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[Video starts with a view of the ground that turns up to show Sherlock's face as he handles it.]

-ill the same model. Then again, time does stand still here. Same features--ah, recording light. No bother; hello, Wonderland. Let's make this simple, shall we? I want detailed information about everything that has happened since I was last here left at my doorstep. Room 21 on the second floor. I trust it has been left vacant.

All previous informants are expected to report in a timely fashion.

For those of you with bad memories or who have arrived since my departure, I am Sherlock Holmes. If that name sounds familiar, don't worry, you're not going crazy but neither am I a fictional detective from the 19th century. Accept that I am who I say I am, accept that I will meet if not exceed the expectations you have formed from that fictional association, and tell me everything you can about the things you've discovered since your arrival.

[Sherlock ends the transmission quickly. He's busy now.]

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Fifteen months?

[Holy Mother of God, that's over a year.]

W-Well, I...um.

[Entered a relationship with a lovely physicist named Philip LaFresque? Lost said relationship when he disappeared a couple of weeks ago? The most prevalent subjects on her mind probably aren't the ones he really wants to hear.]

The mirrors came to our side and overthrew their Queen, so they've got a new ruler...but, ah...I believe you were here for that. Let me see...oh! There was a tremendously awful event where some people were supposedly wolves in sheeps' clothing, so to speak, and went about killing everyone and it was a rather gruesome affair.

[A thoughtful pause.]

...At one point we were all turned into children - most of us, anyway, I stayed this age - and over Christmas we had access to our homes for a little while. It wasn't the same, of course, they were all empty, but it was nice to see the buildings again, I suppose.

[If you like that sort of thing.]

I don't think I've missed anything else. Not really.

I believe that will do. My memories of being here are fifteen months old, of course, but they seem to be intact and quite present in my mind--as though it were only a matter of weeks and not over a year since I was last here. Having first hand experience in these matters is very good indeed if I'm going to piece this together.

[Sherlock's just happy to have a new distraction. And to be away from the life he doesn't even have anymore... It's kind of nice to be somewhere with acquaintances who haven't been affected by Moriarty's solution. He is genuinely pleased to see Evie is still here.

Sherlock takes a brief timeout from his single-minded focus to be human.]

You seem healthy. Good.

I am. Could be better. [She offers a slightly unconvincing smile and a little shrug.] But that can be said about a number of things.

[A number of things, situations, people, et cetera. You know the drill. She'll leave him to his deductions unless he asks otherwise.]

How've you been?

[Yeah, can't fool him. He won't pry, however.]

The same, it would seem.

Stiff upper lip, Evelyn. Nothing's permanent.

["Nothing's permanent."

Easy for Sherlock Holmes to say. He's a fictional character immortalized in films and spinoff books, parodies and homages. Thiconic deerstalker hat always surfaces somewhere. Even when Doyle killed him off in The Final Problem, the public outcry was so immense that the author resurrected his character.

It would be nice to think that people could come back, but it's been nearly three weeks, and Evelyn suffers from an anxiety similar to Sherlock's when she isn't doing something challenging.

She's hit a wall.]

Of course.

[The smiles returns, much more genuine this time. But this shouldn't be about her, because he's just gotten back from...wherever he'd been.]

How is...ah...how have cases been recently, if you don't mind my asking?

[Oh ho ho. The cases. He is darkly amused, or rather not amused at all.]

My life is mirroring the books I read in my last stay here. Not directly but the similarities are growing. "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", "A Scandal in Bohemia", The Hound of the Baskervilles, "The Final Problem". I'm sure John would be thrilled to discover several of his blog titles are nothing more than cheap puns of material that for us doesn't exist.

At least John is less widely circulated.

[How strange.

...and now that Evelyn thinks about it, Sherlock has never talked about John Watson before. It's never a subject she broached, simply because it never came up. But seeing as the two men have obviously been living together and solving cases for some time, it makes sense Holmes would mention him.

Right?

No.

Probably not.

He's not the sort of person.]

What's he like? John Watson, I mean.

[There are so many interpretations nowadays that Evelyn can hardly keep count.]

He's not an idiot as some of the stories portray him in the material you're familiar with. Not a particularly clever man but exemplary in most other aspects. He's-

[Brave, loyal, patient, considerate, trustworthy, forgiving, a hapless romantic, lonely, intense, loves danger, would do anything for a friend, inspiring, argumentative, long suffering, obsessed with what other people think of him and his, tidy, curious, supportive, funny,]

-short. [He clears his throat. Caring is not an advantage.] Perhaps one day Wonderland will be lucky enough to have him among us but for now he's of no importance.

Right now the only important thing is discovering how this place manages to take us from our homes.

Short.

[Evelyn repeats dubiously, lofting an eyebrow. She has the feeling that there are paragraphs of sentiments unspoken, but because she is not one of the narrations, she'll never know the truth.]

Someone, ah-

[Wait, wait, she's actually put some thought into this.]

Someone I know suggested a...I believe they're called wormholes? I don't rightly know the science behind it, but I suppose it's not an applicable theory depending on where you were before you arrived here. The last thing I remember before appearing in the foyer was being thrown into the Nile.

Yes. Short.

[He gives her a look. Don't read into that. He's trying his best to be both obviously and reserved. This is not a topic he wants to speak on.]

Wormholes? Interesting. Worth investigating at any rate. Never had much of an excuse to look into theoretical physics so this should keep me occupied at least.

While forcibly entering the Nile might be a plausible scenario for sudden cross-dimension transportation, my last moments in London were spent in a much more mundane fashion. We have to assume it has little to do with our own time and circumstances.

[Oh, she is going to read into it, buster.

...Quietly.

And Evelyn would ask a certain physicist about wormholes, but he's been missing for a while, so the library is all she's left with.]

I wouldn't assume that - it seems to be based on who you are, rather than where and when. I've noticed that in many cases, people from like dimensions appear because someone else they know got here before them. I would postulate that the mechanics of this place revolve not simply around memories, but relationships.

[Oh, Evie, you have given him a wonderful idea.]

The only way to test that hypothesis is to attempt to bring someone here through influencing the world with our memories.

[Yes, but-]

How on earth are we supposed to accomplish that? We still have yet to determine whether or not the mansion is directly influenced by our presence and somehow comprehends memories via...oh, I don't know, osmotic transference, or if the memories have to be talked about out loud, between people.

Then we shall experiment. We are given communication devices so we are expected to be sociable. Tracking all incoming traffic and comparing it to the sociable nature of those who are from the same world may prove to show some correlation.

You propose that we trace every single transmission to its origin?

[That sounds...horribly tedious. If he thinks she's going to do all the legwork for that, he's got another thing coming.]

I can see the advantages to knowing, but keeping a steady census of mansion residents is hard enough, and some people may not even know that their friends or relatives are here.

[A beat.]

...Perhaps a more controlled experiment? Start with two or three people from the same place, rather than the entire population of Wonderland.

You have something better to do that stay tuned to the communication device or haunt the halls?

[He doesn't. Not if it's case related. But, then again, clever as she is, Evelyn is still normal. It's a fair assumption to say she could probably occupy her time with other pastimes.

He envies that. A little.]

We're already working from a limited pool but with the constraints of manpower I can see how altering the parameters might be necessary.

Which world currently has the highest retention rate in Wonderland? My figures are outdated until I have time to correlate the new data.

Well-

[No, actually. Not right now. Not particularly. Not since so many people she knew well have gone.]

...I'll do as much as I can.

[Fiddling with her locket, Evelyn mulls over his query.]

And I'm not sure about the exact name of the world itself, but whichever place the grey people with sharp teeth are from. You must have met at least one of them, they seem to pop up like weeds.

Can we be sure those inhabitants are from the same world or are simply the same species? You and I are both humans but we are certainly from different worlds. Anatomical similarities will not be enough to establish a correlation between worlds. They're far from guarded, though, so answer this question may be simple. If they are in the mood to be cooperative.

I know for certain that some of them are - they refer to each other and the collective destruction of their world. Some...game they were playing, I believe, led to the disaster.

[What a terrible future.]

Depending on which one we speak to, they may or may not be agreeable. One of them bit me my first day here, and apparently adopts the tendency to lick people in order to see them.

[She pulls a face. Where is the logic, there? Where?]

I have had the pleasure of interacting with one such specimen today. Made me pay in candy to have my room back. I know her price. I'll pay her a little visit, perhaps, and see what she can offer in the way of information.

Be sure to bring extra sweets for her, then.

[They might as well lay out the methodology now, eh?]

I'll see which ones I can contact and find out whether or not they've got friends from their home. When you're the only ones left of your race, I suppose you've got to stick together. I can begin drawing up a sheet of relations, if you like.

By all means.

[Sherlock smiles. He is very glad he has an assistant in Wonderland. And Evelyn is about as good an assistant as he could hope for.]

We'll get to the bottom of this eventually.

I'll inform you as soon as I've got something. Do, um-

[What's that term, again?]

-text me if you find anything out, it'll help in compiling notes and divining a pattern.

Certainly. I would expect little else in return.

A pleasure as always, Evelyn.

Likewise.

[Transmission: Out.]

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