I thought we were perfect for each other. I tried not to let it bother me that whenever I looked into his mismatched eyes, it felt like she was there too, staring back at me. I managed to convince myself for a long time that it was just a biological oddity, and not something that had any deeper meaning. Maybe I was wrong.
Nineteen years before the death of Artemis Fowl.
Six hundred thirty-eight plus-minus fifteen years from now. That was the result of Minerva's examination of the note. The note was the only thing that Artemis had brought back with him from his jump to the future. It was written on yellow, unlined notepad paper, in small, neat letters that looked off somehow. It looked like a collection of different fonts and styles that almost matched up, but not quite, as if they were drawn rather than written, penned by someone who knew how the English alphabet worked, but wasn't used to actually writing in it.
Thank you for being my guardian angel.
That was all the note said. A sentence written with dye-based ink, seemingly made from some kind of lichen. A sentence made of ink and set on paper that had a entropic time signature that set its origin far in the future.
By Minerva's timing, Fowl had been gone for less than two minutes, equipped with not much more than his C Cube and a personal holoprojector. He came back, saw the note in his hand - seemingly for the first time - stared at it for a while before smiling. He handed it to Minerva and then promptly collapsed into a nearby chair, where he was currently fast asleep, snoring lightly.
After making sure that Artemis was actually just sleeping, and not something worse, Minerva had scanned the note with the tachyon detector - the large black monolith of a device that took over much of one side of the room. She and Artemis had developed the device over the last five years, creating, in essence, a self-contained temporal telescope of sorts, something that allowed them to look for 'ripples' of catastrophic events that flowed back from the future. So far, they had found three likely candidates for such events in the next eight hundred years. None of them were supposed to take place at the time she found from the note. The three sets of temporal ripples still pulsed gently from the screen on the other end of the machine. Artemis had clearly not averted one of these catastrophes. Of course, they had only found three so far. Odds were, they'd find one from the point of origin of the note.
"Clio," Minerva said into the air.
A half-meter-tall translucent-blue figure of a short-haired, wide-eyed young woman appeared next to Minerva on an otherwise empty chrome pedestal. She wore a utilitarian business suit and slacks, and floated a few inches off the surface of the pedestal.
The C Cube's resident AI pushed a pair of wire-frame glasses up her small nose and looked up at the French woman.
"Yes, Minerva?" she asked in a smooth voice that came from the pedestal below her hologram.
"What happened during the jump?" Minerva asked the AI. Clio had accompanied Artemis on his time jump and should have been able to provide more details about the event, though Artemis had expressed some doubts about whether or not she'd actually be carrying any useful information back with her.
Clio tilted her head and stayed silent for a moment.
"I have no record of a jump. I do seem to have had a malfunction somewhere," she said finally. "My internal clock reads twelve hours, six minutes, and thirty-two seconds faster than external atomic clocks. Should I correct this?"
"The time difference is probably how long you two spent in the future," replied Minerva, as her excitement began to grow. "That's no error. You two made the jump just now. When did you two end up?"
The hologram's brow furrowed slightly in concentration, and light rippled across her body as she thought about the question some more.
"I do not understand, Minerva," she said finally. "You are implying that Artemis carried me through a forward time jump. Though I recall plans being made for such an event, I do not have a record of such a thing occurring. Are you perhaps referring to the simulations we did last week?"
The professor huffed slightly. Clio was not being helpful. Just as Artemis predicted. Of course.
'Damn paradox protocol,' she thought.
That probably meant the note was the best they were going to get. That note and its six hundred thirty-eight plus-minus fifteen years. But she supposed it was better than accidentally triggering a paradox. That might've led to some sort of weird temporal break, causing a reset of history to some insane alternate timeline or something.
Minerva shook her head.
What a preposterous idea. Obviously. Everything was fine. Artemis was back. And besides, he went to the future - not the past. Probably, anyway.
'What is this about a guardian angel though?'
"I honestly don't know who wrote that," said Artemis after he woke up, maybe an hour later. He leaned back in a large office chair, and rubbed at his temples, wiping at a spot where a bit of the residue from the electrodes remained.
"Of course you don't," scowled Minerva. "Mon Dieu, this is going to be so frustrating."
"The time signature is going to have to be enough," Artemis smiled and shrugged apologetically. "Too much risk in doing it any other way."
Minerva followed his eyes as he glanced at the note again. His mismatched eyes were fascinating to her - in an academic sense at least - especially with the story behind them. Still, she somehow couldn't shake the feeling that he looked better with his natural blues.
"The handwriting is atrocious," he observed, tapping a corner of the paper. "It makes sense, I suppose, with the global decline of penmanship in favor of typing and all. It can only get worse from here."
Minerva rolled her eyes, but gave Artemis a half-smile.
"I am glad you remembered to bring something back then, at least."
She gestured at the row of small, cylindrical probes sitting on the lab bench next to the tachyon detector, looking like sandblasted soda cans.
Artemis nodded. He walked over to the bench, picking one of the probes up. He slid a finger across the edge of one of them, causing the top to pop open, and a ring of clear tubes to rise from the interior. They all looked empty, and according to all of the tests, they were all empty. Every single one of the probes had been supposedly sent to the future, to one of the disaster periods. Each one was supposed to return with a sample of something. Anything really. Anything with an entropic time signature - which was, as far as the two humans could tell - all matter in the universe.
Each and every one had returned empty.
"I'm telling you it's the personal entanglement," said Artemis. "None of the probes went anywhere. I'm fairly sure of that now. It's likely that they reappeared a few minutes after we sent them out precisely because we only sent them out a few minutes into the future. They never got to where they were supposed to go."
Minerva drummed her fingers on the work bench.
"Six hundred thirty-eight years," she said finally. "That's quite a jump. Especially for the first time."
She paused to actually think about it, and after a moment, broke out into a huge grin, before laughing and clapping her hands together in excitement.
"You actually did it then!" she cried, finally letting the actual significance of the situation hit her.
The blonde leapt up and quickly, giving the surprised Irishman a tight hug. After a moment, she leaned back, but didn't let go.
"You brilliant man, Artemis Fowl!" she laughed, her blue eyes twinkling.
Her eyes wandered to his lips for a fraction of a second, as she fought down temptation. She kissed his right cheek instead, maybe a second longer than she would have done normally.
Artemis smiled back.
"Yes," he chuckled after she had let go. "We actually did it."
"Judging from that note, you probably also saved some damsel in distress while you were out there. Probably many such damsels, eh Arty?" she said teasingly.
Minerva went over to the lab's mini-fridge with an extra spring in her step. She pulled out a bottle of champagne she had brought from the chateau just for this occasion. Plucking two glasses from a cabinet, she held them in her other hand by their stems.
She turned back to Artemis, still with a grin on her face.
"First, we celebrate," she declared. "Then, it's my turn."
Minerva Paradizo reappeared in the lab with a bright blue flash, nearly tripping upon landing. She would have probably fallen too, if it weren't for Artemis catching her by the shoulders.
The woman settled herself for a moment, and checked both hands.
Nothing.
She checked both pockets in her coat, pulling out the holoprojector from the left, and the C Cube, along with a neatly wrapped set of electrodes and wires from the right.
She let out a long sigh, setting the items down on the work bench.
Artemis reached for the electrodes. After examining them for a moment, he frowned.
"What?" asked Minerva. "I'm sure I remembered to use them if it was relevant."
He held up the wires that they were attached to, and pulled at them a little. A large section of the wrapped wire remained stuck together.
"You didn't use it," he said, gesturing at the electrodes. "Before your last attempt, I decided to introduce another test, so I added a mild adhesive to the wires. You would have had to pull the wires apart, and it's clear that didn't happen."
Minerva slumped into a chair, her shoulders drooping.
"What was the time?"
"Four minutes, thirty-one seconds," replied Artemis.
The woman blew out a breath in frustration, sending a few golden hairs flapping away from her face.
"That's the fourth attempt," she said morosely. "And nothing. Again."
She felt Artemis set a hand on her shoulder.
"Maybe it doesn't work for everyone."
In their first six months of testing, Artemis Fowl made three jumps into the future. The shortest jump was eighty-five plus-minus six years forward. The longest was still that first jump, over six hundred years into the future.
Minerva Paradizo attempted fifty-two jumps. Each one sent her less than five minutes into the future, where no return trip was necessary.