Academy 27, City of Takumi, Planet Gongen It was a Tuesday when Jhe Sang Mi, more often called Kalingkata, walked into her home classroom after school to grab her hat which she has once again forgotten, only to find her friend Li Xiu hacking away at a keyboard. She had a glass screw top bottle she was taking swigs from at regular intervals; it smelled clearly of apple juice. She was, notably, wearing a beret along with her school uniform. Kalingkata had never seen her friend in a beret before, but had seen her get extremely caught up in things, and so after grabbing her own hat sat down on another desk and watched her performance. After a little longer than you’d think, Li Xiu turned her head slowly, and then scrambled to try to look normal, taking her hat off, and stuffing it and the bottle in her bag, before just as suddenly changing her mind and replacing both where they were, swinging around to cross her legs and lean back with her arms crossed as she faced Kalingkata, a motion that would have been much more effective had Sang Mi not been sitting there literally the entire time.
“Oh, I didn’t see you there Sang Mi, how is it going? Do you need something from me?”
“Yeah,” Sang Mi answered. “What?”
“What?”
She gestured at the scenario before her, “Yeah, what?”
Li Xiu frowned, before getting herself together. “Well, after some deliberation, I decided that maybe before I become a famous director—”
“Uh huh, yeah.”
“I should slum it a little and become a world famous writer!
Write the great Gongen Novel, you know?’
• 105 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes Sang Mi blinked a few times. “So, disregarding that you just called writing a novel ‘slumming’ which is an entirely separate conversation we’re going to have later surrounded by your closest friends and family, do you… really think that you can just drop into writing a novel and have it be immediately brilliant?”
“Yes,” she answered with a clean simplicity that Kalingkata just kinda had to accept.
“Okay, yeah, sure. Good on you then. Um… what’s it about?”
Li Xiu pushed on the bridge of her nose as though there were glasses there to push up. There were not. “Alright, so get this. So, you make a good point—I am jumping right in, so in my brilliance I realized that for my first book I should use some public domain characters.”
“Oh,” Sang Mi said nodding. “Like Batman, or Naruto, or Jenny Over-There?”
“Yes, but better. See, I’m using the world’s greatest detective!”
“Poirot?”
“Sherlock Holmes!!! And Watson! Only get this, I’m modernizing it.”
Sang Mi kicked her feet back and forth. “Wasn’t there a version of that that did that a while back?”
“Yes yes, we all know about BBC Sherlock—”
“No I meant that one that was set in 2350’s Londonplex on Earth? The one where Watson was a robot, and Moriarty was a Maverick Crime Lord trying to make an inroad on Earth?
They had a pet dog with a jetpack name Ruffles?”
Li Xiu slumped. “Oh. Yeah. Did you uh… like that version?”
“Not really.”
She perked up again. “Yes! It sucked! Which is where mine is going to succeed!”
“By not sucking?”
“Exactly! It's so simple I can’t believe no one else thought of it!”
• 106 •
At this point, Kalingkata had realized that this was going to be her evening entertainment, and reached into her bag, pulling out a bag of shrimp-chips, a chocolate bar, and a bottle of cola. “Yes, brilliant, please continue.”
Li Xiu placed her hand on her breast bone, and raised her chin up. “Right, so as I was saying, in my wisdom I have a much better way of going about all this. I’m going to set it in Victorian London—but get this—its going to be modern!
There wil be tears in reality where like… thingies come through!”
She munched on a handful of shrimp chips, offering some to Li Xiu who refused. “Elaborate on that?”
“No. So they’re going to meet all sorts of things—like uh, a young Gongen girl will come through a portal and confront Moriarty!”
Sang Mi’s chewing slowed down considerably to a halt.
“…Sorry what did you say?”
“A cute Gongen girl! So it's relatable to the average reader in 2387, so no reason not to set it in the past or anything.”
Nodding slowly, Sang Mi set the chips down. “…And what happens to this girl?”
“Well she gets caught by the police, and so Scotland Yard calls in Holmes and Watson to investigate, because her clothes are out of place, and she still has her phone on her which they don’t understand and they think is some sort of black mirror.
But she proves that she’s really from our present because Holmes is smart and sees there is no way she’s faking this. But they can’t keep her in her clothes from the present, they have to get her into past historical clothes… this was actually the hardest part of the story. I had to do so much research, and I probably made that whole segment longer than it needed to be because I didn’t want to feel like I’d wasted my time, but they bring in a dressmaker to modify some clothes for her—you see Harrods had burned down at that time and was being rebuilt, and I tried to find other department stores but—oh never mind that isn’t important! Look, so she gets a scene of getting
• 107 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes to wear a cool Victorian dress, and then we move to the climax!”
Kalingkata was no longer having a good time. She looked Li Xiu up and down, face getting more and more serious.
“How… do you know all that?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“How did you know all of that happened?”
Li Xiu laughed, “You’re such a jokester Sang Mi! I made all that up! I did use your name as a placeholder though—
maybe I’ll keep it.”
“Yeah, you do that.” Sang Mi put her snacks away, and hoisted her bag over her shoulder. “Good luck with the novel, Li Xiu.”
“Well, it's more like a short story collection, but thanks.
Are you still on for Roleplaying Game night this weekend?”
Sang Mi nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got a whole thing planned out. Um… Yeah I’ll see you later.” She walked out of the classroom, her eyes glued to her shoes. She’d assumed that had all been a dream…
“Hey,” turning, she saw Saki there, leaning against the wall, looking just as cool as Li Xiu wished she did. “There’s another wave coming through this weekend. We’re going to be seeing what happens.”
Sang Mi nodded. “…I think more has been happening than I thought.”
Saki grinned. “Having trouble telling your dreams from reality these days?”
Sang Mi began walking away, trying to keep her head straight. “Something like that.”
“And what are you going to do about it? These strange dreams?”
At first, Sang Mi was going to ignore her, or make a rude hand gesture. But as it hit her, a smirk hit her face, and she turned, pulling her cap on. “Oh, you should know that by now.
The answer, my dear Saki, is Elementary.”
“...That doesn’t actually solve the problem,” Saki preened.
Then she gave the rude hand gesture.
• 108 •
• 109 •