ARTIFACT by Greg Egan Euclid screams because the hooded man bends his arm behind his back. I wish it would stopbecause I fear the sound of snapping bone. Euclid has very thin arms. Before waking perhaps precipitating it I ponder the insultingly obvious roots of the dream.Euclids thin arms are the laser beams that criss-cross the artifact bent by the black hole atthe centre which is hooded by its event horizon. Euclid screams because space around the blackhole is violently distorted and will not support his axioms of geometry. A final image before Iopen my eyes is of a mass spectrometer fed with my freshly ionised dream depositing itseasily recognised components onto a photographic plate. I label each dark spot by hand exceptthe last which I know should be labelled snapping bones. The lab demonstrator would laugh ifI wrote this on the plate. Nervousness from my student days. A transparent image of my dreams transparency. I wake. Cabin lights brighten slowly to half strength. Over at my desk the monitor still displays ablue schematic picture of the artifact a sixty-four-pointed star each point joined to everyother point