"And what if it's a human?" Rosalina immediately responded to my thought

Hunger took hold before thought, but now I see myself standing in front of the rustling of the leaves that were only beginning to get stronger.

"Activate heat radar" I ordered her.

The screen of the helmet quickly turned blue and in front of me, and a large red block moved on the screen in front of me. I grabbed the plasma rifle and quickly armed it. The rifle began to glow, indicating that it was ready to fire. I crouched down and hid behind some vegetation, ready to shoot at the slightest sign. The red block began to show signs of proximity, moving straight in my direction.

I waited in silence, almost motionless in the face of what could be a friend, enemy, or danger. The rustling of the leaves started to get louder and the red block on the screen just got bigger until it felt like it was looking at me like a mouse versus an owl.

The light coming from the suit radiated on the thicket of vegetation and from it, a shadow began to appear and he stopped. The brown radar hides my view, so I thought I'd turn it off to see what was in front of me.

And the screen of the helmet returned to what it was before and revealed the human block. I entered the market while only his head was emerging from the vegetation.

"It's a deer" I felt happy to see that this was really what I blurted out a few moments before. It's my lucky day - it's food!

"Negative" Rosalina answered: "This is an unidentified creature"

"But it's clear that it's a deer! A shadow whose head looks like any deer I've seen in pictures. And look, it has horns like a deer's!"

The antlers of the deer were large and sharp according to what the shadow cast by the lanterns showed, one could say especially impressive for a creature the size of a man. But how does he move through all this thicket of dense vegetation?

The deer's tail began to shrink in my direction and I remained silent. Little by little he started to show sniffling noises. I guess he's trying to smell the leaves hanging on the bamboo-like vegetation. The shadow showed its mouth beginning to open and terror began to emerge from it: its long tongue jumped on the leaves that the shadow radiated, caught them and they were torn straight into the deer's mouth. The deer seemed to act like a frog, I was stunned. It advanced even further and finally revealed itself: a deer-like creature with large cat-like eyes moving through the vegetation like nothing while its horns stood upward in a curling fashion. He advanced with his hoof-like steps and his body looked lean and flexible, but a large sail was spread on his back and his tail was long and thin.

Of course, I don't understand what I'm seeing now as he moaned towards where I was standing and smelled the place, but ignored the smell and continued picking leaves with his long tongue, picking the leaves.

"Rosalina..." I whispered: "Are you sure we're on Earth? It's alien to everything!"

"Negative. This creature matches sequences that exist for Thomson's gazelle with a 100% match according to the genetic scanner and physiological activity scanner"

"So it's a gazelle? I don't remember them having a long tongue or a sail on their back or a long thin tail! I'm no scientist but I know they don't have anything like that. Wait a minute, so it's genetically modified!" I point my gun in the direction of the creature without it noticing my gentle presence, hunger quickly taking my train of thought.

"No, there are no signs intended for illegal or legal genetic editing. This creature was created naturally as it indicates normal physiological processes and there is no signature of genetic editing. This creature is of a naturally created earth"

I was already losing concentration while touching the trigger and pressing it quickly. The shot was quick and hit him straight in the stomach, the creature began to rage silently as it began to bleed out in the area of impact and gracefully escape by jumping back into the thicket. I chased after him but compared to him, I had a hard time working at his pace or moving easily through the vegetation. With every step I take, I collide repeatedly with the bamboo-like thing. After a few moments, I heard a thumping noise. I managed to move through the thicket before stopping at the spot and there I saw the creature lose its strength before it breathed its last breath. The creature stopped moving as I continue to approach it and manage to touch it.

"Is it safe to eat?" That was all I was interested in at the moment as hunger had already taken over me as I looked closely at the creature - it had shiny brown fur with white stripes, as if it came from a fairy tale, and I was like a predator that managed to catch its prey. Or like an insatiable monster.

"Positive. No physiological processes capable of causing any damage to your body have been detected"

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

This news makes me happy. More than that, the fact that Rosalina can recognize or know things effectively and authentically threw me into a brief thought of what would have happened to me if she wasn't with me. I grabbed the creature's legs with my hands and tried to lift it, but the creature felt extremely heavy compared to how thin it was. I quickly gave up on the idea of carrying him back to the place and instead decided to stay here and prepare him for a meal. I looked around and started cutting the vegetation that was in the area with the tips of the knife. I started to pile up the leaves and with the plasma knife, I brought it closer the leaves began to burn quickly until a small fire was formed and I fed it in the thick vegetation. I quickly made a makeshift fire. I had no experience with this before but the fact that I succeeded the first time made me a little happy and boosted my morale.

Right after that, I turned to the poor creature. The hunger felt strong and I hesitated to try to dismember him but finally, I did it quickly and cut off one of his legs and placed it on the burning fire. I took off my helmet to enjoy the heat that the fire gave off while the darkness surrounded all the vegetation and the smell that the meat gave off. The smell only adds to the experience of a camp I read about as a child.

After some observation of the meat, I thought it was time to take it and removed the meat from the heat. The meat reminds me of that printed meat that I'm used to eating before but the smell is different from anything I've smelled before. I took off some of the skin that was there and bit into it. The meat was tender and pleasant to bite, but the taste was quite disappointing.

I ignored the taste due to hunger and just thought about eating it. It took a while to get full but it was better than starving for another day.

"Do you know a way to preserve meat?" I asked Rosalina, knowing that we might not meet something like this anytime soon.

"Negative"

"Then I think I can try smoking it. Just put the meat on the smoke of the fire for a few hours I think"

I don't know how to cook or how to process things as I please except maybe to run the printer that prints food, but survival, if I want to know what happened here, ask why I was left here and see my wife if she managed to escape from here, I must survive! No matter how hard it is. And I will be content with smoking the meat!

I took more pieces of the meat that was still left from the creature and tried to put them over the fire. It's just that I don't know how to answer the question of 'putting it on the smoke of the fire', and neither does Rosalina. So I decided to put them by the fire, after cleaning the ashes and putting the meat on top of the bamboo-like, hoping I could smoke them.

While I waited, insects began to reach the creature's body and fill it:

"Colin, the body is no longer safe for consumption. I suggest getting rid of it or not touching it for fear of unknown diseases"

"I agree" I have no way of getting close to her, I decided to try to cover the body with the surrounding vegetation, at least to hide it from my field of vision. I sat by the cheery little fire while the meat at least tries to smoke, just lending me the question about a creature, and remembering something I'd overlooked - the mission I'd say I'd done if I'd been sent to the stars but instead I'm stuck here in post-apocalypse Earth, or so it's supposed to be. At that moment one of our tasks is to record and gather any information the planet could offer - whether it has life or not. It honestly doesn't feel any different than where I am right now.

"Rosalina, can you tell me about the creature again"

"Positive" she answered and instead of telling, began to project the creature with a hologram.

"I said tell, but a hologram is also good"

The hologram shows the acceleration of the creature in all its glory as I first saw it, and from all points of interest, information was created for it. I couldn't lock onto something and I rubbed my eyes for a moment and noticed one of the pieces of information about it:

"Compatible genetic and physiological connections: Thomson's gazelle - 100%, Tree frog - 100%, and Curly-tailed lizard - 100%. Another genetic image located from genetic matches adjusted according to an existing database - Sphenacodon - an extinct species of mammal-like lizard"

Next to each of them showing their picture, there were also some question marks of unknown origin or missing.

"You mean to tell me it's an overgrown lizard? With hooves?"

"It's hard to say" Rosalina sounds for a moment more human than usual with an accent that feels like an emotion before she replied:

"This creature is unknown to science, and even so, no genetic segment of extinct creatures is known in the arsenal of genetic engineering, as it has been proven that time travel is not possible, and this creature corresponds to the entire definition of an earthly creature and is genetically evolved"

"And that only adds more questions to his existence" I continued her.

"True. It also means one more thing - congratulations! You are the first person in your group of star cruisers to find a creature unknown to science and, as a result, have the right to give it a name."

"It seems random what you said just now"

"It's just in protocol" she replied quickly.

Suddenly I felt drops falling on my head and soon it turned into a light rain. I quickly grabbed the helmet and put it on as the hologram went off, but the fire and the smoking meat started to get wet and the heat started to fade along with the light and size of the fire. I quickly grabbed the pieces and quickly put them in the bag.

Until I was lucky until now, it seems that this world hates me and I tried to navigate in the vegetation hoping for shelter, but the vegetation blocks my field of vision. As quickly as the rain appeared, it also stopped and I walk through the thickets and decide to stop here and sit down on my torn bag full of things and now also pieces of cooked meat I think.

I asked Rosalina to open the hologram back to me and show me this creature again.

"I think I have a name for him" I said:

"Tangled gazelle"

Thus ended another day and with it only open questions rather than resolved and I went to bed after drinking some of the water that had accumulated in my suit following the rain that had fallen.

The only question to ask right now is what's next for me?