Artemis Fowl belongs to Eoin Colfer. His Dark Materials belongs to Philip Pullman.
Prologue
"All right, Foaly, what is it this time?"
The centaur blinked. "Sir?"
LEP Commander Mark Atreyan glared at him. "Which paranoid urge caused you to go insane this time?"
Foaly bristled. "Sir, this is an emergency!"
Vinyaya sighed. "Could we please just get on with this without pointless bickering? Foaly, tell us what has happened."
He saluted. "Si- er, Madam, I must report that we have found a gateway to another universe."
She blinked, as did everyone else in the room. "What?"
Foaly sighed. "A portal to another dimension. A bridge to a parallel universe. Schroedinger's cat, you know? Well, you probably wouldn't. Schroedinger was a Mud Man."
"And why is this a threat?" Atreyan asked, tapping his foot.
"Well, for one, the surge of raw magic is crazy! Anyone who goes near the place will find their magic on blink for days! And besides that, what if the Mud Men find it? Their weak little brains are far too delicate to handle this sort of thing."
Far above ground, a certain Mud Boy smirked as he listened to the conference he had hacked his way into.
"So what are we supposed to do about it?"
"Well," Foaly replied, "I'm pretty sure that we can close it, with the right technology and a crack team of warlocks."
"Sure. Fine." Atreyan waved a hand. "Anything to stop you going crazy."
"Thank you, sir. And I hope this will be the end of it."
But of course, it was not.