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013 - let me glide noiselessly forth; with the key of softness unlock the locks
Steel follows where bone once went. Artificial tendons slide under artificial skin, machinery as delicate as biology sketching out in the dark the shape of what passed in the light. The machine is gifted with a prodigious memory: here at night in the kitchen, in stillness and silence, he stands with eyes closed and sees sunlight filtering in, hands which are not his own tracked by hands to which he has more claim, each slight motion mimicked to perfection. Angle of the wrist just so. Fingers just so. All over again, filter paper touches the bottom of the mug. John Watson makes tea with his head bent down to watch the motions of his hands and Sherlock wonders what it's like to not simply know, to live in a world of imprecise measurements, as he tilts his head downwards in the dark and allows the trailing thread to dangle over the edge of the cup.
There is a rising acrid smell, mechanical, the heating element of the kettle; Sherlock notes it and files it away. John sleeps somewhere above his head. Quietude, not quite oblivion; he cannot imagine it, not having been built to imagine, not in that way. Sympathy is not within his purview. He is meant to know, not to understand. To be otherwise would be to be human, to be simply a mockery of the organic, rather than a creature in his own right, tracing out the motions of another creature in the dark, grasping for shared experience. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and fourteen seconds ago the sun lit upon John's eyelashes, semi-transparent keratin catching the light, bending it, illuminating. Sherlock remembers this, remembers the set of his shoulders and adjusts his own fractionally, as he waits for the water to boil.
Organic creatures are not things to love, and so it's just as well that artificial ones are not capable of it, bereft but also free of the bindings of emotional attachment. What links they form are purer and stronger: one grows accustomed to the presence of another. They become part and parcel of lived experience, the shape of them imprinted and reflected in the processes that manifest consciousness. John Watson informs action, informs thought, informs activity – now, in the purest sense of all. Sherlock is not meant to understand, but there is some curious appeal in trying all the same. His calculations, all the things he has weighed and balanced, inclines him to it, to understand not just why the shape of him, this fluttering, fleeting organic thing, has been imprinted so deeply into the core of him, the reality of him, the brain that possesses the body, but how.
He knows – it does not occur to him; things cannot drift to the forefront of a mind that has no background – that there is a physical element to it. The longer one spends in a place the more of him permeates the air, quite literally; molecules of John Watson are drawn in with every mimed breath, sampling size too small to be detectable by even his own remarkably delicate equipment at this particular moment but nonetheless there, demonstrably there should he choose to make that demonstration. It would be unnecessary; he doesn't require it. Perhaps that's something like faith. Regardless, the simple presence of discarded pieces, hair and skin and fluids and pheromones, cannot entirely account for the fact that Sherlock incorporates him without question into his own inner life, inner experience perhaps if it cannot be called life.
The gentle hiss and bubble of water at boil begins to rise, and Sherlock reaches out to turn off the heat, thumb and the side of the forefinger, last three fingers curled inwards, soft scuff of a bare foot on the floor (not quite right, but one makes do when it is necessary to work in silence). The water is poured over dried leaves (Camellia sinensis var. sinensis, crushed after picking and left to oxidize two hours, flash-heated, dehydrated), and the soft gurgle parses as pleasant, but even here what Sherlock has been seeking hasn't been found. He lifts the cup to his face, lets the steam warm his skin, his respiratory passages, eyes still closed but seeing John's own fall shut. It's hardly aromatic yet, but he can sense the temperature from the condensation against his skin. Is that part of the pleasure, knowing? Does John know, or is this another ineffable, unattainable thing?
Slowly, gently, Sherlock pulls a chair away from the table and lowers himself onto it. The mug clunks softly against the wood and he curls his fingers around it. Remembers sunlight on his skin. Remembers drifting motes of dust, himself half-obscured behind a newspaper but watching, curious. He was built to be curious. To learn. He is learning. Not in a flash, as he might have hoped. Not suddenly. There is no revelation. But he is learning that although there is nothing to be learned, in this retracing of John's steps there is still a sensation of cognitive space diminished, some warping of the fabric of interpersonal reality. The liquid is faintly bitter on his tongue, curious as all tastes are curious to one so young, so newly-embodied. The smell equally so. He is incapable of attaching pleasure to it: some things taste safe, some things not so. That's not quite the same thing. And yet... and yet, there is meaning he can attach to this scent, this flavour, which might approximate pleasure. This is John's world, John's experience, another part of him stored and integrated. Kept. If not understood, at least known.
It's only fair. John has, against all odds, done the same for him. He might not know it, but Sherlock understands this to be unimaginable: a human being, bending in deference to a machine. It is the greatest kindness he has ever been given.
There is a rising acrid smell, mechanical, the heating element of the kettle; Sherlock notes it and files it away. John sleeps somewhere above his head. Quietude, not quite oblivion; he cannot imagine it, not having been built to imagine, not in that way. Sympathy is not within his purview. He is meant to know, not to understand. To be otherwise would be to be human, to be simply a mockery of the organic, rather than a creature in his own right, tracing out the motions of another creature in the dark, grasping for shared experience. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and fourteen seconds ago the sun lit upon John's eyelashes, semi-transparent keratin catching the light, bending it, illuminating. Sherlock remembers this, remembers the set of his shoulders and adjusts his own fractionally, as he waits for the water to boil.
Organic creatures are not things to love, and so it's just as well that artificial ones are not capable of it, bereft but also free of the bindings of emotional attachment. What links they form are purer and stronger: one grows accustomed to the presence of another. They become part and parcel of lived experience, the shape of them imprinted and reflected in the processes that manifest consciousness. John Watson informs action, informs thought, informs activity – now, in the purest sense of all. Sherlock is not meant to understand, but there is some curious appeal in trying all the same. His calculations, all the things he has weighed and balanced, inclines him to it, to understand not just why the shape of him, this fluttering, fleeting organic thing, has been imprinted so deeply into the core of him, the reality of him, the brain that possesses the body, but how.
He knows – it does not occur to him; things cannot drift to the forefront of a mind that has no background – that there is a physical element to it. The longer one spends in a place the more of him permeates the air, quite literally; molecules of John Watson are drawn in with every mimed breath, sampling size too small to be detectable by even his own remarkably delicate equipment at this particular moment but nonetheless there, demonstrably there should he choose to make that demonstration. It would be unnecessary; he doesn't require it. Perhaps that's something like faith. Regardless, the simple presence of discarded pieces, hair and skin and fluids and pheromones, cannot entirely account for the fact that Sherlock incorporates him without question into his own inner life, inner experience perhaps if it cannot be called life.
The gentle hiss and bubble of water at boil begins to rise, and Sherlock reaches out to turn off the heat, thumb and the side of the forefinger, last three fingers curled inwards, soft scuff of a bare foot on the floor (not quite right, but one makes do when it is necessary to work in silence). The water is poured over dried leaves (Camellia sinensis var. sinensis, crushed after picking and left to oxidize two hours, flash-heated, dehydrated), and the soft gurgle parses as pleasant, but even here what Sherlock has been seeking hasn't been found. He lifts the cup to his face, lets the steam warm his skin, his respiratory passages, eyes still closed but seeing John's own fall shut. It's hardly aromatic yet, but he can sense the temperature from the condensation against his skin. Is that part of the pleasure, knowing? Does John know, or is this another ineffable, unattainable thing?
Slowly, gently, Sherlock pulls a chair away from the table and lowers himself onto it. The mug clunks softly against the wood and he curls his fingers around it. Remembers sunlight on his skin. Remembers drifting motes of dust, himself half-obscured behind a newspaper but watching, curious. He was built to be curious. To learn. He is learning. Not in a flash, as he might have hoped. Not suddenly. There is no revelation. But he is learning that although there is nothing to be learned, in this retracing of John's steps there is still a sensation of cognitive space diminished, some warping of the fabric of interpersonal reality. The liquid is faintly bitter on his tongue, curious as all tastes are curious to one so young, so newly-embodied. The smell equally so. He is incapable of attaching pleasure to it: some things taste safe, some things not so. That's not quite the same thing. And yet... and yet, there is meaning he can attach to this scent, this flavour, which might approximate pleasure. This is John's world, John's experience, another part of him stored and integrated. Kept. If not understood, at least known.
It's only fair. John has, against all odds, done the same for him. He might not know it, but Sherlock understands this to be unimaginable: a human being, bending in deference to a machine. It is the greatest kindness he has ever been given.