Eiron’s first hour with a baby level body control was harsh but wasn’t that arduous at the same time. There was really no danger whatsoever or a turbulence of any kind.

All he could actually do was trying to crawl and constantly blabbering some nonsense with an occasionally irritated face.

No matter how cute he was or how much of a challenge he could be to cat videos back then, Eiron was well aware he had to find a short cut that could make him spare years of trial and error, at least before he fall in a deathly predicament.

From what he could see, his body was not that different, especially externally. After 30 minutes of doing his best to get a feeling of his face and his own body, Eiron was reassured that everything was still in place from his face to his little ‘willy’.

He was barely able to hear his heartbeat and to feel his lungs filling and emptying in his chest but that was better than nothing.

Even though his body looked totally find, that was only superficially. He knew everything would never be the same anymore since his memory seemed perfectly fine but his muscles reacted differently to his thoughts.

His body reacted faster than he thought, and sometimes, simple movements such as lifting a finger or turning his neck around would finish in a complicated and painful twisting.

One of the advantages of having a baby like control was that he had the opportunity to correct all his bad habits while refining his control. Although he was way faster as a learner than any baby to have ever treaded on earth, he knew it was only a matter of time before he felt into a deep hunger and a ravaging thirst.

After some thoughts, he determined he had to establish priorities.

Firstly, he should find a way to move around faster even if it was not in a conventional way. Should it be by rolling or a semblance of something better than his amateurish crawling that looked more like a dying worm in its last 10 seconds, anything would do as long as it was a mean to his ends.

Secondly, he should find a water source or something to eat before thinking about escaping from the desert so as to not die a painful and useless death in the middle of nowhere.

And lastly but not the least,

‘I MUST RAPIDLY FIND SOME DAMN LEAVES IN ORDER TO COVER MY ASS AND MY FAMILY JEWELS!’

Only after doing all that would he have the minimum qualifications to think about an escape plan.

Eiron started racking his brain about how to move faster than 10 meters per hour. The conventional method such as walking was already a no-no while his crawling was quite pathetic. Since he couldn’t use steps, he thought about rolling.

Rolling his naked body on the ground was in no way esthetically nor hygienically good, but it was better than nothing. As you can imagine, it was quite stupid, he couldn’t identify space properly while all he achieved was getting a dirt coat.

He then thought about tensing all his muscles while using his feet to slide slowly. This was so far his best alternative if not for the fact that going a little beat faster will result to a fiasco while not tensing a single muscle will have the same result.

‘This is still better than nothing.’ The poor Eiron thought.

‘Grrr’ a roar originating from Eiron’s belly was suddenly heard.

It wasn’t only his stomach. The intense heat was starting to make him feel thirsty.

Unfortunately, all what could be seen hundreds or so meters around Eiron could traverse in a single journey with his current pace was sand and dead plants.

While trying to maintain his mind, Eiron named the useless drone accompanying him ‘Wilma’.

Since then, the drone started using a secretary like female voice.

He then tried to search for a loophole or two with which he could try getting the drone’s help but to no avail as 30 minutes ago.

“Does your system uses action-reward algorithms?” said Eiron while trying to remember the content of a book he once saw in his father’s room.

“Those are outdated human methods. My system uses the new ….” Wilma replied with some ‘mumbo-jumbo’ for Eiron’s ears.

“In other words you can’t use something that simple?”

“I can.”

“Prove it.”

“Looking for an understandable method for a toddler…”

“What no! Let’s do this. I gave you a name right? So why not give me some indications like where I can find a source of water or food in this desert or some good indications?” Eiron asked shamelessly.

Wilma directly responded with a tone Eiron felt as mocking “The answer is against the protocol .By the way, it doesn’t even works like that.”

‘Damn bitch.’ The thirst-driven Eiron thought.

After renewing his resolve, Eiron decided to keep sliding in a single direction.

Since the sun was starting to set down, he decided to keep going east while looking for a shelter. An old tree’s bark, a cave, anything would do.

By the end of the day, Eiron was only able to move for a hundred meter or so. He neither found a shelter, something to eat or drink nor some damn leaves.

For the second time after his father’s death, Eiron had to sleep on the good old ground. It was so uncomfortable with his new body that he had to constantly turn around before finding a good position an hour or two later.

‘Comfortable position?’ Eiron belatedly grasped what happened.

For the first time since he woke up, he was able to maintain a comfortable position. He tried looking at his body and realized something a little weird.

All his body’s parts that had a contact with the ground, from legs to feet were perfectly aligned with the terrain. Should it be a little stone or a big hard lump, everything fitted almost too well.

Eiron decided to think about that after some good sleep and finally closed his eyes.

The night was getting colder and colder while Eiron’s body was getting paler. He didn’t seem like he would wake up anytime soon and could freeze to death without being conscious of it.

‘Starting new mission, keep the target warm and alive during the night.’ Wilma almost soundlessly said after receiving an order.

Wilma didn’t try warming Eiron up that much. Instead, she controlled the temperature around him so as to keep the challenge while protecting him from a cruel death.

‘The hell was that cold.’ After waking up, Eiron was cursing about the cold in his mind, unknowing of the death he escaped and Wilma’s aide.

He got a look at his status window and realized a slight change. The genic mutation’s bar went up to 2.5%.

‘Assuming that it went up after I gained some more control over my body, does it mains that once it reaches 100% I’ll have a perfect body control?’

Eiron was deep in thought ‘No, it mustn’t be that simple. Saving me for such simple results shouldn’t be what the Beyonder was looking for.’

He wasn’t yet in a position to think about that anyways so he toasted it in a corner of his mind.

The morning’s atrocious hot temperatures made him miss the night’s glacial cold. His stomach was growling louder and his thirst was sharply increasing while his nudity was more and more disturbing.

With all of humanity’s primordial pains and problems on his back, he continued his cumbersome slide in the middle of the desert while keeping track on the east.

But after ‘sliding’ for some more time, the scenery he saw made him completely forget about his previous worries.