Fic: More Things in Heaven and Earth 6/9
Fic: More Things in Heaven and Earth
Previously
Chapters 1 and 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter Six
Then What Remains
Last time Sherlock had visited John's room it had still managed to hold the faint odour of the man. By the early hours of this morning that lingering presence had been banished forever, replaced by the slight acrid aftershave of Moriarty, curled up in the centre of John's mattress with the duvet wrapped tight around him.
He blinked sleep out of his eyes, as Sherlock held the battery powered lantern high up to illuminate the room. Waking, he looked no more than ordinary, awkward, young, but the fierce, malevolent intelligence in dark brown eyes came back fast. Jim hitched himself up onto the pillows, lips twitched in the familiar half smile.
"Now you know."
Sherlock nodded.
Moriarty pulled himself to one side of the bed, taking the covers with him, patted the bare sheet beside him. "Come on then. Tell all."
Sherlock didn't move. "Why there?"
"Because," and Jim sounded frighteningly close to sincere, for once, "you know how bitterly cold the world is tonight, sweet. Take a little warmth wherever you can get it."
Sherlock would normally have needed an extremely compelling reason to even consider the idea of getting within arm's length of Jim Moriarty. Tonight, it seemed trivial. Was trivial. Only the truth mattered, tonight.
He kicked off his slippers, swung himself to sit on John's bed, long legs stretched down nearly to the brass rail at the end. Moriarty plucked the lamp out of his fingers, turned it off and the blackness that was hell's London night returned.
Sherlock settled himself against the cold metal at the head. He tipped his head back, eyes open on nothing, spoke evenly.
"California. I thought Hollywood at first. Smoke and mirrors. But this is so far beyond what cinema special effects can do that nothing there could conceivably help.
"But Hollywood isn't where the magic happens any more, is it? You went to Silicon Valley, because you needed to understand the theory behind the most advanced computing systems available. Closed systems, the angel said. Not engineering but computing. Virtual reality. Simulation."
Something touched him and he quashed the automatic startle response. Four fingers, each curled tight around the back of his neck, a thumb pressed, not lightly, against the pulse at the front. The touch was warm and real and in no sense comforting.
Sherlock closed his eyes, palms flat on the bedsheet, let Moriarty's hand remain, even knowing how his pulse must betray him, because he'd never turned away from a correct line of reasoning in his life and he wouldn't do it here.
"Ghosts, you'd said. You and I.
"VR had been one of my very first thoughts, naturally, but I haven't been idle all these months. I've looked everywhere from the finest detail of a rat's brain and the smudges on Leonardo's cartoons to every single type of tobacco available in London and Mycroft's old expense claims and it's all perfect. Those drugs I synthesised; no-one else should have been able to predict their effects accurately, and yet they worked on my consciousness exactly as predicted.
"So I'd dismissed the VR idea. Given 21st century computing it was flatly impossible. I imagine you confirmed that while you were out there."
"I was already aware of the limits to the capacities of every advanced computer facility in the world. I'm not a dilettante like you. I worked for my living." Moriarty's dig was without heat. Sherlock ignored it, continued;
"You'd thought simulation was important enough to cross the Atlantic for, so I considered it afresh but I came up with the same answer over and over; an accurate simulation of reality on computers as we know them was not possible. Not unlikely; outright impossible. Not to mention the interface problems. You can't just stick electrodes into the brain, wire someone up, get perfect immersion."
It felt so good to talk again. Even about this. Even to this audience. He paused just as he used to do for deliberate effect.
The hand tightened, and Moriarty rolled, fast. Sherlock found himself with a naked man straddling his thighs, both hands now at his throat, just too tight for comfort. He spoke awkwardly around them without attempting to get free, not ready to turn the uneven position into an outright struggle.
"I don't." But Moriarty knew that.
"Don't stop talking." the man murmured. Jim's hands slipped upwards, fingers buried in the curls at the back of Sherlock's head, thumbs still against his neck. A hiss in the dark, more impatience. "Go on!"
"Very well. Eventually I decided to ignore everything I knew about computers and consider the problem in terms of pure logic. Two universes, discounting the angel's rock for the moment, identical in virtually every measurable way; physics, chemistry, history, geography, geology, biology. For any given experiment I'd get identical results in both, unless it involved humans or my ghosts.
"Given any two virtually identical objects, what could I deduce about their nature? The most obvious hypothesis would be that they are identical in kind. So not reality and a simulation of it, but two realities. Or two simulations."
Fingers tightened in his hair. "Sherlock, you are beautiful. Killing you was by far the best thing I ever did. Go on."
"In the reality we left consciousness is a brain function. Afterlife is a meaningless concept. Here and there can't both be real." He resisted the temptation to take an unnecessary deep breath for the next part.
"Which leaves the hypothesis that both hell and the world we came from are equivalent simulations, created by and running on something unknown outside our universe. Improbable in the extreme, but not impossible. And the only explanation that works."
His hands had dropped to rest lightly on Jim's naked thighs. Warm, human, but not made of stuff at all. "A simulation capable of constructing our universe, that can model the huge complexity of the human brain, six billion times over. We're the result of computer code, or something functionally equivalent; you, me, this bed, everyone and everything we've ever known, modelled down to the level of the individual atom. We could be turned off in an instant, or kept immortal. Inserted into any environment. There could be a billion copies of us or one.
"We're ghosts, you and I, but then that's all we have ever been. Am I right, Jim?"
"Oh, yes," Moriarty's voice was low. "My clever, clever boy. Top marks, this time. Fuck." And Sherlock wasn't sure for a moment whether the last word was an instruction or an obscenity.
Chapter 7 Trial of Hell
Author’s Note: The usual argument for suggesting that we are in a simulated universe goes something like this: at some point computing power will reach the point at which a simulation will be possible which is indistinguishable from the real world to an observer inside it. Some huge number of these simulations may then be run in which countless trillions of conscious beings will exist. Given that we can’t tell whether we are in the real world or one of these, the chances that we just happen to be the ones in reality are vanishingly small.
Of course when angels start messing around with the system it’s much easier to figure out what's going on.
Previously
Chapters 1 and 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter Six
Then What Remains
Last time Sherlock had visited John's room it had still managed to hold the faint odour of the man. By the early hours of this morning that lingering presence had been banished forever, replaced by the slight acrid aftershave of Moriarty, curled up in the centre of John's mattress with the duvet wrapped tight around him.
He blinked sleep out of his eyes, as Sherlock held the battery powered lantern high up to illuminate the room. Waking, he looked no more than ordinary, awkward, young, but the fierce, malevolent intelligence in dark brown eyes came back fast. Jim hitched himself up onto the pillows, lips twitched in the familiar half smile.
"Now you know."
Sherlock nodded.
Moriarty pulled himself to one side of the bed, taking the covers with him, patted the bare sheet beside him. "Come on then. Tell all."
Sherlock didn't move. "Why there?"
"Because," and Jim sounded frighteningly close to sincere, for once, "you know how bitterly cold the world is tonight, sweet. Take a little warmth wherever you can get it."
Sherlock would normally have needed an extremely compelling reason to even consider the idea of getting within arm's length of Jim Moriarty. Tonight, it seemed trivial. Was trivial. Only the truth mattered, tonight.
He kicked off his slippers, swung himself to sit on John's bed, long legs stretched down nearly to the brass rail at the end. Moriarty plucked the lamp out of his fingers, turned it off and the blackness that was hell's London night returned.
Sherlock settled himself against the cold metal at the head. He tipped his head back, eyes open on nothing, spoke evenly.
"California. I thought Hollywood at first. Smoke and mirrors. But this is so far beyond what cinema special effects can do that nothing there could conceivably help.
"But Hollywood isn't where the magic happens any more, is it? You went to Silicon Valley, because you needed to understand the theory behind the most advanced computing systems available. Closed systems, the angel said. Not engineering but computing. Virtual reality. Simulation."
Something touched him and he quashed the automatic startle response. Four fingers, each curled tight around the back of his neck, a thumb pressed, not lightly, against the pulse at the front. The touch was warm and real and in no sense comforting.
Sherlock closed his eyes, palms flat on the bedsheet, let Moriarty's hand remain, even knowing how his pulse must betray him, because he'd never turned away from a correct line of reasoning in his life and he wouldn't do it here.
"Ghosts, you'd said. You and I.
"VR had been one of my very first thoughts, naturally, but I haven't been idle all these months. I've looked everywhere from the finest detail of a rat's brain and the smudges on Leonardo's cartoons to every single type of tobacco available in London and Mycroft's old expense claims and it's all perfect. Those drugs I synthesised; no-one else should have been able to predict their effects accurately, and yet they worked on my consciousness exactly as predicted.
"So I'd dismissed the VR idea. Given 21st century computing it was flatly impossible. I imagine you confirmed that while you were out there."
"I was already aware of the limits to the capacities of every advanced computer facility in the world. I'm not a dilettante like you. I worked for my living." Moriarty's dig was without heat. Sherlock ignored it, continued;
"You'd thought simulation was important enough to cross the Atlantic for, so I considered it afresh but I came up with the same answer over and over; an accurate simulation of reality on computers as we know them was not possible. Not unlikely; outright impossible. Not to mention the interface problems. You can't just stick electrodes into the brain, wire someone up, get perfect immersion."
It felt so good to talk again. Even about this. Even to this audience. He paused just as he used to do for deliberate effect.
The hand tightened, and Moriarty rolled, fast. Sherlock found himself with a naked man straddling his thighs, both hands now at his throat, just too tight for comfort. He spoke awkwardly around them without attempting to get free, not ready to turn the uneven position into an outright struggle.
"I don't." But Moriarty knew that.
"Don't stop talking." the man murmured. Jim's hands slipped upwards, fingers buried in the curls at the back of Sherlock's head, thumbs still against his neck. A hiss in the dark, more impatience. "Go on!"
"Very well. Eventually I decided to ignore everything I knew about computers and consider the problem in terms of pure logic. Two universes, discounting the angel's rock for the moment, identical in virtually every measurable way; physics, chemistry, history, geography, geology, biology. For any given experiment I'd get identical results in both, unless it involved humans or my ghosts.
"Given any two virtually identical objects, what could I deduce about their nature? The most obvious hypothesis would be that they are identical in kind. So not reality and a simulation of it, but two realities. Or two simulations."
Fingers tightened in his hair. "Sherlock, you are beautiful. Killing you was by far the best thing I ever did. Go on."
"In the reality we left consciousness is a brain function. Afterlife is a meaningless concept. Here and there can't both be real." He resisted the temptation to take an unnecessary deep breath for the next part.
"Which leaves the hypothesis that both hell and the world we came from are equivalent simulations, created by and running on something unknown outside our universe. Improbable in the extreme, but not impossible. And the only explanation that works."
His hands had dropped to rest lightly on Jim's naked thighs. Warm, human, but not made of stuff at all. "A simulation capable of constructing our universe, that can model the huge complexity of the human brain, six billion times over. We're the result of computer code, or something functionally equivalent; you, me, this bed, everyone and everything we've ever known, modelled down to the level of the individual atom. We could be turned off in an instant, or kept immortal. Inserted into any environment. There could be a billion copies of us or one.
"We're ghosts, you and I, but then that's all we have ever been. Am I right, Jim?"
"Oh, yes," Moriarty's voice was low. "My clever, clever boy. Top marks, this time. Fuck." And Sherlock wasn't sure for a moment whether the last word was an instruction or an obscenity.
Chapter 7 Trial of Hell
Author’s Note: The usual argument for suggesting that we are in a simulated universe goes something like this: at some point computing power will reach the point at which a simulation will be possible which is indistinguishable from the real world to an observer inside it. Some huge number of these simulations may then be run in which countless trillions of conscious beings will exist. Given that we can’t tell whether we are in the real world or one of these, the chances that we just happen to be the ones in reality are vanishingly small.
Of course when angels start messing around with the system it’s much easier to figure out what's going on.