The orange antimacassar is but a mere visual obstacle. Chapter 4 awaits below it.
I do apologize that I am not yet able to reply right away, but the public library will have to suffice for now. The last time they extended my 1/2 hour and they did this time too! Hooray. Fortunately it looks as if the weather next week will be a little better and I got a ride today for the last half mile. It's the little things we come to appreciate. Like Chapter 4, perhaps?
Sherlock Holmes in Space -- The Knower -- Chapter 4
a story by jabney based on (the now public domain) characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A chronicler must at times overhear things. It is, after all, part of the the nature of the task. I struggle mightily not to be a common gossip. Though, of course, the reader shall have to decide for himself or herself whether I have succeeded. I believe the following scene, spanning our initial meeting with Director Parrish and a subsequent evening I spent in the company of Edgar and Cody imparts some enlightening background, but you be the judge.
Cody said something to Edgar on the way out. I heard, "Baskervilles," "Parrish" and "Senior play disaster." And Director Parrish looked none too pleased with this conversation.
I later had an enjoyable evening when the pair treated me to a healthy quantity of delicious sparkling wines brought out from Earth. I finally decided to ask Cody and Edgar the reason for Director Parrish's dudgeon that time and they began to laugh.
"Dr Watson, You must imagine Director Parrish as a stage-struck youth, not the stodgy bureaucrat you see today. Right Edgar?"
"Cody, your disparaging of the ravages of age is duly noted, yet again. But I tell you, even if I were, as Knower, allowed to alter my age appearance, I would still not go for as young a look as yourself."
"It has its advantages, Edgar. It's not only looks that get restored. Youth does have benefits."
"But for an official such as the good Director Parrish, extreme youth may not be an advantage. Especially after the Baskervilles scene. Dr Watson, it is something we like to reenact to keep the memory of the disaster fresh in our memories."
"And to keep tormenting Director Parrish," added Cody with a smile.
Edgar ignored this. "Cody, you play Sherlock Holmes, I'll play Dr James Mortimer as enacted by young Mr Parrish."
..
Edgar (as Dr. James Mortimer): I have in my pocket a monolith.
Cody (as Sherlock Holmes): I observed it as you entered the room.
Edgar (as Dr. James Mortimer): It is a big monolith.
Cody (as Sherlock Holmes): You have presented an inch or two of it to my examination all the time that you have been talking.
Edgar (as Dr. James Mortimer): This monolith was in the hand of Sir Charles Baskerville, which created so much excitement in Devonshire. I may say that I was his personal attendant. He took this very sensuously and prepared for just such an end as he eventually wound up in.
..
"And that, Dr Watson, is precisely how the scene was played. To the letter."
"But gentlemen, how could you remember the exact wording?"
"It's quite easy when the words are one's own, and one returns to them again and again," said the older-looking of the two old school chums. "Cody and I thought Parrish would get a laugh."
Cody added, "We never thought he'd think those were the real words when we pasted them in his script."
Later, when I told him the story of Director Parrish's turn on the boards, Sherlock Holmes said, "Watson, I worry about these devices that everybody here seems so keen on using."
"I could certainly get used to having one back in London, Holmes. Keeping track of how much more often Mrs Hudson serves braised mutton than she serves boiled beef, for instance."
"Does she Watson? I make a point of never filling my brain cells with that sort of thing. I eat and am not emaciated. And you seem to have a healthy enough appetite." At this, Holmes looked at my midsection just as I was sucking it in.
"That's the beauty of these clever gadgets, Holmes, they free the brain cells from the very trivia that you so assiduously avoid. At least that's what I think. You must admit that much, must you not?"
"But at what cost, Watson? Consider even the rudiments of the language. There are words that one would expect to be unchanged over the years. "Paste" is one of those words. I dare say the youthful Parrish might have noticed the stiffness of one page bonded to another with mucilage. Even Lestrade would have been able to spot that."
"Funny thing Holmes, I recall Lestrade quoting your brother as saying, "Imagine if glue had a younger, less robust, sibling. That would be paste."
"Impossible, Watson. Not that I doubt Lestrade said it to you, but highly unlikely that Mycroft said something like that to, or in the presence of Lestrade. Or anybody else, for that matter. It's the sort of potentially untrue truism that my brother would never have allowed me to get away with. Much less, to have allowed himself to utter."
"Still Holmes, I don't see the problem with using "Pasting" to describe what Cody and Edgar did with Parrish's script."
"Nor do any of the travelers aboard this vessel. And yet, old friend, I fear there may be more to these clever gadgets than initially meets the eye."
Holmes then sank into his chair, lost in thoughts about tri-folds, no doubt. Holmes's use of the word, "Vessel," though, sent my mind in a different direction. We were on a ship in the vacuum of space. But what a space. What a curious assortment of inhabitants. And what a ship.
For being such an advanced design, the SS Oligarch comes with quite a history. Or so it would seem. Sherlock Holmes is to be allowed total access to the records and data: he is not a threat to the future, assuming the integrity of the time-line protocol. His memories of this event in future space are to be wiped from his brain. I, on the other hand, am being given the responsibility of vouchsafing a tale from the future to be written in the past and then discovered again in an even more distant future. All rather confusing, but Holmes and Edgar and Cody seemed to trust me well enough. At least well enough to explain the ship once I had been outfitted with my personalized tri-fold.
Holmes, of course, had a personalized tri-fold as well. Unlike his, mine had my name spelled correctly. The other difference was that my tri-fold had no medical information older than four hundred years. Oh, and mine had the time-line monitor.
My first experience with the time-line monitor was when I met the SS Oligarch's Surgeon General, Dr Hastings over dinner. A fine, polite fellow, it seemed, but his jumbled concepts of medical practices in various eras was evident in the conflation of his initial questions to me. "So tell me, Dr Watson," he said, "When you have a patient present with a case of the vapours, is your first choice bloodletting with leeches, or do you go straight to trepanning?"
Holmes later complimented me on the tremendous effort I exerted in not breaking into uproarious laughter. "I'm much better at hiding my reactions than you, Watson," he said, "But even I had difficulty suppressing a good laugh at that line of questioning."
"For all that, Holmes, none of us did such a good job at hiding our shock when that hideous klaxon sounded from my tri-fold. I'd have never thought such a small object as that capable of such a raucous racket. And all triggered by a comment about a single stale dinner roll and a name. I presume that fellow Sir Alexander Fleming must have committed some horrible act with a basket of them. Poisoned a Duke's rolls with cyanide or something, I suppose."
"Perhaps, Watson, but you know I really couldn't say. Even though it might save one life, or many lives. This future business is trickier than even I would have imagined. I am starting to see why poor Cody is so flustered all the time."
Holmes's observation about Cody was punctuated at precisely that moment by a frantic knocking on the door. "Mr Holmes, Dr Watson are you there? Please be there." It was Cody.
I got up to answer the door when I heard Holmes whisper, "Shh Watson, we'll wait a few moments, then we have a social call to make. It's time we met the Captain."
...
PS, Readers of WriteOn (a Thursday evening treat that I miss in my time of limited computer access) may recognize part of a spoof that I did in response to Doyle's original Dr James Mortimer/Sherlock Holmes dialogue. Doyle's Mortimer is more conventional than mine.