Written by Thom Garrett
Edited by Danna Colman
They called him Gil. He had had a name once, but it seemed to have slipped his mind. The local kids used to call him the Monster, and that later became the Gila Monster, which evolved into Gila the Monster. More recently, those modern lazy kids shortened it to Gila, and then they just called him Gil.
“Don’t go too deep into the desert,” they’d say. “That’s where Gil lives! He’s a cannibal, and he hasn’t eaten anyone for weeks!”
At least that’s what he’d heard on his rare trips into town for supplies. He liked being an urban legend, especially if it meant people would leave him alone. He wasn’t crazy, and he wasn’t a sociopath. He just loved the desert.
Gil loved the desert for its sense of eternity contrasted by its ever-changing ephemeral beauty. He religiously met the sunrise every day, sitting in silent meditation just outside his adobe hut. He would watch each day begin, transfixed as gray turned to blue and then blue to purple and purple to flaming hues of red and orange, igniting the stones and sand all around him with those same colors. Every day it was the same sun rising over the same desert, but he never saw the same sunrise twice.
Like others before him, he felt called to be a hermit but driven to be a scientist. Most days he would…
