The author apologizes in advance for the presence of any American spelling in a fan-fiction dedicated to one of the most recognizable Fictional British Personas of all time.
*Note: This story is slightly different from the original Sherlock Holmes series in that a character that has been killed off in the original serialisation was retained, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is portrayed as being a separate persona from Watson. Some of the dates have been altered slightly as well.*
Prologue: A Prelude to a Nap
"How's it coming along, old chap?" Holmes, up and about, iron constitution beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, stood by my bed, white-knuckled grip tightened around the railing. He clutched a tablet computer in his other hand as though it would provide all the answers in the world to everything earthly. That statement was not altogether incorrect.
"Fine, I suppose."
My hands betrayed me as I fumbled about for my pipe, dropping it on the floor. Holmes was about to bend down to pick it up, but I stayed him from doing so with an anxious hand on his arm.
A passing nurse, shockingly attired as was the norm in these modern times, picked it up for me and washed it fastidiously. One would think that there would be more cloth to go around in a society where all menial tasks were automated, rather than less of it, as was the impression that her clothes gave me.
I sighed as I bit down on my pipe, forbidden by this sterile society's iron restriction on smoking in Hospital wards. The familiar taste brought back memories of the circumstances that had landed me in this unfamiliar time.
"What can modern science not achieve?"
Sherlock and I were seated in his dining room, having just finished a magnificently roasted duck. I must confess that the wine had loosened my tongue somewhat, so the reader should excuse any irrationality that has corrupted my speech, for my honesty in setting this down was at least unadulterated.
"Pray tell, Watson. There are some things that should not be achieved." My incorrigible companion said, reaching for his snuff-box that had I any power over it, would have been thrown out of the window, along with most of his test tubes, which contained regrettably volatile reagents.
"Doctor Samson, renown within the medical profession, a polymath who is an expert on the winter habits of bears, squirrels, and all hibernating animals in addition to being one of the best chemists in the country, has invented a method of trapping a fully-grown bear in a state of hibernation so deep that it makes its natural pseudo-death seem like a fitful nap. His scientific achievement, though to the layman merely a curiosity, is intriguing enough to the academician that he may henceforth, after a ceremony at Buckingham Palace, be addressed as Sir Doctor Samson." I read aloud as Holmes leaned forward, undisguised intellectual hunger shining from beneath his eyelids at the news.
"Really, the things that Man can do with idle time and an excess of money!" I laughed, lowering the paper. "Our European civilization has advanced its arts and amassed a staggering overabundance of resources, notwithstanding our recent conflicts, so much so that what is unnecessary for practical men necessarily becomes a subject of inquiry."
"Beware, Watson." Holmes remarked with less than his usual amount of good cheer, even for him. "What is unnecessary to-day shall become to-morrow's lifeline, and today's monarch might be stretched out upon his deathbed on the morrow."
He reached across for the paper as though to snatch it from my grasp, and I must confess that I handed it over somewhat grudgingly.
"I say, Holmes," I began, slightly put out, "What the Devil is bothering you? Is that man some base criminal putting on the cloak of respectability as so many of your jailbirds have been wont to do?"
"Nothing. Only that this man might have the keys to the future, and they have been tossed in the dust! And speaking of dust, here, have some." He extended his snuff box to me before I could say anything more, dark mood suddenly lifted. I laughed, refusing him politely by informing him that I was content with my pipe. He could be truly disarming when tact was called for.
Two pinches of tobacco later, I dressed for the walk outside, where I hailed a hansom cab and directed him to proceed with all speed to my matrimonial home, where my wife, Mary, was awaiting my return in our bed.
Our efforts have yet to result in a child, but she believes with great feminine faith that one should not count one's chicks before the eggs are laid, let alone hatched – or fertilized. The sight of my home with the bedchamber being the only room lit as though by flames of passion, even from within the cab, caused circulations of blood in certain regions that drove from my mind all thought of Holmes and his esoteric sayings.
Looking back, I realized that I should not have taken his brief moment of severe sobriety so lightly. I would soon find out that he had been speaking prophetically – perhaps even more so than he was accustomed to doing.
After a pleasant night's sleep, Mary and I received a startling piece of news over a dainty breakfast of croissants and jam accompanied by some half-boiled eggs. Doctor Samson was inviting me, and whoever I would care to bring along, to inspect the fruits of his labours. The letter that he sent cited my credentials as a respectable man in the medical community and a soldier that had seen actions fighting on the front lines for our Empire. Surely I, a seasoned war veteran, could see the practical value in his new discovery.
Though I scoffed at the thought, I wore a smile on my face as I asked my wife if half a Sunday spent inspecting a scientific discovery would agree with her tastes. Some men are absolute masters of their wives; I, having almost been separated from her by quite a fair sum of money in her favour which was mistakenly thought to exist in the form of a treasure of six pearls, am far less inclined to exercise dominance for its own sake, if at all.
"But of course, darling," she cooed, dabbing at her lips with an immaculately white napkin. "I would love to see what could capture my husband's fancy so, when it should have been solely in my possession."
"All right," I huffed, blushing as only a man could at his wife titillating him in the presence of their servant-boy. "Hum! The letter calls upon us to be present at the docks of London at one o'clock. No hurry at all."
The rest of the morning was spent taking in the fresh Sabbath air outside our domicile. After dressing for the occasion, I scribbled a note to our houseboy, instructing him to have some light refreshments ready for us when we returned.
Mary and I departed, and I glanced at the headlines once more as we left our home, marvelling at how the year 1893 had found England alive and well as we neared the next century.
"Halloa!" I was not surprised at all to see Holmes standing beside Doctor Samson at the Docks. I should have expected no less given the reverence that Holmes had displayed towards the good doctor's discovery the last night. Around them was a pretty crowd filled with not a few important faces, some of them gathered from abroad.
"Good day, Watson! And good day to you too, Miss Watson! I trust that you had a good night's rest with your husband, though it was probably not without quite a fair amount of activity beforehand."
"Nothing can hide from your keen gaze, Holmes." I laughed resignedly while Mary blushed and feigned mild offense.
"Well, here we are!" Doctor Samson huffed. "I would like to first of all thank Mister Holmes for rendering a great service unto me, namely that of recovering a vital piece of machinery which was instrumental in my experiments. Though he claims that it was but a trifling matter, accepting but half of the sum that I had offered him for his efforts, I deem it of sufficient import that I am compelled to pay for the other half in any other way that I can, even if it is by offering half a Sunday's diversion."
I recalled the case of a certain Doctor Samson that I had neglected to publish, deeming it insignificant and unremarkable since it had been solved in the space of several hours by Holmes and involved a disgruntled employee of a courier company. I shall not mention it in detail here.
"Now, as you can see, the squirrel in this metal cage is alive and well-fed."
Doctor Samson held up a wire cage, within which crouched a grey squirrel that looked around fitfully, as though already comprehending the ordeal that lay ahead.
"I shall now place it in this chamber, which I have used before on bears to induce hibernation. A special gas that I have synthesised shall be injected into this chamber, which the squirrel shall be allowed to inhale for about five minutes. It shall be asleep after the first minute, but for safety's sake, it should be allowed that period of time for the chemicals in the gas to diffuse throughout its body."
Doctor Samson clasped his hands, noting that the sea breeze had brought a blush to some of those present.
"Surely you all must be wondering about the reason for my odd choice of venue. Allow me to explain: This chamber is cooled by a refrigeration unit that requires seawater for its operation. Of course, refrigerators do not generally use seawater for heat dissipation, but I have built a refrigerator that uses seawater in such a manner to meet the demand for an abrupt drop of temperature as ordinary refrigerators cannot provide. Imagine if you will, a drop in temperature from what you are experiencing right now to twenty degrees below zero in a quarter of a second! Perhaps a more efficient means of cooling may be invented later, but for now, I have seized upon seawater as the best means of dissipating the tremendous amount of heat removed from the chamber."
Doctor Samson inserted the cage and its unfortunate occupant into a large metal chamber that was sizable enough to fit three men. He shut its door, sealing it shut by means of a single clamp.
"Please do not worry about the gas that I shall now introduce into the chamber. It is quite airtight, I assure you." Doctor Samson said upon noticing some worried faces in the crowd.
A slight hissing was heard, and then for the next five minutes, he answered questions from the crowd. I recall only the last question from a young boy who held his respectable father's hand in his right and suckled on his own left thumb while doing so.
"Can we use it on the deer at London Zoo?"
The crowd tittered a little, and I myself smiled in gentle amusement at the boy's ignorance. Deer do not hibernate.
"Of course." Doctor Samson said, surprising all of us greatly. A murmur ran through the crowd as the Doctor ventured into uncharted waters that might lead to glory or ruin for his reputation, depending on the words that he chose next.
"I have conducted experiments with deer as well as other non-hibernating animals, such as dogs, cats, mice, monkeys and chimpanzees. All of them were successfully brought into a deeper state of hibernation than even a bear in the dead of winter, and were successfully revived when subjected to warmer temperatures and the invigorating effects of oxygen."
The crowd was uncertain now. The general consensus on remaining undecided was his cue.
"Bring out the dog!" He called, glancing at his watch. Five minutes had already passed. "Vent the gas into the ocean!"
The seawater some distance away from the tubes running from the machine into the water suddenly appeared to boil, churned by the passage of a noxious-looking green gas.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you –"
Doctor Samson opened the door to the chamber to extract the squirrel within. "A sleep that would have baffled Morpheus. Here it is!"
The doctor held the cage up with a flourish. He immediately placed it upon a tray, clapping a glass lid over it.
"-Ee's dead!" The little boy who had asked his question earlier cried out, as the Doctor's assistant led a large greyhound into the chamber.
"No, no, lad! Merely asleep! However closely you look, you won't see him breathing, but just you take off the lid and wait for a while – He'll awaken when he gets enough fresh air!"
The doctor clamped the lid shut, and by the means of some apparatus that formed a connection with the hollow handle of the glass lid, pumped a colourless gas into it.
"Carbon dioxide, ladies and gentlemen," He said, "No need to fear! None of the green gas that you saw earlier is now necessary. I repeat: It's oxygen that he needs to awake now. As long as he is not exposed to it, he will continue in this pseudo-death, not breathing, unfeeling, neither dead nor alive – until sufficient oxygen enters his nostrils and diffuses to his lungs."
The machine hissed and hummed, now administering the gas to the martyr within. The glass container was passed around, its contents scrutinized intently by all. When the squirrel was passed to me and my wife, Holmes, who had waked over to join us, scrutinized it with far more zeal than did I, and perhaps with far less of the revulsion that doctors should not ever display.
"Fascinating, Watson." He breathed "The squirrel has truly stopped breathing. See how its ribcage remains stationary! Ah, but what a fine specimen it is! One of the largest that I have seen."
"I am no veterinarian, but I must say that it looks, to all intents and purposes, dead." I remarked. My wife also peered through the glass, slightly distressed that the squirrel should be subject to so disagreeable a treatment.
"It will wake up when you open the jar, won't it?" She half-demanded of the Doctor.
"Absolutely. Go on, give it a shake! It won't respond even if I were to fire off a pistol next to it. Well? Anyone else? No? Then permit me – "
The doctor removed the covering of the jar, standing back a little and waving his hand over it to dispel the carbon dioxide.
"And now we wait for about five minutes for the squirrel to begin breathing. It shall be awake and aware of its surroundings after another five, leaving us all with enough time for some afternoon tea." He joshed.
"For us, it would indeed be ten minutes, but for him, I daresay that it would be an eternity in a purgatory painful enough to rival that of Dante's," Holmes whispered wickedly in my wife's and my own ears.
"Perhaps." I whispered in reply. "He looks rather confident, though."
"Pooh! Watson, surely a medical man such as yourself are a better judge of men! See how he fiddles with the ring on his right finger!"
"Perhaps it is merely a habit of his," My wife remarked, "His hands look steady enough to me. His motions are unhurried and smooth."
"Whether he is moving spasmodically or not has nothing to do with it; the mere performance of the act is enough to give him away. I have been observing him long before you came. He has not toyed with the ring on his finger though he had nothing else to do with his hands. Since he only finds the occasion to do so now, I may infer that it is a nervous habit of his. Look how he leans! Earlier on, he was standing with his weight balanced on the balls of both his feet; now he favours his left, though he does not shift his weight from one foot to the other as most men would do. This is practiced composure at its best. The man is probably stewing in his own juices on the inside."
"Oh, Holmes! You see everything!" My wife tittered playfully, covering her mouth with her fan.
"We see everything too, dear, but do not make sense of it as he does." I paraphrased one of Holmes' reprimands that had once been directed at me with far greater frequency when we were fellow lodgers, offering my old friend a mischievous grin. He chuckled at my verbal plagiarism.
The Doctor had been unnecessarily modest. The squirrel was already twitching after five minutes; by the eighth, it was already wide awake, though it appeared more torpid than usual, as though it had awoken after three months' worth of hibernation rather than ten minutes' or so of the same.
"Now bring out the dog!" He called out, mopping at the moisture that had gathered on his brow though the December chill threatened to freeze any uncovered flesh.
The canine test subject, which had gone unnoticed as the squirrel was being passed around, was brought out to hushed murmurs of anticipation from the crowd.
"And now, I shall call upon Doctor Battenford from the Royal Medical Society to examine this dog. Doctor, over to you."
Doctor Samson stepped away as Doctor Battenford pressed a stethoscope to the dog's chest.
"It appears to be dead – no pulse." He muttered. A hush fell upon the crowd, and then came the inevitable eruption of mirthful scorn. Doctor Battenford was about to remove his stethoscope, but Doctor Samson stayed his hand.
"Didn't I say that the animals would enter a sleep that was deeper than hibernation earlier? Patience, patience! The dog shall be revived soon enough. Dear Sir, I trust that you shall humour me, if only for a few more minutes. Larger animals do require more time to be revived."
The next five minutes passed all too slowly by for the animated doctor. Every minute or so, he would shoot his colleague a quick glance, and a shake of the other man's head would be his only response.
Eight minutes. Nine minutes. The nervous doctor was squeezing the ring upon his finger as though he might, by sheer force, reshape the metal.
Ten minutes. The crowd was beginning to titter dangerously. "Wait! Silence! Silence, I say!" Doctor Battenford leaned excitedly over the dog, excitement carved into the deep lines of his face. The crowd fell silent as his request came with the force of an order.
"Incredible. Marvellous!" He breathed "The dog's heart has just resumed beating!" The crowd was petrified for a moment as they contemplated what he had just said, and then a roar of acclaim washed over all present. Doctor Samson, surely now Sir Doctor Samson, took a bow, cheeks flushed more from excitement and relief than from the cold December air.
"Thank you, thank you! Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, I shall now answer any and all of your questions!"
Doctor Battenford was just removing his stethoscope from the dog's rib as though he still could not quite believe that the dog had just returned from the dead. Eyes full of childlike wonder, he bent over the dog's head to examine it when the canine patient woke up and bit him in the neck.
The crowd's surprised cry was not half as loud as Doctor Samson's wail of despair. Sherlock and I glanced at each other and lunged forward to help.
"Help! For God's sake – Help!" the poor man cried out. Sherlock and I grabbed at the dog, working to pry it away from the Doctor's throat. It growled at us like the Devil incarnate, and that was when a well – meaning but clumsy member of the audience rushed forward to help, but ended up butting Holmes and I into the chamber behind us.
"John!" Mary shrieked, rushing forward to help pull me out of the chamber. I would have gotten out without trouble, save that the world was tilting dangerously now and that Holmes was obstructing me, his body curiously limp. My eyes widened in horror as I saw that he had fallen with his face pressed into one of the vents, which was now leaking the vile green gas that had subdued the squirrel and dog.
Her body fell upon mine, and the overthrow of our balance completed itself as our world was plunged into darkness by the chamber's door swinging shut under its own weight.
I struggled a little, and fell into nothingness.