Lower Elements, LEP "Julius Root Memorial Research Laboratory."
Artemis arrived in the lab to find it was only Holly at the computer.
"Where's Foaly?" Artemis inquired, he was surprised he wasn't around.
"The LEP granted us time off to handle you and get you back to the rest of your kind," Holly explained, somewhat jovial in her response as she referred to him like an endangered animal, "but they said Foaly was urgently needed today. Lucky for you, they didn't need me, and Foaly made this thing easy enough for even a Mud Boy like you to work with."
Artemis wasn't sure how to reply, she'd always had a few armor-piercing comments but he wasn't sure how to approach this. Instead he simply nodded at her and entered the machine. Looking at her, he noticed a slight wince, perhaps she'd expected some kind of comeback.
It was interesting to him being inside the machine. When the electrodes were attached to his head, they stimulated him into a half-asleep state. He was conscious of his surroundings, the whirring and humming of the machine he was inside, the discomfort to his brain as it was stimulated, the mild claustrophobia of being in a machine somehow smaller than he scale he was already used to dealing with in Haven. At the same time he experienced the memories that the Holly and Foaly were pulling together outside, coming to him like dreams. Much like the screens outside, he experienced all of them concurrently in his head and in an almost faded style; it was almost overwhelming, but luckily he was able to process it all and avoid straining his mind too harshly from the information pulsating into his brain. He felt sort of odd, being helpless to even assist those outside as they worked on their own to piece everything together.
Holly began her work, throughout the day sorting out their next adventure. The scene of Butler nearly dying that her and Foaly had commented on previously led into her healing Butler with Foaly's help. She was glad Foaly didn't pick up on it, he would probably start keeping a tally to see who owed who the most. She finished that adventure, one where she helped him recover a fairy-based supercomputer. She saw that Artemis knew that a memory wipe was coming, and that he planted Mulch Diggums with discs to assist in recovering his memory. She saw that, without Fowl's memories of his interactions with the fairy folk, he had returned to his old ways of criminal actions. Ultimately it was Opal Koboi's efforts that restored them, trying to fulfill a plan that ultimately was put to detriment when she forced Holly to seek Artemis' help. By the end Opal was defeated and Fowl's memories restored, he even became overcome with guilt, even seeking to apologize to Holly for the kidnapping scheme.
Holly was impressed by her speed in linking together events. In just two hours she'd managed to complete two whole episodes of this mud boys surprisingly eventful life. She was also somewhat impressed by the mud boy's apology; it was an unexpected development of his otherwise cold character. The whir of a door opening followed by the telltale clopping of a centaur got her to turn around, seeing Foaly cantering in.
"Any progress?" the Centaur asked.
"Only two whole adventures." The young elf reported with a laugh.
Foaly's eyebrows raised, "Impressive. Anything interesting?"
"Well, some of this was already established but…" Holly started, "He is clearly a genius and programmed some weird computer thing that he used us to recover when it was stolen, he also had a plan for our mind-wipe tactics. Our good pixie friend Koboi framed me and tried to bring Haven down in a race-war, Fowl helped with that, though. He also apologized."
"It's so weird," Foaly mused, "every time we uncover something I can't tell if I want to continue helping him because it's interesting in a train wreck sort of way, or because there might be a good guy underneath the 18 layers of crime and manipulation."
"Me too." Holly somewhat flatly replied before turning back. "You want to go ahead and fix his personality now?"
Foaly sighed, "If I have to."
The centaur trotted up to the machine and typed a few keystrokes.
"Done." Foaly glumly stated.
"Thank you, now help me piece together this next one." Holly ordered.
She figured they'd have enough time for one more. While they'd only been at it for two hours, even the last session was only three for fear that the memory-line machine would begin to alter Fowl's brain intrinsically. Nothing good could come of 12 hours of constant external electrical stimulation to the brain, at least that's what Foaly said. The next adventure involved the demon species and was based somewhat on the intrigue surrounding one No. 1, an imp warlock. The elf-centaur duo stumbled somewhat through the adventure, but sure enough felt the results of success and were guided by them. The long-and-short was ultimately that Holly and Fowl swapped eyes and jumped forward three years into the future on that adventure, leading to Artemis having two twin-brothers. It also explained the reasoning for demons returning to the Fairy folk, something previously left unquestioned since they lost their memories.
Upon noticing that she was connected to Artemis by an entire eye, Holly immediately looked for a mirror and realized that sure enough, she had one hazel and one blue eye. How she'd not noticed it before was a shock. She mused a moment on how she'd been so busy in the past several days after what occurred with Artemis she'd never noticed something as mundane as her own eye color. She raised an eyebrow at Foaly.
"How does the eye-swap thing work genetically with his clone?" Holly inquired.
Foaly furrowed his brow and cantered over to the pod that Artemis laid in, "Well, unless your genetics fused with his somehow in the process, he should have retained both of his eyes."
"Arty-boy, can you open your eyes?" Foaly requested as he tapped on Artemis' pod.
From his half-comatose state Artemis heard the command and struggled a moment. He was aware, but to this point they had never had him move in this state but in theory it should have been possible. To his surprise, he found himself struggling to lift his eyelids. They gave way to some light but refused to open further, forcing him to give more effort. One more attempt to open his eyelids instead sent him into the brink of total unconsciousness before passing into the realm of sleep. Meanwhile, Holly heard a beep, turning to see that the machine was beginning to send errors to the forefront. The various feeds were beginning to disappear one-by-one as the connection Artemis had seemed to be severing, despite the fact he was still fully connected to the machine.
"D'arvit Foaly!" Holly shouted to Foaly, "Tell him to stop, it's messing up the machine!"
Foaly looked over to see the incident occurring on the screens of his precious Memory-Line Machine. He tapped again, "Hey, turns out that was a bad idea, stop it Mud-Boy!"
It was too late, whatever connections were made had been severed, Holly watched as the progress monitor flickered to zero and nothing remained. She made her way to the pod as she watched Foaly shut it off, preparing to open it.
"What happened?" Holly questioned, trying to suppress the anger from the incident that he caused.
"If I were to guess," Foaly reasoned, "telling somebody to move a body part sends brain signals, and they happen to be electrical synapses, which apparently don't play well with the electricity being shot into his brain to rewrite his memories."
"And it didn't occur to you for a moment that telling him to open his eyes might cause that?" Holly spat, her anger becoming unmasked.
Foaly was taken aback slightly, "That was just an on-the-spot theory, even human brains perform processes in the background that rely on similar synapses, I'd sort of expected his brain to not overload."
Holly was getting even more frustrated by Foaly's responses, stabbing the button to open the pod with her finger to try to awaken the Mud-Boy, "You're saying you overloaded his brain?"
"Once more, all theoretical," Foaly replied, trying to remain at least slightly optimistic, "even a great scientific mind as I can't predict what can happen with an experimental machine. Perhaps he was just knocked out for a bit, is he still breathing?"
Holly looked at the Mud-Boy and saw the telltale signs of his chest rising and falling, she then pressed her fingers against his neck and felt a pulse. He was still at least functioning after whatever had occurred. Foaly came closer and reached to begin disconnecting the electrodes that were spread across Artemis' head, prompting Holly to grab his hand roughly.
"What if disconnecting him does something worse?" Holly anxiously asked, "You know, like how if you disconnect a media drive it corrupts things?"
Foaly initially had a comment prepared regarding how only human drives have that issue, fairy society fixed that long ago, however, Holly's concern was palpable and drove Foaly to do something uncharacteristic… be empathetic.
"I have no doubt a human with a brain like Fowl's…" Foaly's expression grew more and more pained as he spoke to comfort Holly, "would be able to withstand his brain having a bit more activity going on than normal. It's still functioning enough to let him breath automatically, so all we can do is wait for him to awaken."
Holly was somewhat surprised, Foaly dropping his high and mighty… well she certainly wouldn't call it an act but him even trying to comfort her was a bit of a shock. She wasn't sure whether to be at ease or let her fears grow due to Foaly exiting character to comfort her. For now, though, she had to suppress the emotions swirling within her. Her concerned expression hardened as she looked between the Mud-Boy and the centaur.
"For now, let's leave him plugged in until he's conscious and aware." Holly ordered, retreating to a harsh tone used more for LEP duties than around her friends. "It's better not to break the Mud-Boy more before we try to fix him."
"Alright fine," Foaly withdrew from his plan, "but can you at least release my arm."
Holly recognized she'd been roughly holding the centaur's arm, quickly releasing it as he retreated his own arm back.
"Sorry." Holly let herself soften enough to give a genuine apology.
"No problem." Foaly looked at the time, noticing it was getting somewhat late, "I can stay here a while but Caballine has me for our eveningly jog."
"No problem, I'll stick with him until he comes-to."
"If he's not up by the time you need to sleep, I'd just come back in the morning." Foaly suggested, before realizing he was kidding himself. "Also if you feel it necessary, I keep a cot in my laboratory down the hall. I used it before Caballine, when I could stay up and work on new tools all day."
Holly nodded, then furrowed her brow a moment, "Do centaurs use beds to sleep, I thought horses sleep standing up?"
"What?" Foaly was utterly shocked, "of course we lay down to rest, can you imagine the pain my top half would be in if I didn't?"
"Well, I guess-" Holly tried to explain, becoming flustered, "I don't know I guess I saw some animals on the surface that sleep standing up and thought they were related to Centaurs."
"Horses do have to lie down sometimes," Foaly flatly stated, before chuckling, "I'll give you a pass this time. If you want to be more insensitive just imagine me laying just my top half on the bed."
Holly was embarrassed but gave a chuckle to the joke anyways before they fell into silence. This little misconception incident brought her away from the levity of the situation for a moment, and eased her emotions slightly. With the flurry of emotions having passed, she was able to assess herself and recognize that she may have overreacted regarding whatever happened to the random Mud-Boy.
Except, he wasn't random.
She literally had the only existing genetic material of the original Artemis in her eye socket.
She placed her head in one of her hands as she thought, connecting the dots. She felt a strong emotional attachment to the boy, to the point of defensiveness when it came to Foaly altering his personality and when their most recent incident that left the boy seemingly comatose. Not only that but it was pretty clear that they'd been working together for the past several years. She had better not be falling for this boy.
She had the same revelation last night after having come by Artemis' room for no reason other than to talk to him, but she didn't want to believe it then. Her feelings now spoke to the fact that, despite her fears, this may be true.
Foaly noticed Holly's seemingly stressed expression and put a hand on her shoulder in silence.
An hour passed before Foaly had to leave. Exchanging goodbyes with Holly, Foaly left to return to his wife Caballine. This left Holly to maintain her vigil until the late hours of the night, with no sign of Artemis coming to consciousness. When it finally hit around the time she normally sought rest, she brought the cot from Foaly's lab and laid on it. Despite him claiming not to have used it since he married Caballine, it certainly still had a bit of the pungent scent that came from an overworked centaur. She fell asleep facing him, hoping that in the morning they could figure out what to do.