Author's Note : As the prologue was rather short, I've made an exception to my goal of 1 update per week, so here's chapter 1 ! :)
Disclaimer : Eoin Colfer is the author of the Artemis Fowl series, therefore I do not own any of its characters. Many elements of this fanfiction are also inspired or directly drawn from the 1998 Japanese anime 'Serial Experiments Lain' (GO WATCH IT) even though it is NOT a crossover.
Author's Recommandation : I personally love writing and reading to music. If you're interested, I highly recommand listening to Neon Demon (main theme) by Cliff Martinez, from the eponymous movie by Nicolas Winding Refn (freakin aesthetical masterpiece if you ask me). This piece of music just really fits the mood of the fanfic !
Enjoy your reading ! :)
Database #01 : Glitches
Judging from the outside, Artemis Fowl II's life at the age of thirteen was merely as quiet and motionless as it could get.
It seemed as if the darkest years of his childhood were behind him : his mother was somehow cured of her depression and bipolar disorder issues, and miraculously, after nearly three years, his father had resurfaced from the dead in Helsinki. It appeared as if someone had anonymously left him in front of the Finnish hospital to be found and rescued. As to know were Artemis Senior was during all these years, no one could tell : even the hypothesis of the Russian Mafiya holding him hostage didn't stand, as Artemis could certify he had never received any ransom demand – or didn't remember so.
Still, the young Fowl hadn't been sitting back for three years : he could account for many operations – both legal and illegal – aiming to restore the family fortune, and quite successful operations with that. Even so successful, that he had to keep most of his private bank accounts secret, so his parents wouldn't ask him about it. The Fowl heir had actually gathered so much gold, that there were even parts of it he couldn't put up where he actually got them.
Anyway, as he had both his parents back, an end was put to his mischievous schemes. Most of his energy now went to school, various research projects in the fields of science and art, and spending time with his family.
All in all, it seemed like the criminal and adventurous life of Artemis Fowl was behind him, and he was promised to a brilliant future.
Yet, even though he couldn't quite tell why, he felt somewhat… odd in his heart. As if things weren't quite right. As if he was… missing something.
One morning, he had woken up feeling nauseous, with a severe migraine, a sense of dizziness in his brain. That in itself could be rationalized easily ; too much work, lack of proper sleep… being the businessman and relentless schemer he was, Artemis was actually quite accustomed to these symptoms of fatigue. However, it was definitely strange that said symptoms would last for weeks. Then months.
And then, there were the lenses.
Washing his face that same morning, Artemis had found a pair of reflective contact lenses falling from his eyes in the sink. More astounding was that Butler and Juliet had awoken with similar lenses, and that apparently, it was Artemis himself who had bought them.
Three months had passed since then, and Artemis still hadn't managed to solve the mystery. He had gotten used to the migraines – which kept him awake almost every night, and that the strongest painkillers couldn't silence. But something Artemis Fowl would never get used to was having a puzzle unsolved.
Had his mental health slowly started to deteriorate, as had his mother's before ? Or was he a victim of an unkown foe playing tricks on his mind ? Only one thing Artemis hold for certain : whoever was behind this, would eventually deeply regret trying to confront him. It was the only solace in his long nights of insomnia : the thought of how exactly was he going to obliterate his enemy.
It might sound like a harsh word to use. But indeed, the seemingly peaceful attitude he was adopting for the past months was only a facade, hiding the cold, yet determined anger growing inside him. For if not in the deepest of his heart, Artemis was a criminal mastermind in his soul. He had it in his blood. The day he would give up on his tortious plans and corrupt behaviour was far from happening, his parents on the watch or not.
Then, one might wonder why Artemis hadn't attempted anything yet, against his mysterious opponent or just for the art of mischievousness. Not even the slightest spectacular painting theft. Well, Artemis Fowl was waiting.
He had tried his best to pick up any information he could on the puzzle in his hands, and found nothing. Artemis eventually conceided that he didn't have enough clues to work with, and after interrogating the lenses' supplier (with no good results), no solid lead to follow. But he could feel, deeply in his guts, that he shouldn't give up on this enigma, and his instinct told him that there was some one – at the very least – behind all this. And Artemis knew that this someone was probably still watching him. That's what he would do in the same position.
This conclusion being made, Artemis only had one option : pretending he had given up, moved on and settled up ; and begin waiting. For the slightest sign, the most insignificant trace of surveillance. Any trace was a sackload of information. Information leads to knowledge ; and anyone who knows anything about Artemis Fowl knows his personal motto : knowledge is power.
And so, Artemis waited. For a couple months, it was in vain. But eventually, his patience was rewarded.
The very peculiar phenomenons he witnessed, on two occasions, are so exteremely rare and of such ephemeral nature that it's actually almost impossible for any ordinary human to see it. But Artemis generally wasn't any ordinary human, and he had lately grown to be particularly observant – at the point it almost became unhealthy.
The first time was during a Sixth Year philosophy lesson in St Bartleby. This class was supposedly not Artemis' school level ; actually he was the youngest student in the group, as everyone around him was about eighteen or nineteen. Be he had long since made it quite obvious that his actual intellectual level was far beyond anything the professors in Bartleby could teach him, so he had been given exceptional authorization to attend four Senior Cycle classes, despite his young age.
Professor Tarkovski, the young yet long, white-haired teacher, was analysizing an excerpt of French philosopher Michel Foucault's Microphysics of Power when the phenomenon happened. Unlike many of his classmates, who were for the most part scribbling on their notes, texting on their phones or patently sleeping, Artemis was concentrated on Tarkovski's lesson, his fingers crossed under his chin, eyes locked on the blackboard. He genuinely enjoyed philosophy, especially since it was a discipline he usually hardly had time studying, and Tarkovski was actually not bad in his domain, providing thoughtful analyzes and being a fierce rhetorician when confronted by Artemis about philosophical theories. Artemis had even, rare enough display of respect to be reported, switched his cellphone on silent mode.
But something suddenly caught Artemis' full attention, disconnecting him instantly of Foucault's depiction of the intrication of social norms and power mechanisms. Yet that something was hardly a glimpse, and lasted about less than a second. It appeared about a few inches above Tarkovski's hand writing on the blackboard. If Artemis hadn't been this focused, like he hadn't stopped being for two months, he probably never would have seen it. For a split second, he even thought it was an hallucination. But it didn't really look like one.
His mind racing, Artemis tried to describe what he had seen. Alteration seemed like the most fitting description at first. The words of Tarkovski's sentence, « implacable mechanism of apolitical, human sciences-derived forms of control », had, for a brief moment, mixed up, then everything had came back to normal. It was as if pieces of the board had started disassembling, distorting even, and reput themselves together afterwards. Like pixels bugging on an old computing device.
Like a glitch, Artemis thought to himself, his heart pounding and a familiar electricity running down his spine. He was persuaded this strange phenomenon was, a way or another, the sign he had been waiting for.
He spent the rest of the hour intently staring at every word on the blackboard in case it started glitching again, but nothing of supernatural interest happened next. He didn't notice the text from his mother, that he had received precisely the minute the Glitch had happened, until the end of the class. And, all shaken he was after what he had witnessed, he paid zero attention to the rest of Tarkovski's lesson about Foucault – which was rather a pity, actually, considering what he could have have learned. But Artemis' problem with philosophy had never been learning ; it was understanding the concepts – concepts like morality, ethics, power. He eventually did understood them, but far too late.
The second time Artemis saw a Glitch was only eight days later. This time, he was more prepared, for he knew what he was waiting for. The questions he had not elucidated were why the glitching happened, and where it actually came from. On this second occasion, he got to find out about the latter.
It was about four a.m and a half in the morning, a time at which even Artemis was normally asleep. But since that fateful morning three months earlier, sleep deprivation had slowly become his daily life. Lying on the back in the middle of his bed, eyes on the ceiling, he had long since given up on reciting himself the Irish Constitution to try and put himself to sleep. Artemis was hesitating on whether he should grab a book or check on his several bank accounts, until he decided for the latter. Reaching for his cellphone, he grabbed it and switched it on in a single move, smothering a yawn.
Suddenly, the applications' logos on the phone's main menu started glitching under Artemis' eyes, in an almost violent fashion. Artemis dropped the phone in surprise as if he had been electrocuted, and then the Glitch stopped almost as soon as it had begun.
Artemis was immediately as awake as he could be, his infamous vampiric grin twisting his pale features. The Glitches were initiating from his cellphone, which meant that whatever his mysterious stalker was surveilling him with, it used the phone as an intermediate. The young Fowl pushed his silk blankets aside, and, holding the cellphone tightly in his hand, he went directly to his office a few rooms away from his bedroom. There, he kept a toolbox and an operating table, in case he needed to dis- and reassemblate one of his three personal computers.
Whatever software or virus has been used to infect my phone, Artemis thought with a dire look in his ocean blue eyes, I'm going to find it.
After two hours of work, the task proved easier said than done. Artemis had triple-checked everything on the phone, and in the phone, dissecting every application and every microchip it had.
He didn't try to connect the device to one of his computer to try and get a more thorough exam ; if it was indeed a virus of some sort as he suspected, he couldn't risk it infecting his other computing machines. Unless all his material was already infected – but for now he rathered push this possibility aside.
Eventually, at eight a.m and after the third sleepless night he had had in row, Artemis gave up. Whatever caused the Glitch through his cellphone, it had left absolutely no trace. None, nowhere.
But everyone knows Artemis Fowl doesn't get discomfited easily.
For now, he had to assume he was facing a particularly intelligent and undetectable virus, capable of causing peculiar alterations both in the digital and physical world. Glitches. That was weird, to say the least. But to Artemis, it was mostly very intriguing. Another sardonic smile stretched his lips, revealing his teeth.
Hacking had always been one of his strongest skills, which he had been practising since the tender age of six. He had never stopped keeping in touch with his contacts in both deepweb and darknet forums – in another life, some of them helped him gather the tokens and informations that ended up leading him to Ho Chi Minh City… even if he had no recollection of it – ; and it seemed to him that now was time to come and say hello again.
Despite how preoccupying the situation was, Artemis couldn't help but chuckle.
Finally, after so many months. Some fun.
Nyeheheheh. Once again, please feel free to review ! Chapter 2 is already written, I'll start Chapter 3 tonight and do my best to keep by the rule of one update a week :) Hope this story is going to find some readers !
See you next weeks folks ;)