taxonomites | [location: Central]

First A. Then D, E, and G, in perfect fifths. Sooner or later, life does have to go on.

Sherlock Holmes raises the pitch pipe to his lips and blows D, E, and G, shrill and pronounced in the summer air. He prefers to tune those in relation to one another and to A, generally, not by the pipe, but it never hurts to check his strings against them.

He fusses minutely with the fine tuners, leaned against the wall. His case is at his feet. Though he expects only Extras' custom today, the look of the thing matters. To him, at least. Unlike most of the matters he deals in, there are no absolute truths in violin tuning: only the perfect fifth, one in relation to another. One may vary the tuning as much as one pleases, as long as one varies them all. Sometimes he experiments with a particular scordatura for a time; generally he tunes just a fraction brighter than G-D-A-E, though, for clarity of sound and because he doesn't expect company in harmony.

The truth is, as much as he likes to play his violin, he would rather be doing it somewhere else right now. Squirreled away indoors in the heart of one of these abandoned buildings, maybe, where he can practice in peace and pretend the city is empty until he gets tired or slinks off to Jeremy's for food, either/or. Saying hello to the other prisoners in Taxon is not his idea of fun just today.

But he generates all of his income busking. Besides, on some level he supposes he owes it to the others to make himself available, for questions or tirades or whatever else they see fit. So Sherlock keeps his odd hours, ignores his tablet (with exceptions), and keeps more than ever to himself: except on his usual odd-numbered afternoons and even-numbered evenings, where he sets up somewhere on the Taxon streets and plays his violin, to raucous and randomly-generated Extra applause.

[ooc: corresponding to dien's everybody come yell at jason post, here's my everybody come yell at sherlock post! fire away!]

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Metody's first impression of Sherlock had not been overly flattering; she was frightened, he was rude and abrupt. But he was a familiar kind of rude to someone well acquainted with academia, and she was starting to get an idea of how very many people he must have seen arrive.

And even if he is a bit of a jerk, he's not being one now. And real conversation is a marvelous thing.

"Ah." She smiles sympathetically. "I'm not creative either." Her smile brightens. "I'm a very good craftsman, though. There's a lot of joy in that."

"If you're not an engineer, what are - ah, what were you? I was a student, before all this."

"A scientist," says Sherlock with a slight smile.

He sets bow to strings again like he's going to just leave her with that--but after a moment he looks up again, through his eyelashes. It certainly hasn't escaped general notice that Sherlock Holmes has a flair for the dramatic. "In philosophy," he says. "Professionally I was a detective. I worked with--with the Metropolitan Police Service," he says with a frown, as if he's wondering if there even is a Metropolitan Police Service or for that matter a United Kingdom in Metody's world (which he is). "On retainer, though. Consultations. Otherwise I was a private investigator, I suppose. That calls to mind something very noir, doesn't it," he says with a disdainful snort. "Nothing like that. Ninety-nine parts perspiration to every sliver of inspiration. It's all details, Miss Green--the difference between an arrest and an unsolved crime is a detail."

There might be the faintest hint of a sparkle to Metody's smile at that moment of drama. It could be the glitter of suppressed humor, or it could be the nearby streetlight. Who's to say?

"Goodness. That sounds...largely tedious. I can't imagine it's like on TV when you live it in real life."

Mildly, she adds, "One of my brothers is a cop."

Sherlock's rather disappointed with the quality of the bad television in Taxon, as a matter of fact: it's just not bad enough. Manufacted fake telly just doesn't have the heart in it--it's like when science fiction channels try to make B-movies. One can't try to make a B-movie or a bad television show. He misses Jerry Springer.

He says none of this to Metody. "Is he?" he says with mild disinterest. "Do they let people like you into the police force where you're from? Or is it things? I don't have an exact taxonomical grasp of what half of us are, biologically."

This is said casually, offhand--like it's a foregone conclusion that Metody isn't entirely what she claims to be, an open secret. Which it is to him. Many things are foregone conclusions to him.

She stands straighter, drawing back from him. She's not sure which of those who were there that night went around talking - Horst seems like a stand up guy, Nuada isn't likely to be in a condition to gossip, but Coa- Cain and....Smecker? Was that it? - those two are unknowns.

Its inevitable, really. What's more interesting than a source of shame?

"Things. And not knowingly, no - but I'm Unfortunate anyway, so law enforcement has never been an option."

People never like to feel their privacy's been invaded--even if all that's been taken from them, they offered up freely. Perhaps without realizing. But freely nevertheless.

"I told you, Miss Green." He glances back down at his instrument. "Ninety-nine parts perspiration," he says again: the beginning and end of all the explanation of his methods he feels up to giving just now. Other days he's a terrible show-off. The motivation comes and goes.

Sherlock catches a string with his thumbnail and lets it go, sounding a short, reverberating note. "I find the distinction between people and things to be a semantic one, for the most part."

Her eyes, brilliant blue in the way of tinted lenses, flick over the mindless crowd. "I suppose it would seem semantic to someone who comes up on the happier side of things. But it's still an important difference."

"All categories are semantic." Metody never should have engaged him on matters epistemological. Theories of knowledge could keep him here all day. "The most staggering lesson I ever learned in biology when I was small was that taxonomy--everything we understand about classification--is an invention. Linnaeus's invention, for the most part. Had some other botanist distributed his own Systema Naturae to that kind of success, we'd conceive of it differently."

This is usually the sort of conversation he has over his own microscope, with one eye to the lens. He's not sure why that occurs to him now.

"I imagine you draw your boundaries of personhood where they make the most sense to you. As do I."

Just as this conversation verges on the distressingly personal, though, Sherlock hefts his violin again. "In any case, they're hardly paying me for my conversation here," he says with a brief smile. "Any parting requests?"

"It's a tool. A useful way to see and manipulate the world." A person without taxonomy and semantics might as well be a computer without an operating system, or numbers without accounting.

"Ah...hm. Tchaikovsky's Meditation?"

A shrug as he adjusts the positioning of the violin and considers, briefly, Tchaikovsky's Méditation in D minor. Straightforward enough, but without orchestral backing, more than a little forlorn.

Then he looks off into the middle distance--past or perhaps through Metody, to a horizon somewhere beyond the Taxon skyline--and commences the piece. Soon it's as if he's forgotten Metody or shuffled her in with the Extras, and for all practical purposes he has; ultimately, there's only one audience he truly cares to please with his music. The peculiar narcissism of artists: and of Sherlock Holmes.

[location: Central]

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