Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

Orion was equally distraught. “Oh, Captain Short.

There was so much I wanted to tell you, about how we feel, Artemis and I. You were so young, with so much left to give.” Fat tears rolled down his cheeks. “Oh, Artemis, poor foolish, Artemis. You had so much and did not know it.”

Foaly felt hollowed out by sudden, wrenching grief. Holly was gone. Their last best chance of warning Haven. How could he hope to succeed aided only by a mooning Mud Boy who began every second sentence with the word “Oh”?

“Shut up, Orion! Shut up. A person is gone. A real person.” The ice was hard beneath Foaly’s knees, and made their situation seem more desperate.

“I don’t have much experience with real people,” admitted Orion, slumping beside the centaur. “Or feelings that translate to the world. But I think I am sad now. And lonely. We have lost a friend.”

These were words from the heart, and Foaly felt he had to be sympathetic. “Okay. It’s not your fault. We have both lost someone special.”

Orion sniffed. “Good. Then, worthy centaur, perhaps you could give me a ride to the village on your back. Then I can make a few pennies with my verses while you build us a shack and perform circus tricks for passersby.”

This was such a surprising statement that Foaly briefly considered jumping into the hole to get away.

“This isn’t Middle Earth, you know. We’re not in a novel. I am not noble, neither do I have a repertoire of circus tricks.”

Orion seemed disappointed. “Can you juggle at least?”

Orion’s idiocy was just what Foaly needed to shake him temporarily from his grief. He jumped to his feet and stomped in a circle around Orion.

“What are you? Who are you? I thought you shared Artemis’s memories. How can you be so stupid?”

Orion was unperturbed. “I share everything. Memories and movies are as real as each other to me. You, Peter Pan, the Loch Ness Monster, me. It’s all real, maybe.”

Foaly rubbed his forehead. “We are in so much trouble. Gods help us.”

Orion brightened. “I have an idea.”

“Yes?” said Foaly, daring to hope that a spark of Artemis remained.

“Why don’t we look for some magic stones that can grant wishes? Or, if that doesn’t work, you could search my naked body for some mysterious birthmark that means I am actually the prince of somewhere or other.”

“Okay,” sighed Foaly. “Why don’t you get started on the stones thing, and I’ll scrape some magical runes in the snow.”

Orion clapped his hands sharply. “Excellent notion, noble creature.” And he began kicking over stones to see if any of them were magical.

The complex is progressing, realized Foaly. He wasn’t this deluded only minutes ago. The more desperate the situation becomes the further from reality he gets. If we can’t get Artemis back soon, he will be gone forever.

“I found one!” Orion shouted suddenly. “A magic stone!” He bent to examine his discovery. “No. Wait. It’s a shellfish of some kind.” He smiled apologetically at Foaly. “I saw it scuttling and so I assumed. .”

Foaly thought a thought he had thought he would never think.

I would prefer to be with Mulch Diggums.

This notion caused him to shudder.

Orion yelped loudly and scuttled backward. “I found it. Really, this time. Look, Foaly. Look!”

Foaly looked, in spite of himself, and was amazed to see that a stone actually did seem to be dancing.

“That’s not possible,” he said, and wondered, Is he somehow sucking me into his delusion?

Orion was jubilant. “Everything is real. I am abroad in the world.”

The stone flipped high into the air, spinning off across the frozen lake. Where it had been, the black hull of the escape pod punctured the ice. It rose and rose above a bass rumbling of engines that set the ice plates vibrating themselves to pieces.

It took Foaly a moment to realize what was happening, but then he too was jubilant.

“Holly!” he called. “You made it. You didn’t leave us.”

The escape pod lurched to the surface, then toppled on its side. The for’ard porthole was winched open, and Holly’s face appeared in the frame. She was pale and bleeding from a dozen minor cuts, but her eyes were bright and determined.

“Took a while for the fuel block to dissolve,” she explained over the engine noise. “Get inside, both of you, and buckle up. We have to catch that fire-breathing monster.”

This was a simple order, and both Foaly and Orion could obey without their realities clashing.

Holly is alive, thought Foaly.

My princess lives, exulted Orion. And we’re chasing a dragon.

“Foaly,” he called after the centaur. “I really think we should search for my secret birthmark. Dragons love that sort of thing.”

Artemis Fowl’s Brain; Now

Artemis was not gone completely. He was confined to a small virtual room in his own brain. The room was similar to his Fowl Manor office, but there were no screens on the situations wall. In fact, there was no wall. Where his selection of gas screens and digital televisions had been mounted, there now floated a window into his body’s reality. He could see what the fool Orion saw, and hear the ridiculous sentences dripping from his own mouth, but he could not control the actions of the romantic nincompoop who seemed to be in the driver’s seat, to use a motorcar reference that Butler and Holly would appreciate.

In Artemis’s room there was a desk and a chair. He wore one of his lightweight Zegna bespoke suits. He could see the weave of threads on his arm and feel the material’s weight as though it were real, but Artemis knew all these things were illusions constructed by his mind to put some order on the chaos in his brain.

He sat upon the chair.

In front of Artemis, on what he had decided to call his mind-screen, events played out in the real world. He winced as the usurper, Orion, rolled out his clumsy charm.

He will utterly destroy my relationship with Holly, he thought.

Now he appeared to be treating Foaly like some kind of mythical pet.

Orion was right about one thing: he was in the second stage of Atlantis Complex, a mental illness he had brought on himself through a combination of reckless dabblings in fairy magic and feelings of guilt.

I brought the guilt on myself too, exposing my mother to Opal Koboi.

Artemis realized suddenly that while he was trapped in his own mind, numbers held no sway over him. Neither did he feel any compulsion to rearrange the objects on his desk.

I am free.

A metaphorical weight lifted from his allegorical chest, and Artemis Fowl felt himself again. Vital, sharp, focused, for the first time in months. Ideas fluttered from his mind like bats from the mouth of a cave.

So much to do. So many projects. Butler. . I need to find him.

Artemis felt energized and potent. He surged from his chair toward the mind-screen. He would push his way through, force his way out, and send this Orion character back to where he came from. Next on his to-do list would be to apologize to Foaly and Holly for his rudeness and then get to the bottom of this space-probe hijack. His Ice Cube had been torn to pieces by the subterranean river, but it could be rebuilt. In months the project could be operational.

And when the glaciers were safe, perhaps he would submit to a little regression therapy from one of the People’s less flamboyant psychotherapists. Certainly not that Cumulus fellow who had his own talk show.

When Artemis reached the screen, he found it to be less solid than it had first appeared. In fact, it was deep and gloopy, reminding Artemis of the plasma conduit he had crawled through at Opal Koboi’s lab all those years ago. Nevertheless, he forged ahead and soon found himself submerged in a cold, viscous gel that pushed him backward with floppy fingers.