I NEVER KNEW WHETHER to curse or praise the day I fished Sherlock out of the Obsolete Equipment Storage Center, which is essentially a glorified scrap pile. VH Labs, my employer, used that overstuffed old room in the basement to store whatever malfunctioning, outdated, or broken-down machinery they chose not to dispose of outright in hopes that one of their enterprising engineers would find some way to recycle it. I was one such engineer—in the biomedical division—and had gone down there in search of salvageable equipment for my lab. Though VH had plucked me out of university two years before my expected graduation in order to sooner harness my talents—after I won an interstellar science award, it mattered little that I had not yet obtained my degree—they were unwilling to allocate too much budget to a sixteen-year-old girl.
Like everyone else, I'd heard about the ill-fated Project Sherlock, which had been shut down three years before I joined the company, but I hadn't expected to find Sherlock herself staring at me from a under a heap of mechanical rubbish with her one remaining robotic eye. Named after a figure from ancient Earth Zero mythology, she'd been VH's attempt to replace their own scientists with an artificial intelligence. They'd given her a humanoid body and programmed her to think not only analytically, but creatively and practically as well. This had the unintended side effect of giving her an unmanageable personality—and sentience. Though sentient AIs were nothing new, they were rare. And despite a century having passed since the first known synthetic being with humanlike consciousness was created, no one quite understood why some AIs developed such self-awareness while others remained purely mechanical. The creation of artificial life was illegal in the Interstellar Confederation, but that did not prevent VH from attempting to use their creation, claiming that Sherlock was only a convincing imitation of life. However after she proved to be not only obnoxious and disobedient, but destructive as well, they deactivated her and left her to collect dust—I stumbled upon her.
I don't know what possessed me to take her home with me that day. Neither can I explain why I thought it would be a good idea to repair her (as other engineers had mined her mechanical body for parts) and reactivate her. Especially since I was a biomedical engineer, not a mechanical one, and these efforts caused me many, many, many headaches and far too much time. Perhaps it was for the challenge of it, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't also because I was affected by the sight of such a human-looking face, behind which lay so much intelligence and potential, lying slack amid discarded computers as if she were no different. My employer was not happy when they learned of what I did, but as they'd already relinquished claim over her by designating her as garbage, there was nothing they could do to stop me.
About a year after I found her, I was in my lab working on solving one of the most frustrating challenges in the biomedical world—how to create synthetic human bone, complete with marrow that could produce blood—when the alarm on my slate began buzzing urgently. I'm fairly certain I was on the cusp of an epiphany, but I'll never know what it might have been, since I was so startled by the loudness that all thought flew from my head. Since I didn't recall setting any alarms, I scrambled to dig the device out of my bag, thinking I'd forgotten something important.
But after I unfolded the slate from its portable triangle shape and snapped it flat into a rectangular tablet, I found not a reminder, but Sherlock's face filling the screen. Her right eye, usually almond-shaped, had expanded into nearly a perfect circle, while the metal patch over her left had been pulled so high by her lifted eyebrows, it threatened to pop off and expose the hole beneath. Her wild expression gave her a frightening look, despite the fact that her face had been designed to be attractive and non-threatening. No one had a good explanation for why an AI named after a middle-aged man had been built made to resemble a nineteen-year-old actress named Shi Lei Wang; my theory was that the engineer who headed Project Sherlock had a thing for black-haired beauties.
"Watson!" Sherlock exclaimed. She was the only one who called me by my surname, and if I had a throne for every time I asked her to call me Chevonne instead, I could buy the planet Shimshawhenn. I was glad that most people weren't familiar with the Earth Zero lore her name had been taken from. Otherwise, I would have never heard the end of the Sherlock-and-Watson jokes.
A lock of her gleaming black hair slipped down her pale forehead as she moved closer to the camera on her side. "You must come home at once!"
"What's the matter?" I asked, puzzled.
"I don't know how to deal with this—come home now!"
"What the hell are you going on about?"
"Are you coming or not?" Sherlock's expression turned from panicked to irritated.
Unwilling to let her handle whatever she was dealing with alone—the last time I did so, her solution to her problem somehow involved disintegrating the kitchen table—I said, "Okay, all right!"
The screen went black without so much as a "thank you" or a "see you soon." I rolled my eyes. Typical.
Though I was accustomed to her rudeness, this was the first time she'd summoned me from work with such urgency. I tried telling myself that I shouldn't to worry, that she likely needed extra hands for some new cockamamie experiment of hers, but I couldn't keep the concern from bubbling up my chest.
So I rushed out of my lab and into my starship—a tiny hunk of gray metal called a Zander—which was docked against the orbital habitat that was VH Labs. I was one of the few employees who commuted from the planet Aryus below; most lived in corporate housing right there on the float, just an elevator ride away from their offices. I had as well until I made Sherlock my roommate. It took me all of two days after reactivating her to realize that making her inhabit the same air as those who'd created and then disposed of her was a terrible idea.
It wasn't until I'd jumped into the pilot's seat of my Zander that I realized I was still wearing my orange lab coat. I was one of the few people in my division who didn't mind the shade; in fact, I rather liked how the fiery color glowed against my dark complexion. Though I wasn't supposed to wear it outside of work, I couldn't be bothered with putting it away, so I went ahead and buckled myself in. The Zander jerked as I pulled it out of its docking station, sending several locks of my tight black curls flying into my face. I tossed my head and steered my starship toward the small, blue-green planet below.
By the time I arrived at the two-bedroom apartment I shared with Sherlock, I was out of breath. But I was too late to thwart her destructive tendencies. This time, however, it wasn't the furniture she'd harmed.
The first thing I saw when I opened the door was Sherlock lying flat in the middle of the floor, her lone black eye fixed on the ceiling with a blank expression. With her outfit of gray pants and a gray sleeveless top, which were nearly the same color as the carpet, she looked like she was melting into the ground. I wish I could say I was shocked, but unfortunately, this was an all too familiar sight.
Spotting the metal syringe in her left hand, I snatched it from her in fury. "What the hell, Sherlock? You promised you'd gotten rid of it all!"
Sherlock blinked up at me. "I did. But I procured more."
Scowling, I grabbed one of the hazardous waste disposal bags I'd nicked from my workplace; VH wouldn't miss them, and they were a necessity when one roomed with Sherlock. I shoved the syringe—and the empty vial of acid lying by her head—inside, then began combing the apartment for any more of the infernal stuff.
Why did Sherlock have to pick up her namesake's most frustrating habit? I didn't know if she got the idea after learning about the mythological detective and his infamous addiction to narcotics, or if her self-destructive tendencies were always part of her personality.
The first time she realized that damaging her body would shut down parts of her mental systems to divert energy to repairs, she tore off nearly all the synthetic skin on one arm. The self-healing polymers grew back so neatly, not a scar remained. Then she discovered that injecting corrosives that would eat away at her metal skeleton took more energy to heal, and therefore sent her head into higher states of euphoria. She told me once that this was the only way to quiet her mind, which absorbed and processed information at what seemed like lightspeed. I dreaded that someday, she'd go too far and end up permanently damaging or even destroying herself.
"What is wrong with you?" I yelled. "I spend all day trying to figure out how to grow bones for people who've lost then through disease or accidents, yet here you are purposely wrecking yours!"
"They'll fix themselves." Sherlock's voice was light and carefree. "They always do."
I was about to launch into a full-fledged rant when I noticed someone sitting in the armchair by the window. I froze, staring at the silent, dark-haired boy. His physical features made him appear around my age; his athletic frame was significantly taller and broader than my five feet and three inches, and his smooth, copper-complexioned face had powerful, mature cheekbones. Yet something about his wide, startled black eyes made him seem younger, almost childlike.
"Who are you?" I demanded, too furious to bother with manners. "And why the hell didn't you stop her?"
"My name is Makya Namoki." His voice was quiet, nervous. "She... She told me the injection was an AI maintenance thing."
I sighed, feeling bad for this poor, confused bystander. I often forgot that most people in the galaxy had never and would never encounter a humanoid AI—let alone a sentient one—and therefore wouldn't know how to deal with one.
"Well, she lied." I glared down at Sherlock. "What's he doing here?"
Sherlock sat up, tucking her knees against her chest. "He's a client."
Of course. One of the reasons why VH Labs shut down Sherlock was because she found scientific mysteries far less interesting than ones that directly impacted the world around her—crimes and the like. The last straw was when she blew up a lab to flush out a VH executive she claimed was a corporate spy. Since I reactivated her, she'd spent most of her time on the Net, where people would message her with their mysteries, and she'd respond with either the answer she'd deduced or instructions for gathering more clues.
Basically, she fashioned herself into a private detective. I had to wonder if her creators took her name too literally when they programmed her.
Mostly, her interactions remained online, but every so often, a client would find their way into our apartment. I crossed my arms. "Is this the big emergency you called me home for?"
Sherlock glanced up at Makya. "Tell her what you told me."
Makya looked so confused and scared—traumatized, really—that I wanted to give him a hug. His shaky gaze teetered on the edge of tears, and he couldn't stop fiddling with the edge of the burgundy shirt he wore.
At first, I thought it was because of Sherlock's antics and my ensuing anger, and I opened my mouth to apologize. But then he said, "There's something wrong with my parents. They're behaving strangely, and I fear they're in some kind of trouble."
Deciding I might as well learn what all this was about, I took a seat in one of the armchairs, dropping the hazardous waste disposal bag on the floor, and waited for him to continue.
"It started after my accident." Makya clasped his hands in his lap, looking incongruously brittle for one built so sturdy. "I hit my head really hard during wrestling practice at school—so hard, they had to put me in a medically-induced coma for a few weeks. I barely remember anything from before the accident other than a few scattered memories, but my parents told me I was physically fine other than that."
I furrowed my brow. Brain trauma was not my area of expertise, but I knew enough to find the story odd already. "Wait... your parents? What about your doctor?"
"I never saw a doctor." Makya spread his hands. "I was already on board the Silicon Beeches—that's the starship we live on—when I woke up. My parents told me that I'd been released from the hospital while I was still asleep."
"And they brought you out of a coma?" I blinked. "Are they medical professionals?"
"Not even close," Sherlock quipped. "Kaia Namoki, a.k.a. Mom, owns a wealth management company. Hence living on a private starship—her net worth makes Aryus look like a backwater world. Bolivar Namoki, a.k.a. Dad, is a professor of Earth Zero Cultures. He's currently unaffiliated with any one university, but in high demand for guest stints due to his specialized knowledge."
"Well, that is strange," I murmured.
"Quite," Sherlock said. "Particularly when you take into account just who the Namokis are."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
She leaned back on one elbow and waved a hand at Makya. "You tell her."
I threw her an irritated look. "Why do you keep making him repeat for me what he's clearly already told you? What's the point in keeping him here and making me listen?"
Sherlock shrugged. "I'm terrible at storytelling."
That was as weak a reason as I'd ever heard. But I should have known better than to expect a straight answer. You'd think someone as analytical as Sherlock would behave logically, but as far as I could tell, there was simply no rational explanation for many of the things she did.
Curiosity got the better of me, and I gave Makya a resigned look. "What did Sherlock mean by that?"
"We're among the last of our people," Makya said, and I wasn't sure if the bewilderment on his face was a reaction to Sherlock or due to the mystery he'd sought her for. "We trace our ancestry all the way back to an Earth Zero tribe called the Hopi."
I widened my eyes. The planet from which humans originated was so long-lost, it was almost a legend. Centuries and centuries ago, disaster forced people to evacuate to newly discovered planets, scattering them across the galaxy. Much information was lost; even my family, which always stressed the importance of knowing where you came from, had no idea which Earth Zero nation our ancestors lived in. That the Namokis could pinpoint their origins so precisely was something of a miracle.
"You must know how risky medically induced comas can be," Sherlock said to me. "Isn't it odd that such protective parents would bring their only son out of one themselves?"
I lifted my eyebrows at her. "I suppose you have an idea as to why?"
"At this point in the story, I had twenty-eight ideas."
"Of course." Knowing better than to ask what they might have been—if she'd wanted to tell me, she would have already—I turned back to Makya. "So what made you seek Sherlock?"
"It's... It's going to sound really stupid, but believe me, I wouldn't have come if it weren't important." Makya raked his hand through his short hair, which was so unevenly chopped, I wondered if he'd cut it himself. "Let me start by saying that the parents I remember and the parents I woke up to after my accident seem like different people. They were always so loving and affectionate in my memories, but now, they seem... cold. Almost... almost as if they don't want me anymore." The look on his face was so pained, I again had the impulse to give him a hug. "My father looks at me like I'm some unwelcome thing he's been saddled with. In fact, he barely speaks to me. My mother... she goes back and forth. One moment, she has no time for me, and the next moment she's going out of her way to make sure I'm happy—buying me anything I asked for, telling me funny stories, letting me do whatever I want... except leave the Silicon Beeches. And I knew she was watching my transmissions and Net activity as well. I began to feel like a prisoner."
"So that's why you came in person." I leaned back in my chair.
Makya nodded. "They don't know I'm here, though it won't take them long to figure out that I took one of the Silicon Beeches's shuttles. I'd been meaning to for a few days, but couldn't quite work up the courage until..." He paused. "Like I said, it's going to sound really stupid. But please understand, it's actually about a lot more..."
"What is it?" I asked impatiently.
He dragged his hand through his uneven locks again. "My hair used to reach past my shoulders. Keeping it long was part of our tradition, and it meant a lot to my parents that I keep that little piece of our heritage alive. But shortly after I woke up from my coma, my mother cut it. I was puzzled by how angry she was when I initially refused to let her. It sounds like such a small thing, but it... it just wasn't like her. Then yesterday, I went into her dresser to search for a family heirloom she'd told me about—I was bored and just wanted to see it. Instead, I found several locks of black hair—my hair—sitting in one of her drawers. But I recall a cleaner bot sweeping my hair away after she cut it... when I asked why she'd retrieve it, she became so furious, I feared she might..." He trailed off and drew a breath. "I thought she was going to kill me."
The acute terror in his eyes told me that these words weren't superlative. "You thought she'd actually kill you," I echoed, disturbed.
He nodded, but before he could say anything else, a high-pitched buzzing noise filled the apartment, indicating that someone was requesting entry.
Since Sherlock, now curled up on the floor, was in no state to answer the door, I got up to check the security monitor. To my surprise, an armed security bot—a rectangular machine on large wheels with two massive robotic arms ending in weapons—stood outside. It wasn't unusual for someone to send a bot to run an errand, but normally, they'd dispatch a messenger drone or delivery android. Security bots were used for guarding places and escorting prisoners.
"State your purpose," I said into the intercom, doing my best to sound authoritative.
"I was dispatched by Kaia Namoki to retrieve her son, Makya Namoki, and return him safely to the private starship Silicon Beeches." The bot's voice was a mechanical monotone. "I request entry."
I glanced at Makya, whose pursed lips failed to hide the fear still plain in his eyes. "You don't have to go." I didn't know what I'd do if the bot was programmed to use force to complete its mission, but I wasn't about to let a terrified kid walk off with that mechanical monstrosity if he didn't want to. "You can stay with us until we figure out what's going on."
Makya stood slowly. "Thank you, but I've caused enough trouble." He looked down at Sherlock. "Do you... have any answers?"
Sherlock rolled over to face him, but didn't get up. "Based on the information you've given me, I've deduced seven possible explanations, but I'll need to know more in order to narrow it down to one. And I never share my deductions until I'm certain I'm right."
"Thank you for listening, at least." Makya made his way over to the door, then turned to me. "And thank you as well. I'm afraid I didn't catch your name."
"Chevonne Watson," I said.
"Chevonne. It's been a pleasure."
Now, why can't Sherlock have manners like that? As I reluctantly opened the door, I assured Makya that Sherlock and I would be in touch soon. Then I watched him leave with the menacing bot, an uncomfortable sensation swirling in my gut. I couldn't help feeling that he was in some kind of danger, and I reminded myself that the bot had been sent to protect him, not to harm him.
After shutting the door behind me, I spun toward Sherlock.
"Don't think that Makya's case made me forget what you did." I grabbed the hazardous waste disposal bag and resumed my hunt for Sherlock's corrosives. "How many times do I have to tell you—you're not indestructible! One of these days, you'll go too far, and then what? It took me ages to repair you the first time, and I don't know if I could do it again!"
"Calm down, Watson." Sherlock pulled herself up onto the armchair, then collapsed sideways into it. "I assure you, I'm fine."
"No, you're not." I rifled through the kitchen, searching every nook that could possibly conceal a syringe. "It's bad enough that you do this to yourself, but for freak's sake, Sherlock, Makya was here! How could you do that in front of a kid?"
"He's no kid."
I emerged from the kitchen and found her with a dark expression on her face—her slender black eyebrows knit into what looked like a scowl tinted with sadness. "What do you mean?"
She adjusted her position so that she sat with perfect posture. If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought she'd suddenly sobered up. "Merely that he's a legal adult—a year older than you, in fact. The school he referred to is the University of Thern. Of course, he has not attended in some time, due to his so-called accident."
"So-called? You suspect foul play?"
"I do. And I need to observe what's going on up close. Can I borrow the Zander?"
I crossed my arms. "I am not loaning you my starship."
"Then you'll have to come with me. Which I was going to ask you to do anyway. Extra hands are always advantageous."
"Sherlock, I have a job."
"And the day after tomorrow is the weekend, which is perfect because that gives me a day to prepare for our mission. Come now, Watson, where's your sense of adventure?" Her expression gained a brightness that reminded me of an excited kitten—the look it gets right before it begins bouncing off walls and tearing things apart.
I had to admit, the promise of adventure was rather irresistible. Particularly since meeting Makya made this case feel strangely personal to me. If his parents' odd behavior ended up causing him harm, I'd hate myself for failing to intervene.
Also, the case seemed to matter a lot to Sherlock. I hadn't forgotten that she'd failed to explain why she'd needed me so urgently.
"Fine." I shook my head. This would hardly have been the first bizarre escapade I ended up on thanks to Sherlock. "Why not?"
"Fantastic!" Sherlock grinned. "We could be the ones to connect the famous businesswoman Kaia Namoki to a crime. Doesn't that sound like fun?"
"You like causing trouble way too much."
"I'm just playing the role I was made for." As if to prove her point, she grabbed the deerstalker hat—which I'd given her as a joke—from the shelf behind her and put it on.