Artemis Fowl: The hitchhikers guide
Created | Updated Mar 2, 2006
First: Disclaimers. No charecter is mine. Little of the plot is, too. It should get more individual soon.
This is but one of the many stories told about the hitchhiker's guide. This begins with a house. A large, largely deserted house.
Artemis Fowl, a juvenile ape-decendant, was sat in a small room, looking for inspiration. He was bored. He had already checked his online bank balance 37 times, and it was not yet lunchtime. This boredom worried Artemis. As someone who could generally find inspiration in an empty room, he was not used to the feeling. He did what many comfortably-off ape desendat earth dwellers do - switch on the television and start channel-hopping.
It didn't help. Each channel was as brain-numblingly lowest-common-denominator-aimed as the last. Until one. The animation was stylised - bright and psudocomputerised. An invention was being discribed to generate improbability. Just the thing to liven up a dull day.
For improbability, Artemis knew [don't ask me how] that he would need an object that could generate random, unpredictable values. He knew that nothing on the macroscopic scale was random unless the subatomic could be random - which he felt was debatable - so he went for the next best thing, where the inputs were unknown, and completly seperate from the outputs. Brownian motion. Unknown to him, he was in the perfect place in the galaxy for this.
Butler entered. He was happy to see that his young master was finding something to do - the boredom had worried him somewhat. He didn't like to interrupt Artemis's contemplation, but he roused himself, and asked for a cup of tea. Little did Butler know what it would be used for.
Artemis set up his data logger, attaching it to his computer and the cup of tea. He programmed in a probability to test it - 1/(2pi). He pulled one corner of the carpet back, to expose the floorboards. He dropped a matchstick, the same length as the width of the floorboards, from his head height when he knelt down. It hit a crack. He tried it again. And again. And again.
It hit the crack every single time. And he knew it should only have a probability of 1/(2pi). The improbability generator was working.
But this was small fry compared to what could be done. I would like it known now that Artemis has no idea what form fairy underwear takes, and thus he would be unable to make the nessecary calculations. Instead, he got a pack of cards and shuffled it thoroughly. He put the value 1 in 8*1067, the probability that all the cards came in the right order.
The computer, horrified at the magnitude of the number it was to deal with, displayed an error message.
This probability level is beyond the capabilities of your equipment. Have you considered the Sirius Cybernetics Corparation infinite improbablity drive? Only 500,000 Altarian Dollars.
Well, Artemis hadn't before, but he was doing now. But something worried him. Altarian dollars? He had never heard of those. And he was familiar with most of the planet's currencies. It would be much easier - and cheaper - if he worked out the probability that there was an infinite improbability drive, just outside...
Now that was cheaper.
"Zarquon!"
"Zaphod, it would be much easier if you let me steer..."
"But I didn't do anything!"
This is but one of the many stories told about the hitchhiker's guide. This begins with a house. A large, largely deserted house.
Artemis Fowl, a juvenile ape-decendant, was sat in a small room, looking for inspiration. He was bored. He had already checked his online bank balance 37 times, and it was not yet lunchtime. This boredom worried Artemis. As someone who could generally find inspiration in an empty room, he was not used to the feeling. He did what many comfortably-off ape desendat earth dwellers do - switch on the television and start channel-hopping.
It didn't help. Each channel was as brain-numblingly lowest-common-denominator-aimed as the last. Until one. The animation was stylised - bright and psudocomputerised. An invention was being discribed to generate improbability. Just the thing to liven up a dull day.
For improbability, Artemis knew [don't ask me how] that he would need an object that could generate random, unpredictable values. He knew that nothing on the macroscopic scale was random unless the subatomic could be random - which he felt was debatable - so he went for the next best thing, where the inputs were unknown, and completly seperate from the outputs. Brownian motion. Unknown to him, he was in the perfect place in the galaxy for this.
Butler entered. He was happy to see that his young master was finding something to do - the boredom had worried him somewhat. He didn't like to interrupt Artemis's contemplation, but he roused himself, and asked for a cup of tea. Little did Butler know what it would be used for.
Artemis set up his data logger, attaching it to his computer and the cup of tea. He programmed in a probability to test it - 1/(2pi). He pulled one corner of the carpet back, to expose the floorboards. He dropped a matchstick, the same length as the width of the floorboards, from his head height when he knelt down. It hit a crack. He tried it again. And again. And again.
It hit the crack every single time. And he knew it should only have a probability of 1/(2pi). The improbability generator was working.
But this was small fry compared to what could be done. I would like it known now that Artemis has no idea what form fairy underwear takes, and thus he would be unable to make the nessecary calculations. Instead, he got a pack of cards and shuffled it thoroughly. He put the value 1 in 8*1067, the probability that all the cards came in the right order.
The computer, horrified at the magnitude of the number it was to deal with, displayed an error message.
This probability level is beyond the capabilities of your equipment. Have you considered the Sirius Cybernetics Corparation infinite improbablity drive? Only 500,000 Altarian Dollars.
Well, Artemis hadn't before, but he was doing now. But something worried him. Altarian dollars? He had never heard of those. And he was familiar with most of the planet's currencies. It would be much easier - and cheaper - if he worked out the probability that there was an infinite improbability drive, just outside...
Now that was cheaper.
"Zarquon!"
"Zaphod, it would be much easier if you let me steer..."
"But I didn't do anything!"
