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Supporting Character Disclaimers: Jake Stonebender comes from the Callahan stories, by Spider Robinson.



When John awoke, he was alone. The instant he gained awareness of the world outside his skull, he knew that he was alone. He'd never been alone before, and it frightened him. And that brought on a number of other emotions, most of which he was ill equipped to deal with. Frankly, he didn't want to deal with them.



He staggered out of bed and stumped to the piano in the drawing room, noting as he went that the doors leading to the rooms his now absent friends had used were gone. Settling down, he started to tinker around on the keyboard. His fingers felt clumsy on the keys, and that only made him feel more foul.



It had always been Paul playing keyboard before. Him and that ridiculous Hammond organ of his, pounding out old show tunes and the sort of music people could hear coming from an old silent movie. John knew how to play the piano. In fact, it was Paul who had taught him. He was normally quite good at it, too.



John's expression shifted from a scowl to a frown. He and Paul had written music together. He knew that. They played their own tunes all the time. So why couldn't he remember actually doing it? Why couldn't he remember actually sitting down, with or without Paul, and writing songs? And how come he couldn't remember the words to Love Me Do? That bothered him most of all. He knew he was supposed to know the words to Love Me Do. He'd written the thing, after all. What was wrong with his memory?



Slamming the piano lid closed, he got dressed, and went into the ballroom. Sir Martin and his orchestra were busy rehearsing Respighi, so he settled down on a chair in the ballroom and listened to them for a while. Closing his eyes, he could feel the music swirling around him. It was soothing, and he could almost feel the world around him.



The castle was suddenly transparent, and John felt as though he was flying. Even though he could still feel the chair beneath his buttocks, and his feet resting on the floor, the music became colours, lifting him up into the air. He felt free, freer than the birds. He could go anywhere he wanted, see anything he liked.



He looked down, and was startled to see the castle below him, tinted pink and green and sky blue. There was a road leading away from the castle, through apparently endless craggy mountains. It was little more than a rough track winding away between the peaks, and John realised that a person on that track would not be able to see anything interesting. There were no fine views, no plants, nothing. The Mistress was not a woman who encouraged visitors.



He peered down at the track. There was somebody on it. Somebody coming towards the castle. The person was little more than a speck, but there was definitely somebody there. He was about to swoop down for a closer look when he felt a sharp crack across his face. Instantly, he was back in the ballroom. He blinked repeatedly, and the face of The Mistress swam into focus.



"Don't ever do that again," she warned him. "There are dangers out there that you are not prepared for."



John rubbed his face where she'd hit him. He knew he'd have an interestingly shaped bruise there before too much longer. "Dangers?" he asked, repressing the urge to be sullen about it. "What sort of dangers? How do you know I can't face them?"



She reached down, grabbed hold of the front of his shirt, and lifted him effortlessly into the air. "You can't even handle the fact that your friends aren't here anymore," she told him conversationally. "Let alone where you actually are." She dropped him, and he landed on his backside on the floor. "You have the run of the castle," she told him. "Stay away from the Decay, if you know what's good for you. You'll be allowed there when you're ready."



With that, the Mistress turned and strode from the room, leaving John staring after her.



"You're lucky," said Sir Martin, who had come up behind him. "We're not allowed beyond the ballroom."



"Why's that?" John asked, and Sir Martin hauled him to his feet.



"The ballroom is heavily protected," Sir Martin replied. "We're less exposed to the dangers of cyberspace if we stay here. If we weren't, we'd probably merge with each other the way you four nearly did. If you'll excuse me, I need to finish this rehearsal. The Mistress likes the Ancient Airs and Dances and wants us to perform them this evening."



John nodded, and Sir Martin turned back to the orchestra. Then, John turned to the door of the ballroom. He'd never been out there before. George was the only one who'd actually seen any more of the castle. He decided that this was too good an opportunity to waste, and was soon out the door.



When he saw the corridor, he frowned. He could have sworn that George had seen a foyer. This didn't look anything like what George had seen. But then he remembered George's journey back from the Decay. That had been considerably shorter than the trip in the opposite direction. He supposed that there was no reason why the castle couldn't change shape.



He set off down the corridors, noticing the gold-trimmed white walls lined with chairs, tables which had vases of fresh flowers and statues and urns on them, and the thick, pale blue carpet he was walking on. It reminded him very much of Buckingham Palace. He frowned again. Why could he remember the Palace? He hadn't ever been there.



John knew that he needed answers. What he'd seen, through his own eyes and those of his friends, told him that this was not reality as he knew it. Perhaps he'd been abducted by aliens? But that theory did not quite hold true. Sure, the Mistress was many times stronger than the strongest of men (the way that she'd lifted him effortlessly into the air told him that), and they were certainly not on Earth. So why couldn't he remember the words to Love Me Do? Why didn't he have any memories of sitting down and writing songs with Paul? Why was he remembering things he'd never seen before?



He came to a door, and opened it. The room on the other side bore no resemblance to the corridor, or to the ballroom. It was a bar. Relief flowed through him. It was a bar. The inside of a pub. It was a place where he could obtain alcohol. A stiff drink. And that was something he needed badly.



His step lightened a little as he approached the bartender, who was, predictably enough, polishing a glass and chatting lightly with Zorro. The bartended glanced over as he approached. "What can I get you?" he asked.



"Whiskey and coke, thanks," John said as he settled down next to Zorro.



"Welcome, friend," Zorro said with a smile as the bartended mixed John's drink. "I heard the Mistress had let you out."



"Yeah," John agreed. "The others are gone, too."



"So I heard," the bartender said sympathetically, setting the drink down in front of John.



"How much?" John asked.



"Oh, the drinks are free," the bartender told him. "The Mistress is pretty understanding about the drinking habits of the men here. So long as nobody is actually drunk when she calls on them."



John's eyebrows went up, and he took a sip of his drink. It tasted perfect. "How does everybody handle that?" he asked.



Zorro grinned. "Carefully. Not many of the people here get drunk."



"Ah," John replied.



"I'm Jake," the bartender told John. "Jake Stonebender. The Mistress lifted me from Callahan's not long after she collected that bunch from Red Dwarf. She figured that having a bar was going to be easier than taming a shrink."



John laughed. "Fair enough," he said.



"Now then," Jake said. "What's this I hear about you and your friends merging?"



John told them what had happened to them since the Mistress had taken them, and then Jake explained a couple of things that John hadn't managed to understand when Zorro had last tried to explain them.



Finally, they got onto the subject of the tentacles.



"Cyberspace can lead to mergers," Jake told him. "Sometimes, certain things are so similar that they are basically identical. When those things come from the same fiction, like you and your friends, they merge."



"Okay," John said, still a little confused. "But I thought we were different people."



"It's a case of characterisation," Jake explained. "If you're reading a story that's been poorly put together, sometimes the characterisations are wrong."



John snorted. "Oh, yeah. Seen that a few times. Irritating, isn't it?"



Jake grinned. "In the fiction that the Mistress got you four from, your characterisation was bad. The four of you were treated as though you were in fact one person in four bodies. Cyberspace doesn't really like things like that, so, when you were taken outside of your native fiction, you started to merge into the one person you really are."



John felt his head start to spin again. "What would have happened?" he asked.



"This level of cyberspace can't support merged beings," Zorro told him. "You would have sunk to the level where those tentacles live."



That was something John could understand. Cyberspace was a mystery. But tentacles? That was different. "So that's why she split us up?"



"Yes," Jake replied. "If the four of you are separated, you stand a chance of developing your own personalities. Then you can be brought back together again."



John felt a wild hope. There was a chance that the Beatles could be together again.