Random Grassy Hilltop 750.10.10
Artemis Fowl was only all too familiar with technological failures. To be truthful, he was experiencing a current technological failure at this very moment. And, as usual, it appeared in the least convenient of times.
He, however, was not exactly familiar on how to remove an idiot, namely one of the opposite sexes, from embracing him like he was one of those wretched toys commonly seen at Target.
Tapping furiously in his laptop, and occasionally muttering a polite "yes", he frowned when he was not allowed access to one of many accounts he had.
"What's your phone number?" the girl mumbled, just as a jet of wind sprayed her overly-shampooed hair everywhere at Artemis's face.
Artemis curled his fingers into a fist and locked his teeth. Patience, he thought. And then, It is only your own fault that you became tangled in this hopeless inanity... He tapped several times.
schwartzchildschizophrenicsingularityofcalciumcarbonate.
Access Denied.
illogicalelongatedpasswordthatshouldgetmeinthisdamnaccount.
Access Denied.
"Would you like me to force it out of you?" the girl asked, in some type of genetically altered playfulness. She meant the phone number.
Artemis muttered something through gritted teeth.
"What?"
"Nothing," Artemis replied. He checked his configurations.
Across from Artemis and his clinging infatuation, Miri sat quietly uttering cries of dismay or cursing under her breath. Her hands clenched the LCD screen, not exactly the best thing to do to a newly bought DellPorttable[tm], but only understandable during periodic flares of anger. She too, though experienced in failures, refused to believe her current problem.
Her thumbs pressed against the display, forming a greasy depression, and spurts of liquid rainbow rippling around, occasionally across the screen.
It was only then did she realize another fatal, not to mention unstoppable situation: Mollie is home alone with the disks. Unsupervised by neither Mum nor Dad.
Her head felt light.
"Two options," she mumbled. "The first outcome is an explicit breach. The second..."
Miri trailed off. Not possible. There was no "second outcome". Yesterday, she found at least three disks that were unlocked. They were:
holly's conversations [disk color green]
chix and juliet [disk color green]
the plans of mulch diggums and grub kelp [disk color orange]
Sure. Kids play and chew and unlock everything they can lay their hands on. Mollie was just another innocent, unsuspecting, normal kid. Nothing in her hands can be ruined.
"The second option," Miriena declared loudly, "is that nothing happened at all. To the disks, I mean. Internally."
After all, they have already been unlocked, which was reasonably external. You can't deny that. With Mollie, you never know if sliding two little knobs on the bottom corners of a floppy disk down meant anything or not.
There. She said it. Her own words comforted her, drowning out the immediate memory of finding leftover .exe files in the Floppy A drive.
Her eyes narrowed. What were executive files doing in the Floppy A drive? Mollie, despite all her brilliance, failed to refresh the computer, thereby letting Miri blatantly know that she has been feeding disks in and viewing the files.
This doesn't make sense. Mollie has never met a LEPrecon faerie, and doesn't understand the importance or privacy of these programs. She simply brought them up to satiate a childish curiosity. She didn't need to refresh the computer to hide what she was doing...
Then, Miri's eyes narrowed even more. They began to resemble Lilac's expression when she was neglected for another regular interval.
One run-time error after another popped up, stacking above each other on the screen. Each message emitted a B-flatish chord, and sounded like a sequence of low, echoing sonar beeps.
Miri caught Artemis looking over his laptop, cold amusement in his eyes. Then the girl's glance. She clung onto him like he was a my-size-Barbie. Quickly Miri turned the volume down, and there was a brief silence.
She leaned back slowly. Watching in helplessness as one message popped up after another, asking her if "she would like to debug", perhaps hundreds of times.
After a few moments, she got extremely sick of seeing error messages. She slammed her screen down, another thing that wasn't exactly the best for her new Intel Pentium III Processor.
Her elbows rested on the laptop; face grimacing as a southeasterly wind whipped her hair and jacket forward.
I was supposed to be alone. Who is that boy across from me with an obsessive-looking girl adhering to him? Am I suffering from discreet paranoia because of this anxiety? Well! I have very good reasons to be exasperated. Her voice was inclined to list out reasons to herself. Firstly, I prefer to be alone when operating confidential programs. Secondly, I prefer to have park landscapes undisturbed by any lovesick couples on this surprisingly fair day. By the way: why am I speaking in such a formal tone? Should I consult a psychiatrist regarding my overly worrying habits? And regarding my frequent self-evaluations? And, most importantly, my tendency to include formality when addressing to -
Miri sank down and hid her head in her arms. Technological failures. That is the precise reason for my hyperactiveness. Absolutely no need to go to some pointless psychiatrist and definitely no need to use "adhering" when talking to myself.
She couldn't help but glance at the pale boy across from her. He's frustrated as well, she mumbled in her head. He might as well be having difficulties reaching the same site I'm trying to get to.
Miriena comforted herself twice in the day with false hopes.
Twice. That's pretty impressive.
Across from her shut laptop, Artemis tapped infuriatingly. One of many things could have happened.
He eliminated modification immediately. Artemis modified his own password only according to specific dates coinciding with solutions to a mathematical equation. So far, he has not changed it yet. And, the idea of someone else hacking into his account was absurd. No one could be that precocious.
His hardware malfunctioning was a possibility, but highly unlikely. Troubles with logging in were often associated with internal difficulty, or even software breakdowns. Besides, his laptop has never really failed him during its use.
That left, of course, the blame on the other side. The site and site owner[s] were probably experiencing a technological failure as well.
Things were going well to plan. Artemis had successfully and logically faulted the other side for his predicament.
He assured himself that this was his last attempt. After all, it was their delinquency.
1123581321345589144233377610987.
Access Denied.
1_1_2_3_5_8_13_21_34_55_89_144_233_377_610_987.
Access Denied.
He relaxed. It was unquestionably their problem.