As we join the twins, it is the summer of their thirteenth year; that is to say they are twelve, and the boys have completed their primary education cycle. Myles has also recently been conferred a doctorate in biology from University College Dublin, writing his thesis on the theory that the womb’s amniotic fluid can act as a shared brain between multiple babies, which would go some way toward explaining the bonds between many twins, while Beckett has finally managed to finish reading his first chapter book, entitled Alien Pooping Boy. Beckett admired this alien boy’s ability to poop through his finger, a talent that cracked up the blond twin each time he read about it. Beckett had sworn a vow that Alien Pooping Boy was the only book he would ever read unless the publisher released a sequel. He had even written an e-mail to the publishers in which he suggested the title for any second book should be Alien Pooping Boy Goes Number Two, which Myles had to admit was in keeping with the spirit of the first novel.
It would seem to the casual or even deliberate observer of LEP surveillance logs that the Fowl Twins had been following predictable behavior patterns for the past several months with only minor deviations from their submitted timetables. These deviations could easily be explained by various family-related or after-school activities. For instance, the logs showed that Myles gave lectures at a coder dojo on the mainland, while Beckett attended an actual dojo, where he quickly rose to the top of the student heap. That is not a metaphor: Beckett piled the other students in a wriggling heap, then climbed to the top while singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” which was one of his mother’s favorite songs.
But even though the twins strayed from their daily paths occasionally, not once did they try to insert themselves in fairy affairs, nor did they ever miss a Facetime debriefing with their fairy parole officer. Lazuli Heitz was so happy with their behavior that she even arranged for a magical healing of the scar tissue on Myles’s chest that she had accidentally inflicted on him. It was the least she could do, as in many ways Myles and Beckett were model prisoners.
Because, in fact, that is exactly what Myles and Beckett were: models.
Thirty Thousand Feet Over the Atlantic
Most flight regulations do not allow children to fly planes on transatlantic routes. This is an eminently sensible rule, as young people in general do not have the temperament or training required to pilot a flying machine between continents. Not only that, but juveniles typically lack the length of limb to reach either the pedals below or the array of controls overhead. Myles Fowl solved these problems simply by rerouting the controls of the Fowl Tachyon’s eco-friendly power-to-liquid (or PTL) jet fuel to his mobile phone and sitting on a booster seat in the cockpit so he could see out the smart shield. Each time he strapped himself into the pilot’s chair, Myles looked forward to the day when his adolescent growth spurt would arrive and he no longer required the booster. Using the family’s genetic history and a personal growth chart, he calculated that this spurt should commence in six hundred and thirty days at midnight, give or take thirty minutes.
Beckett served as copilot, and he solved the pedals issue by wearing a pair of 1970s platform shoes that the online vendor Rocketman1972 had sworn once belonged to Elton John. Beckett overcame the controls problem by flicking the required switches with a long-handled reacher/grabber that he’d borrowed from the garden shed.
None of these workarounds were strictly necessary, as the Nano Artificial Neural Network Intelligence system, or NANNI, inhabiting Myles’s graphene smart eyeglasses could have flown the jet more competently than any top-gun pilot. But the twins enjoyed the experience, so NANNI had promised not to interfere unless the jet went into a steep nosedive, something that happened more often than one might think, especially when Beckett grew bored.
As the Fowl Tachyon passed over the emerald green of Cuba far below, Myles relinquished the jet’s controls to Beckett, who was without question the more intuitive pilot of the two, and launched into the latest in his ongoing series of lectures on his favorite subject, that being “Why Our Brother, Artemis, Is an Idiot.”
Myles cleared his throat, straightened his gold-threaded tie, and initiated this oration with two audacious lies. “I hate to speak ill of the absent, Beck, but our brother Artemis is an idiot.”
Beckett adjusted the flaps with his grabber, though the lever was within his natural reach. “Artemis is not an idiot. He built a spaceship.”
“Spaceship, indeed,” said Myles scornfully. “Are you referring to the Artemis Interstellar? Which he modestly named after himself, by the way. That craft is barely more than a windup flying yo-yo. I would be embarrassed to breach the exosphere in such a contraption.”
“Our big brother built an actual spaceship,” insisted Beckett. “Idiots don’t build spaceships.”
Myles was far from finished with this latest effort to demean Artemis. “And Interstellar? What kind of a name is that? Technically speaking, which is the only way a scientist ought to speak, the entire human race is interstellar.”
This was perhaps a good point, but Beckett rarely cared enough about his twin’s arguments to engage for more than a sentence or two, so instead he moved to a related topic. “Is Arty in trouble, Myles?”
“Of course not,” said Myles, instantly softening, for there was absolutely nothing in the world that upset him more than his twin’s discomfort. This probably had something to do with the fact that Myles and Beckett were the world’s only documented set of conjoined dizygotic twins. “Artemis is not stupid enough to get into trouble,” he explained. “I’m just saying that our older brother is not clever enough to be taken seriously as a scientist. At any rate, ignorance is bliss, as they say, and so Artemis would not realize he was in trouble even if that were the case.”
Beckett adjusted the jet’s tail elevators, plunging the Tachyon into a steep descent, which was absolutely his favorite kind. “All you had to say was no, Myles,” he said. And then Beckett had his second serious thought in as many minutes. “Are we in trouble?”
Myles’s intestines attempted to tie themselves into a bow as the jet lost altitude at a rate of ten thousand feet per minute, but he remained calm and considered his answer.
“Definitely not,” said Myles, who generally used the word definitely to overcompensate for a lie. “Today is merely reconnaissance. A flyover to get a feel for our target and take some photographs.”
“You said definitely,” said Beckett.
“We are possibly moving toward trouble, brother mine,” admitted Myles. “But not today, and when we do, it certainly won’t be anything I can’t handle. And surely treasure is worth a little trouble.”
“Trouble and treasure,” said Beckett, leveling out before NANNI assumed flight control. “Great. Do you think I will get to cluster-punch anyone?”
“I would think that cluster-punching is a distinct possibility, but you may only punch bad people,” said Myles, smoothing back his lustrous black hair. “And only if they absolutely deserve it, which, to be fair, bad people often do.”
Beckett plucked another question from his seemingly endless supply. “And nobody we actually care about will be angry with us because we’re not where we’re supposed to be?”