. This skill also teaches you how to make mortar based on what you have nearby and your other knowledge.

This day had gone great. Everything was working, and nothing was trying to mess with me. I even remembered to ask Sam my question. I was sure that everything had taken a turn for the better. As I was drifting off, I heard the baying of dogs not far away.