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The ambient temperature of the room is 299.23K. The time is 20:31UTC+1, the date the 3rd of September 2103.
Holmes is sat in the chair closest to the fireplace with his feet on the seat and a book propped up against his thighs. It's a real book, made of paper and cloth, and there are precious few of those left in the world now, let alone in our flat. The cover is red, so it is most likely A History of Criminal Psychology or The Study of Poisons and Toxins, but I cannot be certain from this angle. Whatever it is, it must be fascinating, for he hasn't moved from that chair in forty-three minutes and seventeen seconds.
It's warm for an autumn evening and Holmes has his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. The window is open 174 millimetres and is letting in an evening breeze from the north-west. The Met Office predicts a lowest overnight temperature of 11 degrees Celsius and a bright morning with showers later in the day. I know this because the computers at Scotland Yard know it, and what they know, I know.
There is a lot that I know now that I did not know before, like weather forecasts and news reports and obscure articles of the law of the land. But for every new thing I learn, I seem to have forgotten something else. I cannot, for instance, remember my mother's face. I know her name, and that of my father and brother, for their birth and death records are still kept on file in the national databases to which I have access, but I don't remember her face, or the sound of her voice, or her favourite song. Likewise, my name appears in the records of my grammar school and of the University of London's archives, and yet I cannot recall a day of my childhood or of my later education, though all evidence suggests that I did in fact have both. My memories of the war are hazy, confused and scattered. I know the details of every action and retreat, the plans of each battlefield and a great list of the fallen. I recognise few of the names.
The ambient temperature of the room is 297.04K.
Even after the war my mind is muddled and fragmented. I have memories of events but no knowledge of the order of their occurrence, or indeed if they occurred at all. What I do remember is Holmes. Every clear image I have, he is involved somehow, as if everything which was not related to him has faded away beyond recall to bring him in turn into sharp relief. Even now as I see him in his chair by the fireplace he seems the most solid object in the room, more than the walls or the furniture which seem thin and insubstantial in the artificial light.
"You might consider taking a photograph, my dear fellow. It will certainly last longer."
He cannot possibly have known I was watching him. I can see his eyes move under their lids and they are still fixed on the pages of his book, just like they have been for the last forty-four minutes thirty-one seconds. I pretend he hasn't said anything. He can sustain the act for twenty-three seconds before his eyes flick up from the book, and I am rendered speechless as I always am when he looks at me from under his lashes. I avoid his gaze pointedly. He has turned the page now and under his hand I can see a stain on the cover which means it is in fact Harper's Visual Dictionary of Marine Life.
"Try page 345," I suggest. He offers me an indulgent smile in return and turns to the requested page, which makes him chuckle quietly.
"You've been going through my books again, Watson."
I have never opened that book in my life, though I see the page with its many-tentacled illustration as clearly in my mind as if I had read it not five minutes ago. I won't tell Holmes that, though.
The ambient temperature of the room is 292.98K.
"Shall I shut the window?" I ask. "It's getting a little cool."
"Is it? I hadn't noticed."
He is lying, of course. I noticed the brief flick of his eyes towards the window only a few seconds ago, when he was already thinking of getting up to close it. I get up instead, because if I don't then he will and he belongs in the chair by the fireplace with a book in his lap.
The paint on the window-frame is late 21st-century acrylic emulsion, the third coat added since the first time we lived here. The lower sash sticks a third of the way up; one day I will fix it, but not today. Outside, the street lamps have already chased away the shadows. They are brighter than anything we had the first time, but part of me is nostalgic for gaslight. It is softer, more forgiving, and I miss the times when the night was still dark. The curtains keep out most of the light, though, and the windows most of the noise. When they are closed, I can pretend for a while that it is 1903 instead of 2103.
"Surely the street is not that exciting," Holmes says from the chair, and I realise that I have been standing at the window for some time. I close the curtains and go to him, and my hand finds his shoulder and his head my side. "That was a good one, wasn't it?" he says, pointing at page 345. Cyanea capillata.
"I'm afraid I only remember it second-hand." That is not quite true either, but it is easier than the truth, which is that I remember it as if I had been him. It is a disconcerting memory, and one on which I try not to dwell too long.
"You were visiting a friend in Dorset. When you came home you were rather put-out to have missed all the excitement." He winds one long arm around my legs and drums his fingers on the outside of my thigh. It's irritating but I shan't complain; at least he no longer refuses to touch me. "You were less than complementary about my literary interpretation of the events."
"If I was, it was fair. You were downright mean about my writings!"
"Nonsense. True, as manuals on the science of detection and deduction they were sadly lacking, but I won't deny that they had some redeeming qualities when regarded as literature." He leans his head back on my arm and smiles up at me, and for a moment I am afraid I will be lost forever in his eyes. But he turns back to the book and for the hundredth time I am spared a fate vastly preferable to death. "Still, perhaps your scorn was deserved, if not necessary—ah! Heavens, your hands are cold."
I apologise quickly and remove my fingertips from the side of his neck. It is a simple matter to divert some of the excess heat from my processors to warm my extremities, but if I don't pay sufficient attention the temperature gradient tends to slip back over time. I wait a few awkward seconds and try again. This time he arches into my touch with a hum of pleasure.
"Much better," he sighs, and so I stroke the corner of his jaw with my thumb and calculate his heart-rate (a steady 62BPM) while he reads about the tentacled sea-creature he once charged with murder.
The ambient temperature of the room is 296.43K.
He doesn't like to talk about Sussex. I have so many gaps in my memory and he is happy to fill them... so long as they occur during one of our cases. Of our life after he gave up the business, all I know is that we spent it together in a cottage on the Downs. If I ask him, he avoids the question or, if he is feeling particularly petulant, ignores it entirely. I often wonder what we did each day; whether we walked along the cliff-tops, or bicycled to the nearest village, or waded out into the shallows of some beach or cove. I wonder if we had friends there—I know we had a dog, for that was the first thing that we discovered was missing from my mind. I wonder what it was like to awake each morning and see the sun caress his still-sleeping face (for I have rarely known him to rise before me and I like to imagine, though I am not at all certain, that our bedroom faced east). I wonder if we were happy.
"What are you thinking about?" He is looking up at me now with the beginnings of a frown around his eyes.
"Nothing much," I lie readily, though it hurts to do so. But it is never that easy with Holmes.
"Do you know that you produce a particular noise when you're thinking?" he asks, like it is an interesting fact he has just learned. "I have been studying the sounds of your... your processors, and your other mechanical workings. It is early days yet but I believe I have isolated several distinct tonal variations which indicate various stages of cognitive and physical exertion. And you, my dear Watson, are making your deep thinking noise."
"I assure you, my mind was wandering quite happily," I insist, but he looks unconvinced. "Have you really been... listening to me?"
"Of course. It bothered me that I could no longer satisfactorily read your body language. Now, I am quite comfortable here but I cannot talk to you all the way up there, so do come down here, my boy, and tell me what you were thinking about." He tugs on my arm and I have no choice but to kneel next to his chair. His arm rests easily around my shoulders, the book forgotten on the floor. "I am waiting, Watson," he chastises when I do not respond immediately to his request. "You more than anyone know I am not a patient man."
His eyes captivate me at two feet. At six inches I am utterly powerless.
"Sussex," I say. "I was thinking about Sussex."
His face clouds over. He tries to stop it from doing so, I can tell, but it does nevertheless. "It is a nice place," he says casually. "Perhaps we should visit sometime."
"Holmes," I start, but break off. It is some moments before I can finish my sentence, but when I do, I look him in the eye. "Were you happy?"
He doesn't answer immediately but closes his eyes. It is eight-point-three seconds before he opens them again. "Yes," he says. "I was happy. Does that satisfy you?"
I doubt I will ever truly be satisfied if I never regain those lost years, but I nod anyway. Once again, though, Holmes reads me like a book.
"I miss those years, John, and I won't deny it," he says, and the sound of my name on his lips thrills and scares me. "But neither will I mourn them. It may sound like the plot of one of your fantastic novels, but you and I are young men again and I am fundamentally selfish, so if it means I can live two lifetimes with you instead of one then I am all for it. And on a related topic, I believe you mentioned Mars."
For a moment I am so stunned and so touched by his 'selfish' admission that I do not register his last sentence at all.
"Did I?"
"You did, shortly after you dislocated my shoulder saving my life, and shortly before you wrenched it back into place."
I had indeed, when it had looked as though Moriarty would once more drag my friend down into the clutches of hell and I had grabbed Holmes’ hand in the very nick of time. To tell the truth, I was so relieved that I had moved fast enough to stop the unimaginable from happening that I had paid little attention to what I was saying, and I tell Holmes as much.
"Nevertheless," he says. "The idea has merit. You commented once on my apparent lack of interest in or knowledge of astronomy, but even I would consider it an opportunity wasted if I died a second time without having set foot on another world. Would you come with me?"
"If you would have me."
"If I would have you?" He seems almost disgusted at my questioning tone. "Have you listened to nothing I have been saying? Of course I would have you, but would you have me?"
I hardly know what to say. I can think of nothing finer than to spend the rest of my life at his side, and the thought that he might think the same of me still, after all the years we have already shared, is staggering in its poignancy.
"You know I'd follow you to the ends of the earth."
"And beyond?" There is a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
"If you like, then certainly!"
"Then Mars it is!" he cries. "But that is many years off yet, I think. England is England yet, for all that it has changed, and there are cases to be solved and criminals to be caught. In the meantime, my dear, dear fellow, it would probably be a good idea if you were to kiss me now, before I remember that I am, as you once put it, 'violently allergic to sentiment'." And he grins, and I laugh and I kiss him, just as he asked, and I remember the touch of his lips, the warmth of his hands, the softness of his hair and the beat of his heart.
The ambient temperature of the room is 298.15K.
Perfect.