I write this in a haste. I fear if I do not get these words down onto paper, that they might fade from my memory as snow after a spring shower. Even now, I doubt my memory of the event. I fear that it may be simply a dream brought upon by stress and terror. I fear that I have gone mad. For what sane man could experience such a life as mine. These holes in the world, they should not be. They are filled with great terrors and wonders. Things beyond the scope of human imagination.
Beyond the possible.
And yet, still, I am sane. I must remind myself time and time again that I am sane. For if I fail to do so, then… I might forget. I must remember. Despite everything that has happened, despite everything that I have seen, despite the things that I have participated in, been complicit in, been responsible for, I remain sane.
We never found the hole the man calling himself Moriarty walked out of. He was not the man, Holmes knew that to be true. The man calling himself Moriarty was not balding. He was not skeletal in face. He was not dressed in nice clothing or wearing a top hat. He did not even have the same eyes.
Moriarty’s eyes were black as soot. This man… his eyes were pale black. Like a corpse.
He was found inside an occult bookstore located on Cecil Court. Holmes had frequented the store many a time after his resurrection. I never saw the appeal in the store. Holmes would speak of keeping an open mind on the matter. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, as the Bard once said.
• 39 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes We entered the store with the intent to purchase a text by the poet Blake. A third edition of his Proverbs. I had no interest in the work of Blake. He felt like an amateur scribbling his way into genius. Holmes never told me of his literary opinions, whether this was chosen out of a desire to read the poems or to unpick an implication of the world like a loose thread. He had done this before with the works of Shakespeare, which he was notorious in despising. The Bard of Avon was simply too simple for the great detective.
But when we entered the store, there was no one there.
Not even the cashier. The lights were on. But the room was bare. Only dust was in the room. Piles and piles of dust just lying in the store. Perfectly scattered throughout. Only to be blown away by the autumnal wind. Holmes investigated the piles, tasted them and shuddered with horror. I asked him what had happened, but he remained silent. In his silence, I understood al too well what the piles were.
A noise was heard from downstairs. A wheezing, groaning sound like a dying lama. We descended down the spiral staircase to find a man. A man we knew didn’t belong. Imagine, if you wil , a child’s drawing of the scene. Two men descending down a staircase to find a man with a knife standing before a mutilated body. The blade, still dripping with blood. The body, unrecognizable as human. Now imagine the man is a photograph in the world of a child’s drawing.
He looked at Holmes and myself and said… and said…
and said…
I’ve forgotten. I’ve forgotten everything. All the words spoken in that moment, now lost to the void. Phrases pop out without context of who or what said them.
“The game will end without your bees as salvation.”
“Surely, Moriarty, the Devil is not so easily escaped.”
“I am older than this flesh body implies. I will survive this encounter and recur time and time again. This is nothing more than an emanation.”
“Good lord, his smile! His smile! HIS SMILE!”
• 40 •
“The inevitable col apse wil only grow larger and larger, Mr. Holmes. You cannot escape the entropy. Things fall apart.
We all fall down the hole in things”
The next thing I remember, the man calling himself Moriarty was gone. The body was gone. The piles of dust were gone. All that remained were two men lost in the dark. We did not speak as we returned to Baker Street. I simply returned to my room and wrote what I could remember.
I handed what I wrote before to Holmes, and he told me none of this happened. We never went to a bookstore for Proverbs by Blake. We never found piles of dust or a murderer calling himself Moriarty. He told me to burn what little I wrote out of disgust.
But I know this to be true! I know these things happened!
I cannot remember them, but I know them to be true! They have to be true! They have to have happened! This is true! This is real! The bookstore is real! I returned and saw its occult contents. The man at the desk politely asked if Mister Holmes was to arrive shortly to pick up his books.
Sitting on the floor of the bookstore, reading a book far too old for her, was a girl with blue hair. She was no older than fifteen years old, dressed for the opera. She was dark in complexion. Her eyes were blue as sapphires. She was familiar, but I could not place where I saw her. For a moment, I considered approaching the girl, asking where we had met before. Instead, I stood there, watching as she left the store with the book in hand. But before she left, she muttered something I could only barely hear. Perhaps I was the only one who could hear those words.
“The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white. What do you wish, Dr. Watson?”
I must remind myself that I am sane.
• 41 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes
5. The Adventure of the Stellar Sailing Ship It was about two o’clock in the morning on the nineteenth of March, when I was awakened by the sound of Holmes playing his violin. Confused, I arose and knocked on the door of my friend’s room: “Holmes, what in the world do you mean by this? It is not even light out!”
The door was flung open, and there was Holmes, wide-eyed as could be. He seemed stricken with some kind of madness. “It’s these damnable cracks, Watson,” he barked at me. “Truly, this is a case unlike anything you and I have ever faced before… even the hounds were easier to deal with than this. This is why I am playing my violin, I need to think.”
“Has another of these rifts opened up, Holmes?” I asked.
Already, Holmes and I had dealt with a number of beings from these cracks. They were much stranger clientele than our usual fare, to be sure.
As Holmes opened his mouth to reply, there came a scream: it was Mrs. Hudson, our landlady. “Mister Holmes!
There’s another one!” she cried.
Holmes didn’t even stop to change, he simply hurried down the stairs in his night-clothes, and I followed along at his heels much like a dog runs after its master. And sure enough, there it was: a glowing white tear in the wall of the drawing room, directly across from the fireplace.
Holmes approached it cautiously, and I waited with bated breath. “This crack,” he said eventually, “is not like any of the others… I can hear… I think they are engines, Watson.”
“How peculiar… do you suppose it leads somewhere, Holmes?” I asked.
• 42 •
Holmes nodded. “Most certainly. There is but one way to be sure.” And against all better judgement, he walked closer towards the tear… and seemed to dissolve into mist.
“HOLMES!” I shouted, and ran after him… only to dissolve into mist myself. There was a blinding flash of light, and then…
We were simply someplace else. It seemed to be a large room, with barrels and crates stacked high all around, perhaps a cargo bay like those found aboard steamships. And we had changed… we no longer wore our nightclothes, but our preferred daytime outfits. Holmes and I wandered about for a while, exploring every corner we could find. The engine sound we had heard was louder now, echoing all around us.
“What do you think this place could be, Holmes?” I asked.
What Holmes said then was the most alarming thing I’d yet heard in my years of knowing him: “I haven’t the faintest idea, Watson…”
Next moment, a man entered through a pair of double doors on one side of the room. He wore a blue jacket of some type with black shoulders, and beneath that, a red shirt with black trousers… the outfit seemed very peculiar, and certainly did not look like anything Holmes or I had seen before.
“What the… who the hell are you two?!” he asked, seeming to be just as surprised at our appearance as we were of his.
“I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “And this is my companion, Doctor John H. Watson.”
The man in blue simply shook his head. “This can’t be…
you’re fictional characters! You don’t exist in real life! Are you some kind of holographic projection?” He walked over to Holmes and made to tap him on the nose… and did so.
“Do you routinely violate the personal space of perfect strangers, sir?” Holmes asked, sounding very annoyed.
“Hey, I’m sorry, I’m just trying to figure out how a couple of detective novel characters from three-hundred years ago can be standing in one of our cargo bays,” said the man in blue.
That we could be in a place three-hundred years from our time was startling, and yet in a moment I realised we had already
• 43 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes met a girl from over four-hundred-fifty years onward. Would this look ancient to her?
The man raised his arm and tapped the watch he was wearing a few times, and then… there are simply no words to describe what happened next. A woman simply appeared, somewhat transparent, her image flickering. It was clear she was not actually in the room with us.
“MacPherson to Shadow: Captain, I’ve found the source of the anomaly in cargo bay three… I think you need to see this,” said this man, and the woman turned to face Holmes and I. “I’m on my way, Lieutenant,” she said. “Shadow out.” And then her image disappeared.
Lieutenant MacPherson studied us both suspiciously, one hand resting on the holster for his weapon. “You caused this crack to appear, didn’t you?” he demanded.
“We most certainly did not, sir!” Holmes barked. “How dare you accuse us of such impropriety!”
MacPherson opened his mouth to speak again, but was interrupted as the doors through which he’d entered opened for a second time. In stepped a woman with light skin, almost as pale as Holmes’s. She had reddish-brown hair that she wore in a bun, and a nearly identical outfit to the lieutenant except that the undershirt was purple instead.
But the most striking thing about the woman was her eyes: bright, vivid emerald, perhaps the greenest eyes I’d ever seen in my life. She had a stern expression on her face, and looked between each of us in a fashion similar to Holmes whenever he was investigating something.
She took out some sort of rectangular box from a pocket of her jacket, and aimed it at us in turn. It made a humming noise, and she stared at it in shock. “Stars above…” she whispered. “You are reading as humans… then… you truly are Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson?”
“I do not see why we could be anyone else, madam!”
Holmes said testily. “What in the world is going on here?! I demand to know at once!”
• 44 •
“Believe me, Mr. Holmes, I am wondering the exact same thing,” the woman said. “But allow me to introduce myself…
I am Captain Gemini Shadow, of the United Humanity Space Navy ship Endeavour. If you would please join me in my ready room, I believe we have much to discuss.”
She turned sharply on her heel and marched out, carrying herself in exactly the fashion as my own superior officers had in Afghanistan. Was she military as well? It seemed so. Holmes and I followed after her, wondering what other surprises might be in store.
* * *
The good captain led us into a small chamber, not unlike that of a lift. She simply said “Bridge!” aloud, and then quite suddenly, we were propelled forwards at high speeds, yet we did not fall. It was a most curious sensation indeed.“My dear captain… what is this?” I asked her.
“This, gentlemen, is called a turbolator,” she explained.
“The Endeavour is a very large ship, you see, and so we invented these to move between decks more quickly.”
“I see…” Holmes remarked, and for once in my life, I had the occasion to see something I had never seen before… the great Sherlock Holmes, utterly baffled. He was hardly alone in that. Holmes was able to deduce several details about her, which he whispered to me as we went along. She was obviously military, and seemed to be a veteran of a great and terrible war, greater even than the Afghan conflict I had once been a part of.
Remembering my own service and how those of us who came back carried themselves, this rang true.
Further, the lack of the gentle rocking motion that accompanies a ship at sea was absent… which Holmes suggested must mean we were not on water at all.
This… turbolator soon came to a halt, and a door swished open. She led us out down a short hallway, and into a room
• 45 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes that was quite unlike anything Holmes or I had ever seen before. It was rather angular in shape, with three levels: the top level contained banks of screens, at which stood men and women of all sorts, tapping at things and looking very serious about it.
Directly in front of us was a long rectangular console with even more screens attached to it, at which stood a raven-haired woman with scarlet-coloured eyes. On the next level, directly below this console, were three chairs, all very comfortable, though the centermost one was larger and had armrests.
The final level, and the lowest of the lot, merely contained two additional work areas, with chairs and consoles. Two more people sat at these, and paid Holmes and I no attention at all.
In front of these two was an enormous window, through we could see stars surrounding us.
“My God, Holmes!” I cried. “We’re adrift in the heavens!”
“No, not adrift,” explained the captain, turning to face me.
“The Endeavour is a starship, capable of travelling through space, just as the steamships of your time travelled through water.”
“And what year is this then, dear lady?” asked Holmes.
“It is the year 2216,” the captain answered. “Welcome, gentlemen, to the twenty-third century.” She narrowed her eyes at my companion, and her next words had the steel of a commanding officer in them: “You wil address me as either ma’am, or Captain, Mr. Holmes. The same for Dr. Watson.”
It was the last thing I heard her say. My vision swam and I felt myself topple over, in a dead faint.
* * *
When I came to, I was lying on a bed in what was undoubtedly a sickbay… though as with everything else I had seen since departing Baker Street, that was as familiar as it got.My attending physician saw me and called over: “Captain? He’s awake.”
• 46 •
Captain Shadow approached, a new expression of genuine concern in her eyes. “I’m glad to see you are awake at last, Dr.
Watson… not many people faint when they see the bridge of my ship for the first time.
“I am over three hundred years out of my time, Captain,”
I said crossly. “Am I hurt?”
“Nothing except a bump on the head from the fall,” said my physician. “He’s cleared to leave, ma’am.”
Shadow nodded. “Very well. Dr. Watson, with me.” We left the sickbay, and entered another of those turbolator cabs.
It conveyed us to the bridge, and she led me briskly across it to a door marked “Ready Room.”
Inside, I could see a large curved desk that dominated the place, with a wheeled chair behind it, and several smaller chairs for visitors. Directly across from this was a sofa that ran the length of the wall, with windows to let in the view.
A wall close to the desk had a bookshelf laid into it, crammed full with works of both fiction and nonfiction inside.
Decorating the place was an assortment of objects I could not even begin to catalogue, but must have been items col ected by our hostess on her travels. Last of all, between the desk and sofa, was a small shelf that seemed to glow with light.
Holmes was here, browsing the captain’s book collection, while a white-haired woman sat on the couch, watching me.
“What have we got here, Cap’n?” she asked with a strong Irish brogue.
“Sheer impossibility, Number One,” replied the captain.
“Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson, allow me to introduce my first officer, Commander Caiomhe MacMurrough.”
The Irishwoman waved. “Gentlemen. I see you’re as out of your time as I am.”
“Very astute of you, Commander,” Holmes said, nodding his head in MacMurrough’s direction.
Shadow, meanwhile, went to the glowing shelf and spoke to it: “Tea. Earl grey. Hot. Four cups.” The machine began to hum loudly, and through some phantasmagorical process, four cups of tea simply shimmered into existence, along with a
• 47 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes serving tray. She handed us each a cup and went to sit behind her desk, very much the queen in the castle.
“Now then, gentlemen,” she said, looking between Holmes and I. “Kindly explain how precisely you appeared in my cargo bay.”
Holmes made to take out his pipe and light it, but a stern glare from the captain put paid to that at once. So instead, he simply sipped his tea. “For some weeks now, Watson and I have been occupied with a mystery unlike anything he and I have faced before - great tears have opened all across London, from an abandoned house to my own rooms at Baker Street.
And one of these tears…”
“Led to my ship,” the captain finished for him. “Yes… I had my science department analyse this tear of yours. They determined it was benign, and not actually a tear in the bulkhead, as I had first assumed when it appeared. Lieutenant MacPherson wondered how it could be that two fictional beings,” she indicated Holmes and myself, “could be standing before us. Further tests indicated that you are, in fact, of another universe entirely.”
Holmes considered the book in his hand, and as I read the spine, I was astounded to learn it contained my own notes…
except credited to a Mr. Conan-Doyle. He held the book up for the captain to see and said, “That would appear to be the case, Captain. I put it to you now: what is to become of us?
Are we marooned here, in this place and time?”
“I should hope not, Mr. Holmes,” said the captain, sipping from her tea cup. “But as the tear did not close behind you when we left the cargo bay, I think it’s safe to assume you will be able to leave just as you arrived.”
She opened her mouth to say something else, when a voice emanated from the ceiling: “Captain, incoming transmission from Fenrir Prime.”
“I’ll take it in here, Commander Verger,” answered the captain, and at once another shimmering image appeared in front of the desk, between Holmes and I. The being it depicted… well. It certainly wasn’t human. Rather, it appeared
• 48 •
to be like a wolf, except it stood upright. From what I could see, it had grey fur with patches of cream here and there… and it seemed to know the captain.
“Chancellor Catarrah!” the captain said, smiling for the first time since we’d met her. “How wonderful to see you again, my friend!”
“As it is to see you, Captain Shadow,” the wolf replied in a rumbling growl of a voice. “I only wish the circumstances were more pleasant.”
Shadow’s smile faded at once. “Chancellor, what has happened?” she asked.
“A most gruesome murder has been committed, Captain,”
said the wolf. “Right in the Hall of State. Our teams have so far been unable to determine the cause. We will need your assistance if we are to solve this mystery.”
Shadow nodded solemnly. “We’ll get there as soon as we can, Chancellor. I’m very sorry for your loss… Endeavour out.”
The wolf’s image disappeared, and the captain stood up, finishing her tea before leading us out back onto the bridge.
She took up the centre chair, while her Irish companion sat to her right. Holmes sat down in the empty chair to her left, and I stood beside him.
Shadow began issuing orders in that familiar bark all officers seemed to develop: “Helm! Set course for the Fenririan system, Alcubierre factor six!”
I watched as the helmsman began tapping at his screen several times. “Course laid in, Captain,” he said.
Shadow pointed forward, as if to suggest forward momentum. “Engage!” she cried, and the view of the stars appeared to elongate… we were away.
* * *
As we travelled, I listened to Holmes inquire of the captain how it was her vessel could travel through space. “Technically, it doesn’t,” she explained. “The Alcubierre drive functions by creating… well, a bubble of spacetime. Said bubble then• 49 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes compresses space ahead of it and expands behind it. In essence, instead of trying to accelerate the ship past the speed of light, we move space itself around the ship. To the naked eye, however, we appear to be moving.”
Holmes took al this in quietly, I could see the inner workings of his mind attempting to process this. I admit I hardly understood it myself, but when explained as simply as that… I suppose it could work. All Holmes said in the end was,
“…I see.”
Shadow smirked at him. “It is elementary, my dear Holmes.
‘When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
As I tried very hard not to laugh, Holmes rolled his eyes and said nothing more.
* * *
Soon, the space bubble popped and we appeared outside…well. Another world, quite frankly. The landmasses we could see were purple in colour, and the planet was surrounded by three large moons, equal in size to our own. Holmes and I simply stared, awestruck. Wherever we were now, it certainly wasn’t near the Earth.
Fortunately, the captain answered our unspoken question by tapping a button on her chair’s armrest. She began to speak:
“Captain’s log, solar date 2/1603.20: We are in orbit of the planet Fenrir, in response to a request by Chancellor Catarrah of the Fenririan Republic. A murder recently took place within the Hall of State’s chambers, and we have been asked to investigate.”
The ship’s crew took no notice of this, but Holmes gave her an odd look as she rose from her chair. “It is proper procedure for a commanding officer to accurately report on ship activities,” she explained. “It is a little odd at first, I will grant you, but in time you adjust to it.”
MacMurrough grinned. “Besides, she has an excellent reading voice.”
• 50 •
Blushing faintly, Shadow made for another sliding door.
“You have the bridge, Number One!” she said. “Ms. Verger, Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson, with me!”
We dutifully followed after her.
* * *
The captain led us to a large room filled with small craft she described as being shuttles. Climbing into one, we chose seats, and she and Commander Verger (the raven-haired woman I mentioned before) piloted the little craft down to the planet. As we landed and exited the shuttle, Holmes and I could see the world appeared to be shrouded in perpetual twilight, and the air was quite chilly. Still, there was plenty of light to see by.We then hurried to a large building that looked much like the Houses of Parliament, except all the people inside were of the lupine variety. Chancellor Catarrah herself led us into the central meeting hal , where the legislature sat. And there, on the marble floor, was a corpse. A dead wolf, brown with patches of white in its coat.
While Shadow and Verger went around the room interviewing the local population, Holmes and I bent over the body. The surroundings may have been wholly alien, but in this moment it felt like any other case he and I had solved together.
All I could see was a corpse, but I knew my friend’s deductive skills were hard at work.
After a time, I asked: “So… what of it, Holmes? Who might the culprit be?”
“Moriarty,” Holmes replied.
“But that cannot be!” I cried. “The professor is dead! “Isn't it more likely that who we have encountered is some sort of...
imposter?"
Holmes nodded. “That’s the disquieting thing about this, Watson. If the captain’s hypothesis regarding our own origins is correct, then is it not also the case that Moriarty is from another dimension, as you and I are? After all, the last time we
• 51 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes met him, left behind a residue in the act of making his escape.
And now, it is here, on this corpse. He is the man we are looking for.”
I thought about this. “I suppose that is the only reasonable conclusion… but what do we do?”
“We return to Baker Street,” said Holmes at once. “This world of space ships is too distracting.”
I found myself agreeing. The world in which Captain Shadow lived may have been normal for her, but for us… well.
Perhaps that Wells fellow might enjoy it more than we did.
* * *
The captain, much to our relief, agreed with our plan when we informed her. She had only one request: to return with us to Baker Street, to render assistance in solving Moriarty’s latest scheme. Holmes initially tried to override her, but the captain was firm: her own deductive abilities were a match for his, and she knew his previous cases intimately.Holmes, eventually, relented… with the proviso that Shadow retired to a safe house near Baker Street, owned by his brother Mycroft. The safe house had been set up when the first of the rips appeared, and would allow her to remain close while also being inconspicuous.
Shadow agreed, and together the three of us returned to the cargo bay where al this madness had begun, and finally home to Baker Street. I breathed a sigh of relief as I stood in the small, comfortable drawing room, and even at the sight of rain pouring down the windows. The captain could have her sailing ship, this was where we belonged.
“Mr. Holmes!” cried Mrs. Hudson, as all of us appeared.
“Where in blazes have you been?!”
Holmes’s reply was deadpan as could be imagined.
“…Where none have gone before, Mrs. Hudson.”
• 52 •