From the Blog of Dr. John H. Watson:

It's very kind of so many of you to respond to my blogging again. I hadn't realised how many people cared so much about Sherlock, which was probably stupid of me; I thought he was larger-than-life, and I lived with him.

I miss him so much.

Without him I'm not sure what I'll be blogging about (if anything), but there are cases we worked that I never wrote up, and so many of you have sent me stories about him; I'll try to get some of those up here as well.

As for my life (I do have one), I'd say things were getting back to normal, only my normal for the last couple of years included explosives, guns, knives, dead bodies (it sounds like Afghanistan, doesn't it? Less dusty. Many fewer bombs, actually), Luminol, and a mad flatmate. It's much less exciting now. I stayed with my sister for a few weeks, but I am back at 221B. Being here doesn't make me miss Sherlock any less or any more; it's not like those things people say where you think someone will be back any moment, or that you hear them moving about in another room. Though I am surprised every time I notice that there's space on the kitchen counter. Some people thought I would want to make a fresh start, but I'd be lying if I said I wanted one. When it gets too quiet I turn the stereo up loud until Mrs. Hudson comes to say she's always enjoyed a good banjo, but perhaps I could turn it down a bit? (Can you tell I've been playing the last Mumford and Sons but one? Does anyone understand the lyrics?)

This page (the whole site) looks a bit different; I hope you find the changes helpful. The new web mistress (there never was an old one, or a webmaster either; I have been let to know I was living in the past, sometime in the early '00's) is Ms. Mary Morstan . Since she told me off in a pub for not making sure everyone knew about the report from the Met, I thought she deserved some of the work to try to keep this current. I was luckier than any blogger deserves to find someone as knowledgeable and enthusiastic as she is—

"A bit different?" says Greg. "It's gorgeous. How did you get him to let you do this?"

Polly smiles, still a little shy.

She had called me two days after our first meeting, in something of hurry as the comments continued to pile up. We met in the café again. "I went with a 'forum' model, rather like Neil Gaiman's," she said.

"I'm not Neil Gaiman."

"No, but it's a lovely model. At least you know who he is."

"I'm old, not dead. I actually read, you know."

"Hard copy?"

"You're judging me."

She sighed. "If we can get them sorted into threads, you'll be able to respond to the ones you want to and the rest of them can respond to each other."

I am familiar enough with the internet to know that meant there would be blood in the water; she was very pleased I understood that much. "This sort of response can't go on forever, but I have a few friends who'll moderate with me till it cools down. One of them curates a 'worst things on the Internet' thread on SomethingDreadful and she's like death from above."

"Do we need death from above?"

"Almost certainly. Now, how do you feel about fan art?"

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Do I have to?"

"No, John. Nothing you feel uncomfortable with."

"Is there a way we could politely send them somewhere I never have to see any of it?"

"Probably a good choice. If there's something really nice I'll let you know. Same thing about poetry?"

"Less weird, but …"

"Okay. And fiction's right out?"

Flames came out of my nose and ears. "RPF is the most complete mind-fuck awfulness—"

"RIGHT, wow, okay. I didn't expect you to know about that."

"Don't ask. Although some of the stuff with the Levenson inquiry was actually quite funny. No. I just want a nice non-fiction non-art blog like an ordinary man. Don't snort like that."

"So I imagine you want it to look familiar; the front page will still be your blog. I've cleaned up the graphic a little, or we could go to something like this—" She clicked to a page and I caught my breath. Sherlock in living colour. I had almost no pictures of him myself— why would I have needed them, before?

"Where did you find these? I've never seen most of them-"

"Flickr, bit of Google. There are some nice ones of you, as well."

"Some of these have to have been taken by people in the Met… that's an old one, it must have been years before my time; God, he looks young—" I tore my gaze away.

"I'm sending you the link to this, it's on a kind of scratchpad for my blog," Polly said. "If you click on the individual pictures you get links and credits. These are just the ones that had blanket permissions or Creative Commons licenses; there are a bunch more who would probably be flattered if you asked."

"I really like this, but it's kind of too much." This was an understatement. I didn't want to face some of those shots, where he was looking through the camera straight into the soul of the photographer. I didn't want to get used to them, either; they stirred memories I hadn't known I had.

Polly nodded as though I was coherent. "I thought we might have some on the inside pages, the actual forums. We can put them on a long repeat and keep the opening page more like the one you have. In the sense of 'not much like the one you have,' because, well." She clicked to something that matched her description. I could see why she thought the original one was old-fashioned; this was cleaner and in fact prettier and easier to read.

"It looks a bit like Tumblr."

"Well, Minimalist Tumblr, yeah. We can do a bit of colour like this—" clicking "— and please can we change the picture of you? I liked these or this one or we can take a new one. And this counter works."

"I found it rather comforting for it always to be 1895."

She rolled her eyes. "Fine, we can keep the broken counter maybe here? And have one that actually does something over here. Do you want one of those maps? I thought 'below the fold' so it doesn't get too messy. You're sure you don't want to make money out of this?"

"Yes. I don't want to push advertisements on my friends."

"Not even an Amazon link? I mean, I understand about integrity and all that, but this must be costing a fortune."

"Not that I know of. I had to go up from a free platform last year, I think I'm paying about fifteen quid a month."

"Oh no, you're not. More like fifty, seventy-five. There's no way you could still be getting all this traffic."

"I'd know if it was that much—" or maybe I wouldn't. _Bloody_ Mycroft. "I may have a mysterious benefactor."

"That's the most reasonable explanation, honestly."

"I wouldn't call it reasonable," I muttered. "So when can we do this?"

Her face lit up. "You really like it?"

"Yes, I do. You've gone to a lot of trouble and it's really better. And, mm, thank you for the pictures of Sherlock. I had no idea."

She looked into my face and knit her eyebrows a bit, rather carefully squeezed my shoulder. "Thank you for letting me help. You know."

"Yeah." We're English. It's good.

"We can do the opening page whenever, and we can do the sorting pages to get the comments under control — that's going to take some time. The real forum pages— what?"

"Just weird, I don't get it. I know."

"I'm so used to people who want _more_ traffic; I mean, you don't really want _less_, do you?"

"I just want to blog in peace." And dodge some bullets and examine a body or two, and argue about the contents of the fridge.

"You won't have to go there unless you want to, I promise. So now we log onto your provider's website— my God, John, do you call that a password?"

"Don't you start."

That was when we found we could not, in fact, do anything, which is par for the course in my experience of the Internet. My phone rang. A number I hadn't seen in awhile. I excused myself from our table.

Not, thank goodness, the man himself. "Hello, Dr. Watson. This is Anthea."

"No, it isn't," I said. "But hello anyway. What does your boss want?"

"You can't do anything structural to your website except through 221B, so you need to go home if you're changing anything. Which is a good idea."

"I know, 'it looks like 2001, not in a good way.' What do you mean, needing to go back to the flat?"

"It's part of the security. And it will take longer to upload than your associate expects."

"Too many layers?"

"'Checking for malware' would probably be the best way to put it."

"Ah, thank you?"

"Ms. Morstan seems to be what she says she is, but there are protocols."

"For my blog?"

"For everything."

"By the way, is Mycroft paying for my bandwidth somehow?"

"He thought the expenses you incurred looking after the younger Mr. Holmes were quite high enough without paying for his business advertising. He said to tell you it was family money so you would be less likely to turn him down."

"He's not wrong. Tell him thank you. Don't tell him about the tone of seething resentment."

"He infers that automatically, Dr. Watson. Be seeing you."

"Welcome to the rabbit hole," I said to Polly. "You can apply to see your file under the Freedom of Information Act, but they lie, so I wouldn't bother."

"What are you talking about? I have your website provider on hold, we may be here some time."

"That was the mysterious benefactor. Sherlock's brother does something for the government and it makes him insanely security conscious. Apparently you're all right, but we have to go to 221B to alter my website. At least you can stop being on hold."

Polly prowls around 221B, not quite sniffing the air. She's not someone who asks about the spray paint; she looks at the skull gravely and strokes its cranium like a cat's head. I can see she's trying to be polite; I tell her to look around while I make tea. When I come out she's reading the bookshelves. "Those are yours, over there," she says when she's done looking. I have taken one set of pre-war (Great War, I think) encyclopaedia up to the spare bedroom and installed enough fantasy and science fiction to identify me as the nerd I somewhat am. All my medical books and any nonfiction were mixed in with Sherlock's long ago.

"What gave it away?"

"The real question is whether you have a copy of 'Flood' on your iTunes." I queued it up. She showed me hers.

After her computer fought its way onto the network, we had no trouble opening the backstage of my website. "See this? That's your blog content. You're giving it a separate password, so you have control and privacy." Except, very likely, for Mycroft.

"Thank you," I say.

"A better one than that."

"How can you even tell?"

"Not enough keys, no shift. All right. In real life, we would not be starting from a backlog like this, and the threads would mostly spin themselves. I've set up four mailboxes? sort of, for you to just toss the comments in, and then I'll make threads later. From the panic in your eyes I thought the important thing was to get you feeling as though you could just write your blog again, mostly—"

"I'm quite good at insurgents and murderers, but numbers over a thousand—"

"You really are a good site owner, John, it's sweet. Thank God you had the sense to let someone take care of you; you shouldn't have to worry your pretty little head about these things. Just provide content." We both enjoy the change of stereotype, and she continues. "So look, here—" They're labelled 'John needs to deal with,' 'John or Polly may deal with,' 'For God's Sake Polly,' and 'DIAF.'

"Die In A Fire," she explains. It seems extreme. "Oh, and I'll set up another one for 'completely spam.' Here's how you can put in subsets, like "People I Actually Know" or "People Offering Me Money or Sexual Favours."

"Those will probably end up in DIAF."

"And yet you complained about the lack of action— Do you want to start on page 14? I've had a look at most of the earlier ones so they should sort fast for me."

It works surprisingly well, and Polly starts finding threads among the "John or Polly may deal with." The last two boxes are a relief, only she laughs every time I throw something into one of them. I am about to suggest we order in, when Greg and Mrs Hudson come to the door.

"Mrs. Hudson, Greg, this is Polly Morstan. She's helping with the blog. Polly, this my amazing landlady who made that cake, and Detective Inspector Lestrade of the Metropolitan Police." Polly turns bright pink and shakes hands. Mrs. Hudson makes hospitable remarks and goes home, having satisfied any perfectly reasonable curiosity she may have.

"I came by to look at the holes in Mrs. Hudson's wall," Greg says. "No one else reported any fake repairmen or similar in this area or in that time frame, although if Mrs. H is typical we may not hear about them until Christmas." It's only just mid-September.

"Another one for our friend in Whitehall, I'm afraid."

"Do you remember seeing this guy?"

"Not really well enough to identify him. Bigger than me, bald. Tattoos."

"So Mrs. Hudson said. I will look into it."

"I was about to ask Polly if she would like Indian, you could join us?"

"Interrupting—?"

"No, I took your advice to ask for help about the blog and I think I'm very lucky indeed—" This pleases Polly and she shows Greg the new front page.

After we eat, Polly exercises either feminine wiles or some kind of web-master voodoo and persuades Greg that he would like nothing more than to sort ten pages of comments: "Detective Inspector, I don't suppose I could persuade you to help us, could you? Only I'd really like to get to at least page fifty, then we'd be less than a week behind—"

"You may call me Greg, you know."

Polly's eyes twinkle fiercely, an expression I am beginning to recognise. "Go ahead and say it," I advise. "That's your fan-girl look, isn't it?"

"It's just so amazing to meet the people in John's blog—"

"Greg, why don't you fetch the people in John's blog a beer from the fridge, including yourself?" Beer is a calming influence.

"Polly, I would be happy to read John's mail, but unlike you I don't carry a computer."

"Oh, I have a spare," she says, pulling an iPad out of her bag. We look at her. "It's like having a dagger in your sock," she explains.

Greg seems to enjoy flicking comments into the various columns, although he and Polly are having, I think a better time at it than I am. I can't tell if the sheer number of condolences is getting me down or just numbing.

"Another coded one," Greg says.

"There's a subheading under 'weird' in For God's Sake," I tell him.

"Have you looked at them?"

"Not really. There's an A-Z next to the skull. Knock yourself out."

Polly giggles. I cannot blame her. Greg finds a pen and paper and sighs. "I can't decide if I should be more disturbed that people have taken the time to make these or that I've taken the time to read them."

"You're being thorough," I say.

"I think they're talking to each other."

"It's not Chinese gangsters?"

"I _think_ it's Dr. Who."

"May I see?" Polly asks. 'Oh, it's them. They think they're clever." She notes the usernames and knocks them out of the queue. "Less than thirty-three hundred to go," she says encouragingly. "We can stop if you want."

"Or we could have more beer," I suggest. I am well into automatic mode. It had once seemed like a good idea to try to keep up with people. Possibly the 'John Needs To Deal' list will look more compelling in the morning, or in two weeks.

"I'll drive you home if you like," Greg says to Polly. We all have more beer.

"This one's a different code," Greg announces suddenly.

16-3-112-10 2-9-41-3 16-6-57-7.

Note: The cipher is eminently doable.