Awakening to Hunger

Wang Yan's last memory was of the blinding headlights of an out-of-control truck, and that brief sensation of weightlessness as his body flew into the air. He had been rushing to deliver an order of spicy stir-fry, crossing that familiar intersection.

When he opened his eyes again, the world spun, and the glaring sunlight had become the flickering glow of a campfire.

A mixture of sweat, smoke, and some indescribable rank odor rushed into his nostrils, choking him into a fit of coughing. Voices buzzed around his ears, speaking a language he could not understand at all, its syllables short and strange.

He found himself lying on a rough "bed" covered with dry grass and an unidentified animal hide. Calling it a bed was generous; it was really just a slightly raised earthen platform. Looking around, he saw a low, dim, circular space, with a conical roof of branches and dry grass overhead. Thin strands of light slipped through its gaps. This was an utterly crude tent-or a shack?

"Where am I? A film set? A prank?" Wang Yan's mind was a tangled mess. He tried to sit up, but his entire body felt weak and powerless. Worse, waves of burning cramps tore through his stomach-the sensation of extreme hunger.

He lowered his head to look at his body, and his heart suddenly sank. This was not his adult body, which had delivered takeout through wind and rain every day and, while not especially muscular, had some strength to it. This was the body of a scrawny, dark-skinned child, every rib plainly visible!

Just then, a tall figure stooped and ducked inside. It was a dark-skinned, middle-aged man with a face full of wrinkles and loose, disheveled hair. A dirty-looking animal hide was wrapped around his body. His eyes held exhaustion, but also a beastlike sharpness. He carried a rough, blackened stone bowl, half filled with a cloudy liquid that gave off faint wisps of steam.

Seeing that he was awake, the man uttered a few syllables and held the stone bowl out to him.

Wang Yan stared blankly at him, then at the unidentifiable "soup" in the bowl. They could not understand each other's language, but he understood the signal in the man's eyes-eat.

Hunger overcame his doubts and panic. Wang Yan took the stone bowl, heavy and cold in his hands. He brought it to his lips and took a sip.

An indescribable taste instantly filled his mouth: a little bitter, a little astringent, with an earthy tang and the faintest hint of raw meat, almost without any saltiness. This was... food? Fighting back nausea, Wang Yan gulped down the half bowl of slurry. With something in his stomach, the burning eased slightly, but his hunger was far from satisfied.

The man seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when he saw him finish. He patted his shoulder, said something else, then turned and went out.

Wang Yan sat dazed on the grass bedding, an enormous flood of information battering his muddled brain. He struggled to remember, and fragments of memories that did not belong to him surfaced in fits and starts:

This was a place called the "Fire Tribe." He was the eldest son of the tribe's chief, "Jianshi," and his name... seemed to be "Yan" as well? He was about ten years old. A few days ago, the original owner of this body seemed to have been so hungry that he had gone with some other children to pick wild fruit from a certain kind of tree, fallen out of it, and then...

"I... transmigrated? And was reborn as a primitive tribal child in a parallel world roughly ten thousand years in the past?" Wang Yan felt as though his entire worldview had shattered all over the floor, beyond any hope of picking up the pieces. A traffic accident while delivering takeout, followed by rebirth in the distant past? This script was far too absurd!

He struggled out of the shack, and the sight outside plunged him deeper into despair.

Dozens of shacks much like the one he had just occupied stood scattered across a cleared patch of ground. Sallow, emaciated men and women in clothing that barely covered them sat or lay about numbly. Most of the children had swollen bellies (a typical sign of chronic malnutrition) and vacant eyes. An oppressive atmosphere, shrouded in hunger, hung over the entire tribe.

In the distance stretched an endless primeval forest, its limits lost from sight, like an enormous green city wall, silent and imposing. The sky was startlingly blue, the air almost excessively fresh, but beneath that beauty lay a naked struggle for survival.

According to the original owner's fragmented memories, this tribe had about two hundred people and lived by hunting and gathering. There was never enough food, especially during this season, when the old stores were running out and the new harvest had yet to come in. The hunting party did not bring something back every time, and the wild fruits and roots they gathered were pitifully few.

"Jianshi," his father now, was the tribe's strongest warrior as well as its chief. But even the chief's son had to go hungry.

Wang Yan (he decided to keep using this name) looked at those numb eyes and listened to the children's weak cries of hunger. The little slurry in his stomach seemed to have been used up already, and hunger struck again.

"No, this can't go on!" A fierce desire to survive rose from the depths of his heart. Was he, a modern man, really going to starve to death in this primitive society? Since he was here, he had to do something!

He recalled the wilderness survival videos and documentaries he had watched, along with everything he had seen at his grandparents' rural home as a child. Although he had swallowed most of it whole without really digesting it, surely he knew a little more than these primitive natives?

"Food... food... relying on hunting and aimless gathering alone is far too unreliable." Wang Yan crouched on the ground, unconsciously scratching at the dirt with a twig. "I need to find a way to get a steady food supply... farming? Raising animals?"

He looked up at his surroundings, then at the weakened adults. "Farming takes time. Even sowing seeds now would be too late to solve the immediate hunger. Raising animals is even slower, and how would we keep any animals we caught alive? What would they eat?"

His gaze swept over some refuse piled at the edge of the tribe: leftover animal bones, hides and fur, and some wild fruit pits gnawed completely clean.

"Wait..." Wang Yan's eyes suddenly fixed on several larger stones with slight hollows in their centers. These were tools the tribespeople used to break open bones or hard nutshells.

An idea flashed through his mind like lightning.

Stone tools! The tools they have now are far too primitive! If I could make better tools, both hunting and food processing would become more efficient! he thought. And making fire... they seem to know only how to preserve an existing flame. If it goes out, that would be a real problem. Starting a fire with a wooden drill? I remember having some vague idea of how that works...

More importantly, he needed to establish his "value" within this tribe. In their current circumstances, with too little clothing, food, and medicine, the rate at which death weeded people out was far too high.

Just then, his younger brother, an equally skeletal little boy who looked about eight or nine, timidly came over to his side. He looked at him imploringly and murmured a word. According to his memories, that word meant "hungry."

Looking at his younger brother's eyes, which hunger made seem especially large, Wang Yan felt a pang in his heart, and his resolve grew firmer.

He took a deep breath, drawing air scented with earth and vegetation deep into his lungs.

"Since I'm here, I might as well settle in," he told himself. "Wang Yan, you've been through the baptism of the information explosion age! You even managed to become the top delivery rider in your area. Are you really going to let a little difficulty like this scare you?"

"Step one: solve the food problem.