Alexa had always been very fascinated by the
desert. She had studied all types of animals from it and had done her final
thesis back in the university about all of them. So it was very natural, when
she finished studying, that she joined a team of proper biologists in order to
go to a remote desert region to discover new species. She was fascinated by the
fact that a whole bunch of life forms could be discovered just like that, even
in these times. She was, without a doubt, the most enthusiastic person to ever
work in such a difficult environment.
Not only was it hard for everyone because of
the food and the general living conditions, but because looking for anything
meant having to submit oneself to the very hot temperatures of the desert and
the dangerous creatures than lived within. In her first week, Alexa was almost
stung five times by different scorpions that appeared out of nowhere, every
time exactly where her hand was.
She had become quite aware of those little
creatures and was now very capable to know where the animals would appear and
also how much time she could stand under the sun before she started feeling
really bad. Alexa was a strong woman, willing to resist whatever was necessary
in order to achieve her goal of discovering something new in the name of
science. She wanted to make history and there was no doubt she could seriously
achieve her goal.
The food was also a big problem in the camp,
always tasting a lot like the sand of the desert but she knew never to
complain. If she didn’t like something, she just didn’t eat it and tried to
exchange with others for things that she had like energy bars. And every guy in
her group liked her because she had been careful enough to bring so many energy
bars it seemed she would never run out.
They stayed in the same part of the desert for
a long time, without having any success in the discovery front. They had
classified many differences between scorpions of the same type but not much
more than that. They had also taken numerous pictures and had studied the
possible ways that snakes and other creatures could survive the hot
temperatures. It was a big revelation to see an actual snake move around the
hot desert sand.
The trip was really fun but the first week
went by too soon and they had permission to stay in the desert for three weeks.
After all, it was a national park that was protected by a series of rules and
regulations in order for people not to alter its stability in any way. The
permission they had been granted was very hard to get and they really needed to
take advantage of it.
However the first week proved to be a deprived
of any real discoveries. They were all really worried that maybe they wouldn’t
be able to fin anything knew. They changed their camp’s location drastically,
in order to be closer to an oasis, where some animals may thrive because of the
“easier” conditions. However, they found nothing there either except more
snakes and scorpions.
The water, however, was crystal clear. They
grabbed some into bottles in order to test it once they went back into their
labs and regular work lives. It would be interested to see how many bacteria
would be able to live in such a hostile environment and to know if the water
was as pure as it seemed to be. Alexa even drank some directly from the pond
because she was very thirsty and thought that even catching a disease from the
water would be more fun that what she was doing daily, which was nothing.
She
was very disappointed in her first trip. She thought that maybe it had not been
the best idea to go to the desert in this first time. Maybe it could have been
better to get to the forest or even in a boat to some corner of the ocean. She
was trying to come up with different alternatives but the desert was the
ecosystem that had always fascinated her, maybe because her parents had been
born so close to an actual desert.
Although not nomad or anything of the sort,
her parents had the tradition to get fresh dates from the desert when it was
the right season for those. They would roam the desert in order to pick them
from the trees and Alexa would love it because she really loved the taste of
the dates but also the feeling of adventure she had when she was around her
parents.
They weren’t’ scientist or anything like that.
As matter of fact, she was the non-artistic person in her family. She had some
skill while drawing but that was it. Alexa was a terrible singer, even in the
shower, and couldn’t properly paint, write or anything like that. For some
strange reason, she had been born without that very characteristic gene that
most of her family had. However, she was very good with numbers, so she never
felt too bad in school.
Another
week ended the day they changed locations in the desert, once again. They were
trying desperately to pick up anything. Their walks every day were getting
longer and longer and people were getting desperate, even to the extent that
everything they saw was a reason to cheer and get excited and then realize they
had just seen a rock or a dead scorpion or something like that. By the
beginning of the third week, no one was very happy about the results they had
come up with.
However, good things come to people that wait.
In one of their long walks, a good friend of Alexa’s was the one who discovered
some markings on rocks who had never been registered. By the way they were
painted, it seemed the artist had lived a very long time ago, probably when the
rock was really above the desert and not buried in it. Although they were
mostly biologists, they were all very excited about such a discovery because it
was something that could change the understanding of the place they were in.
The most interesting part of the drawings was
that it depicted humans and also other creatures hat seemed to represent the
ecosystem of the desert. There was a drawing of a scorpion, another of some
kind of bird and also snakes. All of those were pretty common. But then, there
were drawing of several insect like creatures that had never been registered in
that desert. So from that day, the biologists decide to help and clear the rock
formation from sand in order to see if they could find something interesting to
their field.
And that’s exactly what happened. Four days
before living, one of Alexa’s partners found the rotting body of a huge beetle
the size of an adult’s hand. Several pictures were taken and the specimen was
treated with a special solution in order to put it in a box and take it to the
laboratory. The most interesting feature of that insect was the color: it was
golden, just like the sun and the sand. Nature was very bright.
Some other insects were discovered in the area
and those were actually alive. There was a big thick worm it red antennae and
some kind of really big green ant. They were all preserved carefully in boxes
and jars for further study. In a few days, the would be back in their usually
work attire, not shorts and shirtless like in the desert, typing in to
computers and using several machines to understand what they were seeing.
Alexa’s discovery came on the very last day
and it happened to be a very dangerous one because it was a total accident. The
creature was basically a scorpion but the difference was it was as big as a
human baby. Its eyes were bright red and its body was very white, probably
because it lived beneath the sand. Sadly, the creature had to be killed in
order to take it back to the lab. But not only because of that but because it had
almost stung Alexa with its tail.
She took a picture of the creature and would
later print it and put it in her workstation in the lab. She was very proud of
her discovery but she couldn’t help wondering if what she had discovered was a
natural creation or if it was some kind of mutation. She was really looking forward
to solve that problem too.
