Artemis did not pat his pockets searching for his phone, because he
always kept his phone in the same pocket. Indeed, he always had his
tailors sew a leather-flapped zipper into his right breast pocket so that
his phone could not be mislaid. For if Artemis Fowl mislaid his
modified phone, it would be a little more serious than if Johnny
Highschool happened to lose the latest touch-screen model, unless
Johnny Highschool’s phone happened to have enough tech inside it to
easily hack any government site, a nice little laser pointer that could be
focused to burn through metal, and the first draft of Artemis Fowl’s
memoirs, which did a little more than kiss and tell.
Artemis’s fingers were cold and numb, but after a few attempts he
managed to paw the zipper open and fumble out his phone. On screen
the phone was playing a photo slideshow of his mother while the
opening bars of “Siren Song” soared through the tiny speakers.
“Phone,” he said clearly, holding in a button on the casing to
activate voice control.
“Yes, Artemis,” said the phone in Lily Frond’s voice, a voice that
Artemis had picked simply to annoy Holly.
“Accept the call.”
“Of course, Artemis.”
A moment later the connection was made. The signal was weak, but
that did not matter as Artemis’s phone had speech auto-fill software
that was ninety-five percent accurate.
“Hello, Mother. How are you?”
…
“So you are in Iceland?”
Artemis was glad there was no video feed, as it was more difficult to
lie face-to-face.
“Of course I am. Why do you ask?”
“I ask because the GPS puts you in the North Atlantic Ocean.”
Artemis frowned. His mother had insisted on a GPS function on the
phone if she were to allow him to go off alone.
“That’s probably just a bug in the program,” said Artemis as he
quickly tapped into the GPS application and manually set his location
to Reykjavík. “Sometimes the locater is a little off. Give it another
try.”
Silence for moment, but for the tapping of keys, then another
hmmm.
- The Atlantis Complex, Chapter 8