OLIVER METHIAS GIAS
There it was, etched in the steel beam, jagged as if done by an iron fingernail, but there nonetheless. Behind the walls for forty-six years, when 9 Central Tower was built, waiting there in the darkness of hidden places, disturbed only by the constant vibration of Central, and now, by the renovation of the apartment by a workman, a three, twenty-six years old, the workman with a name.
This name.
The name implanted in a building built decades before his birth.
OLIVER METHIAS GIAS stood, gaping, unsure, and removed the glove from his left hand.
Gently at first, of course. No telling how sharp the edges of vandalism could be.
No memory. No possibility. No longing. It just . . . is. The odds? Someone smarter than him could tell, or Central would certainly know, should he have access to more than just the foreman functions, but they had to be impossible.
A worry for another day.
“Darken.”
His face shield polarized against the sudden spark of the laser welder and he removed himself from the building’s skeleton, mending and plastering the silicate bio-wall before moving on to the next scheduled task.
Later, at home, on a chair older than himself, at a dining room table older than the etching in the wall, he eyed the temp injection before him. Not communion, no. Something dirty. Sacrilegious. An oxymoron. Fleeting immortality.
He had plans with the boys, in the scars, where anything could happen. With the temp, he couldn’t be hurt. No matter how poorly things went, he’d be back tomorrow.
OLIVER METHIAS GIAS cracked open the bubble tube and snorted.
How did . . . ?
Not possible.
I wish I could remember.
Actually Oliver, you don’t.
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