see the sculpture, a few hundred yards away from the doors we entered through yesterday, gloomy and massive and mysterious, like a living entity.
It is a huge slab of dark stone, square and rough, like the rocks at the bottom of the chasm. A large crack runs through the middle of it, and there are streaks of lighter rock near the edges. Suspended above the slab is a glass tank of the same dimensions, full of water. A light placed above the center of the tank shines through the water, refracting as it ripples. I hear a faint noise, a drop of water hitting the stone. It comes from a small tube running through the center of the tank. At first I think the tank is just leaking, but another drop falls, then a third, and a fourth, at the same interval. A few drops collect, and then disappear down a narrow channel in the stone. They must be intentional.
"Hello." Zoe stands on the other side of the sculpture. "I'm sorry, I was about to go to the dormitory for you, then saw you heading this way and wondered if you were lost."
"No, I'm not lost," I say. "This is where I meant to go."
"Ah." She stands beside me and crosses her arms. She is about as tall as I am, but she stands straighter, so she seems taller. "Yeah, it's pretty weird, right?"
As she talks I watch the freckles on her cheeks, dappled like sunlight through dense leaves.
"Does it mean something?"
"It's the symbol of the Bureau of Genetic Welfare," she says. "The slab of stone is the problem we're facing. The tank of water is our potential for changing that problem. And the drop of water is what we're actually able to do, at any given time."
I can't help it—I laugh. "Not very encouraging, is it?"
She smiles. "That's one way of looking at it. I prefer to look at it another way—which is that if they are persistent enough, even tiny drops of water, over time, can change the rock forever. And it will never change back."
She points to the center of the slab, where there is a small impression, like a shallow bowl carved into the stone.
"That, for example, wasn't there when they installed this thing."
I nod, and watch the next drop fall. Even though I'm wary of the Bureau and everyone in it, I can feel the quiet hope of the sculpture working its way through me. It's a practical symbol, communicating the patient attitude that has allowed the people here to stay for so long, watching and waiting. But I have to ask.
"Wouldn't it be more effective to unleash the whole tank at once?" I imagine the wave of water colliding with the rock and spilling over the tile floor, collecting around my shoes. Doing a little at once can fix something, eventually, but I feel like when you believe that something is truly a problem, you throw everything you have at it, because you just can't help yourself.
"Momentarily," she says. "But then we wouldn't have any water left to do anything else, and genetic damage isn't the kind of problem that can be solved with one big charge."
"I understand that," I say. "I'm just wondering if it's a good thing to resign yourself quite this much to small steps when you could take some big ones."
"Like what?"
I shrug. "I guess I don't really know. But it's worth thinking about."
"Fair enough."
"So . . . you said you were looking for me?" I say. "Why?"
"Oh!" Zoe touches her forehead. "It slipped my mind. David asked me to find you and take you to the labs. There's something there that belonged to your mother."
"My mother?" My voice comes out sounding strangled and too high. She leads me away from the sculpture and toward the security checkpoint again.
"Fair warning: You might get stared at," Zoe says as we walk through the security scanner. There are more people in the hallways up ahead now than there were earlier—it must be time for them to start work. "Your face is a familiar one here. People in the Bureau watch the screens often, and for the past few months, you've been involved in a lot of interesting things. A lot of the younger people think you're downright heroic."
"Oh, good," I say, a sour taste in my mouth. "Heroism is what I was focused on. Not, you know, trying not to die."
Zoe stops. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make light of what