Artemis Fowl was in front of his computer, staring vacantly at the screen. Usually, ‘vacant’ would be the last word you’d use to describe his diamond-blue stare. It had the ability to make you believe anything he told you, make you start accidentally calling him ‘Sir’, or just generally make whoever it was trained on feel very uncomfortable. All of the sudden he shook himself, snapping out of his momentary reverie. He’d done it again. It had been almost two weeks since he’d had what he was starting to catch himself referring to as a ‘flash’. This time, it had been a slight heat haze, seen outside the window, reflected in this dark computer screen. A heat haze, for pity’s sake. An isolated incident of evaporation. It hadn’t been a very strong stimuli, he remembered- just enough to make him think twice. He found himself leaning his forehead against his computer screen, running through his mental list of Things That Suddenly Make Me React Oddly. There were things such as acorns, and his newly acquired sense of claustrophobia in orange places. And now, heat hazes. The flash just now had been too brief for him to actually recognize. Fowl let his mind wander back over the past five months.

He had woken up that one morning and found that he, Butler and Juliet alike had mysterious contact lenses in their eyes. Butler had gone to Limerick, to a specialist. The specialist had admitted to crafting them, then insisted that it had been Butler himself who had commissioned the work and presented him with the design, although, the man had admitted, Butler had seemed a bit more fit back then. Even a lot of ah-pressure- from a still dangerous, if older, Butler had failed to produce anything else, though Artemis and Butler were firmly convinced the man was lying. His story was the only thing that made sense- except for the obvious reason that it couldn’t. Artemis tried to get his mind off this topic. He’d thought about it often enough. But that was no good-his mind soon turned to his bank balance, and the discovery he’d made about it‘s contents. Half a ton of gold. Half a ton of gold. That would be one/half of one metric ton of gold, in Latin, Aurum, chemical symbol Au. How under the Earth did he steal a half ton of gold and not remember? He had hacked into bank records and it had been all deposited at once. But he didn’t remember doing that. Wait…all of the sudden he did. (A/N Remember…the ‘best thing’ about the mind wipes is that the victim’s own mind creates memories to fill in the blanks. Artemis has given this matter his full attention, so whoosh…new memory! Foaly will be pleased.) Okay…that was weird. Where had that memory been hiding? Was it connected to the lenses?

How under the Earth!

Artemis heard a pounding at his door. He looked up to see his father.

“Arty, your mother’s on the warpath. I’d change out of the Armani- you didn’t forget that we were going out to lunch, did you? You know your mother would prefer you to dress more casually. Are you all right?” Artemis nodded, aware of the rings under his eyes and the crow’s feet that had prompted the question. “Good,” said Artemis Senior. “I’m off to wake up Butler.” Artemis scowled. He started the creation of a new virus on his computer, so he could look forward to hacking into Microsoft after the dinner. Then he went to find the least offensive of the ‘normal teenager’ clothes his mother had asked Juliet to help pick out. Truth be told, Juliet hadn‘t selected anything that horrendous, knowing there was no point in buying something she knew Little Arty wouldn‘t wear. Still, Artemis preferred his own clothes, which were in general, pretty unremarkable. He still liked his suit. It was just that there was no point at all in wearing a tie everyday.