Precisely Measured
-John Hamish Watson
Mycroft had said it had to be tonight.
He'd called me to the Diogenes club again he said it was important, that he needed to know for his brother sake, for mine. "I need to know John, lives depend on you again I'm afraid." He'd raised that eyebrow of his, he knew the bloody buttons to push alright. He never did answer whose life would depend on me but I could only assume it was Sherlock's who else would be damaged by words he writes?
It felt wrong invading Sherlock's privacy like that, but he swore to me it was crucial to do this; that I had it in my power to save lives if I did this one thing that Sherlock himself wouldn't think twice about doing to me.
I waited until I knew he'd left the house. I crept into his room to find it, it was dark and dismal had always been but lain on the bed between ruffled sheets was what I needed. The leather bound journal looked ancient until you noticed the elastic strap used to close it and the fountain pen clipped onto that.
He would certainly know that I'd touched it, opened it invaded his privacy as I resented when he did it to me. He'd probably assume I'd planned it from the out, get him to write about how he feels just so I could keep track of it by reading it. My hands trembled at a little as I picked it up, pulling the elastic away revealing the first page, dated last week.
He talked about empathy, using spiteful words and venomous tones aiming them at me. Even reading it, it's like he predicted I would be here. The very last word on that page struck me like a dagger.
Hypocrite.
I couldn't deny it to myself, here I was reading his personal thoughts when it frustrated me as soon as he did it. I had to keep reading, even if it felt like kicking him in the teeth after word I read. Mycroft had said to look for something unusual, but every page after the first was less personal it looked like he'd started to use it as a notebook for his research.
Reading down the first page was the usual experience of reading Sherlock's notes which meant I was left with utterly no clue.
The Copenhagen Interpretation: A study into the uncertainty principle
"∆χ ∆p ≥" h/2
As the equation so acutely puts it, we can establish that knowing both the position and momentum of any given quantum particle at one moment is an impossibility. Much like the observer effect the mere act of measuring one of those quantities changes the other, thus if you were to measure where an electron was with any accuracy its velocity and momentum would change in the same instant.
This leaves us with the rather simplistic adage to describe the phenomenon:
The more precisely one quantity is measure, the less accuracy you have of in knowing the other quantity.
It went on like that, just words with little meaning to me. After a while I placed the diary back exactly how it was, very sure I'd missed some detail or other that would incriminate me later. I walked out of the room on slightly wobbling legs, I had to tell Mycroft what I'd read about regardless of its importance to me.
Picking up my phone on the way to my bedroom I dialled in Mycroft's personal number, the one he would actually answer first ring, and he did.
"John I assume you've done it." His voice full of deep British accent.
"Yes" I paused trying to compile my thoughts. "But there wasn't anything different just what looked like another research project of his."
"What was the topic?" He asked curiously, maybe even slightly amused.
"Something about" I could feel my eyebrows furrowing even over the phone "an uncertainty theory, I think it was something about physics but you know what his notes are like"
"Ah, my dear brother is improving with his codes I see. Thank you John, it's what I needed" he hung up.
Just like that, he'd made me betray the trust of his own brother and my own flat mate and hung up as if it were nothing more than a game he played every day.