The Mosaic Woman

by Resa Nelson

  Two of the French doors opposite the bed stood open, letting the breeze inside.

  Zuri approached the open doors, never having given that much attention to them before. Stepping close, she saw they opened up onto a balcony.

  Nausea tickled the back of Zuri’s throat. “No,” she said. “It’s impossible.” She stood still for several minutes, not wanting to take another step.

  The incoming breeze buffeted her face, and Zuri felt as if she were waking up from a bad dream. With conviction, she said, “It’s not possible. I’ll prove it.”

  Zuri stepped outside on the balcony and looked down, only to see Shepard Green’s body sprawled on the pavement 200 stories below, broken and lying in a river of his own blood.

  Zuri screamed, clinging to the balcony railing for life.

  CHAPTER 26

  Zuri ran back into her boyfriend’s bedroom and shouted for his wall of icons, currently dimmed in the background, to come forward. “Outgoing Connect!” she yelled. “Call for help now!”

  His wall failed to respond.

  “This is an emergency! Listen to me. Call for help right now. Shepard needs help!”

  Still, no response.

  “Stupid!” Zuri screamed at the wall. “Emergencies override everything. What’s wrong with you?” Giving up on his wall, Zuri ran back down the hallway, desperate to get home and back inside her own Personal Bubble where she could send for help.

  She pulled up short at the sight of the pyramid, still on the other side of the doorframe at the end of the hallway. Going back to Egypt would do no good. She’d be stuck on top of a pyramid, and she didn’t know how to call for help from there.

  “Go away!” Zuri shouted at the pyramid. “I need to get help!”

  The image shimmered into blackness.

  Zuri hesitated, not knowing what to do. Whenever she’d used this doorway as a portal back to her home and Personal Bubble, it had displayed the sight of her own bedroom. If it were night, she’d understand. But during the middle of the day, she should be able to see her room clearly.

  A bubble filled with light floated in the darkness. Milan’s face appeared inside the bubble.

  “Milan!” Zuri shouted in relief. “Thank God! I need help! Call for help!”

  Her VainGlorian friend spoke in a soothing voice. “I know, Honey. It’s already been done.”

  As if on cue, a siren sounded in the distance.

  Zuri sank to her knees in relief and cried for the first time.

  “Your scream shook all of VainGlory to its core. I think the whole city heard it.”

  Through her sobs, Zuri said, “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how it could have happened. We passed through to Egypt, but that was in his living room. How could he have still been with me if he went back to his bedroom? He would have had to go back through the passageway, the doorframe between his living room and the hallway.”

  Milan shushed her. “Don’t worry about that now. There’s plenty of time to think about it once you’ve had time to collect yourself.” Milan extended one hand through the edge of the bubble containing her image. “You shouldn’t be alone right now. Let me help.”

  Zuri brushed her tears away, even though she still cried. She stood, grateful at the thought of being with someone who cared.

  Before Zuri could take Milan’s hand, the breeze from Shepard’s bedroom skimmed over her shoulders, making Zuri shudder.

  A new thought occurred to her.

  Why can’t I see Milan’s home? That what I always see when I go into her Personal Bubble. Why is everything around her so dark? And why is she floating inside a bubble? That’s how my customers are shown when they visit my business site.

  Zuri felt her skin crawl.

  Milan’s image flickered briefly. Her tone turned condescending. “You’re in shock, Honey. Let me take care of you.”

  Zuri thought about her friend Ann, who committed suicide in Aspire.

  Zuri considered how Mae Lin had changed since arriving in VainGlory. Zuri had assumed they’d spend most of their time together, but every day Mae Lin vanished more and more from Zuri’s life.

  Zuri remembered what Karen said the day after being attacked by a shark and deciding to return to her home in Ascend.

  I know they say fame is the name of the game, but it’s not worth dying for. Is it?

  Without knowing why, Zuri bolted away from the doorframe leading to Milan’s Personal Bubble and back into Shepard’s bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her.

  What can I do? I’m 200 stories high. There’s no way beyond this room. How do I get out of here?

  Trembling, Zuri sank onto the edge of the bed, trying to calm her nerves when reality slapped her in face.

  I’m not really here. This is Shepard’s Personal Bubble, and I’m sharing it. All I have to do is figure out a way to see it.

  Benjamin.

  Her Personal Digital Assistant couldn’t communicate with her when she was inside someone else’s Personal Bubble.

  But Zuri’s body was in her apartment in the Platinum Tower, not in Shepard’s luxurious home. Surely, Benjamin had heard her every time she’d spoken out loud. Maybe he was the one who had sent an ambulance or the police—not Milan.

  Thinking about everything she’d said out loud, Zuri realized she’d spoken only about needing help, not about her predicament. Benjamin had no way of knowing she couldn’t find her way out of Shepard’s bubble.

  No longer crying, Zuri decided to talk to Benjamin out loud, hoping he would hear her. “Ben, I need you. I’m trapped inside Shepard’s Personal Bubble, and there’s no way out. Most of the time, I use his bedroom doorway to get home, but we went to Egypt on the spur of the moment. Everything is stuck the way he set it up. Right now, his bedroom doorway opens up to the hallway, and the end of the hallway opens up to Egypt. Except, that portal went black, and Milan floated inside a bubble. She told me to come to her, but it felt wrong.”

  Zuri shivered again and continued. “I’m scared, Ben. Can you get me out of here? Can you put a portal in his bedroom doorway that will bring me back home?”

  She wished she could hear Benjamin’s voice and take comfort in his pale green eyes, but Shepard’s Personal Bubble made that impossible.

  All she could do was hope.

  Zuri knew it would take little more than a split-second for Benjamin to set up a portal if he had heard her, but she hesitated to open Shepard’s bedroom door. She dreaded the thought that the black gateway at the end of the hallway had moved forward and that she’d be facing Milan’s strange image again.

  Swallowing the fear that tightened her throat, Zuri turned the doorknob of the bedroom door and eased it open a crack.

  At the sight of her own home, Zuri threw the door open and ran across the threshold.

  Zuri’s own Personal Bubble rushed into place, surrounding her with the wall of icons. It throbbed with hundreds of weeping fans, all holding up signs reading “We’re with you, Zuri,” “You tried to save him,” and “We love you.”

  Zuri’s Personal Soundtrack swelled with an orchestra playing a melancholy song.

  When Zuri saw her Personal Digital Assistant materialize in his robot form, she rushed into his arms, leaning into his image even though she couldn’t feel him. “I love you, Ben,” Zuri whispered, not caring that his existence boiled down to something binary instead of flesh and blood. “I love you so much.”

  Benjamin whispered, “I love you, too, Zuri.”

  A loud knock on the front door jolted Zuri. “Who is it?” she called out.

  “VainGlory Police.”

  Flush with relief at the thought of doing something to help, Zuri hurried to the door and opened it.

  Two men wearing dark suits and grim expressions stared at her. “Zuri Blacksheep?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here. Please come in.”

  The man who had spoken cleared his throat. “We’d like you to come downtown with us.”

&nb
sp; The icons on Zuri’s wall shouted protests on her behalf and then hurled insults at the men in suits.

  The other man pointed at her wall of icons. “Please remove your Personal Bubble and hand it to me.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Zuri wriggled in her chair in the interrogation room, finding it impossible to find a comfortable position. The room stood smaller than even a modest walk-in closet. A small round table separated her from the seated detectives, all of them crammed between the walls and the table. “I’ve already told you a dozen times,” she said.

  “Tell us again.”

  Once more, Zuri told them how Shepard had wanted to try gliding from the top of the Great Pyramid on a whim. Once more, she explained how she’d tried to dissuade him, only to see him get caught up in an unexpected dust storm that broke his gliding wings. Once more, she described how she escaped the virtual fantasy in Egypt, returned to her boyfriend’s Personal Bubble to discover he’d fallen from the balcony of his home, and how she’d returned home to her own bubble.

  “He committed suicide?” one detective said.

  Unaccustomed to speaking to strangers, especially in such a strained environment, Zuri kept her arms crossed and her head down, too distressed to look in their eyes. “No. Shepard would never do that.”

  “Had he been depressed? Worried about his career?” The detective’s voice took a dark tone. “He’s getting old for a football player. Maybe he was afraid of losing his job.”

  Zuri snorted. “He wasn’t afraid of anything. Thus, gliding off the top of a pyramid.”

  “You’re getting a lot of attention because of it.”

  For a moment, Zuri forgot her aversion to being in such close proximity to strangers and having to talk to them. She looked up sharply to meet their eyes and said, “Excuse me?”

  The other detective gave a casual shrug. “You’re the gal who punched the shark, right?” He checked his notes. “That happened when you first arrived. At an event where you competed with other people that make clothes.” He gave Zuri a look cool enough to make her shiver. “That was convenient.”

  “Convenient?” Zuri blurted. “That shark almost killed Karen. And me! Besides, it wasn’t a competition. It was just a show to introduce all of us.”

  The first detective nodded. “And you stole the show.”

  The accusation fueled a fire in Zuri’s belly. “What should I have done? Let Karen die? Run away like everyone else?”

  The second detective leaned forward and rested his arms on the tiny table separating them. “Of course not. That took a lot of courage. It’s just hard not to notice how much you benefitted from it.”

  Agitated by the mounting blame in his eyes, Zuri sank into herself and stared down at her lap. “There’s no way I could know what would happen after that show. I wasn’t thinking about it when I ran to help Karen. I was too busy wondering how to save her life.”

  “Which is why we find it so surprising that you agreed to a stunt like gliding off the top of a pyramid.”

  “I didn’t know that’s what Shepard was going to do.” Zuri shifted uncomfortably against her chair’s hard surface. “I didn’t find out until he actually did it.” A new thought gave her hope, and she dared to look directly at the detectives again. “You took my Personal Bubble. There’s got to be some kind of record of what happened. There must be security cameras all over VainGlory.”

  The first detective took a friendly tone. “Sure, but security cameras work in real life only. When you meet anyone inside their Personal Bubble, the only thing a security camera could record would be you inside your own home.”

  “Right,” Zuri said, thinking it through. “But when I lived in Aspire, I used Slim Goggles. They record everything you see in them. It’s automatic. Personal Bubbles are far more advanced. Why wouldn’t they make recordings, too?”

  The detectives exchanged questioning looks.

  “Please,” Zuri said. “There’s got to be a way you can play back what I saw—what I experienced—with Shepard.”

  The first detective looked up at the corner of the room behind Zuri. “Can we do that?”

  She followed his gaze and saw a small black camera mounted in that corner.

  “Sure,” a disembodied voice said. “Pop them in the reviewer.”

  The second detective jerked his arms off the table top when a small panel slid open to reveal a smooth surface with two divots. He then pulled the contact lenses he’d taken from Zuri and placed them on that surface. Moments later, a visual and audio recording of Zuri’s point of view filled the walls, ceiling, and floor of the room.

  For a moment, Zuri closed her eyes and covered her ears with her hands, not wanting to re-live that awful event. She felt the rumble of voices through the soles of her shoes.

  In that moment, Zuri realized she needed to see what the detectives saw, no matter how painful.

  Gathering her courage, she opened her eyes and saw everything as she remembered it, starting with seeing the image of herself following Shepard Green through the door in his home to the pyramid and ending with the moment she found her way back home.

  “Would you be willing to face a lie detector?”

  “Yes,” Zuri said without hesitation. “I have nothing to hide.”

  Her chair transformed as its arms opened and wrapped around her biceps.

  Another panel on the table top slid open, and a robot that looked like a bee flew out of it and hovered in front of Zuri’s face.

  “Did you love him?” the first detective said.

  Staring at the image of Benjamin, the final image still displayed from her Personal Bubble, Zuri assumed the detective referred to her Personal Digital Assistant. She remembered the relief she’d felt after coming home.

  “Yes,” Zuri said.

  “Truth!” the robot bee announced.

  The detectives proceeded to ask all the same questions she’d answered before, but this time the robot bee confirmed her claims, while the detectives studied her vital signs displayed in the air above the table.

  For good measure, Zuri said, “Why don’t you check the Personal Bubble of Shepard Green, too? It’ll back up everything I’m telling you.”

  Ignoring her, the first detective said, “Interrogation concluded. You’re free to go.” He hesitated and then added, “For now.”

  After the detectives exited the room, Zuri began to leave in a huff, but not before she remembered to take the contacts for her Personal Bubble from the table.

  It wasn’t until she walked back inside her apartment in the Platinum Tower that Zuri placed the contacts in her eyes and brought up her Personal Bubble, stunned by what greeted her.

  CHAPTER 28

  As usual, hundreds of icons of Zuri’s favorite people and places filled the wall surrounding her.

  For the first time, their frames and backgrounds flashed black with disapproval. When the people inside those icons spotted Zuri, they shouted angrily at her. Although she couldn’t make out the words, the hostile expressions on their faces cut her to the core.

  “I don’t understand,” Zuri said to all of them. “What have I done to make you so mad?”

  The volume skyrocketed as angry shouts turned to screams of rage.

  Zuri cowered and backed away. But, like always, the wall followed her.

  A news icon burst forward, where a newscaster glared at Zuri and shouted, “You killed him! You’re responsible for the death of Shepard Green!”

  Shocked and horrified, Zuri said, “That’s not true. I tried to save him.”

  The newscaster leaned across the desk and reached out as if meaning to strangle Zuri. “Liar!”

  The hundreds of icons now flashed angry red backgrounds, still framed in black. At first shouting over each other, their voices joined in unison.

  “Liar! Liar! Liar!”

  Her Personal Soundtrack rumbled forward, consisting of dark music punctuated by cracks of lightning.

  “But the police have cleared me,” Zuri in
sisted as she fumbled to mute her soundtrack. “They’ve seen my Personal Bubble. They witnessed what happened. I even faced a lie detector.”

  The newscaster gestured to push a screen forward from the newsroom icon. The screen enlarged to stand between the wall of icons and Zuri. It then displayed Shepard’s point of view, gazing down the side of the pyramid and across the Sahara Desert. His gaze stopped at Zuri, her faced strained with hatred.

  “What?” Zuri said in surprise. “This isn’t right.”

  Screaming, the image of Zuri stepped forward and shoved both hands at him.

  “Zuri! No!” Shepard cried before he tumbled down the pyramid, the image recording the fall from his eyes until landing on his back with a thud on the desert floor, facing the pyramid with Zuri still in sight at its apex.

  The image then shifted, showing the side of the building where Shepard lived and a tiny image of Zuri looking down from his balcony.

  “No!” Zuri said, trembling. “That’s not what happened.”

  The large screen evaporated, and the newscaster crawled over the news desk as if coming after Zuri. “She lives in the Platinum Tower,” the newscaster said. “Everyone who wants justice for Shepard Green, go and get her now!”

  Neon-bright words flashed in mid-air: Lynch her!

  With a shriek, Zuri pushed the wall of icons into the background, now barely visible. Standing in her living room, she looked for Benjamin but saw him nowhere. Not wanting any of the icons to hear her, Zuri whispered, “Ben, where are you?”

  The robotic man materialized next to her, his pale green eyes pulsating. Like Zuri, he kept his voice low. “It’s time to go. I can get you to safety. Meet me at the place where you first landed.” Benjamin then blinked out of sight.

  Her Personal Soundtrack grew in volume as if of its own accord, now playing the suspenseful type of music Zuri would expect to hear during a horror movie. She raised her voice slightly above the music. “Ben? Come back!”

  “Right here, Miss.” Benjamin now appeared in front of her, now displaying bright yellow eyes.

  For a moment, Zuri thought of traffic lights changing from green to amber, from “go” to “caution.”