FicWad

Author's Notes: No, I didn't make up the limerick - I got it out of a book called "Snatches & Lays: Songs Miss Lilly White Should Never Have Taught Us." Even minds which lurk almost permanently in a sewer need encouragement sometimes.



John weaved down the corridor with Dave Lister. They'd just left the warm comfort of Jake's bar and were headed for... well, they didn't really know. All they knew was that Lister had decided that he wanted a curry, and John had decided that that was a good idea. They didn't know if there was any curry available in the Mistress' castle, but they were determined to find some.



"Hey, I got a good one!" Lister declared. "Listen to this:



There was a young man of St John's

Who attempted to bugger the swans,

When up came the porter -

'Sir, please take my daughter,

The swans are reserved for the dons.'"



John snorted. "Bloody sods. Too good for the likes of us."



"Yeah," Lister agreed morosely. "We're bright enough. They just don't understand our needs."



"Too right," John replied. "If you don't come in for classes, then you can't keep coming here," he said, mimicking the voice of a man in too-tight a collar. "We don't cater for working-class layabouts and yobbos like you."



Like John, Lister had been to art college, and had soon decided that tertiary education was not for him. In fact, he hadn't made it past his first day.



"Classes first thing in the afternoon," Lister said, falling back to an earlier discussion. "I mean, who's got themselves together by then?"



John didn't know when he'd been to university, or where he'd been. But Lister's fuller memories and better characterisation had caused a few other impulses to surface in him, also. He had a feeling that the Mistress didn't really approve of his mixing with Lister, but he suspected that she was too pleased with his progress to object.



They turned a corner. "Maybe there's a curry house down here," Lister suggested. But all they found was yet another endless corridor.



"Bloody hell," John said. "Doesn't she eat?"



"Rimmer says she does," Lister said.



"Who's Rimmer?"



"Aw, he was me bunkmate, back on Red Dwarf. He's a hologram. Holly brought him back to keep me sane."



"Why would she do that?" John asked curiously. They hadn't really got around to exchanging life stories, although Lister already knew where John came from. Everybody knew where John came from. Except John. That thought annoyed John. A lot. Not that he was about to take it out on Lister - Dave Lister was the only person he'd met in the castle who he had anything in common with. They were both from Liverpool. Neither of them had grown up with their real parents. They'd both gone to art college and had dropped out soon afterwards. They were fast becoming mates. And, right then, John needed a mate.



"There was a radiation leak while I was in stasis," Lister said, "And when the background radiation dropped to a safe level, three million years had passed. I was the only human being left alive. And computers are not good substitutes for people."



The only part of that explanation that John understood was the last bit. He said so. So Lister told him about radiation, what it was good for, and what it was not good for. When he'd finished, John was horrified. It occurred to him that he didn't really know all that much about people. "How can people do that each other?" he asked. "That...that's just horrible!"



"I know," Lister replied morosely.



John realised that they were both starting to sober up. The exercise was doing them both far too much good. He also realised that he didn't really want a curry that much after all.



Lister had evidently realised the same thing as John had, because Lister stopped. John stopped as well. "What's up?" he asked.



"Aw, this isn't fair!" Lister complained, although John noticed that he'd said it quietly. "The Mistress has been making us walk round in circles to sober us up!"



"But we've only turned one corner since we left the pub," John replied, "and we went in..."



He stopped talking. Ahead of him was the castle's foyer. Also present were the grand staircase, and the door to the ballroom. "We weren't walking towards the ballroom," he said. "Damn!"



"Now, now," the Mistress said calmly, coming down the staircase. She was dressed in her ball gown again. "Jake did tell you that I don't like people being drunk."



John's stomach growled. He had been drinking steadily for some time, and hadn't eaten anything since he'd started.



The Mistress laughed, and took them both into the dining room. The food spread out on the table could have fed an army, and John noticed several large curries on the table. Lister looked delighted.



As they ate, the Mistress said, "I've heard from my sisters."



John looked up sharply. "Are my friends alright?" he asked.



"Ringo is fine," the Mistress told him, "although apparently George and Paul have run into trouble."



John dropped his fork, and it hit his plate with a clatter. "What sort of trouble?" he asked, feeling cold inside.



"Paul, apparently, has lost his memory completely, and George has lost whatever fragments of a mind he had. George is comatose, and Gardener is working on restoring Paul."



John pushed his chair back so fast that it tipped over and he went sprawling onto the floor. He picked himself up, and headed for the door at a run. Before he got there, however, two eunuchs appeared and blocked the doorway. John was running too fast to stop, and collided with them. He picked himself up off the floor once more, and said, "Get out of my way!"



The eunuchs didn't move. Nor did they speak. John turned to the Mistress. "I've got to go to them!" he shouted. "Let me go!"



"Not yet!" the Mistress said sharply. "You aren't ready yet."



"They're my friends! They need me!" John turned to look at the eunuchs again, but quailed at the thought of taking them on. He strode down to the other end of the room to confront the Mistress. "I can help them, let me go!"



The Mistress's eyes were filled with compassion, but there was steel in them also. She stood, and looked John in the eye. John abruptly remembered her vast physical strength, and stopped short of trying to intimidate her. "You can do nothing to help them," she said. "If you go to them now, all you will do is impose your personality over what remains of theirs. You will merge with them again, and that will defeat the whole purpose of separating you. I will tell my sisters of your concern, however. They will pass on any news."



John held her gaze for a few moments, but soon dropped his gaze. He went back to his chair, and slumped into it. "I want to help them," he said.



"I know. But they need to get through this on their own," the Mistress replied.



Once he'd returned to his rooms, he flung himself down onto his bed and stared up at the ceiling. He couldn't think of anything but his friends, and the trouble they were in. He had to help them. But how could he help them? Never mind the fact that he was in the Mistress' castle, and they were not only somewhere else, but he didn't even know where they were, or how he was supposed to get there. He didn't fully understand this whole cyberspace business, although he had a clearer idea of what it was like than he had had before, thanks to Lister. Lister's idea of a simple explanation was much easier to understand than Jake's or Zorro's were.



And even if he did manage to get to them, how was he supposed to help them? They'd nearly merged once already, and the act of separating them had already cost George dearly. How could he help them both without hurting them?



Unbidden, another memory surfaced. Like the earlier memory of his abortive attempt at going to college, this one also came from outside what everybody called his native fiction. Part of him was pleased that he was getting his past back, but the memory that was surfacing was anything but pleasant. Somebody was being kicked, and punched, and he was responsible. The sheer violence of the memory took his breath away, and the fact that he could feel himself enjoying it made him want to cry at the horror of it.



He tried to push the memory away from him, but it kept returning, and it wasn't long before he realised that his victim had never recovered from the attack. Earlier, he'd asked how people could inflict such violence on each other. The thought had horrified him. Now, he realised that he was not excluded from that violence.



What kind of monster was he? How could he have done something like that? Why hadn't he been punished for it? What sort of society had he come from that could condone such violence? For the first time since the Mistress had taken him from his native fiction, John was afraid to go back.



The thought of what he'd done filled him with horror. The man had been his friend, once. They'd played together. Stu had even been one of the Beatles. Now he was dead. In the depths of his mind, John knew that he didn't really know if he'd been responsible for the brain haemorrhage that had killed Stu, but in his heart he knew that he had.



Around him, the room darkened. The off-white walls were replaced by oak panelling, and the curtains covering the window which overlooked the bleak mountains deepened to a rich, navy blue. The painted portrait of the four friends which adorned one of the walls was joined by another portrait. This one was of John, Paul, George, Stu, and a shadowy fifth figure whom John had not yet identified. A third picture appeared, resting on the mantelpiece over the fireplace. This one was of Stu alone, and it rested in a black frame.



John stared at the changed room around him, taking in the differences. He realised that the room was a reflection of his own personality, and knew that it would take a great deal to make it change back to the way it had looked before. Then, his gaze fell on the picture of Stu. He stared at it for a long time, feeling his cheeks getting wetter and wetter.