FIC: More Things in Heaven and Earth 1/9, 2/9
Title: More Things in Heaven and Earth 1/9, 2/9
Author: Unsentimental Fool
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters: Sherlock (for now)
Rating: PG (for now, 15 later)
Summary: "What's the last thing you remember?"
"Impact."
Chapter 1
Metaphysics with an Angel
"I don't accept this reality."
The thing in front of him looked patronisingly down its nose. "Most people don't, to start with. However much they've gone to church, read about it, they don't believe that it will really happen like this."
Sherlock shook his head, annoyed. "I'm not talking about ill considered and inconsistent theology. The survival of personality past the death of the brain is impossible. I refuse to engage in a fiction."
"What's the last thing you remember?" The creature's wings extended slightly, tucked back again behind his body. Sherlock took another look around. Just him and the...angel in a haze of white mist, and the huge gates suspended in front of them. An entirely conventional and uninspired rendition of the afterlife.
"Impact."
The angel looked rather impressed. "Most people don't remember that. The trauma blocks it. What was it like?"
"Like hitting a hard surface at high speed. I lost consciousness within a millisecond. I would have been killed almost instantaneously." He glanced around again. "Clearly that didn't happen."
"Surely death was the only possible outcome? And this is the afterlife."
"Thoughts and memories are encoded in the billions of neuron links within the central nervous system. Damage or destroy the brain and they are lost." Sherlock glanced down. He was wearing the clothes that he'd jumped in. Flecks of blood from Moriarty's final move were splattered in a fine pattern across his coat. As far as he could tell he was uninjured. He had no plausible theories whatsoever. Needed more data.
The angel. Human except for the folded white feathered wings extending high over its head and to within six inches of the ground. It was wearing a white robe of what was clearly fine linen from the way it hung, no indication of the method of bleaching used. Features were masculine, a mix of north african and caucasian. No trace of facial hair, no blemishes. No deodorant. No scent of any kind. Hair and nails perfectly even length, no flecks.
The feathers looked natural, though that didn't mean much. "Can you extend those wings?" he demanded.
They spread out to a fifteen foot span with an audible rustle and he felt the warm air around him move.
"No," Sherlock said scornfully. "They'd have to be connected to the upper musculoskeletal system and weigh at least twenty kilos, probably far more. You didn't flex any of the relevant muscle groups. Didn't anyone with a basic knowledge of anatomy get in on this charade?"
The angel laughed. "Certain physical laws are suspended here."
"How does that work, precisely?"
The creature looked at him, unsmiling. "There is an explanation that fits in entirely with your rational world view. You are very unlikely to work it out and it is not relevant to the true meaning of what is happening to you. You would do best to accept that what you see and hear here is real."
"This is not real." Sherlock dug his nails into his wrist, noting the pain sharp, the marks red and fading fast as he would expect. He had finally scraped up a hypothesis. "The damage from impact is causing one final split second hallucination before the disruption to nerves and brain tissue is severe enough to cause death."
Sherlock was thoroughly unimpressed by the nature of this hallucination, but Judeo-Christian stereotypes were powerful subconscious cues. He really would have preferred not to waste his final semi-conscious moment arguing metaphysics with a shoddily constructed angel. John would think it funny. John; a spasm of acute mental distress and he lost patience with this farce.
"There had to be a limit to the amount of subjective time that can be encompassed in a millisecond length brain event. I will die very soon. I would much prefer to do so without angels." He turned his back on the golden gates and the construct, gazed out into the white mist, waited.
It wasn't easy just to wait. Over and over his mind replayed the scene on top of the building. If he'd been faster he could have seized the gun. Not just faster-if he'd understood the lengths Moriarty had been prepared to go to in order to win. That the conflict with him was the only thing keeping the man alive. The clues had all been there. Moriarty had even spelled it out to him, but Sherlock had still been thinking about afterwards, after he'd won. And so he'd lost.
He glanced down at his watch. The seconds ticked by as normal. He'd been standing here for at least twenty five minutes.
Try an experiment. Divide a seven digit number-6456266- by a three digit one-814. He worked at it methodically, came to an answer. He took out his phone, noting automatically that there was no signal and no messages, and pulled up the calculator to check.
There was no possible way that a split second brainstate could complete that level of calculation, even if subjective time was massively extended. Reluctantly he shelved that hypothesis, turned back to the patient angel. It appeared that unlike Jim Moriarty he was somehow staying alive. For now.
Chapter 2
Flames, Feathers and Fairytales
"I suppose that I go through those." Sherlock gestured curtly at the ludicrous gilt constructions. The appeared to be nothing behind them but more whiteness.
The angel shook dark curls, eyebrows arched in mock surprise. "Do you know any basic Christian theology at all?"
"Deleted it. There are far more fairytales in the world than can sensibly be remembered." He'd remembered Hansel and Gretel though. Two small children stolen and poisoned in order to set him up. Moriarty had won that round, without question.
Grimm's fairy tales. Which had remained when other childish fantasies were discarded because he remembered his brother reading them to him, the steady, approving intonation of every righteous punishment inflicted on the wicked. For Mycroft what mattered was not that the children escaped but that the witch was burned.
Not a coincidence, Moriarty's choice of fairytale. Moriarty knew his childhood, precisely, thanks to Mycroft. Sherlock had never got past the first few smokescreens around Jim's identity. For the first time Sherlock felt the stir of profound gut-wrenching doubt. Had Jim Moriarty simply been better than him, every step of the way?
"Try it," the angel suggested. Since the alternative seemed to be to stand in this nothingness forever, Sherlock took a step towards the gates.
The angel moved, fast, was in his way, grown to twice its height, a sword (15 century bastard sword, most likely Germanic, scaled up in proportion to its wielder) raised and flaming along its length (the blue colour characteristic of butane, no obvious mechanism for gas delivery). Sherlock stepped back again rapidly and the angel returned to human proportion, sword vanishing.
"Nice trick." There had to be some basic principles behind what was going on. Not the dull made-up theological ones- clearly there was some sort of meaningless task that he was supposed to complete before he "moved on"- but proper physical ones. He needed more data. Much more data.
He tried walking away. After a few feet the stone under his feet ended in a cliff edge. Sherlock circled the limits of the space, stopping and backing up when the angel took on his martial aspect. He crouched to examine the stone, found it to be granite very similar to the outcrops of stone that he that he'd stood on in Dartmoor. To the naked eye there was no variance in the composition. There were no cracks or indentations.
The mist was odourless and around 16 degrees C. Without equipment he couldn't determine its composition but he suspected that he would identify it if he had the opportunity to run tests. Granite, butane and linen; this world was composed of real matter. It was the manipulation that seemed impossible. That and his presence.
Reaching one firm conclusion at least improved Sherlock's mood. Time to re-engage with the angel; there was nothing else to do here.
"If this is supposed to be the afterlife then where is everyone else?"
"Individual closed systems, for the moment."
Closed system. Not a theological term. Environmental? Biological? Engineering?
"There must be a lot of you."
"As many as required."
He tucked that away for future consideration. He was briefly tempted to ask what happened next but he knew the angel was waiting for that. He wasn't playing that game until he had to.
"May I have a feather, please?"
The angel attempted not to look startled. It extended one wing. "Take one." It clearly wasn't designed to tend to its own plumage; preening would require awkward twisting.
Up close the wing looked entirely similar to the little he knew of birds. Functional looking flight feathers on the familiar variant on upper limb bone structure, which made no sense anatomically because the creature had its full quota of upper limbs already.
The feather, plucked from the longest of the flight array, was swan's wing white and a good 15 inches long but otherwise unexceptional. When Sherlock broke the spine it hung as limp as he would have expected and when he twisted it enough to finally wrench it apart the broken edges of the hollow shaft were jagged and fibrous.
He held up the mangled object for its former owner's disconcerted inspection. "Real feathers, fake angels and remarkable special effects. Plus the whole not being dead thing. This is starting to get interesting."
Sherlock's initial disorientation had lifted. He was certain that the supernatural angle was a fraud, as supernatural explanations always were. He didn't know how he'd survived the fall but he had done. Had it been obvious enough to trigger Moriarty's gunmen? If his uncalled-for rescue had murdered his friends he would see every one of the men, women and angels behind this charade despatched each to their own personal hell.
Chapter 3 Threadbare Theology
Author: Unsentimental Fool
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters: Sherlock (for now)
Rating: PG (for now, 15 later)
Summary: "What's the last thing you remember?"
"Impact."
Chapter 1
Metaphysics with an Angel
"I don't accept this reality."
The thing in front of him looked patronisingly down its nose. "Most people don't, to start with. However much they've gone to church, read about it, they don't believe that it will really happen like this."
Sherlock shook his head, annoyed. "I'm not talking about ill considered and inconsistent theology. The survival of personality past the death of the brain is impossible. I refuse to engage in a fiction."
"What's the last thing you remember?" The creature's wings extended slightly, tucked back again behind his body. Sherlock took another look around. Just him and the...angel in a haze of white mist, and the huge gates suspended in front of them. An entirely conventional and uninspired rendition of the afterlife.
"Impact."
The angel looked rather impressed. "Most people don't remember that. The trauma blocks it. What was it like?"
"Like hitting a hard surface at high speed. I lost consciousness within a millisecond. I would have been killed almost instantaneously." He glanced around again. "Clearly that didn't happen."
"Surely death was the only possible outcome? And this is the afterlife."
"Thoughts and memories are encoded in the billions of neuron links within the central nervous system. Damage or destroy the brain and they are lost." Sherlock glanced down. He was wearing the clothes that he'd jumped in. Flecks of blood from Moriarty's final move were splattered in a fine pattern across his coat. As far as he could tell he was uninjured. He had no plausible theories whatsoever. Needed more data.
The angel. Human except for the folded white feathered wings extending high over its head and to within six inches of the ground. It was wearing a white robe of what was clearly fine linen from the way it hung, no indication of the method of bleaching used. Features were masculine, a mix of north african and caucasian. No trace of facial hair, no blemishes. No deodorant. No scent of any kind. Hair and nails perfectly even length, no flecks.
The feathers looked natural, though that didn't mean much. "Can you extend those wings?" he demanded.
They spread out to a fifteen foot span with an audible rustle and he felt the warm air around him move.
"No," Sherlock said scornfully. "They'd have to be connected to the upper musculoskeletal system and weigh at least twenty kilos, probably far more. You didn't flex any of the relevant muscle groups. Didn't anyone with a basic knowledge of anatomy get in on this charade?"
The angel laughed. "Certain physical laws are suspended here."
"How does that work, precisely?"
The creature looked at him, unsmiling. "There is an explanation that fits in entirely with your rational world view. You are very unlikely to work it out and it is not relevant to the true meaning of what is happening to you. You would do best to accept that what you see and hear here is real."
"This is not real." Sherlock dug his nails into his wrist, noting the pain sharp, the marks red and fading fast as he would expect. He had finally scraped up a hypothesis. "The damage from impact is causing one final split second hallucination before the disruption to nerves and brain tissue is severe enough to cause death."
Sherlock was thoroughly unimpressed by the nature of this hallucination, but Judeo-Christian stereotypes were powerful subconscious cues. He really would have preferred not to waste his final semi-conscious moment arguing metaphysics with a shoddily constructed angel. John would think it funny. John; a spasm of acute mental distress and he lost patience with this farce.
"There had to be a limit to the amount of subjective time that can be encompassed in a millisecond length brain event. I will die very soon. I would much prefer to do so without angels." He turned his back on the golden gates and the construct, gazed out into the white mist, waited.
It wasn't easy just to wait. Over and over his mind replayed the scene on top of the building. If he'd been faster he could have seized the gun. Not just faster-if he'd understood the lengths Moriarty had been prepared to go to in order to win. That the conflict with him was the only thing keeping the man alive. The clues had all been there. Moriarty had even spelled it out to him, but Sherlock had still been thinking about afterwards, after he'd won. And so he'd lost.
He glanced down at his watch. The seconds ticked by as normal. He'd been standing here for at least twenty five minutes.
Try an experiment. Divide a seven digit number-6456266- by a three digit one-814. He worked at it methodically, came to an answer. He took out his phone, noting automatically that there was no signal and no messages, and pulled up the calculator to check.
There was no possible way that a split second brainstate could complete that level of calculation, even if subjective time was massively extended. Reluctantly he shelved that hypothesis, turned back to the patient angel. It appeared that unlike Jim Moriarty he was somehow staying alive. For now.
Chapter 2
Flames, Feathers and Fairytales
"I suppose that I go through those." Sherlock gestured curtly at the ludicrous gilt constructions. The appeared to be nothing behind them but more whiteness.
The angel shook dark curls, eyebrows arched in mock surprise. "Do you know any basic Christian theology at all?"
"Deleted it. There are far more fairytales in the world than can sensibly be remembered." He'd remembered Hansel and Gretel though. Two small children stolen and poisoned in order to set him up. Moriarty had won that round, without question.
Grimm's fairy tales. Which had remained when other childish fantasies were discarded because he remembered his brother reading them to him, the steady, approving intonation of every righteous punishment inflicted on the wicked. For Mycroft what mattered was not that the children escaped but that the witch was burned.
Not a coincidence, Moriarty's choice of fairytale. Moriarty knew his childhood, precisely, thanks to Mycroft. Sherlock had never got past the first few smokescreens around Jim's identity. For the first time Sherlock felt the stir of profound gut-wrenching doubt. Had Jim Moriarty simply been better than him, every step of the way?
"Try it," the angel suggested. Since the alternative seemed to be to stand in this nothingness forever, Sherlock took a step towards the gates.
The angel moved, fast, was in his way, grown to twice its height, a sword (15 century bastard sword, most likely Germanic, scaled up in proportion to its wielder) raised and flaming along its length (the blue colour characteristic of butane, no obvious mechanism for gas delivery). Sherlock stepped back again rapidly and the angel returned to human proportion, sword vanishing.
"Nice trick." There had to be some basic principles behind what was going on. Not the dull made-up theological ones- clearly there was some sort of meaningless task that he was supposed to complete before he "moved on"- but proper physical ones. He needed more data. Much more data.
He tried walking away. After a few feet the stone under his feet ended in a cliff edge. Sherlock circled the limits of the space, stopping and backing up when the angel took on his martial aspect. He crouched to examine the stone, found it to be granite very similar to the outcrops of stone that he that he'd stood on in Dartmoor. To the naked eye there was no variance in the composition. There were no cracks or indentations.
The mist was odourless and around 16 degrees C. Without equipment he couldn't determine its composition but he suspected that he would identify it if he had the opportunity to run tests. Granite, butane and linen; this world was composed of real matter. It was the manipulation that seemed impossible. That and his presence.
Reaching one firm conclusion at least improved Sherlock's mood. Time to re-engage with the angel; there was nothing else to do here.
"If this is supposed to be the afterlife then where is everyone else?"
"Individual closed systems, for the moment."
Closed system. Not a theological term. Environmental? Biological? Engineering?
"There must be a lot of you."
"As many as required."
He tucked that away for future consideration. He was briefly tempted to ask what happened next but he knew the angel was waiting for that. He wasn't playing that game until he had to.
"May I have a feather, please?"
The angel attempted not to look startled. It extended one wing. "Take one." It clearly wasn't designed to tend to its own plumage; preening would require awkward twisting.
Up close the wing looked entirely similar to the little he knew of birds. Functional looking flight feathers on the familiar variant on upper limb bone structure, which made no sense anatomically because the creature had its full quota of upper limbs already.
The feather, plucked from the longest of the flight array, was swan's wing white and a good 15 inches long but otherwise unexceptional. When Sherlock broke the spine it hung as limp as he would have expected and when he twisted it enough to finally wrench it apart the broken edges of the hollow shaft were jagged and fibrous.
He held up the mangled object for its former owner's disconcerted inspection. "Real feathers, fake angels and remarkable special effects. Plus the whole not being dead thing. This is starting to get interesting."
Sherlock's initial disorientation had lifted. He was certain that the supernatural angle was a fraud, as supernatural explanations always were. He didn't know how he'd survived the fall but he had done. Had it been obvious enough to trigger Moriarty's gunmen? If his uncalled-for rescue had murdered his friends he would see every one of the men, women and angels behind this charade despatched each to their own personal hell.
Chapter 3 Threadbare Theology