There’s really no way to tell exactly where I am this deep into the jungle. The batteries on the gps went down, and the canopy is so thick we haven’t seen the sun in a while. These conditions are like a wet blanket on the expedition’s morale. Some folks’ feet are melting in their boots from trenchfoot, there’s no way to describe the smell except to say “mama”.I was making a making a sextant out of a rubber band because I suspected we’d been going in circles for the last two days when this guy walked out of the jungle and asked if I had any gum. Turns out he knew the way to our next waypoint, so I gave him my last piece of Big Red.
He said his name Arthur, but that I could call him Al, and that he was busy trying to establish his own tribe based on primitive principles but hadn’t found willing matriarch quite yet. I asked him how he got to the middle of nowhere in the trackless jungles of New Guinea. He said he used to be a headhunter for executive talent in New York–he’d gotten an anthropology degree and it was perfect for navigating the modern jungle. At least it was until that fateful day in September of ‘08, when even the headhunters went down. He told me he used to poach for Jaypee Morgan, but was laid off when other big firms went down and nobody needed to seduce talent as the supply had expanded to the point where you couldn’t avoid stepping in it. He lit out for the Appalachian Trail, budgeting a dollar a mile and working on organic farms along the way. His trail name was Rhamphorhynchoid, shortened to Yncho. While walking one day, he was overcome by a woodland spirit and shown a vision of his own primitive kingdom in the land of the Ropen. All the plugs in his piercings glow in the dark in honor of the bioluminescence Ropens are known to exhibit.
So we’re following Al/Yncho for a few days, as he seems crazy enough to know what he’s doing and has been here at least a couple months longer than we have.
He Took Our Advice Before We Could Warn Him
One of the three porters we’ve lost in the last few days was carrying something I didn’t even know existed–a tiny satellite based TV. It turned out he was a convert to the Cargo religion, and had recieved the unit from his god. He became obsessed with watching CNBC, opened a brokerage account, and was doing pretty well until he saw an earnings chart. 
This is how we found him. Either he upset his god, or he saw the reality of the global economy. No one here has ever seen trenchfoot climb the body this fast. Most of our feet look like this, so we all drew lines on our legs to monitor any rise in the condition