Requiem at Reichenbach: Part I
Surely, Holmes, you recognize the singular importance of Porluck. Without him, our game of cat and mouse would have been impossible. His was the variable that balanced the equation of our matched wits.
Which is not to say that there was any unique significance to Porluck himself, of course. He was a common enough man, of whose mold London is filled with thousands of plaster copies: a thief, a fool, a follower. But that someone should play his rôle, that some actor should when the curtain rose speak his lines and make his gestures, was absolutely imperative to the design of both our lives.
Where would we be now, Holmes, were it not for Porluck? None of us can say for sure. I have taught you how even an infinitesimal change can, over repeated iterations, produce results that render the output virtually unrecognizable from the input. A single fleck of dust can so alter the path of an asteroid so as to crash it into a planet or to drive it into the star around which it orbited. Or, if such a fate had hitherto been destined it, then the same fleck of dust could be that which grants it reprieve. So would it be in a world without Porluck. Perhaps I would be the undisputed ruler of London, of England, of the British Empire, of the world. Perhaps you would be ruling by my side, or already dead from an assassin's air gun. Perhaps I would be rotting in a London prison, or husband to a lady of the house of Saxe-Coburg, or the Dean of Christ Church. Perhaps you would be laid to rest in Covent Green as a result of self-poisoning yourself with cocaine, driven to the drug by boredom, or perhaps you would have channeled your ability to other ends and have been London's best barrister, or boxer, or violinist, or scientist. Perhaps--when one is speaking of what-ifs and if-onlys, then that is all one can ever say: perhaps.
And yet even the fleck of dust is driven by the same inexorable laws as the asteroid, set in motion at the universe's creation. A world without a Porluck is as unthinkable as a world without you or I. We are all apiece variables in the same equation. There could have been no fates for us, Holmes, that did not lead us inextricably to this moment. It is as if all the universe, asteroids and flecks of dust alike, were set in motion as to conspire to bring us to this moment, locked in each other's arms as we fall to our deaths, the roar of the falls of Reichenbach behind us.
You must admit, Holmes, there is a beauty in its symmetry. Even if the laws of reason did not demand it, still would the laws of poetry.