"Excuse me!"
Sherlock slowed down from his normal power walk as he realized that this was directed at him, and let the owner of the voice catch up. "Sorry for bothering you," the voice continued, as its owner entered his view. "I'm..."
Early-mid 20s - clean new clothes - likely white collar occupation
no field experience - lived alone
Average social skill - likes Chinese food - hasn't read extensively
"Norm Spellman," Sherlock interrupted, shaking his hand. "Am I right in thinking your PhD is in anthropology?"
Norm was too stunned to reply, and the two of them stopped.
"I'll take that as a yes," Sherlock said, and then halfway through the sentence realized the effect it would have on Norm. "Congratulations," he added, with no particular warmth.
"You can't possibly have memorized the entire crew roster," Norm replied.
"I think I lost interest around the 50th name," Sherlock said, and started walking again.
Norm blinked, and then ran to catch up.
"Sherlock Holmes," Sherlock continued as Norm lined up beside him, and offered a hand.
Norm shook it again absently, still awestruck, and mumbled, "Grace is going to be so glad she asked for you."
"Was there another option?" asked Sherlock.
"You know about Tom Sully?" Norm replied.
"Killed incompetently by British spies, I remember."
"...I was told he was mugged," Norm said, still trying to work out if he believed his ears. This was not what he was expecting to hear.
"That's what they tried to make it look like," Sherlock explained as they walked through the door into the biology lab. "The idiots left his bank cards behind and back-stabbed him. Though they wouldn't have got anywhere with the cards, but a mugger wouldn't have known that."
"Wouldn't have..." Norm hesitated, but then worked it out. Everyone knew the security behind most credit cards could be broken easily, so Sherlock could only mean there wasn't anything to take. "The program pays ridiculously well!" he almost shouted.
"And he knew they were on to him, so he gave it... Jake's the other option."
It wasn't a question - Sherlock's tone seemed to suggest he was absolutely certain of the fact. Considering how uncommon the ability to divine things out of thin air was, Norm thought about pulling the thread.
"What makes you think Jake has Tom's money?" Norm probed.
"He showed up at 221B in a new wheelchair, too valuable to be from benefits alone," Sherlock said, "hung-over."
Norm was taken aback. "He'd really splurge his brother's money like that? That's pretty disrespectful."
"Isn't it obvious they hated each other?" Sherlock said, and he raised an eyebrow at Norm.
"Err…?" said another voice.
The two of them were standing between two large cylindrical tanks that glowed with an eerie blue light. Norm still felt slightly creeped out by the Avatars floating in them like some high-tech Frankenstein's project – although Sherlock didn't seem to react to them at all. Instead, he glanced over the man who had spoken.
Half-Pakistani - One child - Collects rare stamps
Bisexual - Natural animal repellent - Buddhist
Left-handed - Writes erotic romance
"I don't believe we've met?" the new man in the lab coat said.
"This is Sherlock Holmes," Norm said, "Sherlock, this is… you've probably already worked it out…?"
"You're either Patel or…," Sherlock said, and stopped as Max Patel's eyes lit up. "Nothing. Good afternoon."
They shook hands as Max replied, stunned, "You've memorized…"
"He didn't," said Norm.
"And you're here to..." Max asked Sherlock.
"Drive an avatar, solve a mystery," he replied, now looking at one of the displays attached to the side of the tank, "...and you know how to get rid of the fifth finger, don't you?"
"What?" they both replied.
"...Nevermind, it wouldn't work without some sort of QMM inhibitor."
"What were you saying about Jake and Tom?" Norm asked, eager to change the subject before they wound up discussing biochemistry several years out of his league.
"They hated each other. Wasn't that obvious?" Sherlock replied.
He sighed at their blank looks. "He was a doctorate-level bio-engineer hired for the most lucrative job this side of the Jovian Ring Imperium, and yet his brother is from a slum, has health insurance worth nothing, and treats a high-end wheelchair as a luxury item, in contrast to repair or augmentation, and that's a lack of ambition. Clearly, Tom doesn't like Jake enough to think him worth any money, and Jake almost certainly resents him for it. Not surprising that he wasn't that annoyed when I said no."
"Said no to what?" Norm said.
"I'm a consulting detective. Jake asked me to investigate Tom's murder, weren't you listening?" Sherlock replied curtly.
"And you said no?" Max chimed in. "Why?"
"It looked boring," Sherlock said simply.
"You knew all these things without actually investigating anything?" Norm gasped. "How?!"
"I asked Jake a few questions and the deduction was simple," Sherlock said irritably.
"It was simple to see that Tom was killed by spies?!" Norm gasped.
"Elementary, my dear Norm!" was the frustrated reply. "Repeating it will not make it any more believable!"
(Minutes later...)
"Urgh," moaned Sherlock, as his forehead connected with the desk with a clunk. "Video is too linear!"
"We've got to get into the habit of documenting everything," Norm said. "It's all part of the science."
"And good science is good observation," Max muttered under his breath, waiting for another caustic reply.
There was a pause; Sherlock didn't move. "I wrote the website on good observation," he said, with his head still on the desk. "Nobody read it."
"What's it called?" Norm asked.
"The Science of Deduction," Sherlock replied.
There was another awkward pause.
"I don't mind that you've not read it," Sherlock continued, "but it does rather prove my point."
(A few hours later...)
"Grace Augustine is a legend," Norm exposited. "She literally wrote the book on Pandoran botany."
"Surface inconsistences and all, from what I remember," Sherlock replied dismissively, although he seemed to be very preoccupied. At least, Norm guessed he was, since he didn't bother to expand on what anomalies he meant.
"Though sometimes she likes plants more than people," Max said to Norm, as the three of them walked into the link room.
"Much like our Dr. House over here," said Norm with a drip of sarcasm, but Sherlock wasn't paying attention to him.
Norm also wasn't paying enough attention, and skidded to a halt as he realized that Grace Augustine was standing right in front of him. "Norm," she said as though wielding a microscope, "I've heard good things about you. How's your Na'vi?"
"'awve ultxari ohengeyä..."
"'awvea," Sherlock corrected absently, although he was clearly not paying attention to the conversation.
Norm stopped and Grace glared at him, although he took a moment to return to reality and pick up on it. When he did, he just looked surprised, as though he didn't know what he had done wrong. But then, her gaze met Norm's again, and she looked at him as though she was asking permission for something, although he couldn't work out what it was. He tried to gesture "yes", and she went back to looking at Sherlock.
Then she said to him, «I've not heard anything about you, Mr. Holmes.» in perfect Na'vi.
To both Max's and Norm's surprise, Sherlock smiled at her, and replied fluently «I try not to draw attention to myself.»
«And how are you so good at Na'vi with no field experience?» she asked.
«Practice» Sherlock replied smoothly. «Although I think it's very memorable, nobody else seems to agree. John picked up almost… ~ I think Norm just ran out of buffer," he continued, swapping languages without even a pause.
Norm realized that their attention was suddenly focused on him. "You were... talking slightly too fast, that's all," he muttered, somewhat sheepishly.
"Anyway, it seems I was right in choosing you over Sully," Grace said.
"Out of interest, why consider me at all? You at least know that a former Marine could follow instructions," Sherlock said. "You said earlier that you don't know anything about what I'm like."
"You don't advertise and yet Sully knew you by name," Grace replied with a smile. "Now, he could have easily been conned, but how and why would a detective who takes no fee con people into thinking he's better than he actually is? For that matter, why does a detective who ordinarily takes no fee investigate at all?"
"Because I was bored," Sherlock replied simply. "Although you should've shipped Jake too."
"The extra avatar would've cost far too much," Grace said. "Not to mention his salary."
"I think you'd find the psychological data would have been more than worth it, especially if you had him video log everything," Sherlock replied, and Norm felt himself shrink as Sherlock smiled dryly at him. "You'd also end up not having to pay him."
This got a raised eyebrow from Grace, and Norm slowly realized there'd been a non-sequitor. Considering what Sherlock had said earlier, it sounded as though Jake would be eager for more money. Sherlock seemed to notice the confusion, so he explained. "Because he'd stay here until he died or the company went bust, and in the latter case even then you might have trouble moving him."
"What makes you think that?" Norm asked.
"He's a poor, friendless" said Sherlock, counting on his fingers, "disillusioned, financially reckless urbanite. Who's paraplegic," as though the connecting logic where the most obvious thing in the world. He noticed how non-pulsed the three others were, so explained some more. "If you linked him into an avatar and let him run around outside, he's going to get psychologically addicted in a matter of hours, perhaps single-digit days at best. Of course, that's going to mean he'll spend as much time in it as possible, which causes a positive feedback loop and within a few weeks his self-image is going to slide around until he thinks of himself as a Na'vi in a broken human body. Once that's happened, it's not even worth trying to send him home, since he's not going to want to go and once there would be quite likely to off himself in relatively short order."
"And you think all that would be worth the cost of an avatar?" Norm wavered.
"Absolutely. Apart from all the psychology you'd learn, I believe it's the sort of thing people make books or movies out of. If you made a movie and edited it to pull peoples' heartstrings, you could probably make billions."
Norm gaped as he let this sink in, and felt the next sentence bubble up inside him - he didn't really need to think about the words. "You heartless bastard..." he said surprisingly loudly, before trailing off as he couldn't think of a way to finish that sentence.
"I prefer 'high-functioning sociopath', if it's all the same," Sherlock replied without missing a beat.
Grace hadn't reacted as much as Norm, and simply looked at Sherlock quizzically. "You'd seriously have me sacrifice Jake's sanity purely for science?" she said, disbelief clear.
"I imagine he's not going to achieve anything more impressive on his own," Sherlock replied dryly.
"That's seriously your response...?" Norm began.
"...He has a point," Grace finished. "Unfortunately."
Norm looked over Grace's expression, trying to find some hint of sarcasm, or jest.
"...You're not joking," he said, flatly. "You'd seriously use Jake as a guinea pig."
"He would enjoy it immensely," Sherlock pointed out.
Which was true, Norm had to admit. Even messing around for a few hours after all the week's testing was done was fun. You just lost yourself in whatever you were doing, whether that was playing basketball or betting who could climb a tree the fastest, or just generally being superhuman…
And when it was time to get out, someone would always ask, without fail, "Do I have to?"
They said it as though they joking, of course. But now Norm wasn't sure it was always a joke.
"Yeah, he would…" Norm replied, tuning back to reality. He didn't add, I would too.
A few days later, Sherlock appeared from seemingly nowhere and handed Norm a phone. "Call this number and ask for John," he said.
"John…?" Norm stammered as he took the phone.
"Dr. Watson. Tell him you're my new colleague," Sherlock said, and then vanished through a door before Norm could ask him how he managed to acquire a real-time link to Earth.
Since he didn't really want to try chasing Sherlock around the base, he dialled the number.
"Hello," said a male voice. "This is 221B Baker Street. If you're looking for Sherlock, he's on hiatus right now…"
"I'm looking for Dr. Watson," Norm interrupted.
"Oh," said the voice, somewhat taken aback. "I'm John Watson. Who's calling?"
"I'm Norm, from the Avatar program," he explained. "I'm…" He paused. It was a very odd thing for Sherlock to specify. Then again, Sherlock was odd in general. "Sherlock's new colleague," he finished.
"…Did he tell you what he meant by that?" John said, after a worryingly long pause.
"No," Norm replied, suddenly quite anxious.
"Oh dear," John sighed. "What do you think of Sherlock?"
"He's…" Norm said. His mind went blank. "Er…" Then he felt the right word spring to mind, as though it was hiding and had been found. "Fascinating," he felt himself say.
"Up 'till now, how much of a git has he been?" John asked.
Norm hesitated before answering, "Well, he suggested driving a friend of a friend insane just for the research value." Then a worrying possibility occurred to him, "Is that normal for him?"
"Oh yeah," John replied immediately. "That's Sherlock alright. But it hasn't put you off, has it?" he said.
"No," he said, and he felt as though the words were only crossing his mind at the same time as they were crossing his lips. "Well, I mean… yeah. But…" he stammered.
"But you always want to know what he's going to come up with next?" John finished.
"Yeah," Norm said, because it was true.
"Norm, are you straight?" John asked.
Apparently, Sherlock wasn't the only asker of strange questions. "Yes," Norm replied, a bit uncertainly. "Is Sherlock?"
"I think so, but it's pretty hard to tell," John replied. "He's only gone there once."
There was a gap as John said nothing more.
"…Why do you ask?" Norm replied, a little suspicious.
"There are many dangers on Pandora, and one of the subtlest is that you may come to love it too much," John quoted.
"How did you know Grace said that…?"
"Sherlock was ranting a few days ago about how emotional you lot are," John replied, in a very casual tone. "Anyway, substitute the noun."
There was a pause, while Norm worked out what he meant. Then it sank in, and there was another moment's pause while Norm thought through the implications.
"…That does sound like Sherlock. What exactly did he mean by 'colleague'?" he said, a worried tone creeping into his voice.
John laughed again. "He didn't mean gay lover, if that's what you're thinking," he replied. "Like I said, he pretty much ignores that whole area."
John paused while he thought of what to say next.
"It's more… making sure he doesn't forget to eat. Or pointing out that shooting the letters EVR into the wall will get you arrested, even though the probabilities suggest it's not actually dangerous."
"Oh," Norm said, not entirely sure what to think. "He did say… er…"
"That he's a sociopath?"
"Yeah."
John didn't react for a moment, but then said, "Did he ask you to phone me, or did you work it out some other way?"
"He asked."
"Then I think that he considers you his friend. And probably Grace as well, since he took the time to rant to me about her."
"Sorry for being slow, but what does that mean, exactly?"
"It means that a man who can hear the last words of someone in a bomb jacket pleading over the phone and then make a cynical comment over the dial tone cares about you."
(Author's Note: I have no idea where the story could go from here, so this is all for now. If you have any suggestions for what happens next, please tell me in the comments. If there are good ones, I might come back and write some more.)