The Alien Artifact 9 (Novelette) Read Free Page A

being on the frontline, and I was
also getting desperate for answers and wondering repeatedly if I
had received damage to his mind, and realized that I would be
checked by an army doctor at some point and realized I could have
him properly check me out.
    I felt different somehow and I could not
grasp what and stood and started checking myself, and feeling my
head for damage where I collapsed and hit the floor, and realized
the woman could have covered up me hitting something when I
collapsed, as she would have felt responsible for it, and I started
examining my whole body, trying to see how it functioned to me
doing things, and I started jumping up and down and waving my arms
about, and examined my legs, and they responded, and I did a
handstand and noticed my body was weak and seemed to move
differently than I intended, and I partially looked upwards and saw
a large shadow shift across the floor, and saw someone standing
over me, in front of me.
    An officer was standing staring at me
crazily.
    “ What in the hell are you
doing? ” the
sergeant shouted, and I collapsed over the floor.
    “ I’m starting to get out of shape
sitting in here!” I moaned.
    He stood staring insanely, and not believing
anything, and clearly thinking I was someone else.
    “ God help us!” he shouted. “If this is
all we get …”
    “ This is the Home Guard?” I swiftly
replied, trying to look normal.
    “ Well it surely isn’t the boy Scouts!”
he moaned. “Yes! We’re the Local Defence Volunteers!”
    He ordered me into the front office, and I
knew I was in the army, and I sat in a seat at the desk and waited
for an officer to come. Then I wondered what the hell I was doing
there!
    An officer entered, looked through a form
about me, which I had filled in and handed in at the entrance
office.
    “ Captain Godfrey!” he announced. “And
that’s Sergeant Clooney my deputy officer.”
    Clooney sat in the seat beside me, in front
of the captain’s desk, and watched us both, and the captain shuffle
through his stuff.
    “ We’re putting together a group of
soldiers because of the war and you look suitable …” he announced,
examining information on him. “So you’re a private
investigator?”
    Clooney looked sideways in surprise, and
examined me over again, differently.
    Suddenly the phone blared out and the
captain picked it up and instantly realized who it was and launched
into an argument with the person, and shouted not to phone him
there unless it was an emergency, and thumped the phone down.
    He glanced over and gasped, stopped what he
was doing and examined me up close and looked straight into my face
as if he suddenly saw something he did not want to see and could
not fully grasp, and continued studying me.
    “ Your face it’s familiar!” he moaned,
and he started tapping his finger hard against the desk, and tried
to grasp something.
    “ I want to ask you a few
questions! ” he finally
asked.
    I sat upright and waited.
    “ Why do you want to join the army,
Malone? ” he
asked firmly, studying me with confusion, and he started sipping
tea from a cup.
    “ I can ’ t remember! ”
    “ What?”
he loudly gasped, also coughing up the tea in his mouth. “What
can’t you remember?”
    “ I have
had an accident recently and have had some memory loss!” I
confessed, and suddenly wondered why I had done it, and sat
depressed.
    The captain
seemed to alter somehow, and he suddenly grew interested in me, and
seemed to want me.
    “ Okay!
You’ve had a recent misfortune! Perhaps caused by this blasted war!
But surely you can make a rough guess as to why?”
    Clooney stood
up and went over and got a cup of tea, and sat back down, and
sipped it and watched us both.
    “ I can ’ t really remember at
all! ” I
moaned, and made Clooney gasp and cough out all the tea in his
mouth, blasting it all across his front, and he instantly started
cleaning it up.
    When I offered to help clean it
Godfrey screamed, “ Leave it!