Fic: More Things in Heaven and Earth 9/9
Fic: More Things in Heaven and Earth
Previously
Chapters 1 and 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter Nine
Staying Alive
It had been months since Sherlock had seen the sun. Smoke from the fires raging around London blocked out the sunlight, made the city look something like it must have done in the old peasoupers. The windows of 221B were shut tight but the smoke was everywhere, and Sherlock stopped halfway up the stairs to cough the worst out of his lungs. Below him the door latch clicked; John, leaving.
Life was increasingly unpleasant in the city, but further out was no better. Blights had killed the crops, carefully resurrected diseases had done for most of the surviving wild animals. The goats were long since gone, the lab animals abandoned. Sherlock was alone again with his oblivious ghosts. Jim had left nine months before with the most complex task ahead of him. They'd designed it so that he would stay as safe as possible, to minimise the simulation's interference, but nothing was straightforward any more.
The geiger counter clattered constantly now in Sherlock's pocket, evidence that at least some of Moriarty's work had succeeded. All being well, there should by now be a ring of lethal radiation across northern France, the Netherlands, and a band of English towns around a hundred miles from London.
Sherlock's tasks had been more parochial; destroying as much of outer London with its depots and supermarkets that he could. He'd become an experienced arsonist; many of the fires he'd set now covered miles of the suburbs, had been out of control for weeks. The whole of the South Bank was alight; he'd watched the billowing flames and smoke making the water of the Thames swirl red and orange and grey. Normally he would have feared the winds blowing the surrounding fires closer to Baker Street but his infernal luck was holding still.
He opened the door at the top of the stairs to the smell of coffee and found himself smiling. He hadn't thought that they'd meet again, before the end.
"Still no milk." Moriarty was propped up on the kitchen worktop, pouring the coffee with a badly shaking hand. He looked rough. Blistered pale skin, his previously glossy dark hair patchy and dull, and painfully gaunt. Radiation sickness. Hell wasn't doing a good job of keeping Jim Moriarty alive any more.
"That's the last of the coffee. Don't spill it." The last of most things. Sherlock had been destroying his supplies for weeks now, preparing to starve. Not that he would have been eating much anyway, thanks to the combination of the smoke and the nausea that was the first sign of his own overexposure to the drifting radiation.
He took both coffees from Jim, helped the man through to collapse on the sofa. "Did you get them all?"
"Oxford didn't go off. Don't think it matters." Jim coughed weakly. "Missed me, pet?" His eyes were as sharp as ever.
"I thought I'd miss seeing you die. I was sorry about that."
"Glad to oblige. Shall we check that they're still not paying attention?"
The familiar invitation. Sherlock had never really taken to sex; it involved too much ceding of control, and Jim had taken savage advantage of that a couple of times, while his one attempt to return the gesture had been turned against him with casual ease. But in the four years of planning and preparations that it had taken to get this far he'd been bored enough to let Jim play a handful of times.
"You don't look capable."
"Take your clothes off for me, lover, and we'll find out."
Jim reached out to a long white thigh, shaking fingers drifting over Sherlock's penis, and Sherlock felt the faintest stirrings of arousal. Jim must have felt it too because he smiled. "Electric blue", he murmured, let his hand drop and was silent. Fallen asleep, black coffee untouched.
After that Sherlock couldn't rouse him. For some days he stayed in the flat, eating nothing, waiting for Moriarty to die, but the man stayed comatose. Sherlock imagined a million million simulations, and always one in which Jim lived for another hour, another day.
In the end he took matters into his own hands. He'd long since scattered explosives around the house, enough that a single pile would blow the place sky high. Now he tried to set the fires, fighting the simulation's best efforts; the freak storm with the lightning that took the flat's roof off, let the rainstorm in to soak everything. Sherlock kept going for hours, finally managed to keep a small flame alight, watched it start to spread underneath the floorboards. Then he took the gun from the kitchen drawer and returned to the man on the sofa.
For a moment he was tempted to say something triumphal. Jim had threatened his friends, after all, had caused his death, and now Sherlock was killing him. But that had been a world in which Moriarty had died on the rooftop, or should have done. This was Hell and no-one deserved it, not him, not even Jim Moriarty. Splinter, he told the world, into a million more. Multiply the billions and billions of versions that were needed to produce just one where Jim lives. Break. The gun was loaded, the mechanism tested and perfect; he put the barrel to Moriarty's temple and fired.
There were gates, and mist, and an anatomically impossible angel. Sherlock stretched out a hand, looked closely at the unmarked nails, the healthy glow to his skin, and smiled.
"You broke Hell." The angel sounded bemused.
"Send me to Heaven and I'll do the same. I know what it takes, now."
Flutter of wings, half spread then back again. "You have to go somewhere. I can't just erase you."
"Why not?"
"No-one can be lost. Not even you."
Sherlock was about to insist on oblivion when a better idea presented itself. "Send me back, then."
"To reality?" The angel shook his head. "I can't. You're dead. That's what reality is all about. The rules can't be broken, there."
"I'm dead in one version. There must be more." A plan was coalescing.
"There's only ever one. Otherwise judgement would be impossible."
"But you could change the one there is. Rerun it. Start from the lab, when I talk to Molly." It was clear in his head now, what he had to do.
"That's technically cheating."
"Tough. You can do it. Otherwise I'm going to break things again."
The angel nodded reluctantly. " I can do it. But you'll end up back here eventually. Everyone does."
"Anything could happen by then. Send me back."
There was something that Sherlock couldn't quite remember. It nagged at him all through the careful planning of his fake suicide, but he couldn't take time off to hunt for it. Jim Moriarty was playing a vicious game with him and Moriarty was winning.
A flash of deja vu, on the rooftop; the sense, without reason, that he'd done this before. They sparred like lovers and the end rolled forward inevitably, twisting and turning but always closer to the edge. Angels, and hell. They were talking about angels? Sherlock had to keep his people alive, keep himself alive; he didn't have time for theological indulgences. So he put it to the back of his mind and there it stayed.
Until Jim Moriarty looked at him for one last time with those startlingly deep brown eyes and murmured "Well, good luck with that," As he pulled the gun from its holster his lips were still moving, silent, and Sherlock's brain- too slow!- translated "electric blue", just as the body fell backwards and away.
Sherlock looked down at Jim Moriarty, eyes open and vacant, blood pooling on the concrete. Still bleeding? He made no attempt to be sure. Instead he walked to the rooftop edge, pulling out his phone, readied himself to fall one last time, and live.
The End
Author's Note: I am most obliged to Iain M. Banks' Surface Detail for the notion of simulated hells and to several New Scientist articles for discussions of our reality as a simulation. Also to my son who helped me figure out how immortality had to work. The aggregation of these various ideas is all mine :-)
Thank you to everyone who has left comments. I will now reply!
Previously
Chapters 1 and 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter Nine
Staying Alive
It had been months since Sherlock had seen the sun. Smoke from the fires raging around London blocked out the sunlight, made the city look something like it must have done in the old peasoupers. The windows of 221B were shut tight but the smoke was everywhere, and Sherlock stopped halfway up the stairs to cough the worst out of his lungs. Below him the door latch clicked; John, leaving.
Life was increasingly unpleasant in the city, but further out was no better. Blights had killed the crops, carefully resurrected diseases had done for most of the surviving wild animals. The goats were long since gone, the lab animals abandoned. Sherlock was alone again with his oblivious ghosts. Jim had left nine months before with the most complex task ahead of him. They'd designed it so that he would stay as safe as possible, to minimise the simulation's interference, but nothing was straightforward any more.
The geiger counter clattered constantly now in Sherlock's pocket, evidence that at least some of Moriarty's work had succeeded. All being well, there should by now be a ring of lethal radiation across northern France, the Netherlands, and a band of English towns around a hundred miles from London.
Sherlock's tasks had been more parochial; destroying as much of outer London with its depots and supermarkets that he could. He'd become an experienced arsonist; many of the fires he'd set now covered miles of the suburbs, had been out of control for weeks. The whole of the South Bank was alight; he'd watched the billowing flames and smoke making the water of the Thames swirl red and orange and grey. Normally he would have feared the winds blowing the surrounding fires closer to Baker Street but his infernal luck was holding still.
He opened the door at the top of the stairs to the smell of coffee and found himself smiling. He hadn't thought that they'd meet again, before the end.
"Still no milk." Moriarty was propped up on the kitchen worktop, pouring the coffee with a badly shaking hand. He looked rough. Blistered pale skin, his previously glossy dark hair patchy and dull, and painfully gaunt. Radiation sickness. Hell wasn't doing a good job of keeping Jim Moriarty alive any more.
"That's the last of the coffee. Don't spill it." The last of most things. Sherlock had been destroying his supplies for weeks now, preparing to starve. Not that he would have been eating much anyway, thanks to the combination of the smoke and the nausea that was the first sign of his own overexposure to the drifting radiation.
He took both coffees from Jim, helped the man through to collapse on the sofa. "Did you get them all?"
"Oxford didn't go off. Don't think it matters." Jim coughed weakly. "Missed me, pet?" His eyes were as sharp as ever.
"I thought I'd miss seeing you die. I was sorry about that."
"Glad to oblige. Shall we check that they're still not paying attention?"
The familiar invitation. Sherlock had never really taken to sex; it involved too much ceding of control, and Jim had taken savage advantage of that a couple of times, while his one attempt to return the gesture had been turned against him with casual ease. But in the four years of planning and preparations that it had taken to get this far he'd been bored enough to let Jim play a handful of times.
"You don't look capable."
"Take your clothes off for me, lover, and we'll find out."
Jim reached out to a long white thigh, shaking fingers drifting over Sherlock's penis, and Sherlock felt the faintest stirrings of arousal. Jim must have felt it too because he smiled. "Electric blue", he murmured, let his hand drop and was silent. Fallen asleep, black coffee untouched.
After that Sherlock couldn't rouse him. For some days he stayed in the flat, eating nothing, waiting for Moriarty to die, but the man stayed comatose. Sherlock imagined a million million simulations, and always one in which Jim lived for another hour, another day.
In the end he took matters into his own hands. He'd long since scattered explosives around the house, enough that a single pile would blow the place sky high. Now he tried to set the fires, fighting the simulation's best efforts; the freak storm with the lightning that took the flat's roof off, let the rainstorm in to soak everything. Sherlock kept going for hours, finally managed to keep a small flame alight, watched it start to spread underneath the floorboards. Then he took the gun from the kitchen drawer and returned to the man on the sofa.
For a moment he was tempted to say something triumphal. Jim had threatened his friends, after all, had caused his death, and now Sherlock was killing him. But that had been a world in which Moriarty had died on the rooftop, or should have done. This was Hell and no-one deserved it, not him, not even Jim Moriarty. Splinter, he told the world, into a million more. Multiply the billions and billions of versions that were needed to produce just one where Jim lives. Break. The gun was loaded, the mechanism tested and perfect; he put the barrel to Moriarty's temple and fired.
There were gates, and mist, and an anatomically impossible angel. Sherlock stretched out a hand, looked closely at the unmarked nails, the healthy glow to his skin, and smiled.
"You broke Hell." The angel sounded bemused.
"Send me to Heaven and I'll do the same. I know what it takes, now."
Flutter of wings, half spread then back again. "You have to go somewhere. I can't just erase you."
"Why not?"
"No-one can be lost. Not even you."
Sherlock was about to insist on oblivion when a better idea presented itself. "Send me back, then."
"To reality?" The angel shook his head. "I can't. You're dead. That's what reality is all about. The rules can't be broken, there."
"I'm dead in one version. There must be more." A plan was coalescing.
"There's only ever one. Otherwise judgement would be impossible."
"But you could change the one there is. Rerun it. Start from the lab, when I talk to Molly." It was clear in his head now, what he had to do.
"That's technically cheating."
"Tough. You can do it. Otherwise I'm going to break things again."
The angel nodded reluctantly. " I can do it. But you'll end up back here eventually. Everyone does."
"Anything could happen by then. Send me back."
There was something that Sherlock couldn't quite remember. It nagged at him all through the careful planning of his fake suicide, but he couldn't take time off to hunt for it. Jim Moriarty was playing a vicious game with him and Moriarty was winning.
A flash of deja vu, on the rooftop; the sense, without reason, that he'd done this before. They sparred like lovers and the end rolled forward inevitably, twisting and turning but always closer to the edge. Angels, and hell. They were talking about angels? Sherlock had to keep his people alive, keep himself alive; he didn't have time for theological indulgences. So he put it to the back of his mind and there it stayed.
Until Jim Moriarty looked at him for one last time with those startlingly deep brown eyes and murmured "Well, good luck with that," As he pulled the gun from its holster his lips were still moving, silent, and Sherlock's brain- too slow!- translated "electric blue", just as the body fell backwards and away.
Sherlock looked down at Jim Moriarty, eyes open and vacant, blood pooling on the concrete. Still bleeding? He made no attempt to be sure. Instead he walked to the rooftop edge, pulling out his phone, readied himself to fall one last time, and live.
The End
Author's Note: I am most obliged to Iain M. Banks' Surface Detail for the notion of simulated hells and to several New Scientist articles for discussions of our reality as a simulation. Also to my son who helped me figure out how immortality had to work. The aggregation of these various ideas is all mine :-)
Thank you to everyone who has left comments. I will now reply!