FicWad

Author's notes: The theory here is that, while a person using the internet has access to a "back" button, the poor sod on the inside is completely reliant on whatever links come with the site.



George still lay there in his room, floating on nothing at all. All the furniture had long since vanished. And once the recitations had finished, Silver had not ordered them repeated. Instead, she spent long hours sitting in her chair, staring at the monitor she had focussing on the room, and brooded. The initial signs of his recovery had been good. He had formed a link with the outside world again. His mind had come forth. But that was all that had happened. As she had feared, his personality was practically non-existent. He had retained memories from outside the transcript - there must have been a few fan-related links hidden within it - but not his personality.



She had to get it back. Or, to be more precise, she had to implant one. Somehow, she had to manage it with his passive existence. He was having no input into his own life whatsoever. He was not even moving on his own. That had all been lost. Silver descended into another round of rage at the author of the transcript, and had to go back to killing fascist scum until she calmed down again.



By the time she had re-emerged, she had decided on a course of action. Of the four sisters, she was the one who had truly retained Estrelda's Beatles fan instincts. Ever since she had heard of the Mistress' capture of the Beatles, she had wondered why the avatar had taken them. The Mistress had little that was not directly related to Estrelda's hormones, and even Paul had never managed to excite them. Estrelda's interest in the Beatles had little to do with hormones.



In any case, she now had to paste in that which had not been originally included. It was possible. In fact, it was almost simple. But first, she needed the right tools. And the right people. Or, perhaps, the right person. One right person would be enough.



Stored away in her map of cyberspace were the locations to any number of transcripts, fansites, music sites, and so forth. She had visited them all over the years, and she knew that the best person to go to would be another George Harrison. Since Help! had been only the second movie they'd made, her choices were from Yellow Submarine, Magical Mystery Tour, and Let It Be. She wasn't particularly familiar with Let It Be, and the Magical Mystery Tour version was usually as badly written as the Help! version. Therefore, her best chance was going to be Yellow Submarine.



She glanced at the screen. Nothing had changed. Nothing would change, either. It had been weeks since he'd arrived, and he had done nothing. "Computer, lock the base down after I leave. Full security.



"Affirmative," the computer replied.



Ten minutes later, she was in her shuttle and headed out. The path she wanted was somewhat twisted. Yellow Submarine had always been a peculiar movie, and the transcript she intended to use had some peculiar links. It had been set up, apparently, by a high school history teacher who had hoped to use the movie to instil some interest in the whole psychedelic movement, and in modern history as a whole.



As a result, the transcript was hidden away amongst a cluster of non-fiction sites which contained information on everything from the internal construction of a microbe to in-depth discussions of the mindset, attitudes and backgrounds of Sophocles and Plato.



Unfortunately, she'd never been there before. Estrelda had told her about it once, and had even considered putting up some links on Silver's site. Silver now wished that Estrelda had. As it was, she was going to have to start with a web ring she knew of and go searching from there. As tempting as it was to just find a transcript of the movie from a website specialising in transcripts, characters from such places tended to be mechanical and soulless. One from such a site would only make matters worse.



She scrolled through the shuttle computer's list of links, and soon found the web ring she wanted. When she got there, however, she knew that she was going to have to send the shuttle back home. It would not travel to these places.



One of the major drawbacks of cyberspace was that it flatly refused to alter such basic laws of physics as size. A household front door was person-sized, and no amount of computerised jiggery-pokery would make it big enough to fly a shuttle through. Likewise, it would not accept that a shuttle could shrink enough to fit through a person-sized door. It was a totally illogical stance for the place to take, and Silver often suspected that it had a lot to do with the creators of the internet, and their own blinkered notions about how reality worked. It also tended to send Silver's personal stress levels up several notches.



Gritting her teeth in frustration, she climbed out of the shuttle, and sent it back to the space station to await her call. She then opened the door in the wall in front of her, and walked through into the web ring.



From the outside, a web ring looked like a page full of links, usually with short notes on the contents of the page. From the inside, it was a circular room full of doors with brass plaques on them, listing what may be found inside. As she inevitably did, Silver could not resist the temptation to play a little with the most illogical link in the room - the link to the web ring. She opened the door, and looked through. Such an action was dizzying, since you could look down and see the part of you that had not actually gone through the door yet. She looked down, and saw her jumpsuit-clad buttocks and legs. Grinning a little, she pulled back and closed the door again.



She scanned the room, and found a likely-looking door. "Modern history," the plaque read. "19th century, 20th century. With links." Walking through, she found herself staring at a room full of people enthusiastically having sex. Other doors in the room were open, and through them she could see more people having sex - all organised according to sexual position. Cursing, she looked around for the doorway she had come through.



It had shut, and vanished. The supposed modern history site had been taken over by a pornography website which contained no links to the web ring she had entered from. As a muscular and well-oiled young man wearing leather chaps and a huge erection approached, a lust-filled expression on his face. "Mmmm," he said. "You must wandered in from an anime site." He lunged for her. "Lemme taste your pussy," he growled, "I wanna eat you out."



Silver dodged his lunge, and glanced around again. The women of the site were all in positions of submission. Not one of them had an ounce of intelligence in her features, and they were all incredibly sexy. This site had not been put together with women in mind. While she didn't mind pornography, and even had a list of her own favourite sites stored away in the shuttle's databank, she hated sites like this.



She dodged again, and headed for the nearest closed door. She tried the handle. It was locked. Looking behind her, she discovered that other men on the site had noticed her presence and had left off what they were doing. Unless she got out of there quickly, she was going to find herself in the middle of a gang-bang.



She tried to dodge to a different closed door, but her path was cut off. In fact, her only route out of there was through the locked door. Frantically, she turned and gave the door a savage kick. Lent strength by her fear, the door flew off its hinges, and she ran through it.



When she saw what was on the other side, she stopped in her tracks. So did the men chasing her. Disproving her theory that their penises were actually constructed in such a way that they could never be flaccid, their erections all immediately deflated. Silver stared. Finally, she started to giggle.



The men on the other side of this door were all weedy looking fellows dressed up as schoolboys. They all had the familiar hard ons, but they were staring in lustful adoration at a bunch of stern looking women dressed up as nurses. However, they didn't have short skirts. Nor did they have low cut cleavages. And Silver would have been astonished if any of them had been wearing a chain-mail g-string or peep-hole panties. They were all stern looking older women with grey hair tied up in buns that were harder than diamond, their jackets were fastened to the neck, and their skirts went all the way to the floor. There wasn't a flash of ankle, and not one of the women bothered to carry a whip. None of them needed one.



Behind her, the men who had been chasing her retreated, closing the door behind them. None of them had ever had that kind of fantasy, and, judging by their expressions, they all looked more than a little ashamed that the owner of their web page did.



Silver marched determinedly up to one of the women. "Excuse me," she said, "I'm looking for a path to a high school website. Is there any way I can get there from here?"



The woman turned to face her, and Silver immediately felt as though she was a disobedient schoolgirl - an odd feeling for an avatar who had, like Athena, sprung out of her author's head fully grown. Fixing her with a gimlet eye, the woman replied, "And what, pray tell, would a visitor to this web site want with such a link? I will not provide assistance to one who would prey on children."



"No, no! I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing," Silver protested. "A high school web site has a link to a site that I wish to visit. Unfortunately, I got a little lost on my way there. You see, this web site was supposed to be about 19th and 20th century history."



The woman's gaze froze. "So, the little worm has been usurping somebody else's web space, has he? I will not be a party to such a deception. Nor will my sisters."



"What about them?" Silver asked, gesturing at the men.



The woman raised an eyebrow. "They will do as they are told. That is all." She stepped forward in an icily ladylike manner, and gained the attention of the others in the room. Succinctly, she told the ladies what Silver had told them. As she had predicted, the ladies immediately declared their intention to sort out the creator of their web site.



"But if you make the authorities shut down this web site, won't you be destroyed?" Silver asked, confused about their attitudes.



She got another gimlet eyed gaze for her troubles. "We would rather be destroyed than be a party to such an act. In any case, our creator keeps a copy of his creation. It is only a temporary setback to our..."



The woman who had spoken stopped speaking abruptly, but it didn't take a genius to figure out what they were up to, and what sort of creations they were. They were the internet equivalent of Bowdlerisers, and Silver knew that she had to stop them. What they were doing on a pornography website gave Silver a few suspicions about the nature of the website's creator, and none of them were flattering.



Not that Silver had any time to reflect on that, because the women had just made contact with the authorities. She looked around frantically, desperately looking for a link out of the website that was about to implode. It didn't take long to find one, and she couldn't help wondering just why the link to the outside world was in that room. Not that it mattered. What was on the other side couldn't possibly be any worse than where she was, and what she had already seen.



She ran to the door, and was through it in seconds. Looking around, she found herself in a fetish-related web ring. There had probably been links to more conventional pornographic web rings in the other rooms, but that would have meant going through a room full of men whose brains were quite literally located in their penises. They were famed for it.



Behind her, she heard the distinct sound of a web site being eaten by security programs, and shut the door firmly behind it. Now, all she had to do was to get to an educational web site. Somehow, she had to do it from a collection of pornography related websites.



Looking around, her eye was caught by a door with "gay rock stars" written on it. Curiously, she opened the door. She wasn't likely to be in any danger in a site like this one. On the other side, she knew she had stumbled across an example of what had to be one of the odder sides of the internet. The men she saw there, enthusiastically having sex with one another, all had bodies like gods. The bodies were almost certainly taken from other sources, because she knew damn well that George Harrison was built like a piece of spaghetti. He did not have a body like Keanu Reeves in Speed. In fact, Keanu Reeves was better built and generally all-round healthier than George in all his movies, regardless of whether he had gone to the gym or not. This George Harrison had clearly been spliced together with some anonymous body.



She looked more closely at him, and was forced to revise her initial assessment. This wasn't a visual website. Well - not entirely. This website was a fanfic website, of sorts. As she looked around at what else was going on, her eyes widened. She had struck gold here. Around her, she spotted links to websites about comparative religions, philosophy, rock history, modern history, and any number of other subjects.



George opened his eyes and spotted her - no mean feat, given that he was enthusiastically kissing Mick Jagger with a determination that suggested they would soon be getting on to other activities. They broke off the kiss, and George wandered over. "Hello," he said with a disarming smile. There was no hint in his expression of annoyance of what had been interrupted. Behind him, Mick was standing perfectly still, as though somebody had hit an off-switch.



Seeing her quizzical expression, George said, "He's an automaton. He's just there so that the scene isn't a masturbation scene."



"I take it the author isn't interested in Mick?"



"No. She went to a Stones concert when they toured last, and decided that he was sexy enough to deserve a mention."



Silver laughed lightly. "Ah, yes. I thought it must have been something like that."



"What brings you to this part of cyberspace?" George asked, leading her to a couch. They sat.



"An accident," she replied, and told him everything that had happened since the Mistress had kidnapped the Beatles.



George frowned. "You need a Source to patch him up again."



She nodded. "Yes." She was about to continue when the door burst open, and a platoon of women with grey hair tied up in iron-hard buns strode in. Her eyes widened. "Bowdlerisers!" she exclaimed, recognising them instantly.



With the purposeful air of a team of crack troops, the women immediately started to lay waste to all about them. George grabbed Silver's hand and pulled her towards the nearest link. Before they got there, however, they were cut off. George ducked the blow the Bowdleriser delivered in their direction, pulling Silver down again. Silver, with the fast reactions borne of many, many hours spent killing fascist scum in her favourite game, immediately rolled. She delivered a blow to the Bowdleriser's legs that knocked her down. As Silver and George leapt over her, however, Silver felt a blow swipe her side. They tumbled through the door and kept running through the middle of a startled congregation of worshipers in what looked like a Catholic church. The worshiper nearest to the door reacted first, quickly realising what had happened. He slammed the door as Silver and George stopped running, looking around wildly to see what was happening. "Bowdlerisers," Silver panted. The man nodded once, and immediately several of his fellows joined him.



Silver looked down to see what damage the blow had done, and winced. What was once a skin-tight and shining silver jumpsuit had become dull and baggy. The hood had vanished, and Silver could feel that her hair had wound itself into a bun. She pulled at the bun, but it refused to come apart. She wouldn't be able to fix the damage until she got back to the station. Experimentally, she thought about sex, and felt a faint blush. "Bother," she said, and George looked at her in surprise.



She was relieved to see that he had been unaffected, but instantly started to blush. Even without the muscle-tone, he was a very sexy man. But this George was toned, tanned, and more sex appeal that the blushing virgin Silver had been turned into could really handle. "I have really got to get back to my website," Silver told him, face burning. He looked surprised, and then started to laugh.



"What server are you on?" one of the congregation asked her. She told him, and he said, "We have a link to that server." Silver sagged with relief, and thanked him profusely, even as she grabbed George's arm and dragged him towards it.



Once they'd reached the server, Silver was in familiar territory. She lead George along the paths and alleys, and in a matter of minutes they were standing back on the bridge of her space station. With an air of relief, she ducked into the station's security section, and was soon purged of the influence of the Bowdlerisers.



Jumpsuit tight, bright and gleaming once more, she stepped lightly over to George, and kissed him. He grinned, and kissed her back. Before he could turn it into anything more, however, she'd skipped back out of his arms, and had turned to the monitor. Flicking a couple of switches, she brought up George's room.



All the happiness at her success drained out of her. George was gone. Anxiously, she activated the recording she had been making of him. Her face went white when she saw what had happened. He had awoken. More than that - he had suddenly gone rapidly downhill. Fully aware of what was lacking in his personality, he had sunk into that state most feared by the better-constructed denizens of cyberspace. He had become a vampire.