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down a couple of times, half to recall what it’s like to sit on a bed like this, half to see if the springiness of the sponge we grew two years ago has endured. It feels good and I wonder if he’s shared it with anyone lately.
    The pack is heavy on my lap. It’s certainly weatheredenough. Enough for what? For his story to ring true? Where else would he have come from?
    Fumbling with the Velcro, I wince at the sound of it ripping apart. This is wrong but I don’t stop myself pulling the inner layer open. There’s a waterproof jacket scrunched up, filthy, smelling of mud and sweat. I could close it and put it back where it was but I’m pulling it out, committed to the crime now.
    One of the petri dishes that would have contained the gel is the first thing I see underneath, its lid intact. As expected, none of the gel is left. There’s something inside, so I pull it out to inspect the contents in the light. I recognize the six nuts still in their shells. They grow on bushes in dry soil and we can’t eat them without being horribly sick. They contain a protein we can’t digest.
    Perhaps he was using them as bait for hunting. I put them on top of the crumpled jacket and pull out a canister with some water left in it, its lid with a valve fitting to connect to the reservoir collected in the pack’s filter. There’s a thermal sheet folded neatly and a small bundle of something like leather tied tight.
    The bow is easy to pull loose and the skin unravels. There are all sorts of small mammals it could have come from. Two knives fall onto the moss. One is large with an impressive blade, probably used for hunting. The second is very small with a worn handle that looks too imperfect to have been printed. Did someone craft it? I wrap both of them up again and retie it, resting it on top of the pile.
    There are a couple of jumpers and another pair of trousers, all stinking and crusted with dirt. I pull them out expecting to find more underneath only to find nothing more than powdery soil. I look for pockets I must have missed. There are none.
    I put everything back as close to how I found it as I can manage. A notification flashes that the meeting is about tobegin, and thanks to Mack’s “critical” tag I’m forced to actively notify the network that I won’t be present. It’s like he’s forgotten everything about netiquette in the last hour. I don’t shut it out completely though, mindful that he wanted me to keep an eye on things. We both know he’s on his own really. But I find myself keeping the stream open and minimalized, my own settings watching for mentions of my name by default. I know most of the questions will be about what happened this morning and then the rest are relatively predictable: Can we be sure he’s the only survivor? Why didn’t we know they were there? I want to hear Mack’s response to that one when it comes up, so I add that to the session alert parameters.
    The pack has left a dark smudge on my trousers. I stand, putting it back on the bed, smooth out the divot I left and then brush the dirt off my clothes. Beneath the ambient guilt of going through Sung-Soo’s things is an uneasiness, like the pack’s contents have given me emotional indigestion.
    Something is missing. He spoke of carving and I saw a small knife that looked like it could be used for whittling (is that what they used to call it?), but no carvings, not even small ones. I shake my head. Why would he carry anything like that? It would weigh him down and he was busy surviving. But that bit of mental grit doesn’t disappear.
    He wouldn’t have had time to sit and carve trinkets while traveling, but before he would have. Did he really have nothing he wanted to keep after hours of crafting before he set out to find us? Before—yes, that’s it—there is nothing in that pack from his life before. Nothing of his parents, of the others