It was late in the afternoon as a tanned young man was ‘sliding’ in the heart of the Danakil desert [1] with a drone by his side.

The endless ruined land was enough to make anyone lose hope of escaping this terrestrial hell. Added to that, the awful heat was nerve wrecking while the lack of water and provisions proved to be the nail in the coffin.

Sliding with continuing forward as his only thought, Eiron was nearing physical and mental exhaustion. But that was before he reached the rim of an extremely large crater.

The scenery he saw there was awe-inspiring and deserved being portrayed in some of the world’s greatest paintings.

There, he saw roughly aligned lakes filled of water to the brim in this endless desert.

“Ish dis for real?” Eiron asked to Wilma with his slightly better control of his vocal cords. “I just hope I’m not hallucinating.”

“If you are talking about the lakes in front of you, then no you aren’t hallucinating.” Wilma’s reply brought glee to Eiron.

Although the presence of water was great for Eiron, what really made the site splendid was its colorfulness. Green, blue, yellow, orange, red, white; the charming landscape had an assortment of both warm and cold colors, calling for a miracle of nature.

With an objective in view and a renewed resolve, Eiron kept sliding downhill although extremely slowly. It took him around one hour and a half to reach the shore of the closest lake.

Unable yet to simply bend down, Eiron had to lie down in front of the lake to fulfill his endeavor. While doing so, Wilma received a new mission.

‘Start of new mission, monitor subject’s first exposure to the hyper saline, hyper acidic, hot lakes. Don’t intervene unless he is in deathly danger.’

‘Mission received.’ Wilma stealthily sent a reply.

After much struggle, Eiron was finally lying face in front of the lake. But before drinking, he still had some worries, especially because of the lake’s unearthly color.

“Hey Wirme, ish woter yer trincabel?” Eiron asked with expectations.

“Such analyses are not included in my database. The only affirmation I can give is the water not posing an absolute treat.” Wilma responded.

‘Not posing an absolute death treat hnn?’ Eiron inwardly analyzed his next course of actions. ‘Not absolute but a death treat nonetheless.’

After founding about the deception, Eiron dismissed the idea of drinking from the lake and tried getting up… something harder than he expected.

Before long, Eiron’s breathing was becoming rougher and rougher. The gases present at the ground’s surface near the spring were starting to have an effect on him.

‘Acquired abnormal condition: light suffocation’ A light purple window appeared in his vision.

‘Condition updated from light suffocation to medium suffocation. It is advised to get away from the dangerous zone as soon as possible.’

*cough*cough**cough* shortly after standing up, Eiron felt back to the ground and was once more assaulted by the nefarious gases.

He tried bringing together as much willpower as he could to stand up and get away from this cursed ground but the issue with his body control wasn’t something that could be resolved with sheer willpower.

Every single limb, muscle, articulation, he started mobilizing half-unconsciously each and every of them in other to escape his current predicament.

Instead of using his body as a whole while doing conscious actions, this time he left everything to his instincts and let each and every part of his body act by itself regardless of how weird and abnormal what he was doing was.

In another situation, Eiron would have rejoiced about such a breakthrough in his locomotive abilities. But this time, all what mattered was survival.

Without knowing how or how long it took, Eiron was finally able to crawl faraway from the immediate danger.

‘Condition updated from medium suffocation to high suffocation.’ The purple window appeared once more. ‘The subject is at risk of death.’

Unfortunately for him, a good quantity of the harmful chloric and sulfuric gases had already been inhaled by him. Adding to his hunger and thirst, the sensation of his burning lungs was intoxicating.

‘I can’t die here.’ The miserable Eiron thought. ‘Definitely not!’

With his foggy vision, Eiron turned his eyes around and finally saw Wilma floating calmly alongside him.

His desperate eyes fell asking for help fell on her. And no matter how robotic humans perceived the drones, their powerful AI’s were enough to distinguish emotions using facial features.

“Sending a request to intervene to the farm’s headquarters…”

‘Damn it.’ Three seconds passed.

“Receiving the answer...”

‘The f*ck.’ Two more seconds passed.

“Answer received… Negative, ignore the target’s pleas.” Wilma emotionlessly said.

That was the nail in the coffin for Eiron, he almost totally lost hope, but at that moment; “New message from server 001. Reanalyzing the situation, searching for a response conform to the main order, the subject’s situation has been identified as deathly, starting the safety measures…”

While clinging on his last strand of consciousness, Eiron received a shock he was nowhere prepared to. After Wilma delivered the initial discharge to Eiron, his body started having multiple spasms.

At that moment, all what Eiron wanted was to fall unconscious but no matter how much he wanted that, his wish was not one to be easily obtained.

Each time a spasm occurred, the pain was sending Eiron spirit to nirvana, but each time his consciousness faded away, a new spasm, more painful than the former will come and reawaken him.

The same process of his consciousness fading and recovering continued for a good thirty minutes and after that, the sensation that stayed could be qualified only by a single word: rejuvenating.

Each and every spore of his body was breathing, expulsing dirt and absorbing fresh air. He felt lighter than ever and would have almost been jumping up and down if not for the exhaustion that came after that.

And as Eiron thought, a new window appeared before him.

‘Condition updated from high suffocation to purified body.’

Seeing that, he decided to check his status window by simple thinking about it.

Status window

Name: Eiron

Age: 16

Specie: Human (evolving)

Gender: male

Subject’s ID: 1203

Physical condition: Advanced-low musculature, uncompleted growth (1.79m), weak-medium heat/cold/poison resistance, average-high well-functioning immune system, currently naked, unable to properly control his body (2-3 years old level).

Mental condition: Ungrateful jackass, medium-low trust to humans, medium-medium intelligence, mental fatigue, medium-high trust to ‘Wilma’ (drone).

Abnormal condition: high thirst, medium-high hunger, dirty and smelly.

Alignment: Chaotic-Neutral.

Assessment: low-low survival chances, should find rations, a water source, take a good bath, dress up and find a shelter.

Current progress in the quantic clock genic mutation technique (opening): 10%

[1] The Danakil desert is home to Dallol, where Eiron is currently found.