'Ouch.'

In fact, there were four ouches, but they all blended together. Such is the fantastic harmony of the Beatles.

Those four young men had just fell, seemingly out of nowhere, into four seats of a London city bus. A few seconds later, again out of nowhere, fell: guitar, guitar, bass guitar, tambourine.

'A tambourine!?' said Ringo, looking miffed.

'Hehehe,' snickered John, checking his guitar for damage. 'Well, you know, that's what you get, isn't it? Always perched up there above us on your drum set, all high and mighty. It's about time you got a tambourine…'

'Ahem,' interrupted George. 'Er, what do you think we're doing here? On a bus that is…'

'Well, it really doesn't matter, now does it?' said Paul, fastidiously tuning his bass. 'Chances are we'll all wake up and find this has just been an involved hallucination.'

'At least, we all know John will,' scoffed Ringo.

John made a face.

Paul patted John's shoulder. 'Well, that's what comes from too much "tea" and "sugar cubes," Johnny boy…'

***
Thomas Kushrenada was sitting in his usual seat on the bus, returning from work. He had one of those pathetic just-out-of-university jobs that involve mostly scurrying about fetching things for people that you hate. Thomas was very tired. He had fallen asleep, head jiggling uncomfortably against the window, but had woken up when he heard four thuds a few meters behind him. He didn't investigate it. You don't investigate those sorts of things on city buses; you just hope that they don't investigate you.

Thomas was trying to fall back to sleep after having been rudely awakened by the Mysterious Thuds, but the new driver who had suddenly appeared in the driver's seat of the bus today seemed not to know what the hell he was doing. After the fourth time the driver ran over the curb, Thomas gave up all hope of re-entering Dreamland. And after the second time the driver ran a red stoplight, sending old ladies and school children and a variety of small animals scurrying in all directions, Thomas decided he was going to give that bastard a talking to.

Thomas stood up, ready to be assertive for once, and then immediately fell down. The driver had just made a much-too-quick turn around what had to have been way-more-than-ninety-degree corner.

Thomas was cursing (not quite under his breath) and preparing to try to stand up from the littery and unidentifiable muck-y floor when a young man in a silly narrow-legged suit approached him.

'Do you know why we're here?' the man said with a questioning look.

Thomas was nonplussed. 'Should I know why you're here?' he said hesitantly.

'Oh,' said the young man with the long-ish brown hair. He looked rather disappointed. 'I guess not.'

'Don't you know why you're here?' asked Thomas even more hesitantly. As his trousers were rapidly soaking up some unknown dampness, he realized that he was unfortunately still sitting on the floor.

'Erm, no, afraid not,' said the man, whom Thomas was beginning to suspect was a few candles short of an appropriately-candled birthday cake. 'We just fell out of nowhere, it seems.'

'"We?" What "we?"' Thomas thought, looking at the apparently lone man in front of him. 'Maybe he is referring to his imaginary friend,' thought Thomas, 'or his pet feral hamster that he keeps in his pocket or something.'

But Thomas just said, 'Oh,' and tried to return calmly and quietly to his seat. Unfortunately, the bus driver just then braked suddenly to avoid hitting a large, solid building that was for some reason directly in his path, and Thomas and the man were thrown in all sorts of uncomfortable splay-limbed directions.

The man groaned. 'I am going to be a giant ball of bruises by tomorrow,' said he.

'Us too!' came a similar chorus of groans from a few rows back.

Thomas looked confused. Truthfully, Thomas generally looked confused, which is not to say that he wasn't a very bright guy - he was actually very smart. But he had such a permanent expression of I-have-no-clue-what-the-hell-is-going-on-here that people tended to either mock or pity him.

'Er. Um. Hm,' said Thomas, who was fairly certain that nobody had been seated behind him on the bus, and therefore looked even more confused than he usually did (a sad sight to see). 'Erm. Who is that?'

'Those are my…friends. John, Paul, Ringo!' called the man. 'Come over here!'

Trotting down the aisle (well, one of them was actually limping slightly) came three other men with longish brown hair wearing silly narrow-legged suits. They were all carrying musical instruments of the rock band sort. In fact, one of them was holding a guitar in each hand, one of which he handed to Thomas' "new-found friend."

'I'm George,' said, well, it seems, George - the one who had been confusing Thomas terribly. 'These are John, Paul, and Ringo,' he continued, pointing to each of them in turn.

Thomas finally realized that he was still sitting in the mucky, disgusting, covered in soggy paper and unknown slime aisle. He stood up. 'I'm Thomas, er, Kushrenada. Nice to meet you blokes, I suppose,' he muttered, shaking their hands.

'Likewise,' said Paul, for some reason smiling his all-thirteen-muscles press smile to this befuddled young man. Ringo glared at him. That smile can get really annoying after a while. Plus, Ringo was still somewhat upset about his receipt of a tambourine, which he was holding glumly.

'Hey…' said John, as if coming to a sudden realization.

'What?' said George.

'Hey…' repeated John, with a far-off, pondering look.

'What??' said George and Ringo.

'Hey…' said John yet again, scrunching his eyebrows together.

'WHAT?!?' said George, Ringo, Paul and Thomas, and also, it seemed, a few people sitting further up in the bus.

'WE'RE FAMOUS!' said John.

'So?' said Ringo bluntly, as the other Beatles looked pissed-off and Thomas looked really really confused.

'WE'RE THE MOST BLEEDING FAMOUS BLOKES IN THE WHOLE WORLD!' said John, loudly.

'So!?' said Ringo, even more bluntly, as Paul muttered sarcastically, 'No, John Lennon's not egotistical, big-headed, sick on his own fame…'

'So why doesn't he recognize us,' said John at a much lower decibel level, pointing to Thomas.

The other Beatles suddenly looked a lot less pissed off and a lot more like Thomas (that is to say, confused).

John was still pointing at him, so Thomas said, 'I've never seen any of you before in my life.'

'Have you ever heard of the Beatles?' asked Paul quietly.

Thomas was almost radiating confusion. 'The bugs?' he said quietly.

'The band called the Beatles!' said Paul. 'The world famous, millions-of-records-selling, fainting-girls-inducing band! You've never heard of us?'

'Never,' Thomas said.

'Oh no.'

'Oh no.'

'Oh no.'

'Oh no.'

Then there was a sudden flurry of brown mop-tops, silly narrow-legged suits, flailing guitars, and one angrily-waved tambourine as John, Paul, George, and Ringo ran madly around the bus, asking everyone if they knew who the Beatles were. After a few moments, they all tromped dejectedly to the back of the bus. Each of them flopped down into a seat. Ringo's tambourine made a sad little tambouriney-rattling noise as he sat down.

'Nobody,' said Paul.

'Not a single person,' said Ringo.

'Nobody in the whole world has ever heard of the Beatles,' said George.

John looked like he was about to cry.

'What are we going to do now?' said George.

Ringo shook his tambourine in frustration.

'I don't think I'll ever cheer up again,' said Paul dramatically.

***
Just then, the bus stopped. It was a real stop this time, not an I-need-to-stop-because-I'm-about-to-run-into-something stop. It stopped at a Bus Stop, and people got on the bus. It seemed to be a new thing for the driver.

There was a trail of people entering the bus: an old man, four schoolchildren, a scrawny guy with glasses, an old woman with a pet raccoon (don't ask), three more schoolchildren, and then the most stunningly beautiful radiatingly lovely intelligent- and good-humoured- looking woman in the whole world.

'Well,' said Paul. 'Maybe I'll cheer up after all.'

George smiled. John blinked back his tears. Even Ringo looked a little more chipper.

Thomas did not look chipper. He also, for a change, did not look confused. He instead looked very very depressed. That girl was Lilith Alexander, on whom Thomas had had an enormous crush since as long as he could remember. One of those debilitating crushes that made Thomas so painfully shy and self-conscious that he had, in so many years' time, only gotten so far as to introduce himself to her. And now these snappy musicians decided that they needed some "cheering up." 'Over my dead body,' thought Thomas, glaring depressedly at Paul, who seemed to be the easiest target in this situation.

Lilith winked at the new bus driver as she got on, and patted him on the shoulder. 'Since when has she had such an affinity for bus drivers,' thought Thomas, a bit irrationally.

Lilith walked down the bus aisle. Thomas was mesmerized, as always.

She sat down a couple of seats in front of Thomas, and turned her head and shoulders into the aisle to look back at him, pushing her long reddish hair that ringleted a little at the ends behind her ears.

'Hi, Thom,' she said.

Thomas managed to smile weakly.

Paul stuck his head into the aisle. 'Hello,' said he, also sticking out his hand and waving a little.

Lilith smiled glowingly at Paul, and then turned back to her seat and pulled a book out of her knapsack as the bus jerked away from the stop. Thomas peeked between the seats to see what she was reading. 'A Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant.' (Lilith was a philosophy major. Yes, she was beautiful, smart, funny, and nice, but admittedly not practical. Something has to give, I suppose.)

Thomas felt a tap at his shoulder.

'Who is that?' whispered John, looking intensely interested in the answer.

'Lilith,' Thomas said glumly.

'Hmm,' said Paul.

'Hmm,' said John, George, and Ringo.

'I'm-going-to-pay-a-little-visit,' said Paul very quickly, and before anybody could stop him, jumped up from his seat and scooted down the aisle to the seat across from Lilith.

'Hey!' shouted the rest of the Beatles. Thomas just sat there looking more depressed.

'He's a speedy little bastard,' said John.

Paul grinned at Lilith. Lilith smiled back, looking a bit hesitant, and then turned her eyes to her Kant.

Paul was not one to be dissuaded. 'So, how are you,' he was about to say charmingly with his thirteen-muscle, thousand-watt smile, when the bus suddenly did what seemed to be a three-sixty, completely losing contact with the ground for at least a few seconds.

'Oooof,' said Paul instead, flying into the air, his solar plexus meeting the top of the seat in front of him.

'Oooof,' said just about everybody else in the bus.

Lilith sighed. 'My poor cousin…' she said.

'Eh?' asked Paul wheezingly, trying to regain his breath.

'That's my cousin, driving this bus,' said Lilith. 'He used to be an artist, a painter. But his last show was a few months ago, and his next show isn't for a few months. Due to some…unfortunate incidents that I'll avoid mentioning, he doesn't get paid in advance anymore. So he needed a job to keep up his income in the interim.'

'I'm sorry,' said John sincerely, who had been listening carefully all along. It was hard to tell though, if he was sincerely sorry for her cousin's misfortune, or sincerely sorry for all of the passengers who had to endure his driving.

'So he decided he should get a bus driving job,' continued Lilith. 'I tried to stop him…I really did. I said, "Will, how about teaching art for a while? Or even working retail? Or even picking up rubbish on the side of the road in those stylish little neon orange vests? They're classy, those." But I guess he had his heart set on bus driving.'

'Hmm,' said John and Paul. By this time, George and Ringo had left Lilith up to John and Paul. Less messy that way. They had even started playing a rousing game of Two-Person Solitaire (the name of which Thomas thought was terribly contradictory). Unfortunately, the game was rudely interrupted by wicked swift turns and hops of the bus that sent the cards flying everywhere, and they soon gave up.

In the course of Lilith telling everybody about her unfortunate cousin, Thomas had had a sudden stroke of genius that would solve her cousin's problems and probably cheer up the Beatles, as well, but he was still entirely too shy around Lilith to squeak out a single word.

'So,' said Lilith, 'I therefore apologise for my cousins frankly horrendous bus driving. I hope that none of you are injured too badly.'

Then she laughed a little and smiled radiantly at John and Paul and tucked a stray strand of her long reddish hair behind her ear again, which so sent Thomas over the edge of depression and jealousy and lust that he blurted out, 'I have an idea.'

'Hmm?' said Lilith, looking at him with mild interest.

Thomas was red up to his eyebrows and down to his mid-calves, but there was no way that he could stop now. He swallowed in an attempt to moisten his dry throat and prevent his voice cracking. It didn't really work though.

'Well, you're all musicians, right?' he said crackingly. Unbeknownst to Thomas, Lilith found it very cute when Thomas' voice cracked like that. Actually, she found him very cute in general, but he became so insanely embarrassed whenever she tried to talk to him that she ended up avoiding him most of the time, in an attempt to spare him any more psychic pain.

John and Paul nodded.

'And you claim to be good, right? Best-selling, world-renowned and all?'

'Ahem,' said John.

'Yeh, so?' said Paul. George and Ringo were beginning to listen more carefully by this point, although they were still attempting to gather stray playing cards.

'And you have your instruments with you, right?' asked Thomas, pretty damn rhetorically.

'Obviously,' said John, wielding his guitar.

'Kind of,' said Ringo, giving his tambourine an evil look.

'What exactly is your point?' said Paul, a bit miffed at Thomas for taking away from his Lilith-seduction time.

'Well, couldn't you give a little impromptu benefit concert or something? For the benefit of Lilith's cousin (and the bus-riding populace, as well). You could raise quite a bit of quid, if you're as popular as you claim…' Thomas couldn't help still thinking that the Beatles were a little bit off of their collective rockers, claiming to be a famous rock band and all.

The Beatles considered.

'It isn't a bad idea…' said John.

'It's not like we have anything else to do,' said George.

'Very true,' said Paul, grinning at Lilith.

'Could I get a drum set?' said Ringo.

'Wonderful!' cried Lilith. Actually, she was somewhat doubtful of the whole plan, but they did seem to have instruments, and if they were agreeable, who was she to argue…

'I'll ask Will to stop at the nearest park,' she continued, standing up. 'I believe that the last stop is coming up soon…'

Just then the bus came to a screeching halt. 'Unusually fast deceleration speeds these huge busses have,' thought John randomly.

Lilith, having stood up, stumbled. Thomas instinctively grabbed her elbow to steady her. She swayed for a moment, then grinned at him.

'Thanks, Thom,' she said softly.

Thomas, whose face had just finally drained of redness, flushed all over again. The Beatles giggled a little at this, which was a pretty funny sight to see by itself.

Lilith walked lithely up to the front of the bus, and then quietly told Will of the plan. Will nodded sagely, although he looked a little disappointed at the prospect of not bus driving anymore.

'He agreed,' said Lilith, returning. 'We're going to Tangerine Park, lovely spot for a concert…'

***
'How are we going to go about this?' asked John to Paul, George, and Ringo, after they had arrived at Tangerine Park. After the bus had stopped, they found a few amps mysteriously sitting in the last few empty seats at the back of the bus.

'Yet, still no drum set…' Ringo had commented bitterly.

'Shut your bloody trap about the damn drum set!' the rest of the Beatles had said in unison, which was highly unlikely, given the relative complexity of that sentence. Weird things like that tended to happen with the Beatles.

Lilith took charge. Although she had no musical experience, she somehow managed to set up all of the instruments and even tuned one of the guitars before George intervened. She then procured a piece of chalk from somewhere and wrote, 'CONCERT - THE BEATLES - DONATIONS VERY WELCOME,' on the sidewalk, although the "A" in "Beatles" was a bit messed up because she had begun to by making it an "E."

As the four musicians argued good-naturedly about what songs to play, Lilith scurried gracefully around looking for paper bags for donations, Thomas sat around being basically a useless blob, watching Lilith's every move, and Will sat around being just as useless, but in a more artist-like, cigarette-smoking way.

Finally everything was ready. From the first chords of 'Love Me Do,' a crowd began to rapidly develop. Admittedly, the songs didn't sound quite as good as they could have because there was a tambourine trying to replace the drums, but it beat any other impromptu benefit concert in the history of humankind by miles. When the last song rolled around and John was screaming his vocal chords out for 'Twist and Shout,' a massive gathering crowded Tangerine Park, which was becoming littered and trampled and kind of ugly looking, but nobody but the park gardener, who eventually began chasing people around with his pruning shears, seemed to care. And, as was to be expected, a group of screaming girls ages approximately 12-25 had developed right next to the makeshift stage. It seemed that in a Beatle-less world, the Beatles became instantly popular.

When the concert was over and Will had carried off his paper bags bulging with money and John was tenderly massaging his 'poor vocal chords' (as he called them), Lilith crept over to Thomas' side. He was looking positively gleeful.

'Hey,' said Lilith.

Thomas looked a bit shocked, and, not surprisingly, a little bit confused as well. 'Hello,' he croaked out.

'This was a really good idea, Thom,' smiled Lilith.

'Oh,' said Thomas hesitantly. 'Thanks.'

'I mean it,' laughed Lilith. Then she gave Thomas a little sideways hug and a little peck on the cheek.

Everybody was pretty sure that Thomas went into one hundred percent clinically defined post-traumatic shock for about a second and a half after that hug-and-peck routine. Lilith was understandably frightened by that second and a half. Therefore she decided to try Guy Number Two on her current Guy List.

So she waltzed up to Ringo.

'Hey,' said Lilith.

'Hey,' said Ringo, who was Monsieur Suave compared to Thomas.

'Let's go for a little walk,' she said, linking elbows with Ringo.

'Alright,' said Ringo affably, yet looking somewhat confused.

'You know,' said Lilith with a smile, 'I really like guys who play the tambourine…'

***
All of the Beatles woke up the next morning in their respective houses, all well-rested little world-famous rock stars. It was as if all of the previous day's crazy bus-riding benefit-concert-playing events had never even occurred. John, Paul, George, and Ringo all had long, involved, heated discussions about whether those events (which they all remembered) had just been one long, complicated, insanely detailed and not very trippy acid trip, whether it was some kind of convoluted message from some Omnipotent Being, or whether it had really occurred but had somehow slipped through the cracks of time. Ringo was always a bit more adamant than the rest of them (for 'reasons he preferred to keep to himself,' as he said) that everything had really and truly happened.

So all of them went on living relatively normal Beatley and non-Beatley lives after that. But every once in a while, some fan would come up to one of them and mention in passing a certain concert at Tangerine Park…

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