XIII
Enterprise
"Have you ever actually considered becoming a detective?"
"What do you mean? I am a detective."
"No, I mean a real one."
"Oh. You mean a paid one." Sherlock frowned. "Police forces don't do it for me. Too many regulations. Too many offices. Too much paperwork. And they're stuffed full of idiots. It's much more fun this way."
"I would never have guessed."
"Call it an endeavour in active deduction"
"An endeavour?"
"A plan." Sherlock opened his laptop and logging on to his email.
"Right."
"Venture, if you will."
"Sure."
"How do you feel about a triple homicide?"
"Sounds great."
Galaxy
"I don't see the point of having this argument again!"
"But how can you not know the most basic facts about our planet? There's a whole world outside this one, Sherlock; you might not be all that interested in it, but it's there and it's—"
"What? Important? How is the bloody galaxy important and why should I care if it's infinitely expanding? How does that affect me and the work I do? Will the great big galaxy somehow gloriously help me solve a case by writing the murderer's name in the stars? No, it won't!"
Sherlock stalked off angrily.
Federation
"I see you have a fan club."
"I've a what?"
"A fan club. How do you get a fan club?"
"People must be reading the website."
"Have you even looked at your website forum recently?"
"No, why?"
Twenty minutes later, Sherlock was considering pulling the website altogether.
"Idiots everywhere!" he shouted. "The sheer stupidity they are spreading on my website, pretending that they are as intelligent and observant as me."
"I don't know why you're surprised; fans generally aren't all that intelligent."
"It's bloody offensive! They're like a… a group, or a gang, or a… or an alliance! It's awful!"
Next
"Next."
John read off the next case file.
"Next."
John read the next one. And the next. And the next.
"Oh GOD this place is boring!" Sherlock finally complained, throwing himself down on the couch. He picked up his violin and played a chromatic scale as fast as he could. "Why can't there be anything interesting going on? This is bloody London, there's always criminal activity! Why do I always have to wait for them to develop brains?"
John closed the file folder and put it away.
The violin screeched through the flat for the next hour and a half.
Generation
Sherlock sometimes complained that youngsters these days weren't half as brilliant as youngsters had been when he was a kid. Then he complained that older men and women weren't brilliant either. In fact, there was no one out there who had an ounce of brilliance anymore.
"That's a bit depressing," John commented.
"There's a large cloud of idiocy on this generation's police forces," Sherlock said lightly.
"Oh… so you were just talking about the police, then?"
"Of course, what did you think I was talking about? The criminals are much smarter nowadays than they used to be. Kudos to them."