Artifact by Shane Lindemoen Page A

serious, fixed on what I had clenched in my fist. “Why do you have a gun, Lance?”
    I couldn’t do anything except breathe. It was too much – all of it. All of it was just too much.
    “Something is… is wrong ,” I stammered, out of breath. “I’ve been hallucinating… or something. It’s all backwards, Alice. Nothing makes any sense.”
    “What, Lance? What doesn’t make sense?” She cautiously knelt at my side again and allowed herself to brush a strand of hair out of my eyes. “Is this the weird thing that was supposed to happen? Seeing things?”
    “I – I don’t know,” I sighed.
    “That sounds,” She thought for a moment, “pretty weird.”
    “Yeah,” I agreed, and I saw her eyes move again to the gun in my hand.
    “It’s Patrick’s.” I corrected myself, “ was Patrick’s gun.”
    “Who’s Patrick?”
    “Chief of Security Operations on Mars, Patrick.”
    She stared, waiting for me to elaborate.
    I set the gun down on the floor and stumbled to her trolley. I tried collecting what I was going to say in a way that would make sense, but I couldn’t. I flicked through some folders, choosing my words. “He and Joseph picked me up from the hospital today,” I said slowly. “At least I think it was today.”
    I turned toward Alice and leaned against the trolley. I rolled my eyes, resigning myself to sounding like a lunatic, failing for the millionth time to organize sense. “Patrick shot Joseph when I started asking too many questions about the artifact. He wanted an algorithm of some kind.” I studied her, trying to see how she was taking it all.
    “Patrick shot Joseph?”
    I nodded. “In the head.”
    “How did you get his gun?”
    I shrugged, “I took it from him.” I started breathing heavily, pacing back and forth, and grabbing the air for understanding and control. “His head was gone , Alice. Patrick blew his head clean off. His head, Alice – it was just gone, but he was still walking around–” I stopped, trying as hard as I could to concentrate, studying the random folders on Alice’s trolley. “Patrick told me that Joseph was compromised – whatever that means – that he may have been compromised too. Black cars pulled up. Men in suits got out and started running after me,” I shrugged, still breathing heavily. “Then I was here.”
    “So,” she said, opening her hands. “Between our walk from my desk and here – within the span of time it took us to ride the elevator, make a pit stop at my office, without me noticing, you were somehow transported to another time, where you watched Patrick shoot Joseph in the head, crashed into a lake, picked up Patrick’s gun, and then got chased by government spooks?”
    “Alice, please–”
    “And the conversation we had about the coffee?”
    “That happened before–”
    “This morning?” She said, “We had that conversation like, fifteen minutes ago!”
    “Yesterday morning,” I shook my head impatiently. “Listen, everything is fragmented. I was talking to you about the coffee, we were walking to the filing department, and then I was pulling Patrick out of Joseph’s car in the lake!” I brushed leftover bits of sand out of my hair. “I keep bouncing between moments. One moment I’ll be here talking with you, the next I’ll be somewhere else, and then I’ll be back here again.”
    She stared at me, without emotion – without fear, terror, or any other expression within that gradient of extremes. No accusations of insanity. No nothing. She pursed her lips and started looking very seriously at the gun lying next to her feet. I knew what she was thinking, and maybe she was right – perhaps it would be better if she had that gun in her hand than me.
    I crossed my arms. “If you have any ideas, please tell me. Because I don’t know what’s happening. Since I woke up paralyzed in the hospital this morning – or whenever – I’ve been on this hyper vigilant roller coaster of one fucked up situation