At about eleven o’clock Snowman retreats from the glare‑filled sea into the forest, because the high noon sun burns his skin despite any protection. He reflects that a tube of heavy‑duty sunblock would be ideal. He recalls that earlier in the first week he had built a lean‑to from fallen branches, duct‑tape and a plastic tarp salvaged from a smashed car, using a multi‑tool knife he received for his ninth birthday. The knife, which also contained scissors, a saw, awl and corkscrew, was lost a week or two later, and Snowman regrets the loss of the scissors.

He remembers the first night in the lean‑to when ants invaded; he halted them by filling four tin cans with water and propping the cot legs in them. The humid, sealed space under the tarp became stifling, and rakunks and, one morning, three feral pigoons (one male with an unexpected white tusk) prowled nearby. Without his spray‑gun, he chased the pigoons away and later fled the ground shelter entirely, constructing a rough platform in the tree branches from scrap wood and more duct‑tape. The foam mattress he first hauled up rotted and smelled of tomato soup, and the tarp was torn away in a violent storm, leaving only the metal bed frame, which he still uses at noon by lying flat on his back like a “saint arranged ready for frying.”

Heat overwhelms him: sweat drips, insects are attracted to his bug‑bitten body, and food thoughts make him nauseous. He hears a random word “Mesozoic” appear in his mind, an example of the “dissolution of meaning” he feels lately. He tells himself it’s just the heat and hopes for rain.

The mental intrusion continues when a schoolteacher’s voice, Ms. Stratton Call‑Me‑Sally, appears. She is perky, condescending, and uses vulgar insults (“…getting ready to suck your brains right out your dick”). Snowman dismisses her, and she vanishes. He then muses about the emptiness of his time, likening it to a leaky box of hours. He considers ways to occupy himself: whittling a chess set, playing computer games he once played with Crake (Extinctathon, Kwiktime Osama, etc.), or keeping a diary of supplies and observations like a ship’s log. He decides a journal might give his life structure, even though he doubts any future reader will exist.

A memory of a junior‑high Life Skills class surfaces, taught by a neo‑con‑type teacher with a ponytail, faux‑leather jacket and a gold stud in his nose, who lectured on self‑reliance, banking, housing applications, genetic matching and condom use. The teacher’s maxims bored the class. Snowman repeats the teacher’s mantra that “we are not here to play, to dream, to drift” and internally rejects it.

He observes a bright green caterpillar crawling on a thread, feels a sudden surge of tenderness, and speaks to it, asserting that they have hard work to do. The caterpillar’s eyes resemble a riot‑gear helmet. Snowman wonders about the origin of this tender feeling, suspecting a vitamin deficiency.

He then imagines a cave with high ceiling, ventilation, and water, noting a real stream a quarter‑mile away that sometimes widens into a pool, though Crakers often use it and would expose him. He reflects on the dangers of nearby carnivores—wolvogs, pigoons, bobkittens—lurking at water holes.

As clouds gather and the sky darkens, Snowman slips into half‑sleep and dreams of Oryx floating in a pink, petal‑like pool, surrounded by expanding and contracting “valves” like a jellyfish, both of them in great danger, followed by a hollow booming sound like a vault door closing.