Mosaic

by Charlie Bowles

The room felt like a misplaced puzzle piece.

Like when you do one of those hard jigsaw puzzles, where most of the pieces look identical. The piece seems to fit, but there’s a slight resistance when placing it that makes you doubt. It blends well with the pieces around it, and is the shape you believe it’s meant to be. It was only that slight friction you felt beneath your finger that made you question it. You wouldn’t truly know that it doesn’t belong there until you had the bigger picture. I didn’t have the bigger picture.

I would often examine Dr. Vervloet’s office when he started his passionate ramblings. Dare to interrupt, and he would still carry on, speaking over you. It was just best to wait it out, and as I did, I would take mental photographs of the room. All the furniture was 19th century, with the exception of his ergonomic chair; its sleek black design clashed with the rich mahogany dominating the room. Clothbound books were sealed behind the glass cabinet, with their nameless spines frayed with age. Vervloet’s books were underneath, arranged in colour to present a rainbow gradient.

There were two large arched windows, letting light in from two directions. Through one, you could see the pond, adorned with lily pads and a sprinkling fountain. Out the other, you could see the other buildings on the estate, which appeared abstract in their design. They were built after Zuiderduin Estate was lent, free of charge, to Mosaic, our group of scientists researching particle manipulation.

Vervloet’s glasses case was where he always left it. The globe was at the angle it always was, with the Netherlands centred in the view from his chair. Each curtain had a tie, with the exception of one, which had always bothered me. Time measured itself upon the shelves and ornaments in the form of dust. The only thing missing from the room was Vervloet. This made me question why we were doing this interview in his office and not mine. I had never been in his room without him. I told myself, that had to be the reason for this uncomfortable atmosphere.

“Sorry about the wait,” Dr. Martinez said, walking in with her assistant. But there was little apology in her tone.

The two were Americans, sent to peer review our research. I couldn’t fathom why they needed to interview each of us individually, but I did what I was told. Leona Martinez was similar to me, a woman in science approaching forty, which had me surprised, simply because I hadn’t heard of her before this. Not that I could possibly know everyone in this occupation, but with her impressive resume and Columbia Alumni status, I would expect to hear her name in my circles. She took a seat then quickly introduced herself and her assistant, a fresh faced twenty-something by the name of Dr. Holden Perry.

“And you are Dr. Freya McIver, from Glasgow, Scotland?” she asked, saying Glasgow as if it rhymed with cow.

“Glas-go,” I politely corrected and shook the hand she had offered, “and yes. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise. You have no idea how excited I am to meet you.” She beamed at me, showing her words were genuine. Before I could ask how she could possibly be so excited to meet me, she dove straight in, “So. First question. How are you feeling today?”

“That’s the first question?”

“Yes, indeed.”

I shrugged, “Fine.”

“We like detailed answers.”

I let out a sigh, and genuinely thought about it. I decided to be honest, “I’m tired. I’m stressed about meeting deadlines and frustrated that I’m wasting my time in this interview. Not to be mean.”

I expected them to be insulted, but Martinez leaned in with curiosity, “What deadlines?”

“I need to have a report finished before we run the first experiment.”

“You haven’t run the first experiment?”

“No. Which is another reason I’m confused that we’re doing this review.”

Martinez turned to Perry, pointing at something on the tablet beyond my scope of vision. He glanced up at me for a second and took a note.

When Martinez spoke again, her words tip-toed forward with caution, “The way we have it, you’ve performed four experiments. Are you sure you haven’t done your first experiment yet? Really think about it.”

What I thought about was how daft she was, suggesting that I could have gotten it wrong. I was a key player in the project, everything we did was at the front of my mind at all times. At least I thought it was. Like the ornaments collecting dust in the room, there were memories on the back-shelf of my mind. Amongst them, there were vague recollections of the experiments we had performed.

The realisation that I had got it wrong made me flustered. It didn’t make sense that I would have to scour my mind for events that had taken place over the past year. The last experiment we had done was only a few weeks ago.

“No, you’re right,” I said, rubbing an ache that was forming above my brow. “We’ve done four. I don’t know why I thought – why did I think we hadn’t done them?”

“You said you were tired.” Martinez went back to smiling, “But you remember now?”

“Yes! Absolutely.” I laughed, astonished at my brain’s trickery, “That’s embarrassing. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. The stress gets to me too, sometimes.” She took a quick glance at the tablet, “Next question. What is your relationship with Dr. Vervloet, Dr. Chen and Dr. Rusu?”

“Professional,” I lied. “Dr. Vervloet is the head of the project; he’s our boss. It’s his theories we’re trying to prove. Dr. Chen, Dr. Rusu and myself are his assistants. We also have people in charge of the tech and some interns, but at the heart of this project, it’s the four of us.”

“Yes, it’s a small team for something as ambitious as particle manipulation. Why is that?”

“Funding?” I shrug, “Once we have a solid finding, something that proves Vervloet’s theories, we’ll be able to expand our research. But you know how that works; you’re a scientist.”

“Everything I’m researching has already been proven to some extent. I just like to take it to the limits.”

“I respect that. You can accomplish things a lot faster when you don’t need guinea pigs.”

“Or sheep.” She laughed with Perry, but their humour was lost on me. It felt like an inside joke tossed carelessly outside. She saw my confusion and didn’t care to explain. “Would you say you knew them well, your colleagues?”

“Yes.”

“How well?”

With her friendly disposition, I would be easily tricked into thinking this was a casual conversation. The get-to-know-you talks of an emerging friendship. However, Perry’s quick glances reminded me it wasn’t. His eyes were like a CCTV camera, lying in wait for evidence of wrongdoings. This wasn’t a peer review.

“Well enough,” I replied.

The two stared at me patiently. Martinez tapped her finger on the arm of her chair as she waited for me to elaborate. I didn’t. It was none of their business. With each tap, her friendly smile faded.

“Could you attest to their behaviour?” She broke the silence.

“I can attest to their professionalism.”

“Do you think any of them are capable of murder?”

The atmosphere went from uncomfortable to painful. Our eyes were locked, and the stare between us grew more tense the longer we held it.

I looked away, laughing, “Of course not–”

“What do you know about the earthquake?”

Perry looked panicked. “Doctor, it’s best not to deviate from the questions chose–”

She raised her hand to hush him; her eyes never once left me. “Please answer the question.”

There had been one on the news earlier in the year, but my nose was always buried in work. “I honestly can’t even remember where it was? The one at the beginning of the year?”

Martinez was beginning to get frustrated and turned to Perry, “We’re going to have to scrap this one too. There’s no point beating around the bush here; I think we should just try it.”

Perry reluctantly nodded, struggling to look at me.

“Try what?” I asked, feeling frustrated myself.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” She glared at me.

“Working.”

“Really, that’s what you remember? Talk me through what you were doing before you entered this room.”

I thought back. I tried to. It was like rewinding an old VHS tape, but it broke in the process. Black film bursted through the flap as the video recorder chewed it up. I couldn’t remember walking into the room. I couldn’t remember getting to work. There was no start to my day, or end to the night before. I knew there were memories rattling somewhere in my brain, but I couldn’t play them on a broken video player.

“Show her,” Martinez instructed Perry.

He whispered under his breath, “She may react violently.”

“We have security.”

“Why would you think I’d be violent?” I snapped.

The two exchanged a look before Perry reluctantly brought a video up on the tablet. He handed it to me. Shaky phone camera footage intermingled with helicopter shots. Buildings crumbled, roads uprooted into jagged mounds, cars were crushed under falling concrete. It was disturbing, but having seen horrific news reels all my life, I was desensitised to it. Until I noticed the familiar webbed iron structure. Amongst the rubble, the Eiffel tower lay on its side. Then, I paid attention to the report at the bottom of the screen, detailing the places that were affected. France. Belgium. Germany. Denmark. And the Netherlands.

I could feel my grip tighten around the tablet, almost hard enough to crack the screen. The footage was showing a landscape I was all too familiar with. Ermelo – where we were. Surrounded by fields and forest. The view was from high in the sky, but there was no doubt about it. Where our facility was, only debris remained.

“What the hell is this?” my voice found its way out of trembling lips. My eyes darted around the room, feeling the piece of the puzzle pop right out of its expected place. It couldn’t be real. It had to be doctored footage. Yet, it shook me to my core.

“You tell me.” Martinez slid the tablet from my grip. “You were there.”

I stared at her, bewildered. The entire picture was coming apart. The footage of the earthquake sent tremors through my reality, breaking apart the puzzle completely. Every piece was scattered across the floor: me, them, this interview, the room we sat in, my lack of memory. It all had to fit together. I couldn’t envision the big picture.

Everything was spinning. I had to close my eyes to keep focus. “Please… I need you to explain.”

There was silence. I knew she was contemplating. She held all the answers, but pondered if it was fair to give me a clue.

“One of you used the device,” she finally said. “Outside the lab. On the ground. Intentionally. It wasn’t an earthquake. It was an act of terrorism.”

I opened my eyes to their full width. Our aim with particle manipulation was to create not destroy, however, the tests we had run were still resulting in the latter. In a controlled environment, it was safe. Bringing the equipment outside and using it at full capacity would result in the very calamity I had just been shown. Only myself, Dr. Vervloet, Dr. Chen and Dr. Rusu would have full access to taking the equipment and using it in such a manner. There was one more undeniable fact that kept me from even attempting to solve this puzzle. Every single one of us would have been at ground zero.

None of us would have survived.

The memory played in reverse. The blinding light faded and the crushing pain lifted. Fallen bricks leapt back upon each other, plaster restuck itself on the walls, healing its cracks as it did. Fragments of the marble busks and porcelain vases pieced themselves back together, bouncing back on their pedestals. Loose drawers shut back into their chests. Shattered glasses rained from the floor to the window, rippling into solid windows. I was pulled back through the door, outside into the dark night, with a shadowy figure hovering over the controls of the equipment. And it replayed all again. Right to the moment the ceiling came down on top of me. The moment I had died.

“I know better than to ask if this is heaven.” I looked at Martinez, but she was a blur. I refused to release the tears from my eyes. “I shouldn’t be alive. Why am I alive?”

“I thought you’d have an inkling since you’re Scottish.” Martinez smiled innocently. “We’ve come a long way since Dolly the sheep.”

My stomach twisted tightly. Now I was pulled inside of the joke, and it was a sick one. I used to stare in wonder at that stuffed sheep every time I visited the National Museum of Scotland. It made history.

The anger boiled under every word I spoke, “You’re telling me I’m a clone?”

“Yes. That’s what you are.”

Perry sat nervously, watching every twitch of my eye, like the tick of a time bomb.

“No.” I shake my head. “No– if we had that kind of technology, I would have heard about it. None of this makes sense–”

“You couldn’t know about it.” Her tone was becoming more calm as I grew angrier, like a breeze blowing against a flame. “You’re a clone of Dr. Freya McIver, who died in the quake attack twenty years ago.”

Sickly saliva filled my mouth. I was ready to vomit.

“You’ve gotten further than your predecessors. You’re the only one who acknowledges your death.”

My eyes trace the room, looking at all the things that should be lost to debris.

“It’s a replica. It was the only room we had references from every angle, the only one we could recreate exactly.”

“Why would you do this?” The tears finally escaped me. “Why would you want to bring the dead back to life?”

“Because the dead have answers, and unfortunately, ghosts aren’t real.” She leaned in, “The living need closure. That is your purpose here. Twenty years on, the countries and all the survivors are only just managing to rebuild. They lost their homes and loved ones. They don’t know why this happened. They don’t know who to blame. When we don’t have answers, we make them up and now everyone is pointing the finger at each other. We are heading for war. You could prevent that; all you need to do is tell us what you know.”

“What would I know?”

She grabbed my hand, squeezed it tightly, and looked at me with hope in her eyes, “Who did it?”

I already knew. I already remembered. And I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud. She was more than a colleague. More than a friend. We knew each other in secret glances, coded smiles and hidden kisses. If anyone found out, we’d have been kicked off the project. It would be easy for people to suspect our secret on my part, as I had always been open about being a lesbian. Her closet became a place we could both hide, for the sake of our ambitions.

Vervloet had shaken hands with armament manufacturers, promising our findings to aid in the construction of weapons. We were all distraught and looking into legal action. It felt violating, having our work promised to be used for everything we stood against. If we sat back and did nothing, we would all have blood on our hands. The very idea of it broke Crina Rusu. You would have never met a gentler soul, until the betrayal infected it.

When I realised what she was doing, I tried to reason with her. When that didn’t work, I tried to restrain her but she tackled me to the ground. She told me she loved me, but that everything we had accomplished would be the world’s downfall. The reason she pulled that lever was to warn the world of the destruction Mosaic could cause. Her estimate was that she would destroy all of us in Ermelo. The calculations made in madness are never accurate. She caused the very thing she was desperate to prevent. Millions dead and an impending war.

“You know who did it, don’t you?” Martinez could see the writing on my face but couldn’t read it.

The writing was in a language only I knew, and I would have to translate from secret to known. What I couldn’t describe, what no one could ever understand, was the beauty of Crina. Not only in her face but in the way her stare painted the world around her, giving it colour and life. Her kindness paired with her unique perspective magnified the brilliance of every wondrous thing life had to offer. Her laugh echoed through my mind, her smile shone brilliantly when I closed my eyes. No one would remember her beautiful soul; she would be defined by her madness. No. I couldn’t allow that.

It was so tempting to point the finger at the traitor and speak Vervloet’s name. After all, his deal would have made us all guilty of worse. Thinking practically, I knew that lie would come undone quickly. He had no motive, nothing to gain and everything to lose.

Dr. Chen was the most innocent of all. He did everything by the book, even when those who opposed him did not. A father of three whose main goal was to help those in need. I couldn’t even consider tarnishing his legacy.

And I couldn’t bring myself to let anyone blame Crina. When I thought about the unhinged expression on her face, all I felt was guilt. I should have seen the signs. I could have helped her.

I opened my eyes, looking back at Martinez, “It was me. I did it.”