Work Text:
Note: All images are from Ernesto Neto's 2011 installation in the Molinos Rio de la Plata at the Faena Arts Centre in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Before John Watson and nicotine patches, back in the days of drugs busts done out of concern instead of punishment, there was the case of the software designer suspected of killing her boyfriend. After Sherlock absolved her of guilt—and in hopes of staving off the intense boredom that always followed a solved case—he found himself skimming the programming books left in the evidence room of New Scotland Yard (none of the blood splatters had obscured the text, though a few of the pages were reluctant to separate). Dull, and not his area.
But as he closed his eyes and began to file away the pertinent facts of the case in his mind palace, words and concepts from the books echoed through his memories: loops and class hierarchy and simultaneous multi-threading. Half-listening to jargon half-understood, he mentally placed himself in front of the file cabinet that “held” his memories of all the problems he’d had with New Scotland’s Yard software for directional analysis of bloodstains—the program Anderson had been so excited to install. Perhaps if he looked at it a differently…
A week later the enormous white gallery Sherlock had added to his mind palace was filled with a bizarre, pseudo-organic yarn monstrosity that hung precariously from the ceiling. He’d been utterly engrossed while creating it. Engrossed to the point that a desperate Lestrade had been able to lift the mobile from Sherlock’s coat pocket undetected, thereby ending an unplanned for but ultimately productive (for Sherlock) overnight stay at New Scotland Yard. After some awkward trial-and-error, Lestrade struck gold with Mycroft’s number and an assistant (who introduced himself as Caedmon) and driver were sent to remove Holmes the Younger from the Yard’s evidence room.
Outside, the two men exchanged awkward (for Lestrade) and strained (for Mycroft) introductions as they watched a dazed and blinking Sherlock being led into a black luxury car. Both feigned annoyance at the sight for the other’s benefit, but there was an unmissable thread of relief in the warp and weft of the moment shared between them: relief that they’d met one another while dealing with a Sherlock who was both sober and living. Each had devoted dark moments to imagining circumstances that could have easily ended otherwise. Erratic flitting hand movements and general dishevelment aside, they knew this was a good day (i.e., a safe day) for Sherlock and it was a relief to find someone else who understood that. Despite surface differences in style and attitude, both Lestrade and Mycroft ultimately prided themselves most on being practical. Though few words were exchanged during their first meeting, they shook hands and parted knowing they’d met a valuable partner in the otherwise overwhelming project that was a young consulting detective who regularly and eagerly located himself on the criminal side of the nation’s drug laws.
Later, Sherlock would deeply regret his part in having two of his caretakers learn of the other’s existence, thereby doubling their resources. Their partnership would complicate the predictive statistical inference he used to minimize potential retribution when he sensed a drug binge in his immediate future.
But for now he was blissfully alone and unencumbered by the concerns of others or of his body—ideal for this level of brainwork. The mental endurance required to track and connect the thousands (millions?) of thoughts—each represented by a colored length of yarn—he’d generated in his attempt to understand the Yard’s faulty software was a challenge he found altogether intoxicating . Eyes closed, he basked in his mental creation and marveled at its complexity. The patterns possible when he weaved rudimentary technical knowledge with his extensive understanding of London’s criminal classes were, to him, beautiful.
But once his mind acclimated to the look of the imagined sculpture he realized he’d only worked out a few small bug-fixes to the bloodstain analysis software. It wouldn’t save him or the Yard much time. And the new paradigm for storing memories, while pleasingly removed from the stuffy one taught to him by Mycroft, wasn’t necessarily practical for long-term use. Visualized this way, his ideas and concepts took on a fractal quality that made everything interesting but nothing solvable. On the surface this was a seemingly novel sensation, but Sherlock’s body offered unavoidable evidence to the contrary. Even deep inside the trance-like state he called up for mind-palace work, Sherlock could feel his skin starting to itch—a reliable symptom that he was craving the kind of chemicals he’d later have to hide from Lestrade or mislabel and claim were for his home experiments.
So, that was that. At least it had kept him occupied for a time.
Lately, all his projects seemed to devolve into ever-briefer exercises in eschatology. Should that trouble him? He flagged the question for future consideration.
For now, he honed his mental focus and imagined himself lying below the suspended knotted behemoth. The impossibly glossy white stone floor was against his back so he called up memories of appropriate sensations (firmness, coolness, smoothness) until his body accepted the idea that it was in his mental gallery and not on a squashy sofa in his damp flat. Then, concentrating, he let himself see the colored strands suspended above him begin to spark, burn, and finally break out into an all-consuming blaze. The flames were entirely white, a phenomenon he’d experienced at the end of an especially memorable experiment with aluminum powder.
As it was just as much a mental construction as the yarn sculpture, the gallery, and his projected body, Sherlock’s mind accepted that the fire could burn everything completely and with devastating speed. Sherlock twitched as the supporting ropes gave way and burnt husks of what he’d made fell around him.
For a moment the edges of his attention wavered as his animal brain released adrenaline molecules to which his frontal cortex responded with desperate questions: Had his knitted construct always been this heavy and unwieldy, its coherence so fragile? It had seemed so light and strong when he’d devised it, like an orb spider’s web: flexible and precise. But as his mind envisioned the destruction of what he’d created it revealed its true design. The now-blackened threads were that of an inescapable and all-encompassing cocoon.
For a moment Sherlock felt his muscles contract in self-defense, but he bit his lip and furrowed his brow as he squeezed his already-shut eyes tighter. This was his mind, his hard drive; he was in control of whatever happened here. Right now he he needed to concentrate on finishing what he’d started. He willed the flames higher and their light to grow brighter to block out the shrinking, frayed, black piles and the ruins of the ingeniously designed gallery walls.
Through it all Sherlock felt no trace of heat or pain despite the entire range of his inner vision being blindingly white with the intense glare of the imagined fire. In the last few moments, Sherlock’s mind was the consuming flames—pure destructive power and manic positive-feedback chain-reaction processes. He’d been prepared for this intensity, rose to meet it even, but as the flames died down some small part of him ached. The fire had been too enticing for its familiarity to be noticed. But this, the cool down, was too similar to an ever-increasing number (he tracked them, when he could remember to) of his days. And nights. And all the slippery hours in-between.
Finally, the entire gallery was gone. Sherlock’s mental projection of himself was lying in empty space a few feet from the rest of his (unharmed) mind palace. He exhaled.
There. Deleted.•