THE JAIL’S PALACE ELEVATOR
The architect Adriano Zandri was close to one hundred years of age, but until a couple of years before he had never felt the weight of the years. He did now, he knew that an important milestone in his life was approaching, he knew that the nanomachines circulating in his blood stream, beyond a certain limit, would no longer prevent any further aging of his body. He had an appointment, but he was afraid that he could not keep it. It seemed that for thirty years things had all gone wrong. He had to be present at that appointment, he had to get to the mothership where the spirit of Beta, housed in his mortal body, should be passed into a new body, leaving the old one, to begin a new cycle that would last another century. He was tired, standing in the sun of a hot J
