FicWad

Supporting character disclaimers: Major Samantha Carter and Dr Daniel Jackson come from Stargate SG1. (Guess which is the only television program capable of making me stay up past 9pm!) Data comes from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Supporting prop disclaimers: The Tardis comes from Doctor Who.





George was worried. He'd known Paul since they were both kids. Sure, Paul patronised him sometimes, but that didn't matter. Paul occasionally treated George as though he was a younger brother - a nice enough fellow, as long as he was more useful than he was a nuisance - but he was doing that less and less these days. Hardly ever, in fact. But all Paul had said since they had been taken to the rooms they currently inhabited was "Who is she? What is her name?"



They all assumed that "she" was The Mistress. None of them knew what her name was. None of them particularly cared. They all called her Mistress, and referred to her as Mistress. In fact, all the musicians in their part of the Castle did. None of them had ever referred to her by her name. George thought that they didn't know who she was any more than he did.



"She's broken him," Ringo said sombrely. "She's made him her plaything."



Shaking his head, John went to the fireplace, leaned on the mantle, and stared into the flames. "It didn't take long," he said. "It didn't take long at all." He sighed.



"I thought he was stronger than that," George told them. "I mean, he was able to stand up to you, John. Why can't he stand up to her?"



"Maybe because The Mistress is a woman," Ringo suggested. "I had a neighbour once who was like that. He'd brawl with the best of them, if they were male. But he was a pushover with his missus."



They all looked at Ringo, horror in their faces.



"She whipped him!" John exclaimed. "How can he let a woman hit him like that? He's supposed to show her..."



They all shushed him frantically, although it wasn't really necessary. He had stopped himself in mid-sentence, terrified that she was going to hear him.



She'd already heard him once, and made him suffer for it.



What worried them was that Paul seemed to be willing to go back for more. Again and again, he'd given her lip. Spoken out of turn. And she'd punished him for it. Occasionally, she made them watch. Again and again, he'd been dragged back to his bedroom, barely conscious. Even the eunuchs had commented. One of them told the other three Beatles once that Paul was going to get himself beaten to death, if he didn't learn to watch his tongue.



George didn't quite know what to make of the eunuchs. They were all massively strong, of course, and they all looked practically identical - as if some woman had given birth to massive numbers of identical offspring, all at once. Like a bee. The Mistress treated them as bodyguards. Nothing more. But they had personalities. They didn't let people see those personalities often, but they did exist. They were human beings.



As if the thought of them had summoned them, four eunuchs entered, accompanied by a man they'd never met before. "George?" he said.



Exchanging glances with John and Ringo, George stepped forward. They'd never had the chance to meet anybody outside of the musician's wing before. This man was obviously from another part of the Castle. He had an American accent, and was dressed in khaki trousers and a tight black t-shirt. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. George would have picked him as a soldier, if it hadn't been for the fact that his hair was somewhat longer and messier than what was normal for an American soldier. "Yes?"



"My name is Daniel Jackson. The Mistress has commanded your presence."



George nodded, and headed for the door. John started forward as well, but his path was blocked by the eunuchs. "Where... what is she going to do to him?" John demanded. He took another couple of steps forward, but was blocked once more.



"She simply wants to talk to him," Daniel assured him. "George has given her no reason to punish him. And she isn't unreasonable about matters when somebody is willing to obey her without question. I think she's a little worried about your friend, Paul."



Ringo sighed. "We're all worried about him."



"Is he usually that...masochistic?"



They stared at Daniel. "What's that supposed to mean?" John demanded.



"He's doing it to himself, John. He knows perfectly well what makes The Mistress angry. He knows perfectly well what the punishment is. But he's making her angry anyway. And The Mistress isn't stupid. She knows perfectly well that he's doing it deliberately."



"What is George supposed to be able to do?" John asked. "We've all tried talking to him, getting him to see reason, but he won't!"



"The Mistress has something else in mind," Daniel assured them. "Something of a stop-gap measure."



"I'll be alright," George told them, and headed for the door before John or Ringo could say anything else. Daniel fell into step beside him, and the eunuchs formed an honour guard around them both.



They quickly passed along the minstrel gallery, off which the musicians' quarters were located and on which they performed, through the ballroom itself, and out into the main part of the castle. The musicians almost never saw the rest of the castle. They had been confined (under guard) to the ballroom and the rooms leading off it by the orders of The Mistress. Their companions and predecessors in the Castle currently consisted of a symphony orchestra who identified themselves as being from The Academy of St Stephen's in the Air, conducted by Sir Martin Ploughman, and a large Italian tenor with a spectacular voice known as Georgiano Pavlova. They were a mixed but pleasant bunch, and Ringo had already sat in on a few of their practice sessions as a guest percussionist.



They'd never been through the ballroom's main entrance. The dungeons had a staircase into the ballroom - a wrought iron spiral staircase that continued up beyond the ballroom to the minstrel gallery. It went up even further, but nobody ever went up there, and apparently nobody wanted to. Certainly nobody knew what was up there, although there were some very nasty theories. George didn't want to go up there.



They were forbidden to leave the musician's wing, on pain of pain. George didn't really know why. Sometimes people did leave, but only ever with an escort of eunuchs.



On the other side of the main entrance to the ballroom was a large foyer. The most dominant feature in the foyer was not the chandelier, or the spectacular marble floor, or even the Corinthian columns, but the great marble staircase. It was huge. It was carpeted in red. It was just perfect for sweeping down in a wide skirt. Which, Daniel now quietly told George, The Mistress found an excuse to do several times a day.



Daniel turned to the eunuchs, and told them that they would go on unescorted - Daniel somehow knew that George wasn't about to run away. How he knew - and how George knew that he knew - was a mystery to him. But the eunuchs knew as well. They left without a further word.


As they went up the staircase, George got an inexplicable mental image of himself and his three friends dressed in white tuxedos, dancing down the staircase. He paused, looked around, and shook the image out of his head. "Yeah," Daniel said mysteriously. "That happens. We'd better keep moving - it's quite a hike to where we're going."



Daniel's comment, George decided, was something of an understatement. He'd had no idea of just how large the Castle really was. He decided to ask.



Daniel frowned. "The question is meaningless, really. You have to understand - this place, this Castle, isn't real. It doesn't exist in a physical sense."



"What? That doesn't make sense! How can something not have a physical existence? I mean, I'm real, and I'm walking in it."



Daniel laughed. "I think there's something I should show you. Let's take a detour."



He turned to a door, which opened onto another corridor. The door was no different to any of the others in the wall. Certainly there was no reason that he could see why the corridor behind it should be dusty and unswept. It was carpeted and decorated just as lushly as the rest of the castle.



"Why's it so dusty?"



"The Mistress doesn't come here anymore. She's lost interest in this wing." They stepped through a door into a throne room. Or, rather, the remains of a throne room. There was a dias at one end, with a large and glorious throne on it. The throne was golden and inlaid with precious gems. "She used to be dazzling when she sat on that throne," Daniel commented. "Or so they tell me."



Unlike the rest of the room, the throne and the fine tapestries that hung behind it were polished up and cared for. George, however, still got the impression of abandonment that filled the rest of the wing. As Daniel had said, The Mistress never visited this place. She had, largely, forgotten it. It was not the attentions of the Mistress or her henchmen that kept the throne polished.



"Hello," said a pleasant voice behind them. They turned to see a golden man standing there. He had a rag in one hand, and a bottle of gold polish in the other. "We keep the throne polished. In case she ever decides to come back."



The newcomer was, George suddenly realised, not human.



"We don't think she will, of course."



"Data," Daniel said, "This is George Harrison. He and his friends are new to the Castle."



Data nodded. "You've come to show him the Decay."



"Yes."



"Come with me. It's starting to spread, I'm afraid. This area strengthened for a while, but it's fading again now, faster than ever. It won't be long now. Stay close," Data warned. "There are things roaming this part of the castle that are extremely dangerous."



Daniel nodded, and they followed Data to a side door which lead to another corridor. "This place is worse than the Tardis," Daniel commented to George. "Either you get used to it, or you stay in your own corner of the place and hope that you never have to go anywhere else."



"Tardis? And what did he mean, it won't be long?" Goerge asked.



"You won't be able to understand until you've seen the Decay," Daniel told him. "You don't have the technological sophistication for it yet. It's a bit of a tricky concept anyway - it took me months to get to grips with it, and I'm supposed to be a genius."



The floorboards beneath George's feet were creaking badly now, and he started to feel distinctly unsafe. The wallpaper on the wall was starting to lift, and further down the corridor, he could see it hanging down in strips. Several of the chairs and tables were leaning against the walls, rather than standing on their own. Further down, many were in pieces. George started to get the impression of a plant which was starting to wilt and decay.



He felt sad. A feeling of melancholy had started to descent in the throne room, and it was becoming more and more intense. He felt as though he wanted to cry, to wash away the sadness with tears.



Data opened a door, and then stopped. "Don't come any further than the door," he told them. "This is the Decay. This is where my companions and I live." He stepped through, and to one side.



George went to the door, although he noticed that Daniel hung back. Looking through, he noticed that the room's floor was, at best, badly creaking floorboards. In some places, boards had been put down over holes, although in most places, there were, quite simply, holes. He looked down into one, to see what room was below. He didn't get a chance to notice the claw marks on the edges of the holes, because there wasn't a room below. In fact, there was nothing below. He expected to see a hole, the remains of a dungeon filled with water, or something. But there was nothing. And, below the nothing, there was something. It looked like a grid, glowing with blue energy.



"What is it?" he asked.



"That is cyberspace," Data told him. "It is the basic ground that the internet is built on. Not to mention the castle, and everything and everyone that is in it."



"I... I don't understand," George replied, bewildered. "What do you mean, everyone?"



Data responded by pulling his arm off. George took a step backwards, but realised that he actually didn't feel like fainting. He thought he was supposed to faint. Data held the arm out to him, and he took it. It felt heavy, like a piece of machinery. But inside was nothing more than a blue glow. George realised he was shaking his head. "No," he said. "No. This.... this isn't real!"



"Precisely," Daniel responded quietly. "None of this is real. Come on - I'll show you the interface. Then you can see where all this came from."



George gave Data his arm back in a kind of daze, then allowed Daniel to lead him back to the well maintained areas.



When they got back to the dust-free corridor, they came face to face with a squad of eunuchs. They looked angry, and George was abruptly deeply frightened. However, their anger was not directed at George, but at Daniel. Then, he realised that what he was feeling, what it was that was overwhelming his growing feeling of a lack of identity, was external. It was coming from Daniel.



Two of the eunuchs seized Daniel in a manner that was very familiar to George - it had happened to John, and to Paul as well. The remaining four eunuchs formed up around George. "You are to return to the ballroom," one of them told him. "The Mistress is very angry. It is better that your meeting with her wait until a later date."



George nodded, relieved. "Thankyou," he said. "I don't think I want to be with The Mistress when she's angry."



"You've done well so far," the eunuch told him. "You've been very restrained."



In a startlingly short period of time, given how long it had taken them to get as far as they had, they were back in the ballroom. In fact, George could have sworn that the corridors had changed. What he saw next shocked him to the core of his being. A large frame with manacles on it had been set up in the centre of the ballroom. George recognised it immediately - normally it was in the dungeons, in a room full of equipment that all four Beatles (including Paul) were very grateful they'd never been taken into.



The Mistress was there as well, and if she was often angry, this time she was in a towering fury. In fact, George could have sworn he could see sparks flying off her. This was confirmed when one of the sparks loosed itself from her fingertips and hit him in the arm. He yelped unwittingly, and had to fight the urge to run when she spun around to face him. She opened her mouth to say something, but thought better of it. "Tie him to the frame," she ordered.



George glanced around, and noticed that there were other people there - people he'd never met before. There were three other people in khaki pants and black t-shirts (including Major Carter, for some reason) who just had to be Daniel's friends. They were looking saddened, and terrified at the same time. George felt chilled as he looked at them, as he realised that something truly terrible was about to happen here. There were other people as well, and they all had that look about them. Then he spotted his friends, and went to them.



John opened his mouth to speak, but then thought better of it.



"What's going to happen?" George asked in a whisper.



"Dunno," John replied, equally quietly.



Even Paul, non-responsive to the world around him, was more aware of what was happening and was keeping quiet.



By this time, Daniel had been strapped to the frame, and the t shirt had been torn from his body.



"You countered my wishes," The Mistress said, sounding more dangerous than ever. "You knew George wasn't ready to see the Decay. You knew he would be damaged for the experience. Now you will pay the price for your disobedience!"



She produced a whip from somewhere. It wasn't the whip they normally saw her use, but something far, far worse. It was a cat-o-nine tails, and it had a spike attached to the end of each whip. She lashed him with it, leaving blood tricking down his back. Daniel screamed.



She lashed him again and again, until Daniel was barely conscious. Finally, she stepped back. George's eyes widened as he saw a hole start to appear between The Mistress and Daniel. There were faint cries of horror and fright when they saw it, and George felt a horrible premonition come upon him.



The hole widened, until it had consumed the floor beneath frame. The frame toppled into it, taking Daniel with it. As it fell, George could see both the frame, and Daniel disintegrate into sheer nothingness. Then, the hole snapped shut. George did something that he'd been wanting to do ever since he'd learned of the Decay. He fainted.