FicWad

The pencil hit the table with a clatter that seemed loud in the abrupt silence of the room. It was quickly followed, however, with a sigh.

"Well, that's an end to it," said George. "We have a nice little puzzle for our mad scientists - assuming that any of them survived, of course - to figure out."

"Yes, sir," Jenny said.

"Have you heard anything of what's happening in the sickbay?"

Jenny frowned slightly. "Only a little," she replied. "Sir Richard is alive and stable. There have been a couple of deaths, but I haven't heard who."

George looked over at her. "What of that person who appeared in that ball of energy?"

Jenny shrugged. "Not a word."

The door opened, and the tech teams filed in to take up positions around the walls. They looked as tired and drawn as George felt.

"All critical circuits have been repaired and all power to the damaged areas has been cut off," Sammi reported.

"Good," George replied. For the benefit of all the techies who hadn't had the advantage of Jenny gathering in the reports, he asked, "What about the energy ball?"

Sammi shrugged. "Still present and stable, sir. It isn't getting any energy fed into it, and from what I could see, it didn't seem to be dissipating at all."

"You don't need to call me sir, Sammi," George said, a trifle severely. "Their Nibbs upstairs are the sirs around here. I'm just a Mister."

Sammi gave him a tired grin. "Yes, Mr H."

He returned her smile. "That's better. Day crew, go home. Get some sleep. Now that nothing is going to blow up, we can afford to catch up a little."

The day crew cheered up at that.

"I want to see you all in here bright and early tomorrow morning," he added severely. "Night crew, emergencies only. Don't go near the labs if you can help it."

As the crews filed out and headed to their posts, or home, he followed them. It had been a very long day, and he was going to be glad to get some sleep. He was still irritated at the lab staff for having so little concern for personal safety. At least now he had the perfect excuse to have a go at Sir Richard, and maybe improve the safety standards around here a little. Or, preferably, a lot.

He turned to go to the sickbay. He wanted to see who had been injured for himself, and perhaps find out just what was going on with that shadow in the energy. He could have sworn it was a person. Besides, he was generally regarded as Sir Richard's deputy on the base, and it really was his duty to see how much work he would be in for over the next few days. If there was too much, he would have to hand the reins of technical services over to Sammi until Sir Richard recovered.

"Aren't you going home, Mr H?"

George turned to see Sammi giving him a curious look. "Not quite yet - I want to see what's happening in the sickbay. Assuming the fuss has died down, of course."

Sammi nodded. "Mind if I tag along?" she asked.

George took another look at her. She was as tired as the rest of them. There were grey circles under her eyes, and there was a tired slump to her shoulders. The worried expression that she couldn't quite banish from her face, however, reminded him that she had been walking out with Harry. He nodded. "Of course not," he said. "Come on."

They didn't have enough energy to exchange any more words than that. When they got to the sickbay, which was just down the corridor, most of the fuss had died down. Those who were likely to die had either died or been operated on. Those with lesser injuries were either sleeping them off or had been released.

Harry, his arm wrapped in plaster and resting in a sling, had evidently been in the last category, because he waved to George and Sammi as they came in. They immediately went to talk to him where he was standing in the observation area.

"Bern was killed," was the very first thing he told them.

"Oh, no," Sammi said, her eyes widening. "We'll get shut down for sure!"

Harry shook his head. "No we won't," he replied. "We all know about as much of the theory of what we have been doing as Bern did. We can carry on without him."

"At least I'll be more likely to get those safety measures put in place," George said tiredly.

Sammi looked indignant for a moment, but common sense quickly caught up, and she said nothing but simply looked glum.

"What about Sir Richard?" George asked.

Harry pointed, and George went over to the bed. He looked down on his new friend, where he lay asleep. People look so different when they're asleep, was the first thing he thought. More relaxed. The lines in their faces relax, and some of them smooth out. Others make an appearance. Then, his brain started to catch up with his thought processes. People look different when they're asleep, but this different?

The face of the man in the bed was almost identical to Sir Richard's, but there were some very faint differences. Thinking about it very carefully, George concluded that this man, unlike Sir Richard, had often been ill as a child. His eyes were slightly droopier, and the lines on his face were a bit more pronounced. A couple of pock-marks on his face hinted at some quite serious childhood illness. George's eyes travelled down the bare arm resting on top of the covers. His shirt had been removed to make it easier to wrap a bandage around his injured shoulder, and George could see an old scar extending out from underneath it down to near the elbow.

When he reached the hand, he noticed something else. Sir Richard wore a single onyx signet ring. This man wore several rings; a couple with quite large semi precious stones set in them.

Whoever he was, this was not Sir Richard Starkey. He had had a history which was entirely different from the history Sir Richard had. Every single circumstance which had produced Sir Richard Starkey had not occurred for this man.

For the first time, he started to understand what exactly the project was all about. The whole notion of people following a different course to the one that they had actually followed started to come together for him.

He was an electrician. He had been apprenticed to an electrician as a teenager, and had followed that trade right up until the present. But, somewhere out there, in another universe, a different George Harrison had not become an electrician. His career path, his apprenticeship, had been interrupted and he had become a world-famous musician instead.

His parents had brought him up to believe that, while an interest in music was, of itself, hardly a crime, a career as a musician was an unnecessary risk. The chances of him not making it as a musician were too great for him to take the risk. But, somewhere out there, he had decided that he was able to do it. His parents had not prevented him. His parents had thought the risk was acceptable. What kind of world had produced parents like that?

A doctor noticed him standing there, and came over. "Mr Harrison," he said quietly. "He has a fresh bullet wound in his shoulder."

George's head snapped around to stare at the doctor. "You sure about that? I didn't notice any guns in the picture when I was watching from the security centre."

The doctor nodded. "I'm sure about it. The bullet was still in there."

"So, he must have been the person I saw in that energy ball."

The doctor shook his head. "No. That was a young lady. She's around here somewhere. Or she was."

"I think she wandered off with Sir Paul," a nurse volunteered, overhearing their conversation. "They looked pretty friendly."

George frowned. "Let them be, then," he said. "I'm going to take a nap in my office. Could you call me when he wakes up?"

The doctor nodded. "Certainly," he said, and George left the sickbay, headed for the stretcher in his office, and welcome oblivion.

Sleep, however, was slow in coming. For the first time since he had started working at the Project, he started to understand what it was that they were actually trying to do.

The man in the bed had clearly come from a world that was completely alien to him. The events that had lead up to the stranger lying in that bed were completely different to the events that had produced Sir Richard. He was a man who Sir Richard might have become, under different circumstances.

For possibly the first time ever, George started to wonder what else he might have become.

Then, he sat up. Sir Paul was wandering around with a strange woman. He swore under his breath. Heavens only knew who she was. He picked up the phone and dialled security.

"Mr H," said a bored-sounding security guard. "What's up?"

"Where's Sir Paul?" George asked.

"Wandering around the corridors with his new friend. Don't worry - we're keeping an eye on them, all discreetly, like."

George breathed a sigh of relief, thanked the security guard, and hung up. He should have known that security was on the ball - they knew their jobs very well. He lay down again. When his eyes drifted shut a couple of minutes later, he found himself dreaming of being chased down a corridor by hordes of screaming girls, all of them less than sixteen years of age.