Artemis Cubed

by The White Lily and Blue Yeti

In a swirl of melodramatic maroon, the plot holes cleared to reveal three of our favourite character in melodramatic black suits.

"How extraordinary."

"Yes," replied a piping voice. "This is most curious."

"Hardly," said a third voice, older than both the previous two. "This is all perfectly rational, if we allow for a wormhole in the space-time continuum."

"Are you sure you don't mean a plothole?" sneered Artemis.

"Perhaps you could convince a non-genius of that. If they'd recently been looking directly into the sun and were thus not only stupid but temporarily disoriented," agreed Artemis.

"I am Sir Artemis Fowl," sniffed the third Artemis. "Obviously I have all the answers, as I've already lived your so-far-insignificant lives." Light from his diamond encrusted Cartier spangled across their faces.

Artemis blinked. "You can't be serious."

Light from his diamond encrusted Cartier spangled across their faces. Gilt glittered in their eyes.

Artemis blinked. Twice. "You cannot be serious."

"I believe he must be," sighed Artemis, also blinking to clear the sparkles from his eyes. "Or, at least, we must first listen to his ridiculous hypothesis before disproving it."

Sir Artemis folded sun spotted hands before his face, coincidentally flashing the golden light thrown from his watch across the faces of his young listeners. "Do you remember the story of Alice and the rabbit hole?" he began.

"You mean that we should anticipate another bad plot device, as we wake to find it was all a dream?"

"And please tell me that I am not yet so senile as to use children's literature as a reference in an otherwise intelligent discourse," finished the other.

"I'll have you know that I could make good money using this as the basis of some inane children's book. I have made millions with far less consistent plots than -"

"Less consistent than inexplicably having three copies of a character, all of different ages?" interrupted the youngest Artemis. "No, this has something to do with our birthday. And clearly we are all recently from the same year, unless you are both wearing vastly outdated suits from Armani's Summer '06 collection."

"Indeed, this is no wormhole - or rabbit hole, if you must Sir Artemis," agreed Artemis. "This is a quantum irregularity in the year of our birth..."

"Precisely! Our birthday does have a remarkable amount of latent belief attached to it. We are quite famous, you know."

They looked at him sceptically.

"Don't you feel the pull of hundreds - thousands! - of teenage girls, all desperate for a glimpse of your tanned skin and rippling muscles...?"

Artemis looked down at his pale, scrawny arms, then looked back up again. "I'm as mad as Mother," he marvelled.

"Artemis - Arty, my boy - you will have an incredibly exciting year. Beware of full moons."

"I cannot comprehend how I shall believe fortune cookies by the age of fifty."

"I'm barely forty!"

"Of course!" broke in the other Artemis. "Full moons... I knew there was something not quite right about that Christmas Eve when I kidnapped -" he flashed a glance at the youngest Artemis "- someone. Cherry blossoms on the trees at that time of year were undoubtedly odd. And the full moon doesn't coincide with Christmas Eve in the new millennium until 2007. You," he turned to the youngest Artemis, "were born in 1995."

"Yes, I was," said the youngest warily. "Although I can't imagine why you would be consulting astronomy charts to plan a kidnapping. I must conclude that the madness has already taken its hold on you, too. I see that I will need to turn my attention to developing a cure to genius-related brain disorders immediately."

Sir Artemis, however, was beaming at the elder of the two. "See? It's simple really. As for why there's more than one of us... well, let's just say that it doesn't quite make sense for us to make so quite many wise cracks about the new millennium if we've lived over half our life in it. And, according to quantum theory, we could be sharing atoms across a space-time continuum supported by the fanatical brains and beliefs of your myriad fangirls..."

Both younger Artemii stared at him, and he flashed his watch at them hopefully.

"That's absurd," said the piping voice of the youngest Artemis. "This entire situation is impossible - at least without reference to the works of Emmsey Squire, and the only relevance they have is in a world where magic is real. I am certain that I have matured enough to disbelieve Mother's foolish notions on that count."

The other Artemis struggled away from the visions of gold dancing the foxtrot through his mind, across a gold plated piano with solid gold keys, complete with a pianist in a gold bikini who looked suspiciously like Holly. "Not... entirely impossible," he said finally. "According to Schrödinger's paradox, all possible Artemii could simultaneously exist until the exact details of the story are fixed within the mindset of the reader. So really... we could all be valid expressions of the most intelligent mind in our dimension." Then he smirked at the others, adding, "Although, clearly, I'm more valid than either of you; obviously the mental capacity to understand these issues has been distributed in accordance with the quantum probabilities."

"I think not," scoffed the youngest Artemis again. "If you can believe an explanation like this, your world must be something quite ridiculous, filled with fantasy tripe with magical scars and unfailing destiny. Next thing, you'll be trying to convince me that fairies are real after all."

The superior smirk on the other young Artemis's face deepened. "Remarkable. Was I really that narrow-minded?"

"Remarkable. Am I really that obnoxious?"

"Remarkable. Am I really this narcisstic? Boys, boys, it's time to go home."

Shaking his head at them, he summoned a pair of plot vortexes to send them back to their respective dimensions. The elder of the two was easy to lure through to the other end: all he needed was a hologram of a certain fairy - he remembered a lovely fantasy involving a pile of gold, a ripped uniform, and a trombone - and the 17-year-old problem was gone.

The other was even easier to dispatch with a vision of a golden clown pulling gold out of a golden hat. As soon as his eye caught the image, the youngest Artemis frowned and strode through, already preparing to blackmail the unfortunate man for a share of the gold over the fact that he'd been hiding it up his golden sleeve in the first place.

Company dispensed with, Sir Artemis buried his face in the keyboard, an oft-repeated exercise which had provided the original inspiration for Mulch. At least he was happy as long as he kept him in the dark and buried in... well, it was best not to go there.

He sighed, loud and long, and pulled himself back upright. Then he stopped, sensing the presence of onlookers, and gave a seemingly casual twitch of his wrist.

The refracted light plays across your face, and you are pulled towards it, inexorably drawn to the sparkles. They remind you of something... the cover of a book... or something... your eyelids begin to feel heavy as you stare into the sparkling, shifting colours.

When you wake in the morning, you won't remember the dream. You won't remember anything but the vague urge to go out and purchase a book. Perhaps something with a nice eye-catching cover.

 

Happy birthday, Artemis! Whether it's eleventh or seventeenth or anything else.