Forgone Conclusions

[Frozen Smoke]

((Parker_Green - Day 1 - 13:50 Local Time - Entering from They're Magically Delicious!))

thunk

thunk

thunk

Parker picked up the hunk of wood he’d taken from the trunk of the felled tree beside him, and turned it around, before placing it back down against the ground and steadying it with one hand. The axe came down again, continuing the rough line he’d been making, each stroke relatively light and controlled. He had never really liked woodshop class, woodwork had felt like an archaic skill to be forced to learn, but he was glad he’d paid enough attention to it to get a solid A grade in it now, even if it had been a mere exercise in box-ticking. He turned the wood again, and continued to chew over his thoughts.

This was the kind of dull, repetitive task that he’d normally listen to a podcast whilst doing, but sadly that was not an option he had right now. He didn’t even have the luxury of talking to someone, being as alone as he was right now, not that that seemed like a particular negative after seeing the vapidity of his classmates when faced with such a problem.

But even his own thoughts seemed as vapid as what he’d heard from others earlier. All he’d been able to focus on earlier was that, well, felling a tree was certainly not as easy as it looked in Age of Empires 2. And that his wrist hurt, as it was jarred with every stroke into the thing. He tried to figure out what tree it was, but that wasn’t exactly the sort of thing he’d cared to research before, and he certainly had no way of doing it now. If he had to guess, it was probably a Cedar, but did Cedar even grow in a tropical shithole like this?

The angle of his strokes changed as he completed his first circuit around the piece, cutting in at an acute angle down to the channel he’d cut in it, removing slices of wood with each hack at it.

The problem with all of these thoughts were that they were, at the end of the day, pointless. He wasn’t getting to the root of the problem at hand, and whilst he was proud of himself for realising that there were plenty of resources that the terrorists couldn’t take away - unlike Theo - the fact remained that he didn’t see a solution to the larger problem.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was going to die here.

And that there was nothing he could do about it.

Yet, part of him screamed and rebelled against the notion, told him that the problem had a solution. Clearly it had. 6 other people had managed to survive this experience, alongside however many people had reached escape boats. But still, no ideas came, no useful information, no insight. His thinking simply hit a snag, hung mid-process, like a program stuck in an infinite loop as he tried to process it all.

He inspected deep channel he’d made, and put the piece down for now, reaching up and wiping the sweat off of his forehead. He reached behind himself, and picked up the half drunk bottle of water that sat there, and took a long drink from it.

“I notice that I am confused.” he murmured to himself, as he screwed the cap back on, repeating a mantra that he’d picked up a long time ago. “What do I think I know, and how do I think I know it?”

He thought he knew that other people would have guns, and he didn’t, due to knowledge of past version. That seemed to be true, he’d heard a gunshot in the distance, as he’d trekked north-east to where he was now.

He was fairly sure that meant he was going to die, as he didn’t have a gun, and therefore wasn’t going to be able to close the distance with anyone trying to kill him. He knew that, well, because he knew what happened when you charged people with gun and didn’t have them yourself. The Colonial Wars spoke about as loud and clear as they could on that subject.

Except, that wasn’t quite true, people fighting the Colonial Wars had been soldiers, and the members of the school weren’t. It wasn’t even like people hadn’t left without being assigned a gun, he was fairly sure of that. Not that he was a fan of SOTF - people were rarely “fans” of terrorist attacks - but he was pretty sure there’d been a line in a song about Mara. She’d been assigned something a hell of a lot worse than an axe, if the rapper was to be believed, a snowglobe or something like that.

He also knew the supplies he had wouldn’t last him forever. There was only four days of food, and less than that of water, so he’d need to get some. He knew that from basic survival maths, and that most of the games, when reported on the news went to nearly two weeks.

But that was wrong too. There were plenty of ways to get more food, even on a deserted island, and more than that - There were caches of supplies running around the island already. Everyone had a pack that was just like his, and whilst they’d be burning into it, his mind began to turn on ways to get a hold of their supplies without having to kill them for it.

Killing people - at least directly - seemed like a bad idea. He’d figured that out pretty quickly. Having your name called out on the perpetrator part was a smart idea on the terrorists side. They probably would deliberately leave out context, start to degrade the social contract, until people started to attack one another on sight for fear of being attacked themselves.

He got back to work on the club, standing up and angling the channel away from himself as he hacked away the wood that stood in between his initial cut, and the handle size he wanted.

Parker knew what he had to do now. There was an equilibrium at play here. The earlier in the game it was, the more people who wouldn’t be able to hold onto their equipment, be it food or weapons - Would still have it.

If he wanted to give himself an advantage, without having to fight tooth and nail for it, now was the time to work on it.

((Parker_Green - Day 1 - 14:30 Local Time - In Transit to Elsewhere))