Artemis- Exploiting a Time Paradox for Mulch's Help

Artemis’s brow flickered, irritated by this interruption, but then a smile spread across his face, made eerie by the stark lighting.

“Mulch Diggums strolling by,” he whispered. “What are the chances of that?”

“Zero,” said Holly. “Absolutely none. I would bet my pension on it.” At that moment something, or someone, tapped on the trunk door from the outside.

Holly rolled her eyes. “No. Not even you . . .”

Artemis’s smile was smug beyond belief. “Just how large is your pension?”

“I do not believe it. I refuse to believe it. It is impossible.”

More taps on the door now, followed by a delicate scraping and a muted swearword.

“What a guttural voice,”  said Artemis. “Very like a dwarf’s.”

“It could be Butler,” argued Holly, irritated by Artemis’s self-satisfied expression.

“Swearing in Gnommish. Hardly.”

More metallic noises from the outside world.

Shhhnick. Chunk. Clackack.

And the trunk’s lid swung upward, revealing a slice of starry night with the glinting silhouette of a gigantic pylon behind it. A bedraggled head popped into the space, features smeared with mud and worse. This was a face that only a mother could love, and then perhaps only if her sight were failing. The dark close-set eyes peered out from above a dense beard that shivered slightly, like seaweed in a current. The creature’s teeth were large, square, and not made any more appealing by the large insect wriggling between two molars.

It was, of course, Mulch Diggums.
...

“My mother gave me this,” she said quietly. “Most reliable omnitool I ever had. Then, one night in Hamburg, my fugitive locked himself in a car. So I reached for my omnitool and it was gone. The target was apprehended by humans; I lost my first fugitive; and Commander Root had to send in an entire team of techies to clean up. It was a disaster. And all this time it was you.”

Mulch was puzzled. “All this time? I stole this from a belt in a locker in Tara an hour ago. I saw you there. What’s going on here . . . ?” Then Mulch blinked and clapped his hairy palms. “Oh, bless my bum-flap. You’re time travelers.”

Holly realized that she had said too much. “That’s ridiculous.”

The dwarf was actually doing a little jig now. “No. No, it all adds up. You’re talking about future events in the past tense. You sent back a note so that I would come and rescue you here and now.” Mulch clapped his hands to his cheeks in mock horror. “What you’re doing is so much more illegal than anything I could ever do. Imagine the reward I would get for turning you over to Julius Root.”

“Sent back a note?” scoffed Holly. “That’s absurd, isn’t it, Artemis?”

“Most certainly,” said Artemis. “But if someone were to send back a note from the future, when and where would they send it to?”

Mulch jerked a thumb toward Holly. “There’s a junction box beside her locker. Looked like it hadn’t been touched for years. I was checking it out because sometimes they have valuable tech in ’em. Not this one, though, just an envelope addressed to me. And inside a note asking me to come to this place and set you free.”

Artemis smiled. Satisfied. “I imagine there was an incentive offered for our rescue?”

Mulch’s beard hair crackled. “A large incentive. No . . . a stupendous incentive.”

“Stupendous, eh? Very well, you shall have it.”
...

No1 sighed. “So I’m off the hook, as you humans say?”

“Absolutely,” said Holly, clapping him on the shoulder. “I feel a lot better now.”

“On the positive side, I bolstered your atomic structure. Your atoms were a bit rattled by the time stream. I’m amazed you are still in one piece. I can only imagine how hard you were forced to concentrate.”

“Well, you had bolstered my atoms, and I have to beg one more favor,” said Artemis. “I need you to send a note back in time.”

“I’ve been ordered not to open the time stream again, but maybe we can squeeze back one more thing,” said No1.

Artemis nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

-The Time Paradox, Chapters 16