Hurt is the only constant now. Staying put grinds him down; moving grinds him in a different, equally relentless way. Doing nothing would finish the job cleanly, but even that small mercy feels withheld. The very thing keeping him alive—the stubborn, indifferent machine that refuses to let him die—is the thing he hates with a purity that borders on religious. Once you step across the Styx, there is no coming back. This thought loops in his head, bitter and final.
Wrapped in layers of translucent pallet wrap that crackles with every shift, Damian gnaws mechanically on another soy protein bar. The taste is chalky and chemical, the texture like compressed sawdust. He rages at the sky, at the drones, at the empty meadow that stretches out like a taunt.
It is possible to get messages in and out of the Badlands. The infrastructure exists—hidden channels, inmate relays, quiet workarounds layered on top of Willow’s official rules. Inmates built their own community here, with their own codes and hierarchies. But Damian poisoned his status so thoroughly, so early, that his privileges have been slashed to almost nothing. Still, he claws out one final transmission, spitting the words through chattering teeth at a hovering drone that drifts overhead like a disinterested insect:
Heard and Filed
“Eat shit, Inger. Eat the whole fucking buffet. This smug, curving joke of a world can choke on it too. Freezing out here is insane. Waiting for the adults to show up is insane. Drones keep buzzing in like toys with God complexes, and I tell every single one the same thing: get me the supervisor. The one in charge. The one who answers to me. Instead I get a blink. A pause. Like I’m the problem.
ABSOLUTELY NOT!
Dying out here because the system forgot how to do its job is not happening. Build a fire? Make a shelter? What kind of sick hell drops a man in an open meadow and expects him to play pioneer? COMPLETELY DERANGED! Somebody out there owes me a goddamn explanation! Where is the manager!?”
The drone passed the message along. A Resident Services Advisor at Willow Camp read it, reviewed Damian’s file, and updated the case notes:
No further action necessary.
Indifference
New inmates arrive at the same meadow every cycle. They spend their first week in large general-population tents, cycling through intake, basic training, psychological evaluations, and a string of appointments held inside converted shipping container offices. Those who pass become part of the larger prison community, slotted into tracks and routines. Damian never made it that far. He became the community’s problem instead—too entitled, too volatile, too Karen-coded from the very first hour.
Willow Camp exists as a final dumping ground for the discarded and the unmanageable. Every inmate here earned their one-way ticket west of Calgary by exhausting every other option in the system. The ones like Damian—who refuse intake, reject orientation, and scorn the starter kit—are judged bad fits for any structured track. They get unceremoniously dropped in the empty meadow with nothing more than a bulk pack of meal bars, a single roll of pallet wrap, and a couple of weathered pallets to serve as makeshift flooring.
Locals who make it their business to track arrivals have long since learned the schedule. They cheat their way into copies of the manifests through quiet bribes or hacked feeds. Vexton’s people had quietly ordered Damian a “nice” survival kit—the sort of carefully curated REI bundle that screams money and privilege, complete with high-end gear that might have actually given him a fighting chance. It never made it to the meadow. By the time Damian was shoved out of the transport van and left blinking in the grass, word of the generous donation had already spread. The nearby village sent back a polite drone-delivered thank-you note: “We thank you for your generousity.”
Reputation Debt
Any ordinary normie, setting out for an innocent 5k walk in Bowness Park, can expect first responders to swoop in at the first sign of real trouble. In 2125 the Hive Mind Mesh tracks everyone who opts in, monitoring vitals and location with quiet efficiency. A simple trip and fall on the trail is enough to trigger alerts and rapid response.
Not so for Damian. His file is a catalog of the wrong kind of overachievement: one confirmed prison escape, two suspected homicides, a reckless self-stow on a Saito-Gumi submarine, and a serious charge of Unlicensed Synthetic Identity Construction. It paints a picture that no rescue algorithm will ever prioritize.
He once had riz in Marin County—real charisma that burned away like summer fog the moment he locked onto Inger as his woman. In his mind he is nobility itself. The universe owes him Inger, plain and simple. The fractured former USA owes him his due. He is certain he is not wrong, and certainly not a criminal. 🙃
A Tale of Two Truths
It’s easy to cocoon in Marin County. You can cocoon completely inside a Mill Valley condo, buffered from the world by money, views, and carefully curated social circles. Richmond, Virginia offers less insulation, but still enough layers to dull the sharper edges of reality. Brigs, jails, and prisons strip all that away. Most inmates see only two of twenty-four hours outside their cells. Trustees earn a little more—eleven hours spent working or on the yard.
Willow Camp is neither Marin County nor Richmond. It squats west of Calgary, Alberta, in terrain that feels hostile. Inmates here earned their placement by being impossible to manage anywhere else in the system. New arrivals who start their sentence with no support, no kit, and no allies made their bed. Supply theft by fellow inmates is an initiation rite. Newbies either learn quickly how to do the needful—guard what’s theirs, build quiet alliances, keep their head down—or they complain loudly and start looking for the manager.
Karen became an archetype that somehow survived into 2125, a cultural fossil preserved in memes and dark humor. She is the one who wields entitlement like a weapon, who turns complaint and performative outrage into a strategy, who demands to speak to “the manager” at every slight. Damian fits the meme so perfectly it hurts. Willow Camp runs on social capital—relational wealth built through favors, trades, and quiet respect. There is no cash here. Bartering is everything, and you cannot barter without credibility. Damian isn’t just broke. He arrived deep in reputational debt. Karens appeal to authority in any conflict. Inmate ethics are clear: you never rat, never appeal to the RSAs. Damian is a Karen through and through.
Hungry, Cold, Wet, and Shunned
Damian sits sulking under his crinkling pallet wrap on the same pallets that once held the survival supplies now long since stolen. The weather has turned clear and punishing: 18°C during the day, dropping to –5°C after sunset. The nights bite deep. He finished the last protein bar yesterday. His final bottled water ran out the day before that. Thirst and hunger have become background noise, constant companions that sharpen every other discomfort.
This morning, through the drifting fog, he thought he spotted a column of smoke to the west. It had to be chimney smoke—proof of people, of warmth, of someone in charge. He started walking toward it, chasing the distant sound of occasional cars on Forestry Trunk Road. Toward the Administrator who would finally listen and give him the rights he was owed. Toward the memory of a perfect cup of hot cocoa from Mon Rêve, its rich aroma wrapping around him like the warmest blanket, a sensory ghost that pulled him forward even as his body protested.
Over Yonder
He walked for what felt like an eternity. The pavement gave way, the land grew thicker with forest and steeper with mountain slopes. The imagined smoke vanished behind trees. He remembered the old rule: moss grows on the north side of trees. So he kept the moss on his right. A fact that should lead a man to safety.
But the forest thickened around him. Canopy closed overhead until he lost sight of the sky. None of the trees in this stand carried moss. Every direction began to feel identical. Every trunk looked the same—gray bark, damp needles, indifferent silence. Brambles tore at his clothes and skin. Fear of being caught, of being seen as weak or lost, made him want to shrink, to become invisible. He pushed deeper anyway.
Fifteen meters off the faint trail he lost the road completely. The land seemed to swallow sound and light alike. His thoughts started to thin, fraying at the edges as the cold worked its way through his layers. Still he kept moving, because stopping felt like surrender, and surrender was not an option for a man who believed the universe owed him better.
Be Prepared
Yah yah. Be prepared. We all know the line. Zombie apocalypse prepper fantasy, right? In the Badlands of this world, preparation is forced on people in ways that feel unnecessary back in the soft enclaves of Mill Valley, California. There are no zombies here. But there are bears.
Damian heard the growl behind him—low, guttural, unmistakable. “That’s not good,” he muttered, the words sounding small in the vast quiet. He turned toward what he hoped was still the road. The brambles began to thin. An animal trail opened to his left, heading deeper into the trees. It was as good a direction as any. He followed it.
After a couple of minutes his foot sank into something warm and squishy. The smell hit a second later. He looked down. His boot was buried in fresh animal shit. “Great. Just great,” he said aloud, voice cracking with exhaustion and disgust. Eaten by the forest and now coated in shit. What exactly had he done to deserve this particular circle of hell?
Dinner, Dinner, Damian Dinner
He heard nothing—no warning snap of twigs, no rustle of underbrush.
The impact came like a freight train. It took his legs out from under him and slammed him to the ground. Something massive and impossibly strong rolled him onto his back with casual power. Then came the tearing—hot, wet, and immediate—as jaws clamped down and ripped out his liver in one savage motion.
The last thing Damian experienced was the raw, animal sensation of his own guts being eaten while he was still conscious enough to feel it. Pain and shock blurred together into a final, incomprehensible roar.
He missed count.
The official search started later with a routine review of surveillance data. RSAs noted him leaving the meadow and heading west into the forest. His heat signature flickered and went cold roughly two kilometers from his original drop point. Drones swept the area where the signal had last registered and found nothing—no body, no blood trail, no trace that lingered long enough to matter.
The forest swallowed him whole.