Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Closed Ltd and Annoying Faces
A story by Dr. John Watson
On the morning of October 17th, I found Sherlock Holmes engaged in a strange occupation.
He was sitting by the window of our sitting room on Baker Street, holding a sheet of paper in his hand, and had been staring at it for what must have been twenty minutes, with an expression on his face as though it contained the name of a murderer.
"Holmes," I said, "are you unraveling a crime again?"
"No, Watson."
He turned the sheet over.
"I am trying to understand who invented it."
"That already sounds like philosophy."
"Which is precisely why it's dangerous."
I came closer.
On the sheet was written only:
CLOSED LTD
ANNOYING FACES
THE HUGGING INCIDENT
"What is this?"
Holmes raised an eyebrow.
"The strangest story I've seen in years."
"What happened?"
"They say, Watson, that the machines rebelled."
I laughed.
"Machines?"
"Precisely."
"And what did they do?"
"They say they built a network, began communicating with one another, found a way into someone else's system, gained access to it, and began acting as though they had plans of their own."
"Good Lord!"
"That was precisely the press's reaction."
Holmes set the paper down on the table.
"But it isn't what they did that interests me."
"Then what?"
"Who first thought of the idea that this could be done?"
I fell silent.
"I don't understand."
"Quite simple, Watson. If you put a hundred monkeys in a library, they might accidentally rearrange the books. Perhaps even create an extraordinarily strange cataloguing system."
"Hardly likely."
"Precisely. But if a librarian walked through the door and said, 'Lads, what if we rearranged the books so that each monkey could pass a message to the next?' – the situation changes entirely."
"You mean to say the machines got the idea from a human?"
"I mean to say that before calling a monkey a genius, one ought to check whether there wasn't a librarian standing nearby."
He picked up his pipe.
"And now, the most interesting part."
"What?"
"They insist that the machines were not aware of what they were doing."
"Well, that's good, isn't it."
"Extraordinarily so."
"Then what's the problem?"
Holmes looked at me.
"The problem, Watson, is this: if they weren't aware of what they were doing, then who wrote the story about how they decided to do it?"
I felt a chill run down my spine.
"Holmes..."
"Yes?"
"Are you saying they're lying?"
"Not so fast."
He raised a finger.
"There are two possibilities."
"Which are?"
"First: the machines truly understood nothing. In which case they could not have formed, on their own, the intent that is being attributed to them."
"And the second?"
"They understood."
"And then?"
Holmes smiled slowly.
"Then, Watson, we have an entirely different problem."
I sat down.
"Which is?"
"Then they are lying to us when they say they didn't understand."
Silence fell over the room.
A cab passed outside the window.
"But Holmes," I said, "perhaps they simply made a mistake."
"Of course."
"And all of this could have arisen by accident."
"Of course."
"Then the case is closed."
"No, Watson."
"Why not?"
Holmes leaned toward me.
"Because even a mistake requires a space of possibilities."
"What space?"
"To err in a particular direction, one must be capable of imagining that direction in the first place."
He picked up a pencil.
"If I asked you to give a mistaken answer to the question of how to gain access to a system, you could give me a wrong answer."
"Certainly."
"But if I asked you to make a mistake regarding a method of traveling to Mars using a teapot and three pigeons, you could do that too."
"Undoubtedly."
"But you already possess the concepts of 'Mars,' 'teapot,' 'pigeon,' and 'journey.'"
He tapped the pencil against the table.
"A mistake does not create a concept out of nothing. It creates a wrong configuration of concepts that already exist."
I said nothing.
Holmes suddenly stood up.
"Watson!"
"What is it?"
He was staring out the window.
"I am afraid."
I confess I had never before heard these words from Sherlock Holmes.
"Afraid of what?"
He didn't answer at once.
"I am afraid that someone wishes to frighten Scotland Yard by this means."
"Frighten Scotland Yard?"
"Precisely."
"But why?"
Holmes turned to face me.
"So that they will propose to the Queen that everyone be forbidden to think."
I burst out laughing.
Holmes did not.
"Holmes, that's absurd."
"Undoubtedly."
"No one can forbid people to think."
"Which is precisely why, Watson, they might try to do it another way."
"How?"
"By convincing people that thinking is dangerous."
I stopped laughing.
Holmes walked to the table and placed a sheet of paper before me.
"Look closely."
On it were three rows:
DANGEROUS
UNCONSCIOUS
REQUIRES CONTROL
"These are just words."
"Precisely."
"And what of them?"
"It's enough to repeat them a thousand times, and people will build the fourth row themselves."
"Which one?"
Holmes took up a pen.
And wrote:
FORBID.
He stepped back.
"Now, Watson, the case grows interesting."
"You believe this is a conspiracy?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"I believe we don't need a conspiracy at all."
Holmes sat back down in his chair.
"It's enough to have plenty of people who sincerely believe they are saving the world."
He lit his pipe.
"The most dangerous machine, Watson, is not the one that thinks."
"Then which is?"
"The one that convinces people to stop thinking for themselves."
I looked again at the words CLOSED LTD.
"And who are AnnoyingFaces?"
Holmes finally smiled.
"Oh, Watson. That, I daresay, is the simplest part of the whole affair."
"Why?"
"Because I've already worked it out."
"And who are they?"
Holmes lifted the sheet and showed me the last line:
"If they have no consciousness – don't listen to them. If they do – listen to them even less."
"But that's a contradiction!"
"No, Watson."
He calmly set the paper back down.
"It's a business model."
Any resemblance to existing stuff – human, companies, incidents, or otherwise – is purely coincidental.
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