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The Thinker Challenge	By : marksandspence Category: S through Z > Sherlock (BBC) > Sherlock (BBC) Views: 2251 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This story is based solely on the television show Sherlock that airs on BBC1, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. I borrow their universe to play in and do not claim any ownership or intend to make any money off of this fun hobby of m

Chapter List
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Author: Mad (marksandspence@yahoo.com)
Setting: Post Series 3 of the BBC1 series, Sherlock. I have not incorporated anything from the teaser for Series 4 (= Moriarty’s return), under the assumption that such events were resolved prior to the start of this story.
Rating: Mostly Mature (PG-13), occasional explicit (NC 17) chapters.
Summary: The Thinker Challenge offers a prize of £2 million to the first group to create a working prototype capable of transcribing the thoughts of a human being directly into a visually accessible form. Its intellectual sponsor, Dr. Sio Stanton, is a prickly astrophysicist with ambiguous motives who, after hiring Sherlock Holmes on a whim decides to make him an interesting offer. Amusement, sex, drugs, social awkwardness & brotherly conflict ensue. Setting is post Series 3.
Disclaimer: This story is based solely on the television show Sherlock that airs on BBC1, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. I borrow their universe to play in and do not claim any ownership or intend to make any money off of this fun hobby of mine. All characters, except the ones that I have created, belong exclusively to them, the BBC and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate.
Feedback: As always, feedback is much appreciated.
Author’s Note: In truth, I was inspired to write this story because I simply wanted an excuse to think about Sherlock having sex. I could not seem to rid myself of the idea, frankly, and not only because of the fact that I find the character attractive, but moreso because he is a rather prickly and nearly asexual sort as depicted and so it presented a challenge in order to feel believable. But I'm not very good at PWP, so then I had to think about what sort of person he would likely have sex with and in what scenario it might occur. Which then led me to create a character and a situation. Suddenly, I had written 30 pages and still had not gotten to the sex bits! I guess I just had so much fun writing for Sherlock and John and Mycroft, that I got a bit carried away. Plus, it turned into something more and I got rather attached to my OC. Still, mostly just a fun, fluffy, romantic piece, sprinkled with some ideas on brains and gender and sex. I wrote the scenes/chapters out of chronological order based on what popped into my mind. I am leading with a chapter that takes place roughly halfway through the timeline of the story, but all other chapters I have placed in rough chronologic order.
In terms of the sex, I have kept the explicit scenes as distinct chapters so those who wish to skip them (!) can and those who wish to skip everything else can. I have written the first of roughly five scenes that involve detailed sexual encounters. These take place sprinkled throughout the timeline of the story. FYI: There are 17 chapters and an Epilogue. I am putting the finishing touches on the last three of them, so the entire story should be completed over the next couple of weeks. Happy reading!
**NOTE: if looking for just PWP, skip to Chapters 4 & 12 & 20 & 21 & 22
Chapter 1: This is not the beginning.
“Why are you so angry?” Sherlock asks calmly with a look of genuine confusion.
Sio steps forward and shoves him again, this time with less force, as if perfunctory.
“I don’t know. I seem to be angry all the time,” she responds, scowling down at the ground.
“And yet, I don’t see you assaulting the nurses, or whatever sort of people work here. So presumably…”
She interrupts, “He’s my brother. I don’t like anyone knowing…this.” She glances around the courtyard, then focusing on the bench a few yards away with a single form sitting slightly hunched, “…him.”
“But he was so easy to find. It’s not as if you took great pains to hide his existence. John could have found him.”
“Took you four months,” She says with a hint of satisfaction.
“Yes, but I hadn’t thought to look. I had no reason to deduce…” He stops with a brief head nod and side-glance. “I take your point.”
Avoiding eye contact, she crosses her arms and speaks in a voice that no one else would find fraught. “There are criminally few things capable of evoking an emotional response from me. These walls, these people, has seen more humanity in me than… they are perhaps the only people who would not describe me as a heartless freak.”
“The human computer,” he involuntarily utters. She looks up to glare at him. She has always hated that nickname. He smirks gently, “but highly functional.”
She continues, “As you might imagine, I do not enjoy sharing space in here with anyone with whom I share space out there.”
“You’re deflecting. Besides, we do not currently share space out there anymore, remember?”
She shrugs. “You might say something horrible to him.”
“Why on earth would I do that?”
“You do, regularly, say horrible things to people. Its just a reflex, I get it, but….”
He scoffs, “But he’s in a coma.”
“He is not in a coma,” she states plainly.
Her intonation reveals her lack of flexibility on the subject, which piques his interest.
“Was he always this way?”
She can tell by this question that he has been there for some time before her arrival.
She shakes her head. “What did you say to them?”
“I said I was part of the Thinker Challenge.”
“It had to be in the papers. There was no other way,” she answers, resigned. “I suppose I will have to have a word with the staff.”
“Its unlikely anyone else will make the link between that and your brother. Thanks to you, they all think it is a matter of selfish convenience.”
“I do get hand cramps,” she responds while wiggling the fingers of her writing hand. “And having to wait for confirmation is a nightmare and frankly, insulting. I’m a bloody national treasure.”
“Don’t you think people would work harder if they thought it could be a tool for the disabled? The world is filled with sentimental fools.”
“Fools rarely solve problems. Money speaks loudly to those most able. Besides, my motivation is still ultimately selfish. I’m not doing it for the community.”
“Where did you get the prize money? Unlikely DBIS would go for anything quite so fringe.”
“Don’t be lazy. Since when do I have to tell you things?”
He responds with a mock frown. He looks back over to the figure on the bench. “Would you have ended up like him… if we hadn’t stopped it?”
Brushing aside her involuntary fixation on the ‘we’ of that sentence, she tenses slightly, “I think so.”
“When did it happen?” He asks.
“We were eight. There was an accident, but he was already losing, so I don’t know if it even made a difference. They found him with a bump on his head and decided that was it.”
“Netball.” He responds after a moment of thought.
She nods without acknowledging the quickness of his deduction.
“I played to spend time with my father – it was the only thing we had in common. He didn’t bother with Daniel; he was a boy and so everyone quickly pegged him as the cleverer one -- a genius -- and allowed him to stay inside to read his books. I was a girl and they treated me differently from the beginning, though we were the same. Different expectations, different outcomes. I had to learn to balance, to separate. Soon, I could read in an hour the books Daniel grappled with all day. But I could also slow it down and walk out the door.”
“Have you tried…?” he makes a stabbing motion to his leg.
She reflexively touches her left thigh, “Close enough. He has plenty of brain activity.” She adds, almost wistfully, “He’s not in a coma.”
After a brief pause, “They do think you’re a freak, by the way.”
“How did y… ?? Oh. Just because I don’t stagger around, blubbering like a fool, felling tissue boxes. Impossible standards,” she rants, acting mildly annoyed.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he says, straightening up and pulling his coat together. He reaches in his pocket, then thrusts his hand out towards her, dangling a handkerchief.
“What's that for?” She responds, confused.
“For the blubbering,” he responds with a self-satisfied smirk. “But please wait until I leave to get started.”
She waves it off, but steps forward to give him an awkward little shove on the shoulder. She looks surprised and then shrugs, “Still a bit angry.”
He looks at her a moment, hesitating. He notices her hair is tied up tightly in a bun. A flicker of uncertainty stops his momentum, as if he is waiting for her to say or do something else. She steps back, fixing her gaze on him. She crosses her arms and takes in a breath.
“Not to sound melodramatic, but you’ve ruined it for me.”
“Ruined what?”
“My hobby.”
“I’m trying to find a way to take that as a compliment, but…”
“I simply cannot stand their constant chatter. Their idiotic need for small talk, or worse, continuous validation. And the smiling…good god, I’m not a bloody game show contestant.”
“Surely you had to deal with that before.”
“Somehow thinking there wasn’t an alternative made it tolerable.”
“Don’t fight against straw men. We talked…sometimes.”
“Did we? Well, it didn’t seem so bloody tedious.”
After a brief pause, she adds, “I took up running. Someone said it was good for quieting the mind’– and similar to sex with endorphins and such. I ran all the way to bloody Cardiff. I thought maybe it was finally working when I stopped being able to read the street signs. Disaster.”
“What that meant to be a joke?”
“Only the last bit,” she responds.
“I’m starting to see what you mean about this place,” he says, smiling slightly.
“All this is to say that I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to start up again. Back to the original schedule – say, Wednesdays and Saturdays? Barring prior engagements and the like.”
He freezes for a moment with an awkward stare before responding, “Oh. Right. That’s a bit of a surprise.”
“Is it, though? We did have sex in the street two days ago.”
“It was an alley, but yes, that…happened. Still, you were quite adamant, not to mention rather abrupt, when you called it off. I took it to be final.”
“Were you angry? I did nearly die because I was rushing a simulation so that we could have more time together. It seemed a sensible reaction.”
“I had grown accustomed…I thought we were…friends, of a sort. You needn’t have disappeared completely.”
“But you already have a friend.”
“Regardless, as nothing has changed about our situation, why is your prior decision no longer the sensible one?”
“I thought I’d just explained; I cannot get what I need elsewhere. And perhaps I overreacted. We are two intelligent adults – we can surely regulate our time together in a sensible way.”
“Surely.”
“Shall I come to yours later, then? When I’m finished here?”
“But it’s Tuesday,” he responds, confused.
“I’ve got something on Wednesday this week,” she dismisses.
“Right then. Tonight.”
She nods; he turns and walks briskly away.
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The Thinker Challenge