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"By Jove we got him!"

Startled, I dropped the bedpan. It clanged noisily
to the convalescent hospital's waxed tile floor.
Thank god it was empty. "Damn it!" I muttered,
turning.

An old frail man with thinning white hair and patchy
sun-spotted skin lay on a bed beneath a white sheet
and comforter. A maze of IV's and wires snaked out
from under the sheets to a rack of electronics and
fluid bags at the head of his bed. They were the only
things that kept him alive.

The hospital didn't know his true age. Actually, they
didn't even know his real name. But on rare occasions
when he was coherent he claimed to be Dr. John H.
Watson, Sherlock Holmes' biographer. Propped up by
three pillows, he gazed intently at the TV set on the
other side of the small white room, a grin spreading
wide across his face. The clarity in his eyes
surprised me. I turned to the silent television. On it
Bill Gates was leaving the courthouse. A caption read -
'Microsoft loses antitrust lawsuit.'

I decided to humor him. "We got him you say?"

He frowned, never turning from the set. "Dear boy, my
age has not stolen the memory of my friend. You are
not he. Nor have I forgotten the dark man that vexed
my friend so." With some effort he pulled a hand out
from under the sheet and pointed weakly at the screen.

I sat down on a corner of the bed, bewildered. As an
orderly I'd watched over him for the last three
months. In all that time he had only been able to hold
a thought for a sentence or two.

He tore his gaze from the tube and fixed me with an
intense stare as he touched my wrist. "In the twenty
years I spent with Sherlock Holmes I witnessed no less
than two hundred and twelve cases of his. Faced with
such a diverse variety of interesting stories, it was
no easy matter to decide which to choose and which to
leave.

"Yet one case always came to the forefront for me, a
case that in some strange way pursued him with the
same fervent logic and chilling deduction that my
friend possessed in so high a degree. It was his first
case, or at least the first after 'the accident.' But
the very thing that made this story so intriguing,
made it impossible for me commit it to paper. That
diabolical man," he said, releasing my wrist and
jabbing a finger towards Gates' image on the
screen. "He used my friend's very own strengths
against him."

I stared baffled at Watson. Perhaps I should notify
the doctor. But knowing my luck, Watson would relapse
before the doctor arrived. He'd never believe me.

Dr. Watson smiled. "I can see from your expression
that I have piqued your interest. Yet, the story
hasn't even begun. I haven't told you of Bill Gates'
true name, of the destruction of Holmes' first fifty
cases, of the events that caused Holmes to turn to
cocaine, or of the circumstances that prompted me to
take up residence at 221b Baker Street. I have not yet
disclosed my guilt over how events played or how they
coerced my silence, causing me in a Study in Scarlet
to falsify the circumstances upon which I met Holmes
as evidenced by a few mistakes such as the migration
of my war wound from the shoulder to the leg."

He laughed. "In actuality, by the time of a Study in
Scarlet I had already roomed with Holmes for over a
year." Glancing at the nametag pinned to my green
grubs, he said, "Andrew, consider yourself blessed.
You are the first to hear - The Case of the Devil's
Box."

* * *

I arrived late one morning, as was my habit, to
Sherlock Holmes' residence at 221b Baker Street.
Having ascended the stairs, I rapped once on the door
that opened to his suite. I was surprised when it
immediately gave way and swung inward.

Stepping inside, I found the front room in shambles.
China and silverware remained on the table from the
night before, while papers from Holmes' case files lay
scattered across the wooden floor in front of the
fireplace.

This didn't surprise me in the least. For although
Holmes was a tidy man in thought and dress, his
housekeeping and organization skills left much to be
desired.

I strode into the back room, which later became his
bedroom, and found Holmes taking up a glowing cinder
with the tongs and lighting his long clay pipe.
Leaning back, he took a puff while contemplating the
oddest-looking book I'd ever seen. It lay before him
on his working table, next to his racks of vials and
beakers filled with chemicals. Its black cover
appeared both hard like iron and glossy like polished
leather.

"Well Watson, what do you make of it?" he asked
without turning around.

As I approached I could make out the book's baffling
title DELL Latitude CPI. "I don't know. Is it a
witches book?" I asked.

"Indeed!" Holmes turned it sideways and opened it.
It contained no pages, consisting of just a thick
cover. The front part of the cover stood straight up
on its own, revealing a peculiar typewriter inlaid to
the inside of the back cover.

"As you can see, the buttons are labeled like a QWERTY
typewriter with a few additional keys here and here."
Holmes said, gesturing with his pipe.

"Holmes! What do you make of it? Where did you find
it?"

"Observe." Holmes pressed a circular button on the top
left of the flat typewriter. Instantly, the inside of
the black cover lit up, displaying wispy white clouds
and an odd collection of colored squares with the
words 'Microsoft Windows 98' inscribed beneath it.
After a few seconds the picture dissolved, changing to
an image of a waterfall, broken up by a dizzying
collection of smaller pictures each captioned with a
strange title like Microsoft Excel, Internet Explorer,
and My Computer. Abruptly, a white box blotted out the
center of the picture. It was a letter addressed to my
friend.

My Dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes,
I trust this letter finds you well and in good
spirits. Let me get to the point. I am from the
future. From the writings of Dr. Watson, I have been a
great fan of yours for some time. Your methods
inspired me to build this machine.

It can collect and store more data than all the books
in the British Museum's library. You can sort and
arrange these facts how you see fit and from them
create and test hypotheses to solve cases in ways you
could never have fathomed.

I trust this tool will serve you well, inspiring Dr.
Watson to write many more stories, which I'll enjoy
reading. I'm sure using your deductive reasoning
you'll be able to crack this tool's secrets in no
time. If you run into trouble, contact Microsoft's
world class support organization through MSN Messaging
Service located on the far bottom right of this
screen. There is also reference material available by
selecting Start at the bottom right of the screen and
then selecting the item Help.

Yours faithfully,
William Gates

"So, what do you make of it, Watson?" he inquired
after a pause, during which he had sat puffing at his
pipe and gazing down at the picture.

I laughed. "What ineffable twaddle! I never read such
rubbish in my life!"

"Actually, I'm of the inclination to believe what the
letter says," he said cheerily.

"You don't actually believe this H.G. Wells time
machine mumbo jumbo? Do you?"

"Don't rush to judgment too quickly. The lab's door
remained locked from the fore night, as were the
windows, which were bolted and secured from the
inside. Further, the sole vent cut into the floor is
too small to pass an object such as this. And though I
have lived here for some time, I took nothing to
chance and spent the morning with my lens crawling
backward and forward, examining minutely the cracks
between the floorboards and walls."

"Did you find anything?"

Holmes shook his head. "How often have I said to you
that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever
remains, however improbable, must be the truth? What
remains are two plausible explanations - witchery or
technology as the note purports. When deciding between
magic and science, I always choose the latter."

I nodded.

"Well then. I think this should prove to be an
interesting case, don't you agree?"

"My dear fellow, I would not miss it for anything." I
had no keener pleasure than in following Holmes in his
professional investigations. I admired his rapid
deductions swift as intuition but always founded on a
logical basis.

I spent the morning gathering his notes from the far
corners of his apartment and bringing them to him.
With great speed he transcribed these into the odd
typewriter. Together we spent the afternoon poring
over the notes and bits of data using something called
Excel, which enabled Holmes to sort the data this way
and that. I took a keen interest in watching his hands
race across the typewriter, making the symbols and
letters appear on the picture, though I must admit I
understood very little of their meaning. Still, by
afternoon he had made some headway on no less than
three unsolved cases.

I decided to use this opportunity to tidy up the place
a bit. After much cajoling I persuaded Holmes to part
with some of the notes and papers that he had entered
into the machine. In the late nineteenth century we
understood nothing of lost documents, system crashes,
and catastrophic failures. Our life experiences were
limited to pen and paper, wood and awl, stone and
chisel - all permanent forms of filing and writing.
Only acts of God could destroy these. To Holmes and I,
this Devil's Box would be equally permanent.

Thus, with no understanding of my actions I took
relish in feeding his notes to the fire. It grieves me
now to think of all the stories that were lost. In any
event when I left him that night, he had started using
a filing system of sorts called Access. All seemed to
be going well. Ah, but too well.

When I arrived late the next morning, I found Holmes
in a quandary. He sat with his head in his hands, his
cheeks flushed red from agitation.

Even at this early stage in our relationship I knew
him as a stoic man, predisposed to logic and reason.
His present state gave me quite a start. "What on
earth is the matter?" I asked, closing the door behind
me.

"I've been up all night entering my cases. I just
finished typing the last few words to The Case of the
Silver Orb when without warning this box stopped
responding to my key entries. Then the picture changed
to a horribly bright shade of blue. Nothing would
revive it. I was forced to turn it off.

My mind turned to the papers I had burned - The
Adventure of the Not-So-Noble Bachelor, The Five
Orange Rinds, and The Blond Headed League. So many
cases gone, so many stories lost.

Holmes sighed. "Not to worry Watson. Let us see if we
can turn the machine back on."

Pulling up a chair along side him, Holmes once again
pressed the circular button in the upper left corner
of the typewriter. The screen turned to a deep, bright
blue, resembling the sky on the rare occasion when it
was clear over London.

Though my friend had regained his composure and sat
calmly, I could not help but gasp as the machine
presented a horrible message.

Because Windows was not properly shut down, one or
more of your disk drives may have errors on it.
To avoid seeing this message again, always shut down
your computer by selecting the shutdown from the start
menu.

I shook my clenched hands in the air and shouted at
the demon thing. "How could my friend shut you down if
you stopped of your own volition?" I cried.

"Calm yourself, Watson. It's a machine not a man. See?
The picture is changing presently."

Indeed, the message disappeared and returned to the
soothing picture of a waterfall, covered with the
strange pictures and captions.

He turned and favored me with a grin. "I'm sorry if I
gave you a start. I finished entering all my cases
last night and burned every scrap of paper I could
find. For a spell I had wondered if I had gone and
done a foolish thing."

Touching a square pad beneath the keyboard he moved
the image of an arrow on the screen to a picture
titled Access and clicked. The screen changed,
displaying a box labeled Access then everything
stopped.

Holmes repetitively typed at the keyboard, but nothing
happened. Finally a gray box appeared with a message:

This program is not responding it may be busy waiting
for a response from you, or it may have stopped
running.
Click cancel to ignore and return to Windows.
To close this program immediately, click End Task. You
will lose any unsaved information in this program.

I gasped, covering my mouth with a hand.

But Holmes plodded along logically. He pressed the
Ignore button and the gray box disappeared.

I relaxed.

But a second later the message returned. Holmes was
forced to press the End Task button. Access went away.
Holmes leaned back and slumped in his chair, heavy in
thought. Finally, he sat up with a start. "We must
contact Mr. Gates' support organization at once!"

He clicked on the box in the lower right corner of the
picture. A box appeared, presenting a message

MSN Messaging Service
Welcome to Microsoft's World Class Support.

Holmes began to type.

SHERLOCK HOLMES SAYS:
Dear Sir, the 'Access' picture fails to work what
should I do?

ANANT SINGH SAYS:
What is your contract number?

SHERLOCK HOMES SAYS:
I do not understand this term 'contract number'?

ANANT SINGH SAYS:
It's on the CD.

SHERLOCK HOMES SAYS:
What is this meaningless babble? I have pressing
needs. Please tell me how to fix 'Access'.

ANANT SINGH SAYS:
Poor planning on your part does not constitute a
crisis on my part.

SHERLOCK HOMES SAYS:
Dear Sir, as a personal friend of William Gates I
expect to be treated better. It is your product that
broke and caused this tragedy to happen. A carpenter,
locksmith or any other person would gladly replace
their faulty goods. So if...

ANANT SINGH SAYS:
Goodbye a**hole.

Then the message box closed.

Holmes lost his composure. His cheeks now scarlet, he
pounded the table once with a fist. "What kind of
organization does this William Gates control?" He
opened the message box again and typed furiously.

SHERLOCK HOMES SAYS:
How dare you treat me this way! 'Access' is broken and
I need it up now!

ARNE HANSON SAYS:
I don't know what you're talking about. Do you have a
contract number?

SHERLOCK HOLMES SAYS:
I apologize. A colleague of yours, Anant Singh,
treated me with great disrespect. I have no 'contract
number' or 'CD' but I am a personal friend of William
Gates.

ARNE HANSON SAYS:
Is the window still open?

SHERLOCK HOLMES SAYS:
The windows are bolted and locked in this room! I
don't understand what that has to do with my situation.

ARNE HANSON SAYS:
Do you have a backup?

SHERLOCK HOLMES SAYS:
You mean a copy?

ARNE HANSON SAYS:
Yes.

SHERLOCK HOLMES SAYS:
Why would I have a copy? I didn't need a copy when
these cases were written on papers and filed into
folders. What's the point of me entering my cases into
this machine if I need to keep a paper copy just the
same?

ARNE HANSON SAYS
Before I can help you, I need you to educate yourself
about the system.

SHERLOCK HOLMES SAYS:
Very well. Is there a document I can read?

ARNE HANSON SAYS:
Yes, the help files built into the system. It will
teach you the terms you need to know.

SHERLOCK HOLMES SAYS:
Can you not just tell me them now?

ARNE HANSON SAYS:
I'll give you one - RTFM (Read The F**king Manual).

Without warning the message box closed. He sprang from
his chair and paced about the room in uncontrollable
agitation, with a flush upon his sallow cheeks and a
nervous clenching of his thin hands. "They are cunning
devils," he exclaimed at last. "But I must gather my
strength. This case taxes me more than any other. I
can do no more today without rest. Watson, use 'Help'
as Mr. Gates mentioned in his note and find a way to
restore Access and my files. I will relieve you
tonight upon my awakening." Without another word
Holmes went to his room, leaving me alone with the
strange contraption.

I put the time to good use, studying the help files to
familiarize myself with all the odd phrases and jargon
and committing them to memory. The help files were
easy to use, requiring me only to repetitively press a
single button to move from page to page.

Within a few hours I had fully versed myself on
computers and programs, files and directories, Icons
and Menus, even the keyboard and mouse. I proceeded
next to create a number of sample files using the
various programs at my disposal - Excel, Word, Power
Point, and Access. Now and again one of these programs
would give me trouble. But I found rather quickly that
I could rectify everything and start anew by shutting
down and restarting the computer. Time passed quickly
and before I knew it Holmes had awoken and joined me
in his lab.

"So show me what you've learned," he said, lighting
his pipe and sitting down.

"Well, first we must reboot the computer since it has
gotten tired and a number of the programs will start
crashing soon," I shut down Windows and restarted
it. "Now, if I move the mouse over to the icon labeled
Access and double click on it a window will come up.
Then..." I stopped speaking abruptly, seeing Holmes
shaking his head as it rested in his hands.

I found myself piqued by his silent rebuke. "I trust
that there is nothing of consequence which I
overlooked?"

"Watson, I could not understand your sputterings
about 'reboot' and 'shutting down', 'mice'
and 'windows', 'icons' and 'clicking.'"

"These are the proper terms through which I describe
my navigation of this computer," I stated with some
self-importance.

"My dear fellow I had hoped that you knew my methods
better than this. How much closer are we to
fixing 'Access' or retrieving the lost cases?"

I shook my head. "I don't know."

"My point exactly. Data is necessary to solve any
problem and that you've collected abundance of. But
what good are terms and facts if they only confuse and
obfuscate the truth? These meaningless bits of data
skewed you from the task at hand. Indeed my dear
friend we may be no closer to fixing 'Access' than
before. What is needed here is a sifting of the facts,
exercising our minds rather than our senses."

"We could reboot the box?" I chimed in.

"What?"

"We could shut the machine down and restart it."
Before Holmes could stop me I shut down the machine.

He stood, his cheeks gaining some color again. "You
know my methods. Apply them! How could stopping and
starting the box help anything but return it to its
original state? Your suggestion is guess work at best
and tom foolery at worst."

As the computer came up, I clicked on Access. Holmes
sat down again as the program came up without any
problem.

Holmes shook his head. "This is a demon's box I tell
you. It has a mind of its own, forsaking all logic."
Holmes opened a document and suddenly the screen went
to a solid, bright blue displaying a cryptic message:

WARNING!

The system is either busy or has become unstable. You
can wait and see if it becomes available again, or you
can restart your computer.
* Press any key to return to Windows and wait.

* Press CTRL + ALT + DEL keys to restart your
computer. You will lose unsaved information in all
programs that are currently running.

Press Any Key to continue

"The blue screen of death," I cried, recognizing the
message as one I read in the help files.
My friend looked at me in horror as if I diagnosed him
with the bubonic plague.

I laughed. "The help files referred to this as a free
product feature that allows the computer to rest and
sleep for a time." (I learned later that
this 'feature' like many unplanned 'features' were
actually defects in Microsoft's software. But it
didn't stop Mr. Gates from extracting exorbitant
tariffs for most of them.)

Holmes was baffled. "What do we do?"

"Reboot the box of course," I said, assured of myself.

Holmes rose and began to pace, clenching his hands in
a nervous manner. "It seems that is the answer to
everything!"

"It is," I smiled. It gave me keen pleasure for once
to deduce more than Holmes.

"Devil box!" Holmes ranted. In a fit of
uncharacteristic anger, he smacked the screen with his
hand. The blue screen disappeared and the Access
program returned.

I turned to him in admiration. "Well done Holmes! You
fixed it!"

He stammered, "I did nothing of the kind! It has to be
a coincidence!"

"I think not Holmes. You've out done yourself this
time. I have witnessed you wield your logic and solve
many unsolved cases. But even in those times I had at
least an inkling of what you saw. Here, I must
confess, I have no such insight. How did you know that
a firm whack would fix it?"

He buried his head once more in his hands. "What kind
of future is this where a devil box reduces logic and
deduction to a jumble of terms and facts without
purpose or soul, where blind answers and brute force
win over reason, and where simpletons spend hours
toiling over documents for naught as case files turn
to ashes in the fire?"

Suddenly, the screen transformed and the face of a man
appeared on the screen. And though the caption read
Bill Gates I could not mistake the boyish face, auburn
hair and cold blue eyes, a man with a shifty and
evasive personality, a man not only formidable but
sinister.

"Professor Moriarty - your arch nemesis!" I exclaimed,
standing up abruptly. In my excitement I knocked the
contraption to the floor.

Holmes dropped to his knees and scooped it up. Jagged
lines ran across the dark screen. We turned it off and
on to no avail. Exhausting all of our options, we
accepted that the machine was dead. It had taken with
it the entirety of Holmes' first fifty cases.

Holmes became dreadfully pale, staring blankly at the
dead thing.

"Holmes what have I done?" I asked.

He shook his head. "It is not what you have done that
concerns me. Moriarty has stolen my hope and shown me
the future. He has methodically and logically shown me
where my deduction and reasoning will lead."

* * *

The old man looked down with moist and red eyes at his
weathered hands, now on top of the white bed
sheet. "Holmes was never the same after that. The
spark in his eyes left him that day and was replaced
by the addiction to cocaine. Though he busied himself
with cases and continued to expertly spin webs of
logic and reason, when things slowed, his mind would
drift back to the events of the accident, and the
truth it had shown him."

A tear fell down Watson's face. "Revelation 13:18
says: 'Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding
calculate the number of the beast, for it is the
number of a man: His number is 666.' I wouldn't be
surprised if you found that number tattooed on
Moriarty's butt."

The old man took up my wrist once more and locked my
gaze. "Now I fear that a spell of brain fever comes. I
don't know how long it will be before I awake again.
It's up to you to warn the world of the beast and his
servant Microsoft Windows. I pray, tell them before
it's too late. Tell them..." His voice trailed off
becoming a whisper.

"What Mr. Watson?"

He motioned me to lean closer.

I did.

In my ear he said, "Tell them to use Linux."

He coughed once and fell back against the pillows, the
light gone from his eyes.

Mr. Watson never awoke again, dying peacefully in bed
three months later. And though he is gone, his message
has remained. It stays alive in me - Use Linux.

The End

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