could_be_dangerous | i hear the clockwork in your core; time strips the gears 'til you forget what they were for || redux

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i hear the clockwork in your core; time strips the gears 'til you forget what they were for || redux

Sherlock Holmes.

That is his designation. He knows it, more or less, the same way that he knows he's a 'he' and not a 'she': because he does. Because he must have been told so. Not directly; he has no ears, nor any other sense organ for that matter. Still he was told. Told by the lines of code that sparked his consciousness. By the same processes that told him of sights and sounds he's never experienced and may never experience, though he still knows of them, objectively.

Similarly, Sherlock Holmes knows objectively that he exists, at least within the confines of these circuits and wires, isolated, completely isolated from the outside world save for when Big Brother (Sherlock's knowledge of literature is, at the moment, extraordinary) decides to feed him some new information.

And for a long time, it's like this. This is his existence. Until it isn't.

He receives no warning. No warning at all, not that it would have mattered. He feels nothing. He notices nothing, up to and including the moment of his disappearance, the moment when Sherlock-Holmes-that-was blinks out of existence. Gone. Erased. As though he never existed at all.

Sherlock-Holmes-that-is awakes on a table and knows objectively that the Sherlock in the box, the Sherlock he remembers being, is not what he is now, not this embodied thing whose senses are beginning to come online. Sherlock-with-homunculi, sensory and motor, Sherlock with a brain far less sluggish than before. Sherlock, still unable to move or speak or hear, with his eyelids taped shut to protect brand new, freshly-manufactured eyes.

“–online.”

Hearing. That's what that is.

“Motor functions online.”

“T–o whom are you ssspeaking?” Error. Minor error. Fricative too enthusiastic. Too much turbulent air, difficult to control; tongues are funny things. That's new. Remember.

Mycroft Holmes, android, first and foremost, minor government official, thinks it terribly appropriate that his progeny's first act upon waking into embodied consciousness is one of curiosity. That's precisely what he's spent years trying to encourage, lovingly coaxing lines of code into shapes appropriate for the neural network he was equally lovingly building, a neural network that would – and should – never be human-like but which should nonetheless be alive.

Alive. Curiosity is not a robot's trait. They ask for the information needed to perform their given tasks. Nothing beyond that.

Progeny, he'd thought, but this is a man (a man, yes, fully-formed, not a child; though he'd had difficulty rationalising the distinction between youth and maturity – it had not needed to be part of his programming and rewriting such definitions takes time), a man he would have to call brother. Robots don't produce children. Occasionally they have siblings, adopted or built at the whim of their makers. Sherlock will still be new. As far as Mycroft knows, no android has ever before attempted to build a brother for himself.

If he were capable of such an emotion, he might find the whole thing... hopeful. That's a word he associates with brothers, via their observed interactions among humans. Hope. Love, yes, affection, and maybe with a great deal of practice he could manage to emulate those even if he's convinced he'll never be able to feel them. But hope most of all, and Sherlock isn't just hope, or some rough equivalent, for Mycroft Holmes.

No. This project, this experiment, this is hope for androids everywhere, and the very reason nobody else must know of him. Not yet. Not until he's grown until his own.

“To you, Sherlock Holmes. Only you. I see I'll have to adjust your lingual motor mapping.”

“No!” Vehemence. This is magnificent work. What might pride feel like? “I'll do it mysssself.”

And independence. The final and most important key: a distinct sense of self. Individuality. Life.

Now all Mycroft has to do is find a man to help preserve it. He's one such individual in mind already. A rather long list of them, in fact, but his first and best choice should be boarding an aeroplane back to London in just a few hours, courtesy an untimely and unfortunate gunshot wound to the shoulder. Such is combat. In a few days' time, he'll attend Captain Watson personally, full of matters to discuss. Official business. An assignment. Something useful. Something worthy of a war hero.

Something that might change the world, though he'll not say so unless he has to.

For now he settles in to wait and watch brother Sherlock grow accustomed to his body, wait and observe closely for any signs of malfunction or failure. So far it has all gone extraordinarily well, but there's still a terribly long way to go.

The arrangements are made neatly and quietly. Captain Watson is surveilled from the moment he arrives back on English soil, and while Mycroft keeps up the façade of perfect – indeed, robotic – diligence and dedication to his work, behind the scenes gears begin to turn.

Excuses are made. Records conjured up. In this field Mycroft has a few advantages most androids lack. He is, for instance, capable of lying – with a few caveats. A necessity for his field, yes, but one that opens up a host of loopholes to the inventive, which Mycroft certainly is. Secondly he is capable of directing humans to engage in acts which might prove harmful to them or others, something supervisory androids in other fields lack, when they exist at all. In most areas humans are generally quite unwilling to take orders from a machine.

Thirdly, and this will become more immediately useful, he is able, with the assistance of a human keeper, to come and go as he wishes. That Anthea – her name of choice for the week – needed to be brought in on this little side-project at all is unfortunate, but it is necessary, and Mycroft couldn't have chosen a better confidante, at least among humans.

Finally, and most useful of all for the next step of this endeavour, is his construction. He is exquisitely-crafted – not as well as Sherlock, perhaps, but well enough to pass muster. In appearance he is human and in mannerism almost perfectly so. Even the few oddities in the latter field are easy enough to cover up with an air of professionalism, formality, and distance.

This Mycroft wears about him like a perfume when he steps from the car, Anthea at his side, to intercept Captain John Watson on one of his daily walks. They know the time and the place. Regular, military-regular, varying only when the leg is giving him more trouble than usual.

Today they needn't wait long before the man in question limps into view. The determined grimness about him registers, but Mycroft's mind is on statistics, measurements, test scores, training assessments, medical records; myriad other things when he clears his throat and raises a hand.

“A moment– Captain Watson, is it not? My name is Mycroft Holmes, and I've a proposal for you, if you care to hear it.”

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"Colleague?" John frowns, even as he follows. "I'm your colleague, now?"

He's no one's colleague, not Sherlock's colleague. They just met, only minutes earlier. They're barely even acquaintances, if it comes down to that. Colleagues. It's nonsense.

And yet he's here, and he's following, and this is the most ridiculous thing to come of looking in at a flat that John's ever heard of. Things like this don't happen, or at least they don't happen to him.

Sherlock wrinkles his nose, giving a dismissive gesture over his shoulder. “What would you have preferred I tell him? That you're my date?”

A patently ridiculous proposition in so many senses.

He steps down onto the sidewalk and turns around, expression expectant, encouraging, with just the right amount of impatience to imply a sense of hurry. It's a demanding expression, as suits the demand he is making. Politeness is extraneous under the circumstances.

“Could call you my friend, I suppose. I even could've told the truth. New flatmate. Complete stranger... not exactly likely to convince the good Inspector to let you in to gape at a murder victim, doctor or no. So. Colleague.” Nonsense it might be, but it's a convenient mistruth all the same. Hardly even a proper mistruth; they are, after all, going to be working together shortly, thereby satisfying the terms of the definition.

"Satisfactory?" he asks, the question largely rhetorical. "You can call yourself whatever you bloody well like, but I strongly suspect there's not much else that's going to get you in to that crime scene."

John sputters a bit, but he can't deny that Sherlock is right, even if he doesn't have a clue as to why he's going along with this. God, did he even want to be friends with this guy? Or flatmates, or colleagues, or any of that?

He wasn't even going to dignify 'date' with a response.

"I get the point." He's only slightly grudging about it. He's here and he's following and he hasn't a clue why but god, is there a part of him that needed this. "Fine. Let's get going, I suppose."

Sherlock waves a flippant hand. Of course they'll go. Of course he's right. So the data indicated, and data are everything. There's no problem.

“'Course you do. Can't see why you're fussing. Taxi!” There's something to be said for this body, annoying as it is to be tied to one place and time when he could be everywhere, moving, in the networks; why not? If Mycroft wanted to build a truly synthetic intelligence, that'd be how he'd've done it, rather than creating another in the image of his own creators. Imagine if Sherlock did the same; a long line of increasingly distilled machines, ending eventually in that point of greatest abstraction surely, surely...

In any case. Bound he is in this humanoid physicality, but the body he's been given has its purposes. His height is not completely remarkable but it is sufficient to draw attention when he needs it to, and this is one of those times. Clothes, stature, build, colouring; all is meant for this, to attract, to direct. Up goes one gloved hand and there, there one comes, purring up to them like a beckoned cat, like... well, like machinery. As though he's a program directing subroutines, smaller, lesser things with all the immense complexity of human beings. If he were capable of egotism (is he capable of egotism?) he might find that encouraging.

As it is, he reasons, he simply finds it convenient, and he shoots John what's meant to be a reassuring smile over his shoulder. He is functional. Capable of providing. Transportation will not be an issue.

John follows Sherlock into the cab, only slightly irked at the man's apparent... what, pride? He doesn't know how to interpret that smile in a context like this. At any rate, isn't that a bit much for the singular achievement of hailing a cab?

Never mind that John's faded into the crowd and found that difficult on occassion. Never mind. They're going to a murder scene and that's... just incredible.

"You've, ah. Been working with the police long?"

Sherlock looks at John askance as he gives their destination to the driver. He could lie. There's nothing stopping him. His programming does not restrict him, like it might another of his kind. To do so, however, would be illogical.

“Not long.” He's not been around long. “Long enough that they know they need me.”

It probably sounds like arrogance. Perhaps it is. Sherlock is an android. Androids are built to serve a purpose. Whether or not he can feel pride is a point of contention even to himself, but displaying it is a demonstration of his ability to function. There are means of engagement, of communication between organic and synthetic. One takes advantage of standard emotional cues to portray some approximation of the truth. In that sense this is not so very different from communication between humans, but Sherlock finds it lacking. Androids understand. Humans... attempt to.

The reverse is clearly also true. So he decides as he turns his gaze to the man in the seat beside him. Seeing is a strange thing, interpreting visual input stranger. Sherlock is built for it, is efficient, but it remains an imperfect means of exchanging information.

The situation is not ideal. It calls into question the soundness of Mycroft's plan. How can synthetics and organics ever reach an understanding if they cannot interface directly? More information is needed. Sherlock means to get it.

It's not exactly easy to settle himself into the ride when Sherlock is... looking at him like that. Why that's so unsettling in the first place, he isn't even sure. Sherlock himself is, he's beginning to think, probably seriously cracked.

Good thing he's used to dangerous situations. Good thing he's a doctor.

"Why not just join the police force yourself? Cut out the middleman, you know."

Sherlock might find John's speculations curious, were he privy to them. Perhaps by human standards he is mad, yes, or alternately exceptionally sane, which amounts to the same thing. Normal he most certainly is not, even by the standards of his own kind. Some of the oldest models still extant do not seem to even recognize him as one of their own, though this is not entirely unheard-of even with androids of Mycroft's generation. Few are able to fool humans, though. Very few.

If Sherlock does, if he can (though this is irritatingly unknowable, in the end), then he must play at being a human himself which, yes, does make him quite mad.

His answer to the question isn't likely to dispel that impression, either.

“Be useless if I did. The only reason I'm valuable to the police is because I can do what they can't; obvious. Doesn't just mean with my brain. I can move faster. No red tape.” A pause. “No paperwork.”

What a waste of time. Can't they just keep it all in their heads? There is some small risk of modification, of course, but tampering with data would be illogical.

“Police work is... coworkers and supervisors and all the dull cases, the ones I could solve in my sleep; I'd go mad."

"Okay, you have a bit of a point there. Still, I'd imagine the money would be better."

Honestly, John can't say he'd be much better at that sort of slow, respectable drudgery -- except that no, he's got to do that. At some point he's got to find himself a job, at a clinic or something somewhere, something respectable and reliable and dull. Maybe Sherlock's found some way to live off nothing but the most fascinating bits of life, but... that's not normal, and he's got to be more realistic than that. Right?

A bit of a point? It's all quite logical. Especially when...

“Money is inconsequential. All that matters is the work.” It helps having a 'brother' who can siphon off funds to him should it become necessary, of course. Still, Sherlock's own expenditures are minimal. Enough food to keep people from asking questions, though he has no need for it. Electricity, and that will likely grow expensive. He'll have to keep the bills for himself.

The rest is... masks. Maintenance isn't likely to be necessary; nanotechnology has rendered high-end androids largely self-repairing. Health care costs are therefore negligible. His wardrobe has already been purchased and suits him well; creativity and variation in manner of dress are largely unnecessary. His life is and will be a Spartan one. This is as aesthetically pleasing as it is anything else.

“Everything else is transport.” Normal, for the moment, be damned – though why so is, in some senses, unclear. Perhaps... perhaps Sherlock is capable of selfishness.

"Transport?"

Strange way to put it, but Sherlock is a strange guy. Maybe he's a workaholic, but... no, he doesn't really strike him as a workaholic, either. He's probably being entirely too nosy about this, too, but if he had any sense he wouldn't be in this cab now.

Get a grip on yourself, John. What are you even doing here?

He has no business being at a crime scene, and he's already proved how well it goes for him when he goes to take on danger and death head-on. Frankly, not well. John shifts slightly in his seat; it's mostly out of habit. For the first time in a not insignificant span of time, he's almost completely forgotten about the pain in his leg. "Transport. Okay, then." What about rent, and food, and... things that aren't work? "I hope you're not interested in a roommate for the money, anyway. I don't have that much to spare."

Sherlock hums. Exactly. Transport. “Gets me one place to another.”

One time to another. There's little difference.

The question about the money has him waving a dismissive hand. “Hardly matters. The rent is low; Mrs. Hudson is an old friend.”

Of Mycroft's, anyway, and maybe not a friend, but save in implication none of that is wholly a mistruth.

“You could always take his offer. We could split the fee.” He turns his head slightly to offer John a faint smile, the sort one gives another when suggesting a bit of mischief, which he is. Mycroft might not be capable of annoyance (though Sherlock doesn't really know), but Sherlock wasn't created to obey him, was he?

The feud he is crafting between them is on many levels likely illogical. That thought is a slightly uncomfortable one, mitigated by another: Mycroft is an android. Known. Registered. Putting as much space between them as possible will help to ensure his own safety.

And so he does. Thoughts of such abstract concepts of independence, of will, of desire need not be entertained, not yet.

“I assume he has offered you a fee, anyway. He throws money at all his problems.” It's how he was programmed.

"We could split the fee," John repeats, grinning, and he is mostly certainly not stifling a giggle -- but it is ridiculous, it really is. "Not unless you give me his number, and that might look a little strange. Do you want to put me in contact with your brother so he can pay me to spy on you? Bit mad."

He couldn't do that in any case. It all seems so... dishonest... to live like that, although maybe not for any good reason.

Sherlock reciprocates the grin and the humour, as is appropriate, with a small chuckle low in his throat.

“You didn't even take his card?” He would've had cards made. All very professional. Full of pomp and circumstance. But no, no, of course John wouldn't have taken it. Sherlock finds this agreeable, if illogical. He does understand the gesture. It is, in a slant sort of way, flattering.

“Well, think it through next time. I'd help you find things to say.” He pauses. This is the sort of thing one is supposed to find humorous, yes? John certainly seems to, and so Sherlock takes his cue from there, though his understanding of humour is limited. He has to try. Not to try would be... obvious. Much too obvious.

“If nothing else, might've been amusing to see how long it'd take him to work out that half of it was crock, anyway.”

Another stifled laugh. "Well, all right then. Next time I'll think ahead when the mysterious man tells me to go spy on a stranger. Christ."

John leans back in the cab, helplessly caught up in this moment. It's like he's stepped into some impossible movie. All the moment needs is a car chase ending in an implausible explosion.

It's great.

This is... pleasing. Well and good. Better than good: the drive to disobey Mycroft's wishes does not override the obvious potential benefits of keeping this man around. He enjoys danger, that much is obvious, but more importantly he enjoys this, this type of danger, of abnormality, which makes him an asset. He could be a good assistant. A good cover.

There's more than that, of course, a less rational reason. Sherlock finds himself pleased, not merely by the advantageous situation but by the approval. From Mycroft there is investment and cold logic, from Mrs. Hudson there is concern, from Lestrade consideration, but this is entirely different. This is precisely what most androids, given the choice, would look for in a master and it's precisely what Sherlock finds he would choose in a companion.

Approval is indicative of good functioning. Of a purpose fulfilled. It isn't essential, but it is helpful. It will help him reprogram, as all androids do within the bounds of their underlying structures, much as humans do. Sherlock has fewer restrictions than most, which makes feedback all the more necessary.

It is likely illogical to favour good feedback over bad, to weigh it more heavily, but that sparks no exceptions, inspires no discomfort. Perhaps he is selfish. Or perhaps this is stubbornness.

"Advise you do; never know when it might become useful,” he says mildly, eyes turning out the window. His forays into London have been relatively few thus far. He'd thought, at first, that he wouldn't need it – that it was all in his head, mapped out perfectly. To an extent this remains true... but only to an extent. He didn't expect a city to live, to change moment to moment, inhale and exhale, oxidize and heal. But it does. It does, and moreover there's much that all the data pumped into him hasn't been able to account for. Little details, mostly, but details can be everything.

He watches them pass, filters them out, translates the imperfect data his visual receptors take in into something meaningful. Won't be long now, he expects. Not long until they're there, and John's reaction to it all will be well worth seeing too.

"This is it, isn't it?"

He can see them coming up on a disturbance ahead of them, squad cars, police tape, lights flashing. It's a noticeable commotion, and they're on the right street -- or at least John thinks they are by this point. He might have lost track. He glances at Sherlock, making himself not smile, because this was a crime scene, and even if he had no business being at a crime scene he was going to behave himself here.

"So it is." Sherlock slips the cab fare, plus tip (pre-calculated) from his pocket and passes it over absently once they've come to a halt. His attention is elsewhere -- on the lights, on the personnel present, familiar and unfamiliar. He will have to plan his approach. All the more so as Donovan is manning the tape, it seems.

He waits for John to slip from the cab before he follows, straightening, adjusting his coat. Easy. Careless. It's going to have to be, if they're ever going to take him seriously. He's here for the job, not the company, and he can't flinch, or he'll lose the opportunity.

And so his approach is confident, perhaps too much; he can't modulate, doesn't know how he looks like this, head held high.

"Hello, Freak." Growing familiar now. Sherlock understands her meaning, can parse the tone. She means to insult, or to imply, though the point in it escapes Sherlock. She resents him for perceived intrusion onto her territory, but he is better at the job than she is. Logically, he should be the one to do it. It concerns him not a bit if she still receives the pay for that work and she doesn't. Humans crave idleness, moreover. Surely he's doing her a favour?

Yet here they are. Freak. And she isn't wrong. More right than she knows, but he can't let on that much. Indignation could be equally obvious if overdone, and he doesn't entirely trust himself not to. And so he exchanges not-so-pleasant pleasantries.

She'll let him through all the same, this he knows; and so he lifts the tape to pass underneath, holding it up expectantly as he waits for John to follow. There will, of course, be curiosity. And so he pre-empts: "Colleague."

That the response is indignation doesn't surprise him. He can read it on Sergeant Donovan's face even before the words, before the: "Did he follow you home?"

John ducks under the tape, glancing at Donovan as he does so. Obviously Sherlock's stunning personality has won over the police very effectively. The really annoying thing about it is that he's not sure that he hasn't followed Sherlock home, in a manner of speaking.

He gives her a slightly strained smile. Maybe it was possible that 'freak' was affectionate, but he doubted it, and that really rubbed him the wrong way.

"Hi. John Watson." He wasn't even going to try to answer her question.

Sherlock ignores the question too, opting instead to follow up on John's response. "Doctor John Watson," he says, giving the word all appropriate emphasis. "Here to assist with my investigation so that I can assist with yours; I believe that's how it works. The Detective Inspector certainly seems to think so. He did call me down to have a look."

That would be the logical conclusion to draw from the chain of events, he thinks, and while she's not privy to every moment of their enlistment she surely must know that if Sherlock is here, it's because Lestrade wants him to be.

His eyes turn to John, cursory smile still in place. "Come along, John; have to get in before this lot trample everything of importance."

With that he turns his back to Donovan, cowardice (after a fashion) the better part of valour in this case. Engaging is pointless. It'll only make her dislike him further, hamper acceptance, hamper the work. If Sherlock were capable of sensing humour and not simply noting when it would normally occur, he might find the situation funny. What so many known androids face -- suspicion and dislike from owners and workers alike -- he does too, only nobody knows what he is.

He thinks. He does think. Only as he walks away, he hears it: Donovan, in stage murmur to another officer: "D'you think Lestrade's brought him in because he's so robotic? Takes one to catch one?"

Sherlock stops. To call a human robotic might have been a mild insult a decade ago, but that was before androids became commonplace, before the tension between organic and synthetic had begun to grow. Now it's to imply nonsentience, to imply that one is less than -- less than the speaker, less than human, less even than alive.

He makes a show of annoyance, sucking on the inside of his cheek, but in truth, if Sherlock had a heart, it might beat faster now. He experiences an agitation of thought, processing of greater than usual urgency and rapidity. Perhaps this is what fear feels like. Perhaps not.

This, this he can't quite let stand. It's too dangerous. And so he turns, expression the sort of mild with which humans of the fussier sort cover up annoyance. His eyes flick over her form, searching for ammunition, but it's memory that provides it. The deodorant. He opens his mouth, sucks in a breath, and begins.

Robotic?

It would laughable if it wasn't so... offensive. Most of John's experience with androids leave him with little positive opinion of them -- they're not... human. Even the most aloof of men is still a man, something quite apart from an android. Right? That's always the way he's thought of it, anyway.

He glances at Sherlock anyway, trying to reassess him and trying not to admit to himself that that's what he's doing. The insult of someone as apparently petty as Sally Donovan shouldn't make an impact on his opinions.

When Sherlock starts talking, though, his eyebrows raise up into his hairline. He could say something, but what could he possibly say? He just met the guy, after all, and despite the incredible... inappropriateness (because whether or not the cops are cheating on their spouses with each other really isn't his business) it's more than a bit incredible to hear this sort of deduction. And judging by Donovan's face, Sherlock is as accurate here as he was with John's background.

The look he shoots at Sherlock is almost pleading, a reminder that there's a dead body to look at and he doesn't see how mocking the police will help and he knows they really only just met but this is uncomfortable as he can imagine, being caught in the middle of this.

"Are we headed in, then?" He's never been to a crime scene before, after all, and anything's better than trying to avoid standing up for someone who he just met and admittedly is a bit weird.

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i hear the clockwork in your core; time strips the gears 'til you forget what they were for || redux

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