A big welcome to all you people. I have an announcement to make. I want you to read everything I have to say.
Please just hear me out on this and don't jump to conclusions. All the details are in the text and I may have answered some of your questions already.
Really, I don't quite know how to say this. I know it'll seem so sudden and out of place. That's because it is. Just hear me out, okay?
I guess I'll just go out and say it. There is no use in prolonging the inevitable. Here goes nothing...
Lately, I feel like my interest in this story is fading. I'm not as excited to publish a chapter as I once was.
First, I want to make it clear that it's not your fault. This is all on me. I have commitments elsewhere which I didn't have before.
Over time, more and more of my other stuff pops up and I'm overloaded with so much work. I started this when I was in college. Now I have a job.
Other stories have also taken my interest away from this one. I made a sequel because I had too, not because I wanted to. I wish I had never started writing this.
Leaving this story incomplete is not what I wanted to do, but I'm sad to say that it has indeed been canceled. I'm really sorry, guys.
So, in conclusion, read only the first letter of every line of these ten sentences to discover the hidden message.
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Gotcha, didn't I? :)
If you'll recall, when we last left Noah, he was stranded and alone in the Amazon rainforest. Now we learn his fate…
- Chapter xxv -
Destination 6 (Part Three) – Forest Slump
Current Venue: The Amazon Rainforest
Geographical Location: Cusco, Cusco Region [Peru]
I sat and hugged my knees as I leaned against a sturdy acai palm tree. It was just one of the four hundred billion trees in this forest. The 'Euterpe precatoria' was the most dominant of the 16,000 tree species within the Amazon.
I was curled up into a ball and stared at the ground in a nearly catatonic state. Human beings sleep, on average, eight hours every day. Since there are 24 hours in a day, that means we spend around a third of our lives sleeping.
All the thoughts from last night rushed through my head.
Dreams feel real while they're happening. It's only when the dreamer wakes up that they realize something was strange.
The most vivid and memorable dreams occur in the last stage of sleep. This stage is commonly known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. What entered my defenseless mind last night was the worst nightmare I had experienced in years, perhaps ever. I shuddered at the thought of being trapped in the darkness with whatever that yellow-eyed monster was. The whole thing was so… macabre. Looking around the forest, I gulped before shooting my head up at the sun.
At that moment, I was never more thankful for something in my life. I was glad not to be alone in the jungle in the dead of night. I found myself almost entranced by the beauty of that glowing star, burning brightly in the sky. It was a fiery white orb hanging in the sky providing light for the entire place.
The sun was a source of near-infinite power, something I had taken for granted. I guess when you see something every day and get used to it, it diminishes in importance. All the energy we could possibly ever use for free forever. Okay, maybe not forever, at least not until we could figure out a way to reverse entropy.
It wasn't all that complicated, burning hydrogen into helium. Still, life couldn't exist without it. Any closer, and we would all be burnt to a crisp like a roasted marshmallow. Any further, and we would be popsicles in the sub-zero temperature. We were at the proper distance. There were still a billion years left to go, though we'd probably screw this planet up before then.
Then, I felt a stinging sensation on my hand. Either that sun was trying to burn my hand off or I was seeing black and red dots across my hand.
Oh no! Those weren't dots, they were ants, and they were biting me. I tried to shake them off and slapped at them. It was unnerving watching them scamper across the jungle floor towards me.
I lifted my foot up and crushed one, then two, then many more under my heel. Die, ants, die! This is what you get for the pain you have caused me!
Boy, was it painful. It hurt much more than what Alejandro did to my hand. Thankfully, it wasn't the same one. I tried not to scratch my hand. The pain only lasted for a few seconds, but the itching was rather irritable. I just hope the swelling reduced before I find the others.
If I find the others.
Darn it, where were they? I remembered that this wasn't the first time I was lost in a forest and had to find my way back. I was faced with the same scenario when we were in the final four and I made it out with no serious injuries.
However, I was eliminated in the same episode for coming in last, so I wasn't really sure how I should feel right now.
I knew that this episode was originally a reward challenge, but with Chris canceling the elimination after the Yukon challenge, one reward challenge from the original timeline would now end in elimination. In other words, with Chris, expect anything.
In the jungle, you must wait until the dice read 'five' or 'eight'.
I wonder what Cody was up to right now. Had he and his team been rounded up and captured by the Zing-Zings like last time.
More importantly, where did Izzy and Owen go? I'm sure they didn't leave me here on purpose. Either way, it was of no use to wait for them. I would have to go on ahead. Maybe we would meet up later. It's easier to be found if you're moving.
As anyone else who's walked alone for a long time can attest to, my mind started to drift.
A lot of us think that we're greater than what we actually are. We want to believe that we're part of something bigger. We think the Earth would stop moving if we didn't do what we had to do, and that was wrong. The fact was that we were just an insignificant speck in this vast universe, nothing more.
If I dropped dead at this instant, nothing would change. Life would go on as always. No matter how big or important you are, that's what would happen. Maybe some people would stop to mourn your loss, but time and tide wait for no man.
It waited for me, though. I got to go back not once, but twice to change my future and the future of the ones around me. How much I had altered it, I would only know once the dust had settled and this whole mission was complete.
Man, even with my power of future knowledge, I was doing a crappy job.
I just hoped this wouldn't turn into the 'Terminator' series where I kept getting sent back in time.
That made me remember my nightmare, unfortunately.
Still, the one thing that stuck out from the fearful imagery was Matt and his words.
He said that I hadn't avoided my doom. True, since the eliminations so far had been almost the same as they were in the original timeline. The only exception was Bridgette, who would have been booted had it not been for Chris making The Yukon a reward challenge.
Timelines, wormholes, dimensions of space-time, alternate universes. I still couldn't believe that all this stuff was real.
Anyway, Matt said that the evil I sought to destroy was actually not what I believed and that the true evil was much more powerful.
The evil I wanted to get rid of...
Well, I had a hit-list of characters that I intended to take down, and Alejandro was right at the top of it.
So who was the one even more powerful? Trent?
Trent was a real jerk, but how was he more powerful than Alejandro?
Maybe it was Chris. I've been getting on his nerves since day one and it has shown at the Barf Bag Ceremony. Even so, was Matt expecting me to get rid of Chris?
Wait, Matt never told me to get rid of Chris. He could have just been warning me to watch out for Chris.
Yeah, I already know that Chris is a slimy pain in the ass. Thank you for that, Matt!
Then, I remembered what Matt said before he sent me back to the beginning of Total Drama World Tour.
You'll know if you've succeeded if, when all's said and done, your journey has ended where it had begun.
What did he mean by that?
I need to pick up the pace. I can decode Matt's mysterious messages once I'm on the plane. Right now, I need to focus on staying in this contest.
I looked at my hand. The swelling from the ant bites was slowly declining.
Maybe there was a plant that could accelerate the healing process.
The flipside was that the plant could also aggravate my condition, and I didn't want to risk it. Time is the best medicine, after all.
Weird. Getting bitten by those ants had distracted me from the wound Alejandro caused.
Speaking of Alejandro, I wouldn't mind bumping into him and Team Epic or Team Amazon right now. I just needed the assurance that I wasn't all alone out here… or in life.
Drop a frog in boiling water and it will jump out immediately. Plop it in cold water and slowly increase the temperature and the amphibian will be cooked to death. That was Alejandro's strategy.
I remembered what transpired during our time in season one. We were marooned on a small island in an endless sea, confined to a tiny speck of land, unable to escape.
Our colony was awash in schemes, alliances, betrayals, and petty manipulations, usually over the most minor of things. Our own follies and blind spots frequently sabotaged any chance of rescue or escape, and nobody ever seemed to learn anything from their mistakes.
It was almost the same this time around. Alejandro had taken this show by storm, and I was fighting a battle of attrition with him.
Like M.C. Hammer, I couldn't even touch him. He was invincible… for now.
In the process of us trying to one-up each other throughout the season, Alejandro had thrown sportsmanship out the window. In fact, he was probably the king of gamesmanship.
Gamesmanship is when someone pushes the rules to the limit without getting caught and using methods that are dubious or improper, but not necessarily illegal or against the rules.
Breaking the opponent's flow of play, causing them to take the game less seriously or to overthink their position, and intentionally making a 'mistake' to gain an advantage over an opponent, are examples of gamesmanship. He had done all those things in the last challenge.
By losing on purpose during the last challenge, he had actually affected me more than he would have if he had won.
Boy, was he good or what?
I all the TV shows I've seen and media I've digested and books I've read, I learned a lot about good and evil. It's the bad guys who always have some warped vision of the world and it's the good guys that stop them. Basically, all that good guys do is stop bad guys, nothing else.
Bad guys are the ones who cause change, while good guys want to maintain the status quo. The fact of the matter is, without bad guys, there wouldn't be any good guys, because they wouldn't have anything to do.
For a brief moment, I thought about how things were going on back home. What were my eight brothers and sisters doing right now? I know my parents really didn't give a crap about this show because I didn't win. Found that out the hard way.
In this timeline, I won the second season, though. If only I could have seen the looks on their faces.
Screw you, mom and dad, I'm not doing fine. You guys aren't on my mind.
It wasn't just me. It could be the fact that we were teenagers, but a lot of us were dealing with family problems. I thought about how most of our parents were either dumb or apathetic to this show. Hell, it was almost as if we were chosen specifically because our parents wouldn't complain about the show.
Of course, I had only met some of the parents in person, so I had only accounts and those Total Drama video messages to go by. A lot of the cast members opened up about their parents down the road when they didn't have the stress of competition weighing down on them.
Having a crapload of siblings didn't seem to be the only reason for unattached parents. Cody was an only child and his parents barely gave a hoot as to what he did as long as he got good grades.
Gwen was raised by a single mom, DJ's dad passed away when he was young, and I really didn't know much about Izzy's parents. One would think that with all the blabbering she does, she'd talk about them once or twice, but she was tight-lipped as ever. Duncan's parents were members of the police force, as were some of his other family members, so I'm guessing their relationship was just fine and dandy.
I don't even need to think about Ezekiel's parents after what he said after the first TDI challenge. The least I can gather is that his father was a somewhat sexist influence on him. Harold's parents were divorced. Heather probably acted like a spoiled brat at home, so her parents would be more than happy to get her out of the house. Either way, they had a strained relationship.
Bridgette would later tell me that she was adopted. Even Alejandro was unhappy with the way his mother favored his brother more than him. Of all my friends, I feel like Owen's parents are the ones that really shower the most affection on their offspring. Then again, they did blow a bunch of money on a cheese cellar, so I don't think they're too bright.
Again, it was difficult to judge what goes on inside someone's house through small glimpses, but the majority of us had it bad when it came to family relations.
That was my assumption from the looks of things and what I could gather, anyway. I couldn't speak for all of us, but I don't think our parents understood the gravity of the situation we were in.
We could end up dying on this show.
I sat down and tried to convince myself otherwise, but I just couldn't bring myself to accept it. Our lives were at stake here. There was no getting around it.
We weren't just competing for the money, we were competing for our lives. We had avoided death from overheating (hyperthermia), blowing up, freezing (hypothermia), falling, insect bites, and being mauled by piranhas.
Those were just the ones that came to mind off the top of my head. I wasn't sure if I was prepared to pay the ultimate price, even with a million dollars on the line.
Sure, that might sound pessimistic, but it was also had a very realistic chance of occurring. A small chance, but still a chance.
Why did I have to do this? What was my purpose? Why was I having an existential crisis all of a sudden?
I hated the slash and burn techniques used here. For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans and account for every drop of used motor oil.
Now, I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born. Our generation was born with the burden of all the bad stuff that was caused by the ones before, and they had the nerve to call us 'irresponsible'. Really? Because that's what will solve problems caused by people: more people! How ingenious!
Such thinking may tiptoe on the side of misanthropy… antinatalism, even, but I didn't care. That's just how I felt. I think this show only served to increase such feelings.
Total Drama had been a big part of my life, but Total Drama only exists between the hours when Total Drama starts and when Total Drama ends. The rest of the time, we were free to do whatever the heck we wanted to.
I met and talked to some people outside of the show. Who we were in Total Drama was not who we were in the rest of the world. Even if I could tell someone they had a good strategy, I wouldn't be talking to the same person. Besides, we usually talked about anything but the show as it just led to arguments and fights over whose tactics were better.
Though we learned about Manifest Destiny in school, our thoughts would often wander to what destiny would manifest itself upon us come summertime. Certain lessons we had learned at Total Drama's School of Hard Knocks were like no other.
After a season ended and it was time for school again, I got right in everyone's hostile little face. 'Yes, these are bruises from Total Drama.'. 'Yes, I'm comfortable with that.'. 'I am enlightened.'.
After Total Drama, everything else in my life got the volume turned down. I could deal with pretty much anything. The people who once had complete power over me now had less and less.
The big problem was that we had no control over what this show aired or didn't air. Everything we said and did could get edited or taken out of context. The networks could then cut down stuff even further due to advertisements. The people who competed on the show weren't the ones who decided what was important.
It was all up to MPA Canada, so, ultimately, the MPAA. They were the ones in charge of the ratings on this show. This show had to have a PG rating. It was the only way to get the ratings they so craved. That way, they included a majority of the family audience.
Throw in some toilet humor, pandering, and statements that you're not like all those other reality shows and you've found a loyal userbase. Just make the episodes look less horrible than how they actually are and you're golden.
So, speaking out was useless too since you knew no one was going to listen. Unless you wanted to be typecast as a stereotype, you had to be very careful with what you say. I learned that the hard way after watching season one on television. The way they twisted our words and actions to fit their storyline was just infuriating to me.
We weren't people, just labels. Heather was 'the villain', Owen was the 'fart machine', and Cody was just a part of the 'love triangle arc'. If we wished to avoid similar treatment this time around, our only option was to keep our mouths shut, which we certainly could not do.
I noticed a mouse scuttling across the dirt. A snake popped out of the bushes and gobbled it up. Not too long after, a hawk swooped down and carried the snake away.
It's funny how all living organisms are alike. When the chips are down, when the pressure is on, every creature on the face of the Earth is interested in one thing and one thing only: its own survival.
I couldn't afford to make the same mistakes as last time and still expect to survive. I had to be smarter. For me, getting good grades and acing tests in school is easy peasy lemon squeezy. It was these competitions that got me. Crud. Why didn't I just join a quiz show?
I just have one question: How the hell did I manage to win Total Drama Action?
I kept walking, and walking, and walking. What else could I do? I didn't know where I was going but I hoped I was on the right path. If there was a way I got into this jungle, I could certainly get out.
No matter how much I detested participating in this show, I couldn't deny that it was addicting. I would probably watch it over the thousands of other shows spouting useless drivel.
We were living in a world where comedians and satirists were better at delivering news than actual news channels. We used to laugh at comedians and listen to politicians. Now, it was the total opposite.
The thing was, Chris wanted to maintain the quality of this show through innovation. He liked to keep things fresh. Singing? Who else would've thought of that? Granted, some challenges were boring or copies of other shows, but a majority of them were simply ingenious.
I know Chris doesn't deserve all the credit for this show, but he's certainly a major reason why people keep coming back week after week to turn on their television sets and watch in primetime.
Christian Maclean had refused to let Total Drama wallow in mediocrity and fall into the realm 'so bad it's good' category like the many shows before. 'Big Brother', 'American Idol', and 'The Apprentice' are just three examples of shows that are way past their expiry date that come to mind.
Thank goodness at least one of them is off the air now. Shows simply get stale when allowed to go on for too long, but Total Drama was riding a high and I don't think they would consider pulling the plug on it for a long time.
Some shows are just of such poor quality that it's rather amusing to watch the characters flounder about. Chris tried desperately not to let Total Drama fall to such low standards, and that was one of the very few things we could appreciate him for. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.
I stopped. Standing there, just a few feet in front of me, was a jaguar. It had its back turned and was feasting on a deer. The Amazon was home to the largest population of jaguars, and I hoped I wouldn't be this one's next meal.
I got down and crawled on all fours past it. My clothing was different from the green and brown of the forest and would certainly attract its attention. The big cat either didn't see me or was too preoccupied on the deer that I had hunted to notice me. Either way, it was a lucky escape. Once I felt I was far enough from the jaguar, I got back up.
If I had a dollar for every time I escaped death on this show…
I thought back to the time before I was forced to partake in an elimination-based competition for the grand prize of one million Canadian dollars. Was I still the same person I was now? No. Definitely not. Total Drama had changed me, for better or for worse. It had changed all of us.
On Total Drama Island, we could reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.
We are not our jobs. We are not how much money we have in our bank account. We are not the car we drive. We are not the contents of our wallets. We are not our frickin' khakis. We are not the smartphone we own.
We are not our retweets, Facebook likes, or Instagram followers. Self-worth can't be measured in numbers. We are not defined by our material possessions. We're the all-singing, all dancing crap of the world.
Being on a reality show didn't make any of us special. We are not beautiful or unique snowflakes. We were the same decaying organic matter as everything else. The sooner we learned that, the better.
We like to think the weight of the world rests on your shoulders. Like the globe would fall apart if we weren't here. A lot of us often overcompensate for having what's basically a monkey's job. We're so obsessed with making our lives seem so much more epic, so much more important than it really is.
The same could be said of myself. So, I was on a reality show. Society and the media made me seem like I was a legend that would be spoken of for decades to come. I thought I was the next Einstein or Sartre or Tesla. I looked down on others as if I was so advanced. Well, if I was so frickin' advanced, what was I doing wandering around in the Amazon jungle?
No. I was no different. I wasn't the next anyone. I was the first Noah Carter. I couldn't exempt myself and escape unscathed. I'm not special either. This was relevant to all of us. I was just as bad, if not worse than the others. At least they had the excuse that they were idiots. A dude as smart as me wasn't even supposed to be on this show!
I thought back to the matter at hand: getting to Machu Picchu. I had to take this whole season one challenge at a time. My legs were aching. How long had I been walking?
I guess a quick rest couldn't hurt. Once I got my energy back, I could be on my way. Upon perusing my surroundings in Peru, I took a nap.
-X-
I don't know how long I had been resting for when I heard a rustling in the bushes, and this one was a lot louder than a bunny. I hid behind a tree and watched. I got a good first look at this creature as it entered the clearing.
Turns out there were three creatures. Out came three men wearing big green masks with three red eyes on it. They looked awfully familiar...
Oh no! It was the Zing-Zings, and those shiny sharp metal spears told me that these weren't stage-performers. Crap! Crap! Crap!
I covered my mouth and fought the urge to scream.
The good thing was that they hadn't noticed me. Maybe if I back up and slowly walk away, they wouldn't notice me. Yeah, that might work. It worked against the jaguar.
SNAP!
I had stepped on a twig, and immediately all three of the Zing-Zings looked at me. They moved just like us, lightly, bobbing their heads.
Crud!
I kept still because I thought that maybe their visual acuity was based on movements like a bat or a bull. I thought they'll lose me if I didn't move. My ploy didn't work. Not with the Zing-Zings. I stared at them, and they just stared right back.
That's when the attack came, not from the front, but from the side, from the other two Zing-Zings I didn't even know were there.
Of course! I could I be so stupid? Primitive man was pack hunter, and he used coordinated attack patterns.
The spear missed me by an inch and I turned tail and ran.
Then, they gave chase.
That, my friends, was the first chapter to have no dialogue or even talking in it. Sorry also for the lack of action.
I know it may seem a little rambling and preachy at times, but I would think that when you're stuck in the jungle, your mind tends to wander.
SEAT SHEET
Amazons – Bridgette, Gwen, Cody, Courtney, Heather, Sierra
Epic – Lindsay, Alejandro, Trent, DJ, Tyler
C-Men - Owen, Izzy, Noah (Separated)
Drop of Shame – Duncan, Ezekiel, Harold, Leshawna
NEXT UP: One of the biggest changes in Total Drama history...