The morning of the expedition dawned crisp and clear. Darren woke before anyone else, a knot of pure excitement tightening in his chest. For years, his world had been defined by the high-tech sterility of the clinic, the grimy efficiency of the manufacturing plant, and the cramped confines of his apartment. Since arriving here, it had been the stone walls of the orphanage and the crude wooden fence of the village. Today, for the first time, he would see what lay beyond.
He dressed quickly and met Maida near her hut as the sun's first rays touched the thatched roofs. She carried a large, sturdy basket on her back and handed him a smaller one. She looked him over with a critical eye, her gaze lingering on his thin frame, but said nothing, merely grunting and turning toward the main gate.
Six men waited there, their figures casting long shadows in the early light. They were clad in practical leather and carried a mix of weapons—long spears with fire-hardened tips, sturdy shortbows, and heavy knives at their belts. They were the village hunters, their faces weathered, their bodies lean and wiry with strength. The man who appeared to be their leader, a tall individual with a thick beard and impassive eyes, glanced at Darren.
"He comes with me," Maida stated simply. "He is my apprentice."
The leader grunted, a low, rumbling sound. "Keep him close, old woman. We've no time to go chasing after a lost child." He turned to the two men at the gate, who nodded and began heaving the massive wooden bar away. With a deep groan of protesting wood, the gates swung open, revealing not a road, but a vast, untamed wilderness.
Darren stepped through, and the world changed. The air itself felt different—cleaner, fresher, tinged with the scent of damp earth, pine, and a thousand living things. The oppressive smell of woodsmoke and open sewers was gone, replaced by a wild perfume that filled his lungs. The forest was immense, a towering cathedral of green and brown, the trees larger and older than any he had ever seen. Sunlight filtered through the dense canopy in shifting, ethereal beams.
The hunters moved with a quiet, practiced ease, their eyes constantly scanning the surrounding woods. Maida walked just behind them, her pace steady, and gestured for Darren to stay close.
"Watch your feet," she advised, her voice low. "The forest floor is not a village path. And listen. The woods will tell you more than your eyes will."
As they walked, she would occasionally stop, pointing out a plant he had never seen before. "King's Cap," she'd murmur, indicating a broad-leafed fern. "Good for staunching bleeding, but only if you crush the stem, not the leaf." She would expertly dig up a gnarled root or snip a cluster of berries, placing them carefully in her basket and explaining their properties. Darren soaked it all in, his AI meticulously cataloging every detail, cross-referencing her folk knowledge with its own botanical database. They crossed a shallow, chattering river, the water so clear he could see the smooth stones on the bottom, a stark contrast to the murky well water of the village. This was a world teeming with life, vibrant and untamed.
After an hour, the lead hunter raised a hand, and the entire party froze. An unnatural silence fell over the woods, the normal chirping of birds and buzzing of insects suddenly gone. Up ahead, stepping out from behind a thicket of ferns, was a wolf.
Darren's breath caught in his throat. It was larger than any wolf from his memory of Earth, its shoulders powerfully muscled. But what was truly arresting was its colour. Its fur was a deep, impossible shade of sapphire blue, shimmering faintly even in the dappled light.
Maida's hand shot out and yanked him behind her, her grip surprisingly strong. "Stay back and be silent," she whispered, her eyes locked on the creature.
The hunters moved without a word, melting into a practiced formation. Three men with spears formed a crescent in the front, their points lowered and steady. Behind them, two archers nocked arrows to their bows. They gave each other space, moving with a fluid coordination that spoke of countless hours of training. The blue wolf let out a low growl, its black lips curling back to reveal long, yellowed fangs. It tensed, ready to spring.
It never got the chance. An arrow hissed through the air, striking the wolf in the shoulder. It yelped, a sound of pain and rage, and lunged. But it lunged onto the waiting spears. The hunters grunted with the impact, their bodies braced, and the fight was over in a matter of brutal, efficient seconds.
As the men cautiously approached the fallen beast, Darren's eyes scanned the small clearing. The chaos had churned up the earth, revealing something his botanist's eye immediately recognized. Growing in a patch of direct sunlight was a tall, familiar flower with a bright yellow corona and a dark center. A sunflower.
While Maida was distracted, watching the hunters expertly bleed the wolf, Darren quickly darted forward. He knelt by the plant, plucking its heavy head and quickly rubbing the seeds out into his palm before slipping them into his pocket. It was another anomaly, another piece of his old world found in this new one, and a valuable resource he would not pass up.
Before they moved on, Darren noticed one of the hunters—a younger man who carried only a knife—pull something from his pouch. It was a simple leather slingshot. He bent down, picked up a smooth, rounded stone, and fitted it into the pouch. With a smooth, practiced spin, he unleashed the rock. There was a sharp crack and a small bird fell from a high branch. The man retrieved his prize and tucked it into his belt without a word. Darren watched, marvelling at the raw skill and accuracy. These people had honed survival into an art form.
The return journey felt shorter, the weight of the day's experiences settling in Darren's mind. When the village gates closed behind them, the familiar smells felt more oppressive than ever. Sister Marta was waiting anxiously at the orphanage.
"Oh, Kael, thank the Gods! How was it? Did anything happen?" she asked, her hands fluttering over him as if checking for injuries.
"It was fine, Sister Marta. I learned a lot," he said, trying to sound casual. "We saw a big blue wolf, but the hunters took care of it. They were amazing."
The moment the word "wolf" left his lips, all the colour drained from her face. "A wolf! I knew it! I knew it was too dangerous!" she panicked.
"It was fine, really," he reassured her, placing a hand on her arm. "They were never in any danger. They handle things like that all the time. I was safe with Maida the whole time." He managed to calm her down, but he knew he would face more resistance the next time he wanted to go.
He desperately wanted there to be a next time, but Maida was firm. "The hunters will not go out again for several days. You will continue your duties here."
Frustrated but understanding, Darren decided to throw himself into his other projects to distract his restless mind. He carefully planted the sunflower seeds in a special, sunny section of his personal garden, alongside a few of the root cuttings he had acquired on the trip. His mind was buzzing with possibilities: sunflower oil, roasted seeds, a new source of nutrition.
A few days later, while in the bakery teaching Martha the more complex art of laminating dough for flaky pastries, he saw one of the kitchen boys about to throw out a loaf of bread that had gone moldy. A patch of blue-green fuzz coated its surface.
"Wait," Darren said, stopping him. He took the loaf, his heart suddenly beating faster. He remembered a conversation with the AI, a stray fact from a history lesson about his old world's medicine. He stared at the mold, a specific strain he now recognized. Penicillium.
"AI," he thought, his mind racing. "Confirm procedure for primitive penicillin extraction."
"Procedure confirmed," the AI's voice replied instantly, cool and precise. "Requires sterile growth medium, inoculation, incubation, filtration, and concentration. The resulting product will be highly impure but should possess significant antibacterial properties."
He had a new project. A secret, far more important than any bread recipe. That night, after everyone in the orphanage was asleep, he crept to his outdoor lab. He took one of his cleanest ceramic pots and filled it with water and a handful of grain, then boiled it over a small, carefully shielded fire for nearly an hour to create a sterilized broth. He let it cool, covering it with a piece of cloth he had also boiled.
Using a sliver of wood that he had charred in the fire to sterilize it, he scraped a minuscule amount of the blue-green mold from the bread and carefully transferred it into the nutrient-rich broth. He covered the pot again and moved it to a dark, cool corner of the orphanage's root cellar, a perfect incubation chamber.
Then, he waited. For eight agonizingly long days, he tended to his other duties, his mind constantly on the experiment hidden in the darkness. Finally, he retrieved the pot. A thick, velvety mat of blue-green mold now floated on the surface of the broth. The smell was earthy and pungent. It had worked.
Now for the extraction. He filtered the liquid through three layers of the cleanest cloth he could find, squeezing every last drop of the precious, mold-infused broth—the "mold juice," as he thought of it—into a clean bowl. The solid mold was discarded.
The final step was concentration. He knew from the AI that boiling would destroy the active compound. He had to be delicate. He set the bowl of broth over the embers of the kitchen fire, a heat so low it was barely warm to the touch. For hours, he sat there, watching as the water painstakingly evaporated, leaving behind a small amount of a thick, yellowish-brown, sludgy paste. It was crude, ugly, and likely full of impurities. But it was penicillin.
He needed to know if it worked. The next day, he took two small pieces of fresh meat from the kitchen. In his lab, he placed them on clean clay dishes. He smeared dirt into both pieces, contaminating them. Then, using a clean stick, he coated one of the pieces with a thin layer of his new penicillin paste. He left both dishes under his shade canopy, protected from insects but open to the air.
Two days later, the result was stark and undeniable. The untreated piece of meat was discolored and smelled foul, a patch of white and grey mold already beginning to colonize it. The piece treated with his paste, however, was still pink and fresh. It had resisted the bacterial decay almost completely.
Darren stared at the dish, holding a small pot containing what was arguably the most powerful medicine in this entire world. He had done it. He had created a weapon against the invisible infections that claimed so many lives here. It was a weight of knowledge that was both exhilarating and terrifying. And he couldn't wait to make more.