Sherlock's Home

by Steve Emecz

  “Well, Holmes,” I said later that day, when Lestrade had carried off the murderer and his accomplice, “that was a rare find. A unique case both in the grotesque circumstances, and the remarkable way in which you solved it.” “I don’t doubt,” the consulting detective settled back in his armchair, and blew blue smoke rings from his old pipe, “the cases I accept are rarely the mundane. And now, back to the centre of this dastardly plot, but this time in entirely innocent circumstances.” And with that, he picked up his own violin and, pipe still in mouth, began to play.

  The Constant First Meeting

  By William Maulden

  London, UK

  ==IM/2185AD/03/04/21:06GMT==

  ==IM/FRAGMENT RECOVERED==

  Back in training, our instructor said that the only constant is war. I disagree. The other is Sherlock Holmes, my friend.

  ==IM/CORRUPTED/BOOT INITIAL/SEARCH STRING: FIRST MEETING==

  ==IM/2183AD/05/23/15:32GMT==

  I am still feeling my way around everything. My name is John Watson, I am thirty four years old, and a Doctor. Or rather, I was an Army Doctor.

  My experience is an odd mesh of what happened to one person and what happened to another, and it’s currently a struggle to align them both, like they are meeting each other for the first time. So it’s been suggested I reactive the IM and use it to record thoughts and feelings while I recover from the surgery, and attempt to “rectify both halves of your personality John” according to the Criterion staff. Though they call me ‘John’ as if it isn’t really my name. I guess it isn’t.

  There is a hazy recollection of a face when I close my eyes sometimes, lingering like the shadow of a bright light that you’ve stared at too long. Yesterday I felt the face was standing over me, then gone.

  This is going to take some getting used to. Especially as I can’t sleep at the moment.

  ==IM/2183AD/05/26/10:04GMT==

  So yeah, the last two days have been a learning curve. The IM has had the tactical function I was used to removed, which is good I suppose. No constant bombardment of information anymore, which part of me almost misses. The doctors have told me the surgery should be a complete success, but at the moment I am limping like mad. Anyway, they have set me loose into London, a city I have never visited, in a country I have been before, on a planet I have never set foot on.

  Except I have, and I know where landmarks are, and how to get to them by taxi and Mag Lev, while the rest of me marvels like a small child at the place. Oddly the first thing I did was head for the Thames, in the World Heritage quarter, and stand and stare at the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, and The Shard, all built when humanity stayed planted to this world, and now all dwarfed by the Greenwich Sky Hook down the river, disappearing up into the clouds, through the atmosphere, and meeting space. Extraordinary, and so much history. And a constant wrestle, feeling like a tourist when I know it all so intimately and have seen it before, but not with these eyes.

  Stamford, who is in charge of my post psyche care, told me to meet him at Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital tomorrow. He says he has someone in mind that could help with living arrangements, which is something I know I need to do but am also surprised about. The ‘wrestle’ doesn’t seem to go away. Though at least I am getting tired now, which never used to happen. A few more days and I might actually be able to sleep, and I guess a bed is the best place to do that. As for now, I’m just going to enjoy the city again for the first time.

  ==IM/2183AD/05/27/09:46GMT==

  I got to St Bart’s very early to meet my new flatmate. Stamford was waiting already, and took me inside. This is by far the oldest building I’ve ever set foot in, amazing that it is still standing after all these hundreds of years.

  I first met Sherlock Holmes in a laboratory in the basement of the old hospital. He was stood with his back to us, a slim tall man dressed in a two piece suit, in his mid forties, dark hair down to his neck, holding one of the old HL Tesseract Slates. I hadn’t seen one of those in about fifteen years, the things used to be all the rage before the IM chips came in. But there he was, using old technology to study something on the desk before him.

  Without even turning around, he said “Hello Doctor Watson, how are you?” His slumped shoulders seemed to lift with the words.

  Stamford had apparently told him in advance about me, though he had disclosed very little of him to me apart from his name. I limped a little closer. “Not too bad, thank you Mr Holmes.”

  And then he turned, and the first thing I noticed was a tight smile and twinkle in his eye, which then seemed to harden and disappear almost as quickly as the curious flicker of recognition I felt.

  “Welcome to Earth. Quite a change from New Kabul I imagine.”

  I turned to Stamford, who simply smiled and shook his head. He hadn’t told him anything after all.

  “How did you know where I was from?”

  “Relatively simply. I could make a show of the military bearing you hold, or the slight limp you have from the Hard Light replacements, but mostly the tiny bar code you have on the back of your neck is a giveaway that you have recently been discharged as military property.

  Quite a rare and unexpected honour I imagine. The only recent fighting off planet, so I am told by my brother, has been in the main asteroid belt in the Piazzi sector between Mars and Jupiter, where one particular slowly spinning rock that our military are currently fighting idiotic extraterrestrial-believing-cultists for is named New Kabul.”

  I was speechless. I had a bar code on the back of my neck? I would need to have words with Stamford later. Holmes obviously realised he had told me something about myself that even I didn’t know.

  “I am a show off. Call me Sherlock, please, if I am able to call you John.”

  “Of course”, I managed to stumble out.

  “Now, since we are obviously getting along so well as both of us have need of somewhere to live, you should know that I am messy, occasionally belligerent, and definitely what others perceive as ‘rude’. I am stuck in my ways and prefer old technology to new, as you may have seen when you came in the lab. I own a three hundred year old violin and occasionally play it, loudly, at odd times when my brain has no information to process. I am also called on throughout the day and night by the City Police in an advisory capacity, and thus in sum total you may find life as a flat mate less quiet than you may have imagined when you left the hospital a couple of days ago.”

  “How did you know it was a couple of days ago?” I blurted out.

  “Again, those Hard Light Limb replacements you are fitted with. Initially quite difficult to adjust to I’m told. You still feel the itch of the old limb even though the new one exists in the same space, and the adjusted rhythm of your heart to produce the Myocardic Field that generates the replacement is also a counterpoint to normal equilibrium. It’s said that it will pass with normal or elevated use, or so the standard copy in the manuals says.”

  His eyes flicked to Stamford at the last part, then back to mine. I remained slightly open mouthed at the sheer speed of the information he had just spoken. Sherlock turned and picked up a dark brown coat, about ten years out of fashion amongst civilians.

  “Since I don’t think an extra night awake on the streets is productive for you, I’ll meet you over at Baker Street this afternoon, about three o’clock? Number 221, flat B.” I nodded, and Sherlock reached out to shake my hand – my real hand. “See you later.”

  And with that, he was out the door and gone. I turned to Stamford, probably with a slightly accusing expression on my face. “I didn’t tell him anything,” he said, “though he did request to meet you when he heard you were on-planet.” I nodded, slightly stiffly. This is very odd. Now I just have to find my way to Baker Street.

  ==IM/2183AD/05/27/16:02GMT==

  I caught a cab, easy enough really. I can imagine it
’ll end up expensive if I keep doing it, but I felt in a rush to get to Baker Street and meet Sherlock. When I first arrived I was shocked. After all that polymer and glass off-planet, the simple old brick work of the street was glaring but also slightly comforting. I touched the admission alert pad by the door, and was surprised when the door unbolted and automatically swung open. As soon as it shut behind me, an elderly yet oddly homely female voice seemed to warble from the walls.

  “Hello John dear, Sherlock is upstairs waiting for you.”

  “Thank you” I managed to stammer out in my surprise. Entering the main room of the flat, I found Sherlock seated at a table looking at a sample dish through a magnifier generated by his old HL slate. He looked up immediately, a broad smile creasing his face at once.

  “Ah, hello again John.”

  “How did the AI know my name already?” I asked him without further nicety.

  “Oh, I took a sample of your skin cells when we shook hands and programmed the admission allowances for Mrs Hudson. Thought it would speed things along. Plus I couldn’t be bothered to get up if it wasn’t you at the door.”

  “I see. Mrs Hudson?”

  “The building’s Artificial Intelligence. I’d imagine you’re more used to them being simply functional, but I’ve found allowing software to go to seed a bit brings in greater free thinking and personality, even if she is only a glorified house keeper.”

  From the ceiling, or maybe the walls, came “I’m a bit more than that Sherlock” in a kindly yet slightly petulant way.

  “As long as you keep the heating on in the winter, that’s all that matters Mrs Hudson,” said Sherlock to the thin air. He was right, I was used to AI simply being another tool, not something you have to talk back to. I looked around the space of the room, full of clutter and odd random objects and technological antiques.

  “You seem to have been here a while already” I said to Sherlock.

  “Yes, several years actually. My previous flatmate had to leave, no fault of his own.”

  “Stamford told me you asked for me specifically.”

  “Or someone like you,” Sherlock replied defensively, “not you specifically. I am used to having a counterpoint view around to my own. Military has proven a good match in the past.”

  “This is for the crime solving thing?”

  “Correct.”

  “Why on Earth would the Police think to come to someone outside the force for help?”

  Sherlock smiled that thin smile again, as if he had been asked this many times before. “You have a military grade IM Imprint Chip implanted in your hippocampus John, as does every member of the Police. I lack one.”

  “Ok, so they can pull up instant information on anything ever, anywhere.”

  “Exactly, but reliance breeds laziness. They may be able to access whatever information they need in seconds, but often they lack the intelligence to put two and two together. My ability to think freely and collate data on my own terms gives me an invaluable edge.”

  “So why do the Police bother to implant the things in their officers then?”

  “Oh it’s perfectly adequate and even useful for normal, bog standard and trifling street crime. The things the Police come to me with are not normal, bog standard and trifling street crime.”

  “What makes you think I would even be interested in living here, helping you with this?”

  “I never mentioned anything about you helping me, but since you have brought it up yourself, excellent. You are used to being useful, it was what you were bred for I may venture. It is in the very fibre of your DNA. When I saw that a recently returned and invalided soldier had been brought to the Criterion facility, I used my famous brain and concluded it would be a waste to allow you to drift. Everything I bring to you is a proposal of course, I shall leave the decision up to you.”

  I was on the verge of sitting down, feeling slightly exasperated, when the omnipresent Mrs Hudson appeared again. “Inspector Lestrade is at the door Sherlock.”

  Sherlock’s eyes locked onto mine, the smile never leaving his lips. “Here we go John. Admit him Mrs Hudson.”

  And that’s where we are now. I’m listening to this policeman named Lestrade explain to Sherlock about a body found at the top of The Shard. Murder in a hundred and fifty year old tourist attraction, baffling, public and exposed. And I can understand why he has come here really. They can know everything about the building, its history and significance. Every entrance, every exit, the busiest place for visitor footfall in the structure. But even with all that information, they can’t work out how someone could be killed in the place, and then have the assailant seemingly vanish into thin air. But Sherlock probably can. And I think I’ll go with him to find out how the perpetrator did it.

  ==IM/SUFFICIENT DATA RECOVERED/BOOT ORIGINAL SEARCH ATTEMPT==

  ==IM/2185AD/03/04/21:01GMT==

  I got back to the flat this evening and found Sherlock in oddly pensive mood. The lack of a case may have set it off, as he certainly wasn’t having one of his ‘episodes’. I walked in and took a seat opposite. His violin was laid to the side. A couple of strings were broken.

  “It is odd how people forget John,” he said, “that while they all headed off into the stars forty years ago, the Earth didn’t really change. Not really. New places to go and new battles of our own making to fight, but back here, crime stayed.”

  I nodded, wondering where this was going.

  “I haven’t been completely honest with you John. But I think tonight I should be.”

  I think it was around then my mouth went dry.

  “John Watson died ten years ago tonight. It was not his fault, but it was mine. Or so I kept telling myself at first. In the end, there is no stopping a madman with a gun, just the sheer randomness of fate. James Winter paid for what he did though.”

  Sherlock paused. His face betrayed no hint of emotion. Instead, he steepled his hands together in front of his face, the finger tips touching, his elbows resting on the arms of the chair. Staring into the space between us, but not focusing on me.

  “Before I knew him, John Watson had been in the army as a Doctor. He lent his very being to what they asked of him, which in effect created you and hundreds like you. Physically at least. He retained the essence of himself privately though, mainly due to protest from various parties about the ethics of the process. You were never meant to set foot on Earth as a result, and so when I heard you were in a Criterion facility in London two years ago I was of course baffled. Then of course I realised – Mycroft. Only he would have the clout to place you there, waiting for me to find, and in effect safeguard. So yes, as you may have suspected, our first meeting was orchestrated, but it needed to be. I used to operate alone, but my brother had realised your predecessor’s death left a hole that needed filling. I instructed Mycroft to allow you freedom of thought, and gave you the memories of the original John Watson, before he and I met. Though there was the risk that scrubbing me completely from his memory would not be fully successful. I can assume that was the case, seeing how quickly and cleanly you accepted my trust that first day.”

  He paused after this long explanation, delivered without taking breath. “I hope you do not think badly of me.”

  I sat for what seemed like hours, possibly minutes, but in actual fact I am certain my reaction was pretty much instantaneous. “No Sherlock,” I said through thick, dry lips, “I don’t blame you. If you hadn’t instantly pulled me into this entire crazy existence I would have been dead within days, or certainly purposeless.”

  Sherlock’s eyes finally focused and locked onto mine over his finger tips. A wry, half smile came to the right side of his mouth.

  “There are many constants in this world John, and things we take for granted are the result of those that came before us. Honey is a synthetic, sugary gloop we spread on our dr
y toasted bread, but in the past it was produced by remarkable insects that humankind used to care for and nurture. Now, even the bees are gone, yet their greatest legacy endures. I took John Watson’s friendship for granted, and then one day he wasn’t there. I do not intend to make the same mistake again.”

  I half snorted with laughter at the gall of him. A man who had somehow completely controlled my integration into society had the nerve to tell me all this. And possibly compare me to a dead insect. But then, that is his way.

  “I don’t believe in second chances,” I told him. “But this entire city has no right to be here. Everything here should have been knocked down and redeveloped hundreds of times over, but it’s still standing. And thanks to you, so am I.” I leant forward out of my chair towards him, with my hand outstretched. The HL replacement one. Sherlock sat still as stone for a few seconds, then moved his hand and took mine, realising the irony of what I was offering him with a smile.