Within an hour, Ming was fully awake, and though his leg was injured, he was providing badly needed guidance.
"Jake, I'm afraid I didn't get a mayday out before we crashed and now the radio equipment is ruined. We are at least a hundred miles from the nearest road. No one will see our smoke and no one is coming to rescue us. We need water, food and shelter. The nights around here are cold, less than 50 degrees. I need you to scout out the area and see if there are any springs to drink from. You need to also see if there are any caves or other places we could shelter. It's already afternoon. You need to get going."
Jake traded shoes with Ming. Fortunately, they had the same shoe size and Jake's wingtips wouldn't work well over rough terrain. Jake removed his suit jacket and went off. He was dying to know what was behind all this. He had many questions but there was no time to ask. How could Ming be back in 2014? The Aye had said that when Ming had mysteriously disappeared, he had returned to 2286. Why was Ming here? The job interview couldn't have been real. What was the story behind it?
Soon he found a stream. The water was cool, clear and just as delicious as the bottled water he had been drinking. He also stumbled across some blueberries and brought them back to Ming. He had not discovered any place to shelter for the night.
The fire in the plane’s wreckage had died down and Ming instructed Jake on making a little lean-to out of branches and plane debris. Jake was also able to get a small fire going using a glob of burning plastic from the plane and additional branches he had collected. By the time night fell, he was exhausted.
The blueberries provided enough food and water for Ming who wasn’t very thirsty anyway. Jake tried to get him to answer his questions but he declined. Ming absolutely refused to provide any information that wasn’t necessary to their immediate survival. The night wasn’t terribly cold but Jake hated it. He’d never been camping before and they didn’t even have a tent. Mosquitos were plentiful and driving him crazy. He had to put his shirt over his mouth to avoid breathing them in. They were constantly buzzing in his ear and brushing against his skin. It took a long time but his exhaustion finally allowed him to sleep.
