Artifact Read online

  I turned to look out the window again, at the world that was falling apart around us.

  “I don’t know.”

  3.

  “Where am I?” Sid asked, unable to keep the choking panic out of his voice. I knew exactly how he felt. He felt like he was standing on a very high bridge that was falling away beneath his feet. This was the moment it finally crumbled and broke – when he finally realized the endless open maw below him, that his painful death was a matter of seconds away and there was nothing he could do about it.

  For a while I just sat and listened to him. I let what I knew was a hallucination take me – and for just a moment, I wasn’t entirely sure that Sid was a projection or not – it’s possible that we could have been sharing the same dream. It’s possible. But it was also possible that, in that land of dreams, he was just another part of me. And so I entertained the thought that I was watching my own panic again through Sid by proxy. Like I was reliving that moment in the hospital again, much like that moment in my bedroom, as I lay on the floor next to my bed bleeding to death, watching my other self in the mirror. Except this time it was Sid, and the dizzying sense of vertigo was gone. I turned back toward the window and the burning cars in the road, and the hordes of zombies began to melt together to form a type of river – a fluid movement of experience as it bled into something that I figured was this reality collapsing – and the sound of Sid’s sobbing enveloped me–

  4.

  “We’re going to have to run,” Sid said.

  I looked around the ruins. We were stopped amid a cluster of high–rises, as the mob of death poured at us from all directions. There was a group of people, maybe three or four – I could make out at least one young woman wearing a leather jacket, who had a fully shaven head – standing on top of a long semi–trailer a few blocks away, hopelessly watching the bodies pile up around them.

  “Where?”

  He pointed at a lone building a few blocks away, with a sign that said Center for Energetic Materials. There was a single car parked in the lot beside the building, and I wondered if that belonged to Alice, which made me think about the ripping sound of her scream as the elevator closed on me, which then made my stomach lurch.

  Every road and alley that Sid’s car could have traversed was obstructed by another empty, demolished vehicle, or a large pack of the walking dead. The sun was still hours below the horizon.

  Sid tried to hand me his baseball bat, but I couldn’t hold it. My burns were excruciating, and I couldn’t take my arms away from my side.

  “I can already see a key–pad on the left side of the door.” Sid strained to see through a pair of binoculars. “And a card–swipe.”

  I pulled the key–card out of my robe – unfazed by the contradictory nature of convenience at that point in the hallucination.

  “We have to get in quick – there’s a rather large cluster of them on the side of the building – see there?” He pointed at a pack of zombies that were pounding on one of the emergency exits, leaving handprints of blood.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” he said. “I know you’re hurt – but we have to move fast. We get there, get the door open, and get inside.” He readjusted the revolver in his grip. “I only have twelve rounds, and I probably won’t have time to reload.”

  I nodded, already dreading the inevitable pain that was about to rack my chest. I didn’t bother telling him the access code, because we both figured that if I didn’t make it, he wouldn’t have my thumbprint handy to get in anyway.

  “Okay,” he said. “Ready–?”

  “Thank you.” My voice was unsteady, and I fought to find the right words. “For bringing me here. For picking me up.”

  Sid blinked, “Thank me later, after you’ve held up your end of the bargain.”

  “Which was?”

  “You said if I could get you in there, you’ll fix all this. Fix my memory. Fix the city.” He put his hand on the door handle. Hundreds of zombies were already within lunging distance of Sid’s car. As soon as my foot hit the pavement, a white blaze of discontinuity ripped through my chest, and the world changed again. And the world changed again. And the world changed again. And the world changed again. And the world changed again. And the world changed again. And the world changed again.

  5.

  When it came to dreams, I realize that I had no frame of reference. I knew of a dream as one thing, completely separate from the waking world and yet wholly similar with respect to the shape and context of the people, places and objects therein. This is the way I thought it was – when one moment I was running with Sid toward the CEM, with zombies spilling out of everything around us, my lungs pumping fire out of my chest as I ran – and suddenly seeing myself back in my bedroom, bleeding out beside my bed. This is what it was like:

  Sid and I reached the door, and he said, ‘hurry.’ I punched my code on the key–pad, swiped my card–key, gave my thumbprint, heard the two notes chime admittance, and pulled on the handle and – Nothing. I glanced up at the double doors and realized that they were barricaded from the inside – someone removed a steel banister from its floor–bolted mooring and wedged it between the door handles. Stacks of work–tables, desks, filing–cabinets and office–chairs were piled in front of the doors, floor to ceiling. Shots from Sid’s gun rang out across roadway–

  –I saw myself lying on the floor next to my bed. The blood I thought had clotted was flowing freely onto the floor around me. My eyes were hollow and terrified. On my dresser, the pink stuffed animal that Alice left me at the hospital was crusted with an old bloody handprint–

  –I was in the lab turning the artifact in the same direction as a tiny strip of luminescence far above what I could perceive, as the light randomly seemed to change direction – I keyed in the newest axis as fast as I could in order to keep up. Alice gave me a thumbs–up, and then I heard that sound of groaning metal – and then the walls began to melt–

  –I was at an emergency defense assembly in Washington, trying to speak over the rising din of experts, pointing out that the hum? That tiny, almost inaudible hum? It changed pitch when I moved it. Someone rushed out of the room and returned a few moments later carrying a transceiver and an oscilloscope and there it was, like a steady stream of code, a pattern of electronic blips, hidden in a packet of data within a separate frequency, a message from a long dead civilization on Mars–

  –And it kept going. My realities kept changing, over and over and over until I was absolutely, irrevocably certain that I was dreaming, and then–

  A doctor was studying a wall–screen across from me.

  “Lance,” He said. “Are you awake?”

  I wanted to say yes. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t. I wanted to get up and run to the room at the end of the hall where I saw the glowing letter M – but I couldn’t do that either.

  I saw Alice standing at the window holding a pink stuffed animal. The doctor tapped an icon on the wall–screen and then went to leave. “Do you need anything?” He asked Alice.

  “No, thank you.”

  We were alone. I tried moving, blinking, grunting, but I couldn’t. I was there again, completely paralyzed, listening to the ventilation sputter.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me,” Her voice was quiet and faint, but clear.

  I can hear you, Alice. I thought, trying to force the words.

  “But if you can, I think it’s important for you to know that I’m having a hard time trying to understand why things had to be this way.”

  What do you mean?

  “And if you ever wake up, I want you to ask yourself –”

  Alice!

  “If this would have succeeded – would you have gone back because you thought it was the right thing to do? Because it was something in accordance with what you believed to be moral and true–” She set the stuffed animal on the sill. “Or would you h
ave gone back simply because you were ordered to?”

  She moved toward the door, watching her feet. Her hair hung in front of her eyes, blocking them from view. I desperately wanted to make eye contact, to let her know that I was there and that I was listening.

  “Would you go back because it was your choice, or because it was how you were programmed?”

  I don’t understand! I tried screaming.

  “So long, Lance.” She said, “If you can, remember that none of this was personal.”

  And I suddenly realized that there was a small glimmer of light which connected everything – the hospital, my paralysis, my burn, the artifact, Patrick shooting Joseph in the car, bleeding to death by my bed, the zombies, Sid, Alice, the melting walls, the lake, the sounds of groaning metal and the glowing letter M – I was so concerned with trying to figure out what was happening that I hadn’t stopped to consider why. Why was this happening, and what did everything have to do with everything else? Maybe that slipping of realities wasn’t as random as I initially thought. Maybe I hadn’t been asking myself the right questions.

  What did each dream have in common with the others?

  The answer of course was the artifact and me.

  The artifact and I were the only constants.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that all paths, all avenues led back to the artifact and the experiment.

  And I finally knew what I had to do. In every dream, in every hallucination, wherever I found myself, I had to make my way back to the artifact. Everything depended on this simple, universally lateral truth – the various worlds that I was falling through weren’t real, and the only way to find reality again was to get back to the artifact.

  Not for the first time in that vision, the world blasted into a singularity of potential–

  6.

  I shot upright in my bed with my lips peeled back, as if I were about to scream. I could feel the blood pooling around me again. I sat trembling under my tangled, sweat–soaked covers, and hoped that I wasn’t bleeding to death. A warm hand enclosed my shoulder. “Lance,” Alice said, lying beside me. “Lance – what?” She slurred her words somewhat. Panic ripped her away from deep sleep. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  I clenched my teeth, biting down on my courage until I felt comfortable opening my eyes. “This isn’t real…”

  “You were dreaming,” she said. “I’m right here – shh. Go back to sleep.”

  She gently rubbed my arm and said, “Jesus, you’re soaked.” She yawned, pushed herself to the night-stand and checked the alarm clock. Her hair a disheveled nimbus of thicker shadow in the dark bedroom, her eyes wide and almost lambent, a vague crease of worry between her brows.

  “I’m not dreaming this…?”

  “No, no you’re in bed now. You were asleep.”

  Alice sat up next to me and gently caressed my stomach.

  “I don’t have a burn,” I said, inspecting my chest. I peeled the sheets back and made myself look. The covers were stained only with the sweat that made my sleepwear stick to my skin.

  “Did you get burned in your dream?”

  “I thought,” I said. “I thought I was…”

  I looked over my bedroom. The curtains were open, and the moon spilled onto the floor. A warm night. I gave a sigh of ease that threatened to become a shudder.

  We were both pretty awake now. “Tell me about it.”

  “I… I feel as if I’ve been dreaming for years,” I hesitated. “Maybe even decades. It was the worst nightmare I have ever had.”

  “Let’s talk about it,” she said. “It’ll help you fall back asleep.”

  I eased back into my pillow and pushed the damp sheets away. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  She cuddled a bit closer and kissed me. “Give it a shot.”

  “The last thing I remember,” I said. “Was you–”

  FIVE

  1.

  I stopped.

  When Alice kissed me, I remembered a moment we had in the lab. And as I remembered it, I latched onto another thought, somewhat like the memory of falling and knocking my head onto the ground, or when Joseph, Patrick and I crashed into the lake. A slight glimpse into a margin of a moment, nothing written into that margin, nothing gained. Inside that margin, in that lack, there was something that seemed vague but honest.

  There were times when Alice would walk past while we worked and her hip or hand would brush me in the most intimate way. I would often think about it long after she was gone. I always wanted that to be more than just a touch. I remember always wanting us to be more than what we were. I would often daydream about what life would be like with her, because she was brilliant and beautiful. When I think about her now, all I feel is suspicion. Somewhere, somehow, deep down she terrified me.

  2.

  I wrapped my arm around Alice, and she snuggled a bit closer. “I was dreaming that we were together,” I said. “You know, intimate.”

  “This was your nightmare?” She asked, playfully slapping my chest.

  “No,” I said. “This was in the labs. I would fantasize about us getting intimate there.”

  “Now that sounds more like it,” she said, fighting the gentle pull of sleep. “But why would that be so bad?”

  “Now that’s the question, isn’t it?” I intoned, “Why would that be such a bad thing?”

  “You’re fucking with me?”

  “Hear me out,” I said. “I was fantasizing about us being intimate because we weren’t together in that way. We are not together in that way. Understand?”

  The curtains danced away from the breeze and the moon crept upon the dresser. Slight tendrils of memory, of ripping myself open in front of the holo–mirror and bleeding to death tugged at the forefront of my thoughts.

  “I don’t,” she said, getting a bit upset.

  “Why are you in my bed?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are we married? How long have we known each other?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she pushed herself out of my arms. “We’re together. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Together how? For how long?”

  She sat, staring at me.

  “Do we share our lives? Share the bills, etcetera?”

  “Yes.”

  “We live together?”

  She shrugged, “yes.”

  “We’ve been living together for a while?”

  “Yes, Lance!”

  “How old am I?”

  She hesitated.

  “It’s a simple question.”

  She closed her mouth and looked away.

  “How long has it been since the accident?” I rubbed my chest, which showed no sign of any burn.

  She folded her arms and clenched her jaw, locking her eyes onto the small cascading waterfall across from us – which was the holo–mirror’s default setting when not in use.

  “When you came to visit me at the hospital, what did you mean when you said that this wasn’t personal?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Which part – the accident or the hospital visit?”

  She settled against the headboard and crossed her arms.

  “Alice,” I gently pulled her chin so that she would look at me. “When you sent me away on the elevator, I heard you scream.”

  She looked through me. She might as well have been carved out of stone. Her face was blank.

  “Why did you scream?”

  She remained blank and unattached as I repeated the question.

  I pushed myself out of bed, and stepped into a puddle of blood that stretched from the side of the bed to the holo–mirror. I heard a screeching crash outside followed by a scream. I rushed to the window and saw that my neighborhood was burning. My neighbors were
running away from their zombified relatives, as they dragged themselves to the closest living thing they could sink their teeth into. A flaming police car sped past, and a helicopter swooped by overhead. A few moments later I began to hear soft, consistent pounding on the first level, followed by a series of lifeless moans.

  3.

  “I don’t know how long it has taken me,” I said. “But I think I may have figured out what’s going on.”

  I mopped up the blood with a sheet. Alice still sat in the same spot with her arms crossed, as if she were upset. I knelt on the floor beside the bed. She was frowning, moving her gaze back and forth between the blood on the floor and the medicine on the nightstand.

  “I’ve been dreaming this whole time,” I said.

  I waited a few moments, gathering my thoughts while Alice continued not saying anything.

  “I must have detonated the artifact, and I’ve been either dreaming or hallucinating ever since. I haven’t woken up yet. I just keep fantasizing that I have, over and over again.”

  “This is your nightmare?” She finally asked. “Lying in bed with me?”

  “Don’t you hear that?” I waved at the pounding downstairs, and the screams outside. “This is all a nightmare. Waking at the hospital, watching Patrick shoot Joseph, crashing into the lake–” I point at the blood on the floor, “accidentally ripping open my burn and bleeding to death, the zombie apocalypse, Sid rescuing me with his car, the loud noises at the hospital, and waking next to you. The truth, however…” I tried to be clearer. “Each reality has never happened. Not really. In reality, I’m either lying on the floor in the lab, or in a hospital bed, comatose, and this is all a dream.”

  Alice shook her head and looked away.

  “Okay,” I said. “You don’t know my age, because that’s something I don’t know myself – and you don’t know or understand anything as well as I do.” I continued, “Because you’re not Alice. I’m not sitting on the floor talking to Alice. You are a projection of my dream of you. In essence, I’m having a conversation with a sub aspect of myself.” I gave her a grim smile, more from the satisfaction of putting the math together than anything else. The fact that Alice looked absolutely crushed didn’t help matters.