FicWad

Author's notes: The Concerto Grosso mentioned below really exists: It's out on the Naxos label, on a CD entitled "Beatles Go Baroque" in case your interested. The CD number is 8.990050.

Supporting Characters: The Mistress' sisters are entirely their own beasts.



The corridor she paced down was, as ever, responsive to the Mistress' unspoken, unthought desires. Annoyed with herself for not having seen the trouble coming, frustrated at having to call for help, the corridor was getting longer and longer. At the far end was the control room. Eventually, when her mood had become calmer, she would reach the far end of the corridor and the control room. But first she had to calm down.



It was not an easy journey. Mistress of the nameless castle and all who resided within it, calling for help to those outside did not come easily. Even if the people she called were her sisters. She did not know of their origins, any more than she knew of her own. As far as she was aware, she had always been there. She had always been mistress of the castle. Oh, the layout changed with her mood, and sometimes prompted a change in her mood. But the castle had always been there.



She was afraid that she was not the Mistress of the castle, so much as the castle was mistress of her. She did not even have to leave her chambers (and they were the most responsive rooms in the entire castle - they were not a place for the faint of heart) to be aware of the castle's layout and inhabitants.



Outsiders were not welcome.



Newcomers had to fit into the castle, for the castle would otherwise reject them, chew them up, spit them out into cyberspace.



She could not leave the castle. She didn't like that very much. But she could not leave. The castle walls acted as a barrier, confining her to its interior. She had never seen so much as the sun, without the intervening barrier of a window. Never felt a light breeze waft across her face, never felt the chill of a frosty morning.



Her sisters had. Perhaps that was why she left them alone so much. Her sisters did set foot inside the walls of the castle, and they left again freely. She was jealous of them for that. Gardener, with her inevitably stunning display of flowers dripping from her dress and hair. Warrior, carrying the broadsword which inevitably dripped with the blood of her latest conquest. And, of course, Silver. She who surfed cyberspace itself.



She had no life outside the castle without them. In fact, she suspected that she would not have a life within the castle without them. She knew for a fact that, without the Interface and what lay beyond it, she would not have a life. She would not even exist.



The exercise had its effect, and her frustration and annoyance faded to sullen acceptance, and finally, with the rush of what would have been endorphins (had she been human), to a happy feeling. The end of the corridor appeared, and she was, as always, slightly disappointed that the journey had to come to an end.



She threw open the door, and commanded the eunuchs who manned the consoles to contact her three sisters, and to activate the Interface. Moments later, the Interface connected and her sisters appeared. She turned to face a large screen which had divided itself into four quarters. Each quarter displayed a woman's face. The first was a warrior woman wearing a metal breastplate, braces, and leather. She filled the screen almost to overflowing, and it seemed as though she would step through it at any moment and lay about her with her broadsword.



The second was a strikingly angular looking woman in a shining silver hooded jumpsuit. Her hair - assuming that she had any - was well hidden, and her face was as futuristic as her jumpsuit was. She looked as though she hadn't been born, so much as created.



The third woman was stunningly beautiful, despite the loose, but well-fitting denim jeans and tattered t-shirt she wore. Her hair was confined at the base of her neck, yet had a tendency to tumble over it invitingly. Of all the women currently engaged in the conversation, she was the one who presented the most contradictions. She was dirty, yet her skin glowed with health. Her hair was messy and rather greasy, yet shone like satin. Her fingernails had earth beneath them, yet were long and perfectly shaped.



The fourth woman had appeared through the Interface, and looked decidedly plain next to the other three. She had a couple of acne spots, and her short brown hair was cut in a style which didn't entirely suit her. Not only that, but it looked as though it needed to be washed. Her clothes were as flamboyant as she felt she could get away with in an office, but while they suited her well enough, looked as though they had suffered from the offences suffered by all clothes in the course of an ordinary day.



It was the fourth woman who was laying down the law to the others. "There's no way around it," she told them. "You're going to have to split the four of them up and help them rediscover their individuality."



"But how, Estrelda?" The warrior woman protested. "Who takes who, and what are we supposed to teach them?"



"Whom," Estrelda contradicted, somewhat absently. "Do I have to think of everything? Just do it!"



Estrelda's image vanished from the screen, leaving the remaining four staring at each other.



"Okay," said Silver, "I'll take George. He's the one who's been closest to the Grid. He'll have to learn to surf it if he's going to stop it from swallowing him up."



"John can stay here with me," The Mistress told them. "I think he needs to learn to respect a woman."



"Very well," Warrior said. "I'll take Ringo with me."



"Which leaves Paul with me," Gardener finished, sounding particularly satisfied with that arrangement.



They all nodded their agreement.



"We'll be there as soon as we can," Silver promised.



"Thank you," Mistress told them, and the connections were cut.





Something strange was happening inside Paul's mind. Something that he really didn't like. He could hear the thoughts of the other three - broken and disconnected as they were, a medley of words, images, smells, sensations, and sounds. They were a cacophony. The thoughts were strange, true, but also oddly beautiful. It was as though he was hearing sounds around him without grading them in order of importance. It was like what you heard when you simply recorded everyday sounds, and then played it back. No individual sound was any less or more important than any other individual sound. The sound of the timpani player outside was just as important as the conversation (or lack of it) inside.



What was disturbing him was something different. Underneath the cacophony was the grid. As he allowed his mind to drift downwards through the cacophony, he found that he was not pulling forth memories of his own youth and childhood. Instead, he was remembering the grid. Blue and humming with energy, he saw only the grid.



He couldn't remember meeting John. It was as though he'd always known him. But he knew that that wasn't true. Intellectually, he knew that he'd met John at a fair. Hadn't he? Or was it a playground? And what about the restaurant? How did that come into it? He remembered a restaurant in his dim, distant past. An Indian restaurant. It had a man in a turban standing out the front, a man armed with a large, curved sword. But the sword was blunt, and the man was, in fact, English. He wasn't from India at all.



Why could he remember a restaurant that he knew he'd never seen before, and not remember meeting John? He felt as though he had known John all his life. But, he couldn't remember his childhood. All he could remember was the flat they all shared, a snowfield, the Bahamas, and London. Why couldn't he remember where he'd lived as a childhood?



It was as if he hadn't had a childhood at all - as though he'd always been twenty four. He'd never been any younger. He'd never be any older. He'd never lived anywhere but in that flat in London.



He was abruptly snapped out of this train of thought by the appearance of a hole in the floor. It was a bizarre sort of hole. It had taken out half of the sofa that John was sitting on (and how come John looked blurred around the edges, like an out-of-focus photograph?), leaving the rest of the sofa perfectly intact, balancing easily and sturdily on its two remaining legs. (And Ringo and George looked out of focus too...)



A figure sprang out of the hole, closely followed by several long, thick tentacles. She landed easily on the edge of the hole, produced a futuristic ray gun, and started zapping the tentacles. It was a dangerous battle, for as soon as one tentacle retreated, another would worm its way up through the hole. The Beatles quickly retreated to the far walls of the room to watch.



Out in the ballroom, the orchestra started playing a piece that their composer had arranged in their honour. He called it "Beatles Concerto Grosso No. 1 (in the Style of Handel)." Paul wished he'd play some kind of incidental music that was more appropriate for this kind of activity.



The woman who had appeared was dressed in a silver jumpsuit, and Paul knew that teenagers everywhere would have loved the chance to look like she did. She was a futuristic fashion designer's dream made solid.



A tentacle came too close for comfort, and Paul dodged into the kitchen. The others soon followed, and they all hoped that she won, because, apart from that route out through the ceiling, there was no escape.



Looking out through the hatch with the others, they noticed that a tentacle had gained a hold around the woman's waist, and was waving her around in the air. She seemed to regard this as being of more benefit than good, for she was shooting remorselessly down into the heart of the tentacles. It didn't seem to be doing her any good, however, because she was being pulled relentlessly down into the hole again.



Behind her, the door was flung open. A squad of eunuchs burst in, followed by the Mistress and a woman in barely-there plate armour, chain mail, and leather. To the Beatles, it seemed as though she had more skin showing than not. Not that it mattered much to her, because she was wielding her broadsword with deadly efficiency. As they watched, she lopped off the tentacle holding the woman in silver. The silver-clad woman landed lightly on the ground, and shot off the tentacle that had been heading, apparently unnoticed, towards the kitchen.



Between them, the three women and the squad of eunuchs soon persuaded the tentacles to go somewhere else. The floor closed up around the tentacles, and soon there was no evidence that anything had existed at all. The Mistress turned to the eunuchs. "Get me a damage report," she ordered, and they left at a trot. The Beatles emerged from the kitchen, just in time to see a fourth woman walk into the room.



"Beatles," the Mistress said turning to face them, "These are my Sisters. You shall be travelling with them for a while."



"What do you mean by that?" John asked, suspicious.



"You are merging," said the silver clad figure. "It is not a danger often faced by people who are taken outside of their native fiction, but it does happen from time to time."



"The only solution," the warrior woman told them, "Is to split you up."