Andy stood there for a moment trying to collect himself.

He knew he shouldn’t mope, but he really did feel like screaming out loud about how rigged this game was. Only, he knew this was far more than just a game. Life and death were at stake here.

He did the only thing he could do and examined his suit, given his lack of supplies, materials, tools and anything else. There was some kind of control pad on his left arm and his visor actually did have a hud built into it. It showed several things.

His health, which was at eighty three percent and showing a plus next to it. Presumably he was healing over time. A fascinating thought, but one for another time.

It also showed a hunger and thirst bar. Hunger being at ninety eight percent and thirst at ninety five percent. Now that was a problem. If this game followed typical survival practices he would either start to lose health when hunger or thirst depleted, or perhaps just outright die. He had no food or water on him, such things were probably sitting at the bottom of a lava river right about now.

There was also a battery power bar, apparently the suit will need to be charged eventually. It was currently at ninety nine percent.

The hud also showed internal suit pressure and temperature, as well as external pressure and temperature. Internal pressure being 50kpa and external being 150kpa. Interesting. The internal temperature was twenty three degrees celcius but the external temperature, in other words the natural atmosphere, was a hundred and fifty degrees. That was a lot, but looking at all the volcanic rock around and lava pools, it was hardly surprising. It was actually more surprising that the temperature wasn’t hotter than it was.

However it was night at the moment and assuming this place had a day night cycle, there was a very real possibility of the day being much hotter. He would either have to hope he could find shelter before then, or hope like hell it wasn’t too hot for his suit to handle.

Andy took some time to play with the buttons on his left arm. They apparently operated the display on the hud. All the different menus were to do with his suit. The game went into quite a bit of detail with how you could manipulate your suit, a real space sim type game. It even included several diagrams located in different sections of the menu showing how different aspects of the suit worked.

One such diagram showed his backpack, which apparently had connectors for two gas tanks, a battery and two different slots for filters. If he was understanding these diagrams correctly, basically he had a full pure oxygen canister that was being pumped into the suit to keep his pressure regulated. As he breathed and exchanged it for carbon dioxide, the suits current one and only CO2 filter sucked it out and put it in the secondary gas canister labelled ‘waste’. Funny, because depending on how this game worked, CO2 might have its fair share of uses.

The battery powered all of this along with temperature regulation and the helmets built in light.

For now it seemed like he would be fine as long as he didn’t do something stupid like rupture his suit or open his helmet. His more immediate concern was going to be food and water. Also, now that he thought about it, somewhere he can open his visor safely to eat and drink it. Shit. He was fairly certain opening his visor to the hundred and fifty degree atmosphere was a death sentence, nevermind what dangerous shit the atmosphere might be made of. Why else would he start off with a space suit.

This was going to be a problem. It meant he basically needed to find or build a working base or something. The direction this game was going was suggesting that you probably had to build a base with supplies given, otherwise survival did not seem practical. Given his supplies are gone, the only likely option was to try and find a POI or similar or another player or their drop pod. All very bad prospects.

With nothing left to do and an ever draining hunger, thirst and battery, Andy got up and set off. He decided to head for the nearest terrain peak to get a vantage point. The black volcanic ground was hard and often jagged. Not only that, he had to avoid the magma streaks flowing here and there, he doubted it was a good idea to get his suit anywhere near them.

But he made good progress in spite of this, ever careful not to have an accident. Nobody wants to ruin their life preserving space suit after all. One of the things he did do, was use the menus to turn off his headlight and try to preserve more battery power. Not that it would matter much, as he was more likely to run out of food or water first.

He also tried setting the internal temperature setting of his suit higher. According to the documentation provided in the menus, the greater the difference between the inside and outside of the suit’s temperature, the more it required to maintain said temperature. Raising the internal temperature would thus save power, albeit not a lot.

Once the helmet started getting stuffy from the temperature increase, Andy noticed that his hydration bar was draining at a faster rate, undoubtedly due to the increased temperature. This game takes its shit seriously apparently. Andy was forced to set the internal temperature back to normal. The drain of hydration was currently his biggest problem to begin with.

Andy carefully made his way up the steep and jagged slope until he reached the summit. He looked around, but all he could see was more of the same landscape. The fog limited his visual range, but being high up still allowed him to see more than before. Just a pity there was nothing to see.

With no reason to stick around, Andy descended carefully and headed for the next peak.

This process repeated several times. He was actually starting to get quite concerned. His water level had already passed the thirty fifty percent mark.

After exiting a large canyon he was actually starting to feel the effects of the dehydration a bit. Well definitely not as much as someone that was supposedly two thirds way towards dying of dehydration, but games are usually funny like that.

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Andy crested the next peak and began to look around. Only this time he caught a glance of the sun rising in the horizon. Now he was starting to get really worried. Carrying on in generally the same direction, it wasn’t long before the sun illuminated the chargrilled hellscape with a vengeance.

Everything appeared to shimmer in a nasty heat distortion effect, but on the flip side the ground actually sparkled a bit. If only he had the luxury of enjoying the scenery. The hud showed the external temperature was indeed rising as he had feared. The question is, how much can the suit take? He did not want to find out, but he had still not found anything even approaching the concept of shelter, and had little hope that he would. So Andy marched on and hoped for the best.

The temperature inside his suit started climbing slowly, while the atmospheric temperature continued to climb rapidly. It was starting to get stuffy and hard to breathe. If this kept up he would be baked alive. Andy had already checked the suit's power, the cooling system appeared to be working at full throttle, it just wasn’t enough.

It was a good thing he had taken the time in the beginning to learn how the suit and its various systems worked. Because now, instead of boiling to death, he could find and use the flush option. It would vent the suits current atmosphere and replace it with a fresh batch from the O2 tank that was apparently successfully keeping the O2’s temperature at a steady temperature, apparently very well insulated.

So Andy hit the vent option. Out several ports on the suit he watched the O2 vent in an instant. And then all hell broke loose, there was fire everywhere! The O2 ignited immediately upon contact with the atmosphere. Andy screamed and leapt away from the flames. Checking himself quickly, but he saw no obvious damage. Whatever the suit was made of, it apparently didn’t mind fire all that much.

He honestly did not want to repeat that again. Aside from the scary fire, it was also a waste of oxygen. But as the temperature continued to rise outside as he trudged along, the suit's atmosphere also continued to heat up again, even faster this time.

This process repeated another two times. Fire dancing.

Shit! This was going to be a huge problem, he can’t keep venting O2 like this, especially at this rate. The external temperature still hadn’t stopped climbing. The visual heat distortion effect along with the sun's intense glow left the world awash in a scary flowing sea of yellow.

Andy went back into his hud menu. He needed a way to cool the suit down without sacrificing precious oxygen. He quickly poured over the menus, having to vent dangerous fiery O2 one more time in the process.

And then he had an idea. Andy set the override for the ‘waste’ tank, where all his CO2 was being stored, to ‘manual’. He then set the valve controlling it to constantly pump atmosphere from the suit into the waste tank at a steady rate. The suit would automatically keep filling up with fresh cool O2 to maintain the 50kpa target pressure. This allowed for a steady flow of fresh cool O2 into the suit to help combat the heat. He had to play with the flow rate a bit, but eventually got the suit’s temperature under control.

He stopped fiddling with the setting once he got the suit’s temperature hovering in the range of thirty five degrees celsius. He would undoubtedly end up paying the price for this in thirst, but at least was no longer venting O2 or at risk of blowing himself up. Also he didn’t want to pump all his O2 into the waste tank too quickly, as he was uncertain how he was going to get it out of there again.

Andy continued onward, now more determined than ever to find help. Even with the increased O2 flow rate, he was still going to run out of hydration before he ran out of oxygen due to the increase in internal temperature.

Andy felt frustrated with the odds so heavily stacked against him, and yet all he could do was keep on searching. He wasn’t sure how far away potential POI’s or other players might spawn, so he had determined the best course of action to be, keep heading in a straight line, more or less. In case there was some kind of minimum distance involved to spawn or drop mechanics. This was all of course still a gamble contingent on such things even existing in the first place, but it was still his only hope.

A few more peaks later and Andy finally ran out of hydration. He was scared shitless when he finally watched the hydration bar tick over to zero. Andy had even stopped walking and silently held his breath.

He was still alive. The suit did give him a warning about hydration being critical and his health bar showed a minus symbol and went red. So it was a system that drains your health over time. He noted that his hunger was still at sixty percent and his battery at seventy five percent at this point.

So now all he needed to do was find shelter before he died. Yay. He still didn’t feel like he was dying though, just very thirsty. Guess the game did dampen some effects. Why not pain then?!

*Sigh*

Andy continued on once more. He kept going for another couple of peaks, all the while nervously watching his health drain. It was at forty percent now, an alarming prospect. But despite the low health, he did not feel any pain, unlike with physical injuries. He did however feel quite fatigued. It could be from all the exhausting hiking, but he suspected it to be an effect of the low health. Was just a hunch though.

“Warning, waste tank full!”

The suit suddenly sent him a surprising notification.

That’s impossible. The waste tank started empty and the O2 tank full and they both have the same capacity according to the hud’s reporting.

Andy quickly dove into the menu as he noticed the suit’s internal temperature starting to rise again with the continuous O2 flow having been blocked. The O2 tank was still seventy percent full, but the waste tank was reporting one hundred percent full. How was this possible?

He examined the status a bit further and noticed the temperature inside the waste tank was near the same as the external temperature. Was the waste tank not insulated like the O2 tank? The O2 tank reported having far more Moles of O2 in it than the waste tank.

Oh shit. That was it. Gas expands when you heat it up. So the same amount of gas takes up more space, hence higher pressure and lower moles. Moles being the measurement of how much gas particles are actually present. The O2 content in the waste tank heated up via the non-insulated waste tank and expanded till the pressure was too much for the valve to keep pumping atmosphere from the suit into it.

The suit’s internal temperature was climbing rapidly. He would suffocate soon. Andy did the only thing he could, and navigated to the menu to find the option for venting the contents of the waste tank, to make more space.

He found it. It would be a terrible waste of possibly recoverable O2, but he had no choice.

Andy suddenly had a flash back to what happened when he vented only a tiny amount of O2 from his suit. Fiery death.

He panicked, but it was too late, he had already hit the button to vent the full waste tank.

Fuck me.