secret history II: of how the fairies came to be.


II: Discs


A.D. 2000+

Artemis Fowl II had been perverse in his teenage years. There could be no doubt of it.

Companies that came to power on a wave of environmental destruction suddenly found themselves destroyed. Sometimes it was simply a few billion, siphoned out of accounts daily, disappearing each day until the debts were too great. At other times, a CEO would have been seen to commit a crime, and the sting that brought him or her down would have to be almost as elaborate as the one Artemis Fowl II had used to set him or her up. It had been an era of glory for the Fowls, a generation of conscientious looting.

There had been casualties. His parents had been mowed down by an unmarked Ferrari on vacation in New Zealand. They had not always enjoyed vacations together; it was only their fourth. Artemis Fowl II, then just 16, did not grieve at the funeral. There was none; but with tears in his eyes, he consigned them to two cryo pods. But of course the word on the grapevine was that he had called for the Ferrari as well.

He had not recalled such faith in cryogenics, something he once saw as mumbo-jumbo. Another vestige of a few years' memory gaps.


One night a haggardly stooped man came to the front door of Fowl Manor. It opened. Unfortunately for the dwarf, the target of Artemis' then-running plan was supposed to arrive right where he stood, two minutes later.

So it was natural for Butler to greet Mulch with a bullet to the heart instead of a handshake. A case of mistaken identity sealed the door to Artemis' past.


c. A.D. 3600

Artemis Fowl sat forlornly in the hall of Fowl Manor.

Of course the great criminal lord, Artemis Fowl II was dead, lost in the annals of countless Fowl geniuses. The point had come when it was useless to put those Roman numerals on the names; Artemis Fowl XXXVIII abolished it. So Artemis Fowl was glad not to be XL, the fortieth. He could safely be called Artemis, for his father's name was Julius.

Artemis sat forlornly in the hall, staring at the strange stuffed – person? - in one corner. The little thing was barely five feet tall. Yet it looked almost human. He remembered reading about how the scientists had been stupefied by its physiology.

"Its metabolism appears to be driven by consumption of minerals and humus," the scientists had noted. "The cellular structure appears rather homogeneous with typical land life expectations, but its DNA strands are wound in a quintuple helix. Doubtless this means that cellular reproduction is generally slower and this creature's lifespan could well have been two millennia. Still, we have no clues how this find should be related to current evolutionary theory."

He had always wondered about it. Why had the great ancestor chosen to stuff and embalm this... thing? It was an extraordinary work of taxidermy indeed, but there could not have been any logic about the decision. The body had kept its pose over the years, rigor mortis freezing its left hand into what seemed like a friendly wave. Its eyes opened wide, as if expecting some reward, and its hairs stood on edge. But its right hand was clenched around some strange golden medallion.

Today, as Artemis watched it, he suddenly saw a little flake of something golden fall from its right hand. And another. There had already been an unnoticed pile of little golden flakes below the hand, mocking like some pile of unraked leaves. So Artemis went to see.

Golden the medallion was not. As Artemis tried to prise open the frozen fingers, he was drawn to the medallion they held. It looked gold-plated, but underneath all that false glitter was the translucent green of an ancient laser disc. Suddenly, a sound of perspex breaking echoed throughout the hall and five dwarven fingers clattered to the floor. Grimly, Artemis took the disc and went to find one of those obsolete laser disc players.

Mulch had done what he came for, finally.




"...wait. There's more."

Aquinas always hated it when meetings were this long. It simply meant less of what he said would go into the LEP's collective head.

"We've analysed the construction material. The thing's physically impossible. Thin as an atom. Only neutrons compacted together; the electrons have apparently crashed into the protons and been absorbed. The positron neutrino signature is still there. Damn material was carved from a neutron star."

The room was in silence. A few of them couldn't believe Aquinas. The rest couldn't understand Aquinas.

But he carried on. "The material's a hundred times as strong as steel."

Now they were all ears. Commander Birch Greenham, head of military production, started wondering aloud about estimated material licensing costs. Telephone-number figures.

"The consistency's same throughout. Well, almost throughout. Except for this area."

The visual was still being displayed on the floating fog screen. "Re-center on memory-determined point bit xx469E4F100. Memory bitmap search two." As if the camera was soaring like an eagle, over the surfaces of the enigmatic cube, the picture in the visual twisted and turned. The general effect it had on the viewers was that of nausea. Thankfully, the visual stilled in two minutes, on a singular square sparkling amongst translucent grey. "It's a hatch, a thing of crystalline carbon that's about .36% as strong as the surrounding material. It's placed geometrically opposite the figurines, and right in between them is an optical disc."

Birch asked, "What's crystalline carbon?"

"Diamond."

Commander Root had had enough. "D'Arvit, so there's a neutron star ship out there with a diamond door, a bunch of toy People and a lousy CD!" His complexion had regained a full-bodied redness and his spittle was forming dangerous projectiles. "So WHAT? What do you want me to do, D'Arvit? Next I know, you'll want me to SEND A TEAM up there to get your BLASTED CD from your stupid SPACESHIP!"

The silence carried a dangerous tone of assent.

"Aquinas, you are SO kidding."

"...Commander Root, I – was – just – about – to ...heehee." Aquinas would have put his hoof over his mouth, if it was physically possible. It takes a lot to reduce a centaur to "heehee".

Commander Root ripped the casing off his wrist computer and mashed a virtual button, taking a few years off the touch-screen's lifetime. A small box floated out of the centre of the round table, with a button on it.

What do you know. It was big, bubbly and red.


"Please hear Aquinas out!"

Arch-mage Short's voice could be heard over the jarring noise the bright metallic column made as it rolled back into its groove. The walls of the inner conference hall were descending, and the roar of the ensuing arguments resounded through the gap between the column and the dome. Instantly, every head in the LEP sanctum turned towards the central area. As soon as the column was fully back in its groove, the 26 council members could be seen almost at fisticuffs. Commander Root was the first to huff off down the central corridor to the exits.

"What are you gaping at! Get back to your work in 10 seconds or you won't HAVE no work!"

Nobody bothered pointing out Root's double negative. Thankfully, or an artery might have burst in his brain. The other council members started walking away from the heated arguments, leaving only Lotus Short, Nigel Trouble and Aquinas behind.

"But someone has to go get that disc," Aquinas was oblivious to the meeting's collapse in the stupor of being refused.

Lotus took a pitying stare at Nigel. "We'll continue this meeting some other day," she said, before walking lightly away. Nigel sighed. Gods knew how long it would take Octavius to cool down, after a request like that.

Fairies in space...