anywhere

A small light flashed out the side of Anton Kovaks's head when he sat up from his bed, cold sweat running down his broad shoulders. The fan and coolant system for the gun embedded in the right half of his skull had already started in his sleep. He could feel soft undulations of the fluid through ticking switches, languid rotations of keys and clasps, turning gears. It was ice on hot skin and water after a long run. In the dark of his sparse apartment bedroom, his chest rose and fell slow. Before long, he was laying back into his pillow, by then having forgotten the dream which seemed to flash in his sleep nearly every other night. It was 4AM, and he had to be at work in an hour.

The train's entry lights usually caught Anton dozing, red reflecting off an eye half-lidded and bloodshot from however many all-nighters he pulled in the last week - feeling somehow more than seven. His morning routine, though priming him for the workday, did little to wake him up. Anton's body had been conditioned to go about the morning's motions regardless of lucidity. Maybe this was for the best. Days where he was conscious were harder. The stillness of his apartment in the early morning and late night made a habit of settling upon him like a coat of iron, crushing his lungs and holding him in place. A silence lurked in the dark corners of the rooms humming in a way that made his brain bleed, rendering him acutely aware of his small size in an expansive, dark world that seemed devoid of people.

Small, of course, would be a relative term. Anton's frame was imposing and of large magnitude, as if to tell all near that he was their master and to be obeyed. This was through no fault of Anton's of course. One with the crowd, not only did he carry himself as unassumingly as one could, he also hadn't so much as glanced at a gym since he left his former job. Despite this being the case, Anton inexplicably maintained a cruel and powerful physique, apparent even under heavy brown coats and wrinkled button-ups. Still swaddled in muscle like bundles of yarn on a dowel, still drawing just as much fear from women when alone with them as before, one could only assume that some degree of hollowness spread to his bones, and his muscles were what animated them.

Beyond the coat and the body, Anton's hair was what protected him from other commuters. Black and brittle, it appeared to sit on his head rather than grow from it, like a pile of burnt straw. Not only did it mask him from the prying eyes by which he was constantly surrounded, it also did well to hide the quietly clicking, oscillating contraption contained in smooth metal casing which overtook half of his head. So too did his mess of hair shield the lone, ever-squirming eye set deep in his skull, scrambling from passenger to passenger to exit to passenger in its mad dash and yet methodically compiling files on each person flashed over all the same. At a passing glance, you wouldn't really notice anything amiss about the large, foreboding figure next to which you sat on your daily commute, beyond a vague impression of discomfort. That is, if you were seated to his right.

The opening of train cars always appeared like the bursting of a pimple to Anton, watching the performance half-asleep at his neighborhood's station before flawlessly reproducing the choreography as he exited the one downtown. The passengers had a way of exploding out the doors that characterized the inside of the car as a burning hell from which they were desperate to escape. This wasn't far from the truth, thought Anton. People simply shouldn't be packed so close together. Long days alone on his father's farm in boyhood meant the only crowded space to which he grew accustomed was the slaughterhouse. He could only suppose then - being that work necessitated the death of the child - that this commuter train was no different, a half-place where boys stepped off and returned men. Such was the reality of work, the great killer. Though, with the way some of the men still milled about with their own senses of vigor, it dawned that perhaps the killer's methods were imperfect. What was to be made of a slaughterhouse from which the cattle emerged not in neat slabs of meat, but rather as some distorted, gasping in-between, stripped of all definition and yet entirely unfit for consumption?

Rain followed Anton through the concrete maze, so arbitrarily constructed it appeared built with the sole purpose to confuse. The walk from the station to the office was fortunately short, and though the heavy grays and constant din swirling through moderately-populated streets made each step a little harder, he felt at home in the city, where the constant directive was always to do and never to think, to consider. Anton swung the door open with force, eager to escape the dreariness of his commute, before realizing with a sharp return to his usual nondescript shuffling that the inside of his office was no less so. The elevator doors were settled deep within the framing of the wall, presumably as old as the building itself. Cheaply manufactured with tin or aluminum and bordered with what could only have been luxuriously gold-tinged scrap, it was rickety, constantly stalling along its track from years of misuse and misdirected anger. To open and enter without catching on a phantasmal obstacle or invisible nothing was to witness a modern miracle. Unfortunately, Anton bore witness to no miracles that morning.

The interior of Anton's workplace was excessively dull. As office workers, they naturally were stationed in cubicles, or separate suites if they were lucky. One striking detail of the place - perhaps the only one - was its symmetry. The entire floor was laid out to be perfectly symmetrical across the north-south axis, only broken by the manager's office at the far end. This manager, a neurotic fellow called Einhoff Sir, but whose given name was Henryk, hated his job - it was clear in the way he walked and talked and sat and stood. Anton liked to think that Einhoff Sir was the reason for the workspace's peculiar orientation, and that his office's placement was the reason he so despised working there, unable to stand himself as the lone imperfection in his own vision of greatness.

His own desk was in a far-off, dim corner of the floor, where a lone window lurked too high to boist morale and too low to allow a sense of timelessness. Sunsets had a tendency towards casting a somber, golden radiance onto the dust and paper scraps piled on the other two desks in the nook, dirty from disuse and neglect. Rainstorms however, though well-liked by Anton and most others in his city (perhaps for giving form to some collective melancholy within them all) were particularly irritating for the way the winds rattled the panes enough to send occasional mists floating down onto his paperwork like a message spat off the breath of the Earth which he had no interest in receiving.

Beyond Anton's own desk, a tidy, dry affair save for bursts of disorganization around midday amidst throes of documentation, and beyond the other two where would-be coworkers would sit (he noticed the re-hiring for accessory departments not in-view of Einhoff Sir's office were much slower than the fevered pace at which empty desks in the main area were filled), were dividers five feet in height, appropriate for privacy while working but also for the occasional wave or head peeking out. He found the murmur of the office reassuring, as if always reminding him there were other people but ten paces away, and he knew that the cubicle dividers being replaced with true walls would not only extinguish this warm ember of safety, but also create a room shockingly claustrophobic.

Around noon, the focused chatter of typeteeth had by now settled into its steady rhythm. Expense reports. Anton appreciated the passivity of his position in the workplace - recording expenses, writing reports, filing figures and files. Insofar as history was concerned, he had heard long ago its function was to record the mistakes of the past such that they wouldn't be repeated. He wondered then, what point there was in action if its only use to the future was as a cautionary tale, and that the future's present would similarly be nothing more. Or was history instead man's futile desire for permanence and immortality in a world of impossibility? This treatment would make sense for a great war or a king's crowning, but what was to be made of these drab figures, these tired reports? What king was there to be crowned here?

"Kovaks?"

Anton heard her voice before she walked into view, but heard her soft footsteps on the tufted carpeting before that. It was Virginia Ewing speaking, foreigner from the New West, accompanied by Marcina Olenka - office receptionist - stood behind her as if taking cover from something.

"Yes?"

"The reports."

There was nothing Anton could do to mitigate the obligatory wince and recoil when he faced someone. The gun hadn't been loaded since he left his former post at the security firm, but the hesitation remained. Sometimes he half expected to see his coworkers' heads blown apart as he turned towards them. For a man almost never caught outgunned, he slouched deeper with every second Virginia loomed over him. Her manner of speaking felt exceedingly masculine in an almost jarring way, and it was precisely that which she had to thank for her swift ascension up the corporate ladder. Whenever she opened her mouth, whether it was one word or one hundred, what came came forth with the force of a heavyweight boxer's blows. If the way her chest and padded shoulders puffed out didn't give it away, that characteristic verbal assault made it obvious to Anton that Virginia was a New Westerner. They all had that way about them. Like young stallions that knew of nothing but their fastest gallop, New Westerners seemed to know nothing apart from the tone of accusation, each question a crime and every remark a punishment.

"Right, the reports. Filed before noon."

"Good."

Virginia didn't seem pleased. Though neither did Anton. He could still feel the weight of her expectation on his mind just as clear as her gaze fixed on his face. Unable to shrink back any further into his chair, he wore a pleading look, dark eye deep-set and ringed with exhaustion, wrinkles cracked and skin sickly from fluorescents overhead glancing off smooth metal just barely visible under his black brush. For a few moments, she stood there just staring at him. After she turned heel and walked back off to parts of the office populated by time and people, the small, soft-bodied Marcina Olenka followed suit with short, hurried steps, all without saying a word. Anton could only wonder why Marcina of all people had tagged along, and for such a trivial matter no less. Before he could put enough into the thought to get anywhere, his wandering eye caught on a report half-finished, and he set off to work again.

The workday concluded at 5PM, after 12 hours of cubicles and cabinets and dials and disclosures. For how strenuous the fall's mandatory overtime was, Anton did not mind. In fact, he even welcomed it. At work, there was always something to be done. Always another disclosure to draft, always another report to file, further figures to preclude from the previous period's fiscal inventory, always something. This was in stark contrast to the period that came after work, in which there was nothing. Sure, Popov and Burkha always made their rounds for anyone they thought hardy enough to share a few bottles with. Usually they'd get a few takers from the warehouse or the occasional burnout from sales looking to poison themselves into a weekend coma. Their only merit - aside from astounding fortitude of the liver - was their kindness enough to drag their poor drinking buddies from whatever liquor store they tapped out in back to their apartments for recovery. But never would they ask Anton, lone member of the accounting department, large and looming, perpetually ready, aimed, and waiting. For them, nights were the sharp sting of drink and the warm stutter of a world distorted. For Anton, they were nothing.

Tanned, scuffed leather briefcase in hand, he weaved through the cubicle labyrinth, noticing here and there those that didn't have anything to go home to, or were too in need of money to do so. Among these dreary faces, Anton noticed Marcina, who met his gaze and raised him a small wave. She gave a weak smile, though anyone could read the exhaustion on her face. Marcina was seated behind the front desk, slumped over a telephone and a binder of appointments far too overstuffed to ever be closed. It was anyone's guess how she got this job, and moreover how she managed to keep it - the woman had the voice of a ghost. Often she had to repeat herself to the displeasure of callers on the company line, who never seemed to catch what she said on the first or even second time. Anton returned a nod to Marcina, looking away before long. Marcina seemed the type of girl who took poorly to direct observation, though he had no way of knowing this to be true. Anton did not stop on his way to the elevator, and did not see Marcina again until the next morning.

The trek up many flights of stairs leading to Anton's apartment was one he expected to get easier with time, but it never did. Every morning down eight floors and every evening back up again. After awhile, the journey even seemed to get longer wish each passing week. By the fourth month, it had more than doubled in length, and Anton discovered he was now living on the eighteenth floor. For all the people living in the building though, not once did he ever meet another resident. He had no problem with this whatsoever, though a part of him always wondered if they had been avoiding him. If they were, they did a fine job of it, though that's not to say they were invisible. What silence there was in the halls was made up for in loud, sporadic bursts of noise from the neighbors' apartments. A shout across the hall, something shattering up a floor, the creak-creak-creaking of a young, overactive couple's bedframe next door. The radio tuned to a dead channel or the late-night news was usually enough to make it tolerable, but the rapid staccato of approaching footsteps in those empty halls kept his deadbolt locked and his eye over his shoulder.

Whether it was world news on the screen or a strained romantic drama on the page, it was all the same. Anton had in recent years become something of a scientist in the passing of time, exacting and ambitious in his methods. These practices often bled into his work, where he would experiment with new techniques before returning home to further explore his current innovations, inevitably repeating the process the day after. These pastimes were never of the constructive or productive persuasions, no, they were only ever trials. When a task's efficiency at reducing the minutes in an hour or the intervening hours between the morning's beginning and the night's end was determined, it was promptly recorded, cataloged and filed away. Then onto the next test. A scientist has no room in his practice for leisure, after all. The process of research is as rigorous as it is demanding, and without noticing much at all, Anton had eventually found the bulk of his waking moments consumed by this pursuit. The misfortune which alone bore the blame of Anton's continued lack of a doctoral degree in his subject was the lack of an academic institution to consider the field legitimate. Regardless, it was with full confidence he could claim mastery of the highest order in this discipline, a trailblazer and gifted academic far surpassing his peers. This is all to say, of course, Anton's home life was quite unremarkable.

Tonight, inside the long, narrow apartment kept bare and yet cramped all the same, it was the mail to which Anton had dedicated his time. The pile of mail, offhandedly tossed onto the shabby wooden table on which he ate, had now grown to overtake its surface entirely, rendering Anton unable to eat and at risk of starvation lest he leave the mess unattended. Slumping into a cold, lacquered wooden chair, letter opener in hand, he reached into that stack of dusted, wrinkled beige and white and pulled back a most unusual notice.

Reading this, Anton grimaced. Reading it again, he laughed. He read it again thereafter, and then again and again, though by that time he had the letter committed to memory. He still remembered the installation procedure completed several years prior, the most fearsome component of the mandatory weapons restructuring of Stadtler Group's Asset Protection division. He remembered his time in the waiting quarters of the Stadtler Ovo Regional building, talking with a high-ranking accountant from the Group's corporate operations headquarters in Sveldten sent to oversee the restructuring which he termed a "liquidation." Tens of thousands of factory-new receivers, mountains of ammunition, and whatever remained of the vestigial "Non-Lethals" division - in all its dubious effectiveness - melted down and auctioned off for what the increasingly feverish accountant could describe by then only in strange, frantic hand gestures that surely meant more to someone hailing from his country, but to Anton meant nothing.

In the hall he remembered the sweat-soaked tension of the intake paperwork, and the walk to the door. He had not seen anyone else of his squadron there that day, nor did he see any newly manufactured machine-men at all emerging from the operating section. Rationally, there must've been another exit deeper in the building, but of course in some sick, misguided hope, Anton could choke down the lump in his throat only with the belief that those christened through this procedure were transformed into blinding, radiant angels. He remembered the wordless assurance of his naivety when he saw the surgical theater, littered with screws and sockets and shavings of aluminum, and the ashtray with its cigarette butts swimming in a filthy brown oil. He remembered the day and days after, of weeks and months' stabs dissolving into stings into aches into nothing at all. He remembered the sensation of scalpels driving through his skin before the anaesthetic hit.

Having decided that was enough mail for the night, the paper was promptly discarded in the wastebasket below the dining-paper table, bouncing off the mound of similar trash befire finding its place among them on the floor. Turning to the clouded mirror clasped against the side of his fridge, Anton's fingers ran the length of his implant; Reflecting off the iron carapace housing it, his fluorescent lamp's sterile white brought out the greys in the skin of his hands. To minimize potential discrimination (it was ineffective), the metal was painted to match the shade of the operator's skin, though in the years since Anton's complexion had devolved from a fair porcelain to its current sickly murk. Passing glances might find a man in sore need of a rinse, but Anton knew painfully well that the dust in the Metronymian air had long since colored his blood with soot, circulating it through his fibres and capillaries, giving him lungs spotted with sand and skin wrought with rust.

Beyond this flesh-toned shell and the rotting biology surrounding, traces of rust gathered too along the gun's barrel. A cleaning was beyond long overdue. Likely worse was the thing's interior - the same unsealed round chambered for what would soon be a third year. It was his third day since installation when he discovered his inability to remove chambered rounds through any method other than direct ejection - blasting and burning it out the barrel. The day after he learned to always keep a round chambered when an accidental dry-fire left him comatose for four days.

Once examining the threads of the firing engine's starter cord lost all interest for the final time - the prospect of slamming the firing pin into that expired cartridge escaping him - it was time for TV news.