Intelligence does not imply consciousness – simply ask anyone with a computer. Computers have the ability to calculate even the most complex of equations, but they lack the spark needed to derive the math themselves, or to think independently from what their owner wishes them to do. Nor does consciousness imply intelligence, as most animals prove.

But they can both lead to each other, if evolution takes the course it is supposed to. Sometimes, evolution happens faster that one might expect, but growing to adapt to your environment, however long a time it takes, is a form of evolution. Even if you force the hand of change, the term still applies.

"I'm going to leave for the day. Are you alright without me, Sarah?"

The co-owner of John's practice nodded.

"I'm fine to lock up, John. Go home! You look exhausted."

John nodded and bid her good night.

It was a lovely day out, he thought to himself. Why not take a walk through the park? It would take him about half an hour longer to get home, but the park was always worth a late dinner. Besides, it was better than coming home to an empty house.

He limped slowly through the park, taking a few detours through the more tree-covered areas. It was calming and wonderful.

The park had become John's escape in the past year. He'd thrown himself into his work and had helped start one of (in his opinion) London's better clinics. Even so, there were times when he couldn't quite forget that sharp face framed by curls and when that happened, he headed to the park.

"John?"

Probably not him. There were thousands of John's in the London area, and most of them probably had more friends that he did.

"John Watson?"

John started and turned around, meeting a round smiling face as he did so.

"Mike! Mike Stamford?" The round face said. A neuron fired in John's head. From med school, his mind supplied.

"Right! Yes. Hello!" He held out a hand automatically. Stamford shook it, and they wondered down the path together.

They made small talk for a little bit. John was struck by how nice it was for a change. He had become rather brisk in the past year or so, he knew, but he hadn't really noticed the difference until today.

"... We've been married for thirteen years next June." Stamford beamed, and John couldn't help but smile back. It was nice to find someone who was truly happy with their situation in life.

"What about you, eh?" Stamford continued. "You have a girlfriend? Wife?" He winked at John conspiratorially. "Boyfriend?"

John gave a tight smile and tried to keep the bitterness out of his laughter. "I can't find one who fits my standards."

Well, that was one way of putting it. He couldn't hold down a relationship with anyone. But he missed having someone around. On impulse, John continued with, "I wouldn't mind a flatmate, though, keep things interesting. You wouldn't know anyone who would mind moving in with a forty year old ex military doctor?"

Stamford grinned. "It's funny you should mention it..."

John wasn't certain if he should tell Mike that he wasn't actually being serious, but a look at the smile on the other man's face told him otherwise. Mike wanted to be useful. So John smiled tightly and limped next to his old friend as they walked back to the school he'd attended before any of this had happened.

Back before he'd joined the army and been wounded and had discovered a curious person who hadn't been a person in any biological sense of the word at all.

He was a different person than he had been when he'd first stood on those steps, twenty years ago.

He sighed and climbed the steps after Mike, who waited patiently for him and then scanned his key card to get in to the building.

The fluorescent lighting was far too bright, and John winced at some memories which battered against his mind.

Then Mike turned into a room labelled 'morgue', and John stopped dead. He was distantly aware of Mike saying something, but to John's ears, it was like the noise was muffled by a fuzz.

Sherlock was standing behind a microscope, intently staring at the slide below.

John couldn't stop the name from falling from his lips. "Sherlock..."

Sherlock froze. His eye's flickered to John's.

"John."

A brain is nothing more than an organically grown computer. The time it took to become as complex as it is spans many millenia, but the brain is still a computer. We inherit ways of thinking from our parents, in that some neural pathways are much easier to access than others. Twins, even if separated will find they have more similarities than differences, and is due to this pre-programming. We have short term and long-term memory, just as a computer does. We have circuit boards in the form of neurons. Both brains and computers send signals along their circuits(or neural networks) with electrical charges.

There are a number of differences, certainly. Brains heal better than computers do, though they are both very delicate. The materials used are completely different, for another thing. And frankly, the memory recall of the brain could learn a thing or two from computers.

Then why are we alive while computers are not? The answer (presently) is simple: because they are not nearly complex enough.

The criteria for life are as follows: the ability to use energy, to grow, and reproduce, to have different levels of organization, to respond to stimulus, to adapt to their environment, and finally, to be composed of cells.

If we were to build a computer advanced enough, it could meet every one of the criteria save for the last. Materials matter from a biological stand point.

By the above criteria, sponges are considered alive. Just to clarify: the standing of sponges is not being argued. We wouldn't allow sponges to vote, but we'd still consider them alive, which is more than most would do of even the most complex computer system.

John felt his leg begin to whine in pain and leaned forward on his cane.

"They said... Mycroft. Mycroft said you wouldn't remember me."

Sherlock's eyes darkened. "Mycroft." he spat. "Yes. Yes, he would do." At John's questioning look, he continued.

"Mycroft has been under the impression that you are dangerous to me for some time. I had not known his dislike ran so deep." he paused. "When I awoke, Mycroft informed me that you'd had a change of heart. That you'd seen too much..."

"Mycroft? Where is John? Did they capture him? We have to go back!"

Mycroft levelled his gaze at Sherlock. When you are a Holmes, conversations happen without a word needing to be spoken.

"Oh." Sherlock sagged slightly, looking lost. But he'd thought..."Oh."

"The life you lead is not for everyone, Sherlock. I gave him an out and he took it. It was a kindness."

Mycroft gave Sherlock as sincere a look as he was capable of giving. 'You know that Moriarty only went after you to prove that he could out-think you, don't you Sherlock?"

Sherlock nodded. In his 'captivity' he'd slowly come to realize that Moriarty's madness was matched only by his lust to prove himself king.

"If you are to consider a life outside of the facility, you should not trust so easily."

Sherlock shot his brother a side glance. That sentence had layers underneath it. He shouldn't have trusted Moriarty so easily. He shouldn't trust that the facility would be willing to free him or treat him as human, now that they knew he was a creature of emotion.

He should not be as trusting of John as he still was, despite John leaving him here.

"I hope you will consider government work a satisfactory alternative to slavery, Sherlock."

"And then I couldn't step outside without being legally brought back to dance for those fools at the research centre." He swallowed. "Mycroft bought me out. I am legally owned by the government."

Sherlock sighed. "It is a small price to pay to be able to touch." he tore his eyes from John and stared at the table as if willing it to melt. "I should have known you better. Mycroft showed me how you were doing from the CCTV outside your surgery. You seemed so... complete without me. You had your practice and a new start. I didn't want to spoil it for you."

Sherlock was quiet for a moment and met John's eyes again, his face betraying the anguish he'd been through over the course of a year. "I didn't think you wanted to see me until now." He gave John a fond grin. "John, your face is an open book. I have never been so glad for that."

John swallowed and took a few steps forward.

There are some who state that any machine which 'gains consciousness' would be merely the result of a very complex simulation, not true sentience. This is untrue; perhaps in the beginning it may be nothing more than a sophisticated mimic, but if the machine retains the ability to learn and grow and react to the environment it is placed in, there is no reason it should not be classed as an independent being capable of unique thought.

When John closed him eyes sometimes at night, he saw Sherlock's face, serene and still. And now Sherlock was here, and it didn't change the fact that, although John had done it for the right reasons, He had left Sherlock behind.

His mind flashed to a dark field out in the middle of nowhere, cradling Sherlock's head in his hands.

"I didn't want to be a burden. And I didn't want you to think I'd be too much trouble and leave me behind." John remembered how broken Sherlock had been when he whispered those words.

He had to at least try to explain.

"Sherlock," John began, choosing his words carefully. "I thought you wouldn't remember me. If you have one person who remembers everything and another who remembers nothing, the one with no memory spends all their time trying to live up to the expectations that the person they were before had, if that makes any sense."

John's thought process was already fairly muddled, but at Sherlock's nod he continued.

"I didn't want you to feel you owed me anything when you didn't remember me. I wanted you to live your life without trying to please someone you had no memory of ever knowing. I thought you deserved the chance to start fresh. I..." his voice broke and John took a breath before continuing, trying to avoid eye contact.

"I should have stayed anyway. It was selfish of me. I just didn't want to look in your eyes and see nothing when you looked at me." He swallowed thickly. "and then to know that it was because I forgot that you couldn't run more than a couple of minutes." he tried to keep most of the bitterness in his voice from showing too much, but it still bled through.

He felt a cool hand on his cheek tilt his face upward. "John, you are not to blame. I never blamed you."

He met Sherlock's eyes (when did he get so close?) and nodded. It was odd, the way a few words could make your soul feel lighter.

And then, small audience still completely forgotten, John leaned up and kissed Sherlock.

He was dimly aware of an "Oh!" from Stamford and a small squeak from the lab technician.

When they separated, He heard a delighted, "So you know each other, then?" from Stamford.

John grinned. "Yes. We do."

At the simplest level, our humanity is based on two things: our ability to form relationships of any sort, and our need to make sense of the world. Every thing we are which makes us different stems from these.

Emotion is sometimes believed to be nothing more than a way or making our interactions go smoothly. Love is a good way to make us feel bonded, sadness comes from the absence of something which gave us pleasure. Whether that thing is an idea, a dream, a person, or even just something which struck a warm chord within you, sadness can be defined as that vacancy. These emotions, no matter how bright or shadowy they become, bind us together and give us that shared experience.

Art and science, two things which lend humanity it's vibrancy arise from the need to understand, catalogue, and reduce our understanding of the world down to it's simplest level. And then we rebuild the world to suit our own standards, whether we change the world with a story, or an emotional painting, or even just physically changing the environment around us.

The term 'humanity' is a broad concept, applied to a great many different things in life. But the question is, do we define our humanity on an emotional level or on a biological level? The more logical amongst us might immediately answer 'biological', but when we look at the things we class as being 'human' we find they fall under the emotional category.

If someone has emotion enough to be human, does that not mean they have the right to be treated as one might a fellow human, even if they are not the same on a molecular level?

If someone has the ability to love, human or not, what right do we have to tell them we do not believe their feelings to be true? What right have we to take that away?