Chapter 1

I awoke to a buzzing sound in my ears. My eyes hurt the way they did when I had a migraine, too. On top of all that, my stomach felt as if I had swallowed a 250ml of Ghost Pepper oil imbued pop-rocks, which was making me ill, and I couldn’t seem to control my muscles. This was my introduction to New Eden (NE).

Once my body got over that transitory feeling (it’s what I imagine recently hit roadkill feels like) I made a few discoveries. The first was the lack of chronic pain I’ve suffered nearly all my life due to various injuries sustained rock climbing, Spelunking, and on the job accidents (some of which should have killed me). It went beyond that, though. I was physically, as best I could determine, as fit and healthy as I was when I had finished Basic and AIT when I was 19 and had joined the US Army. To help me with the pain and keep my body from totally ceasing up, I had learned Yoga and long-form Wu (Hao). I found it easy to flow through the movements. Much smoother than I had in decades. Those were some of the positive things. It wasn’t all good, however.

Once I got over the fact that I felt like a new man, I began to pay more attention to my surroundings and determined that I was nowhere near home. I might not even be on Earth by the look of the plants and the glimpses of wildlife I caught here and there.

The creatures I saw looked noticeably different from those I was familiar with back home and across the many places I’d been to in the military. This includes a chicken-sized lizard-like animal I saw chasing after what I can only describe as an opossum-like quadruped with fur that matched the landscape and large eyes, which I figured would be great for night time vision. There were flying creatures as well, and they didn’t make any sounds like our birds on Earth. Some had feathers, but others were more like bats, flying squirrels, and sugar gliders. I thought I saw something that was a lemur, but I didn’t get a good look at it as it moved very quickly.

I was definitely not on Earth. So, either I was hallucinating, in a dream, or I’ve been abducted and sent to a new world by some damned aliens.

Why do I mention aliens and abduction? Well, I have always been an avid reader, and several years ago I began to indulge in online stories about alien abduction to far away worlds, with and without equipment, time travel, and more, which in turn led me to learn several survival skills just to understand what would be needed if one were to find themselves out in the middle of nowhere.

Those skills included how to skin my kills; preserve and tan hides; smoke any meat that I couldn’t eat before it went bad; how to make pemmican; how to recognize sources of water (EG vines, and such); how to knap rocks and flint; how to make a recurve bow and the art of fletching; how to build a variety of shelters; and a plethora of traps and snares for small and large game and even fish.

In other words, if you give me a few bones and some dry wood, I could take care of myself well enough.

The most significant discovery was a 40-foot shipping container filled with an assortment of items a modern-day pioneer might want on hand to start a farm out where there is a distinct lack of access to any kind of store or mercantile. This included a heavy-duty treadle-powered sewing machine with table and chair, along with a sewing kit with needles for cloth and leather, thimbles, threads of different sizes, etc.

As I explored the container, I found a case filled with various knives for skinning, scraping, cutting, etc. Then there’s a 55-gallon drum filled with hemp rope and cordage in diameters of 1/4th, 1/2, 3/4ths, and one inch. You can fit a lot of rope in such a container. On top of all that, in the same barrel, was a vacuum sealed container, which held seeds for both Indica and Sativa cannabis. This was fortunate since marijuana is where hemp comes from can be used to make fibers for cloth, paper, and cordage, oil, and medication. I had at least a full liter of each. That’s a lot of seed for a perennial plant.

A large tool wooden tool chest was filled with woodworking hand tools, including a variety of hammers, saws, chisels, planes, draw blades, adzes, ax heads, mauls, and more with the metal coated in cosmoline to help reduce/prevent corrosion. In a well-marked short cask like container was more chain saw chain than I have ever seen at one time that wasn’t attached to a chainsaw. On top of the sawchain, as I decided to call it, as there was no chain saw body to be found, was a packet containing multiple copies of handles designed to attack to lengths of the sawchain for use in cutting trees and possibly lumber.

Another container was filled with farming implements, which includes heads for hoes, spades, shovels, rakes, gardening forks, plow heads, pruning shears, and more. There are also various other tools in there for animal husbandry. There’s a bundle of carbon fiber handles for them all, as well.

I would find, once the container was thoroughly inspected, a small but powerful electric generator meant for a wind turbine, and the pieces to put it together to provide me with limited but useful electricity. That was there to help power a few tools that were included, like the lathe and milling machines that were very familiar to me as I had nearly identical ones in my garage back home. With the woodworking tools alone, I had a huge hand up. This was over the top, but I wasn’t about to complain.

Another two containers are filled with clothing for all types of weather, and it seems that it’s not just for me but for at least one other person because many are too small for me.

As I made my way to the rear of the container, I found 2m wide roll of sail quality canvas hanging on the back wall of the container. Figure that it is doubled over and the label states that it is 100m of cloth and that’s a lot of canvas. At least it seems to be in my mind.

There are other rolls of fabrics hanging there, too. White linen and cotton, and undyed hemp fabric. From the labels on them, I have 75m (each) of the linen and cotton at a width of 60 inches, and 150m of the hemp fabric. All hung on the wall for easy access and storage.

I found one container filled with cast iron pots, pans, skillets, and dutch oven, hand mixers, spatulae, etc. Next to it was a large tub filled with vacuum-sealed bags of cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda, and more. Possibly enough to last a year for a family of four, if used wisely.

There are containers filled mostly seed stocks. Wheat, corn, rye, barley, peanuts, wild rice, golden rice, soy (both edamame and nattu for making tofu), quinoa, a large variety of lentils, tubers, onions, garlic, basil, bay leaf, rosemary, thyme, turmeric, many types of peppers, and much more.

Essentially, I have enough to plant many acres of each of the grains and plenty of the others to ensure a good crop (weather and soil conditions permitting). I had no plans, nor means, to use all of it right away. That’s fine. It means that I have enough to ensure I have the seeds for future crops.

I also found an unassembled crossbow and compound bow with spare parts, bolts, and arrows, and a case of 100 steel field point arrowheads, along with plans for making crossbows from wood, as well as

Speaking of plans, I have them for making everything from barrels and casks, to handles for tools, and for just about anything one could hope for back in the old west. Yes, that even includes a steam engine, though I have no way to make welds, so that’s way off in the future. I have no guns and minimal means of electrical production and tools that use electricity. I do have several oil burning lamps.

There’s also a 55-gallon drum of kerosene, which I assume is for the lamps. I hope that lasts until I can start producing oil from the hemp seeds when I begin harvesting the crops, once I plant them.

There is neither bed nor toilet, but there are a couple of hammocks and a large copper tub and lots of soap. I would later discover papermaking related apparatus, including a decorticator, and an old Washington hand press, which had been disassembled and stored inside the container as well. Those would be for future use. They had no place in my current situation.

“What is New Eden,” one may ask. Well, the answer is that it isn’t on Earth. Truth be told, I haven’t a clue as to where it is. Why name it New Eden? I didn’t. That’s the name it had when I awoke.

What do I know about this place, this “New Eden”?

Well, for starters, it is very Earth-like. I don’t have the equipment to measure anything in a way that proves how Earth like it is. However, I can breathe the air, and it is clean and refreshing. Probably how it would have been back before the Industrial Revolution back on Earth. Gravity feels to be close to what I am used to from before the unwilling move from Earth to NE. The sky is Azul in color, much like back on Earth. There is a moon, but it appears to be either closer or larger, (possibly both?), than that of Earth. That means that tides here are going to be extreme.

The moon is not tidally locked like Earth’s. Instead, this one spins on its axis so that it has a day and night period of about four NE days to one Lunar day. I haven’t seen it make a full rotation, yet, though I have kept an eye on visible landmarks and base my ratio on my observations at this time. There are no familiar Constellations and no “North Star.” My compass does keep a consistent heading, so it does have a magnetic field, which is good.

There are plants and animals here. I’ve seen creatures as small as a mouse to as big as a Moose, but they look very different. I’m reasonably certain that the plants are on a parallel evolutionary track to Earth’s in that they are mostly green and therefore likely using chlorophyll. There are grasses, trees, flowers, shrubs all around. I believe that I’m in a tropical climate, but that’s a guess as I haven’t been here long enough to know for sure.

I have seen one other predator, so far. It resembled, to me, like a really feathery three-foot tall raptor, though its arms are longer and it can use them to grasp, climb, and dig. There was only one, but that just means I only saw the one. I had the pleasure of observing it as it took down a creature slightly larger than itself, which I would describe as a large rodent. If pressed, I might label it as a Capybara, as it looks very similar to those I’ve seen in various nature periodicals back on Earth. This is a good thing because that means I have a likely source of easy protein.

There are flighted creatures, too. They seem to range from the size of a Chickadee to a Red-Tailed Hawk, from my observations so far. So, as I stated before, it appears that NE’s flora and fauna took a parallel evolutionary path, but not exactly the same as on Earth, which is reasonable.

I don’t have a watch, or clock of any kind with me, so I cannot figure out the length of the day here. When the local sun goes down, it gets dark fairly fast. There’s a lot of stars out there but not enough light to do any work by. I am confident that it is close to a 24 hour day, maybe longer.

It took a bit of work, but I to set up a lean-to against the “North” side of the container, which is where I’ve placed the barrels containing non-perishables like the farming and woodworking tools so that I have room to set up a hammock to sleep in at night.

By making use of the handles designed to use with a length of the sawchain to make cutting down timber easier, I was able to fell the trees necessary more quickly and efficiently than it would have been by using either an ax or saw to cut the trees down. Hauling them was another issue entirely. I hope that I can eventually find a buffalo or bovine of some kind that can be domesticated to put to work moving heavy loads. In the meantime, simple pulleys work.

In the first week, I managed to clear about two acres of land of trees and shrubs. This would be where I would put down my roots. I’ve begun digging down into the Earth. It’s going to take some time as I intend to make my home partially underground. This will be made easier by the fact that many of the trees I’ve cut down seem to be something similar to cedar. No insects seem to have an interest in them, and if I’m lucky, they will be highly resistant to rot.

I’ve managed to dig the pit that will be my home out. It’s been a month of hard work. My traps have been ensuring I have a supply of fresh food. I’ve been smoking the meat I haven’t been able to eat so that I have it for later. There’s a stream nearby with fish, which are quite tasty. There’s also a freshwater spring just up the hill from me that bubbles out of the side of the hill. I’ve emptied a barrel, washed it out, and set up a duct to bring water to it, so I have plenty of fresh water on hand.

As I’ve explored the nearby area, I discovered a sizeable pond downhill and 3km to the south of me. I would guess, on the surface, that the pond covers close to 10km based on an average of a 50m radius. It seems to be bound by a large deposit of clay that can be easily reached, though gathering it will take a bit of hard work.