Chapter Sixteen
When Sherlock finally emerged onto the roof, he drew in deep breaths of fresh air. The night air was cool, and the roof was damp- a recent shower. No more than ten minutes ago, judging from the puddles. He listened to the sounds of London around him- traffic, the distant siren, the last trains coming in and out of Kings Cross station, the hum and buzz of life. Even at this hour- just before midnight, he found the sounds were what he expected, a background hum that was somehow comforting. He tried to get his bearings. This part of town was boring- the commercial buildings lining Pentonville Road were not high enough to give a good skyline, which he resented. He like the idea of his city being the last thing he saw. A rundown area just southeast of a train station didn't quite fit the bill, unfortunately. But to leave in order to find a better place was to risk being caught on camera and then ending up his days inside four walls painted an institutional colour, subdued into a state of drugged purgatory. He wondered how long his body would be up here on the roof before someone discovered it. For the first time, he thought about what others would think. Why does that matter? It seemed to be some defect of this stripped down, basic brain- random thoughts just came crashing in, unbidden. It was most peculiar.
His frustration with the location went up a notch or two when it started to rain heavily. He realised the absurdity of caring that he was getting wet, whilst having an internal debate about where the best place was to kill himself. Yet, somehow instinct was running its own program and he found himself in the doorway that he had left propped open almost two days ago, looking down the stairwell and wondering if he was the only one in the building. He hoped so. The ignominy of being found and "rescued" would be too horrible to bear.
That reminded him of a comment that John once made to him, when he'd learned that Sherlock had once taken a lethal overdose. "Well, you must have been seriously off your game. The Sherlock I know would be successful if he really wanted to die. Or was it the cry-for-help kind of overdose?"
That time, he'd been unlucky and been found before the drug could kill him. So, this time he would leave nothing to chance. But thinking of John worried him. God, is this what it's like to be 'normal'? I can't control anything of where my brain goes. Odd tangent, but he found himself wondering if John's reaction this time would be different.
He wouldn't understand. Sherlock was sure of that fact. And there would be consequences. At the very least, his death would cause a significant upheaval. John would have to leave Baker Street, unable to afford the rent on his own. And the tremor, the limp would probably reappear, once the adrenaline push of case work disappeared. That seemed unfair. The doctor would somehow think the suicide was something to do with him, take some sort of responsibility. John was like that. He wouldn't be able to deduce the truth. Sherlock didn't understand it, but he knew that John would be distressed.
He sat on the top stair step and wished that he had a way of telling John that it wasn't anything to do with him. If he'd brought his phone, then he might have sent a text or left a voice mail message. No, just turning the phone on would alert Mycroft to where you are. He couldn't risk it. And in any case, he'd left the phone at home.
STUPID! You are in a building full of offices with PCs linked to the internet. Who needs a phone? He got up and walked down the main stairs. He was looking for the right sort of business- one not likely to have a lot of security, the sort of place where busy people forgot to turn off their computers at night or who were too lazy to log off.
On the second floor, he found it. Arial PR Ltd- they'd have reasonable technology to impress the clients, but no sense of discipline about security. He picked the lock, and walked in. Not a camera in sight. He scanned the open plan office, then spotted the walls of glass in the corner that announced a senior manager. He could see from the doorway the green light on the PC tower. Switched on and running. A shove of the mouse brought up the home screen, so no need to guess a password. Bliss.
And there was a sofa. Wonderful. He could even be comfortable. He then tried to figure out what to say to John. Although the desk was covered with yellow sticky notes reminding the CEO of inane things to do, he took a few pieces of paper from the printer tray and a pencil, and started to write. After the second sheet was crumpled and chucked on the floor, he began to question the wisdom of trying to explain. The latest iteration was much, much shorter than the first, but it still didn't make sense- John. I'm sorry if this makes no sense to you. But, without the mind palace, I don't want to be me. It has nothing to do with you. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
It all sounded ridiculously banal and stupid. Furthermore, he couldn't risk sending it, because knowing Mycroft, he would have put surveillance onto the doctor's e mail account and his blog, just in case. He should have known this in the beginning. Why was his brain working so slowly?
That made him think about what he should say to Mycroft. He filled a whole sheet with angry permutations, mostly around the theme of you've never understood what it is like to be me, what actually goes on inside my head; the mind palace is the only thing that kept me sane, and now that it's gone, there is no point. IT'S NOT THE DRUGS TALKING. I'm sorry I couldn't live up to your expectations, but I never agreed to them in the first place. But to say this to your face would give you just another excuse to lock me away. When he scanned the page, he realised how pathetic it all was. He collected the pieces of paper and put them through the shredder by the woman's desk. He gave up on the idea of a note, because anything he wrote made him sound crazy.
He was crazy- mad, deranged. He knew he had no choice but to end it, shut off the incessant noise going on in his head forever. His brain then went haring off on another tangent trying to find all the synonyms for insanity that it could locate amongst the shattered debris of memory. To shut it up, he pulled the package out of the sling and unbundled the three syringes, taking them over to the sofa. There- the end is in sight, so just shut up. The voices in his head carried on, regardless. Then he turned the computer screen so he'd be able to see it from the sofa and typed in the URL for his favourite London webcam, on the top of the Marriott County Hall hotel on the South Bank. He would look at that while the first injection brought him some peace.
The new window opened in a customised screen layout that had four news sites showing headlines. Typical PR- one eye on the media at all times. He grabbed the mouse to see if he could get the webcam window to open full screen.
As he closed the second news site window, his eye was caught by a ticker going across the bottom of the BBC website: GEEK KILLER TAKES FIFTH VICTIM; MET ACCUSED OF SLOTH BY IBM
He sniffed. At last, Lestrade might finally get the point. He'd been going on about it for months, ever since the so-called suicide of Andrew Saxton at Imperial College. Sherlock had been unable to find conclusive evidence that proved that it was murder, not suicide, in the case of Saxton, so the DI had not been able to take the case. The coroner's verdict was suicide, unfortunately. Then came the death of another programmer in Switzerland, then one in Brussels and in France on almost the same night. Lestrade's only comment had been "Not my jurisdiction, Sherlock."
Now it would appear that opinion had changed. He wondered if Lestrade would be able to put the pieces together on his own. He clicked on the news story, wanting to know more.
Jonathan Fryer, aged 31, was found dead in the UCL IT lab by a colleague on Tuesday morning. While initial investigations concluded that suicide was the likely cause of death, the Metropolitan Police started a murder investigation this morning.
Fryer was a computer programmer working on the research team of University College London's cognitive computing team, specialising in programming language for machine learning algorithms. His work was funded by both the EU and IBM, as part of the SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) project. In August 2011, IBM researchers successfully demonstrated a building block of a novel brain-inspired chip architecture based on a scalable, interconnected, configurable network of "neuromorphic cores" that brought memory, processors and communication into close proximity. These new silicon, neurosynaptic chips allow for computing systems that emulate the brain's computing efficiency, size and power usage.
Fryer's contribution was in the area of "corelet" programming, the building blocks of the new computer language needed to run on the new SyNAPSE chips. Asked for a comment on his colleague's death, research team leader Robert Smith said….
Sherlock stopped reading. The media would get it wrong. But at least he had the latest victim's name now- and the fact that a Murder Investigation Team was at work. He closed the news windows, and minimised the webcam screen, before calling up the HOLMES2* database, typing in Lestrade's user name and password. He then called up the recent postings under Lestrade's MIT and was rewarded with a report and attached evidence files. He started reading.
For three hours he concentrated against the noise of his dysfunctional brain, hacking deep into UCL and Imperial College's intranet and through it into the personal data files of Andrew Saxton and Jonathan Fryer. Their work on corelet programming was utterly fascinating, but Sherlock skirted around it as much as possible. His brain was too easily distracted, all he wanted to know what had led to both men being targeted. Find the motive and the evidence would come.
It was in a Tweet from Saxton to Fryer that produced the first 'Oh' moment.
- check out lines 73 to 98- a greek bearing gifts?
Sherlock looked at the corelet from the library that Saxton had been working on. He struggled at first to understand the corelet programing language. It was like finding out that gravity fell sideways instead of down; a whole new physics of computer. IBM's public library of corelets were no help, because the programmes were designed as 'black boxes'- the rest of the world was just to accept what lay hidden behind the IBM trademark and focus on using them to build interlocking sets of drivers to use them. He'd had to hack into one of them on Saxton's files before he could get at the underlying neuromorphic structure. Weird. Instead of a binomial sequential and linear entrance and exit, the corelet was not only circular, it was 3 dimensionally round, and a connection could enter the program at any point. It took a while to get his head around that concept, but once he did, it make sense. What Saxton had called "lines" were in fact SyNAPSE connections, and it was only when he thought of things three dimensionally and then added the fourth of time sequencing, that he understood the presence of an intruding sub-routine that had been buried in it, which was, indeed, a Trojan Horse- definitely not being used, dormant but ready to be awoken by some malware virus. He wondered who would be clever enough to figure that out and bury the routines? It could fatally compromise the security of any new system using the corelet. The brain that had thought up this little nasty surprise was clearly willing to kill to make sure that any programmer building a corelet who stumbled on it was not going to live to tell the tale.
A glance at the lower right corner of the screen gave him the time- 04.49. His brain was finding it increasingly difficult now to sustain concentration. The Work had kept the demons at bay for a while, but he kept having to re-read things. Information stuffed into a temporary working file kept bulging at the seams, and then would leak away. He cursed his stupidity and knew that if he had been functioning properly, he could have solved this within minutes of finding the program. He sighed, it was so frustrating. If this is what a normal brain worked like, then he would happily put himself out of his misery- once he'd solved the case. Even as defective as his mind was at the moment, he still knew that Lestrade would not be able to solve this without him. A parting gift; after all, if it hadn't been for his willingness to let me do the Work, I wouldn't have lasted this long.
He needed a pee. And a stretch. He wondered if there was a coffee machine in the office. Arial PR was probably too small to warrant one, but he'd look for a kitchen or a coffee maker. He glanced at the three syringes lying on the sofa arm. If he'd been in his right mind, he would not hesitate to take half of one dose- the high would ensure he cut through all the rubbish, focused and found the solution. But, with his Mind Palace so shredded and malfunctioning, he dare not try the cocaine- it could actually make the problem worse.
Later. Once I'm done with this one last case.
* The HOLMES2 database (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System) actually exists.