Len watched Munchkins cavort and sing their way across the TV screen, an expression of disbelief on his face. The black-and-white part hadn't been so bad. Then, suddenly, the whole thing exploded into color, and none of it made sense!

"This is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen."

"We haven't even got to the wicked witch yet," Chris said.

"Oh, the witch used to scare the snot out of me!" Kit said with a shudder. "I used to run and hide under my bed whenever she came on. It was years before I could watch it all the way through!"

"You know what used to freak me out? The guards at the witch's palace."

"The guys in the big tall hats who went around chanting? Those guys?"

"Yeah. I don't know why, but they gave me the creeps."

When the witch finally made her appearance, Len didn't think she was so scary. "Why is she green?"

Kit and Chris looked at each other, at a loss for words. "I don't know," Kit said finally. "She just is."

"Maybe she ate something that disagreed with her," Chris said. "Who cares? It's a movie. Just watch it."

So they did. Len had no further comment until the Oz the Great and Terrible scene, when he said, "Oh, please. That is such an obvious hologram! How can they not see it?"

Kit just shook his head. "Dude, this movie was made a long time before they had hologram technology."

"Maybe on your world."

"Yeah, whatever."

When the movie was over, Len went outside to clear his head.

"Is he okay?" Chris asked. "He seemed a little . . . disappointed with the film."

"He just needs a few minutes. It's a lot to process."

"Yeah. We'll just put this on the list of 'Things They Don't Have in Ventara,' along with Google, Spaghettios, microwave pizza, frozen yogurt . . ."

"And the Beatles." Kit said.

Chris just stared at him in disbelief. "How could they not have the Beatles?"

"It's very strange, very strange."

"Bee-ah-tlees?"

Kit looked up. "What are you doing with my dad's CDs?"

"Just looking. What are Bee-ah-tlees? Bee-at-less?"

"Beatles. Dude, you've never heard of the Beatles?"

Blank stare.

"Okay, then. Why don't we listen to some of it?" Kit suggested. "Which one should we start with?"

Len thumbed through the stack of CDs, stopping at Sgt. Pepper. He flipped it over to look at the track names, and recognized one of them. "This one. Start with number two."

"Okay." Kit hit the power button on the CD player and popped the drawer open. A few seconds later, they heard the opening bars of "With a Little Help From My Friends."

It only took a moment for Len to realize that he did know this song. "Oh," he said. "The Quarrymen!"

"Quarrymen?" Kit said, confused.

"You know . . . John, Paul, George, and Peter?"

"What?"

"They're only the number-one-selling band of all time! They were the biggest thing in music in the Sixties--they pretty much defined the Sixties, according to some music critics."

"And Pete Best was still part of the group?"

"Of course. Wasn't he, here?"

"No. He left before they got famous."

"That's weird," Len said. "I've always loved the Quarrymen. I have--had--all their discs, even the transitional ones from when they broke up and then got back together."

"Got back together?"

"In 1974. They broke up for good in 1978, but then after John was shot, the surviving members reunited at World Fest '85. They made a movie about it a few years ago."

"Wait a minute . . . slow down." Kit's head was spinning from all this musical history gone wild. "Start at the beginning. They broke up? When?"

"1970. When they came back, it was without the two founding members. Paul left to start his own band, and John went into seclusion after Yoko died. It was years before he went back to his music. And then one night, he was on his way home from a recording session, and some crazy woman shot him."

"Woman?" It was before Kit was born, but he was pretty sure it was a man who shot John Lennon. "Who was she?"

"Nobody knows. She just disappeared. Over the years, five thousand, eight hundred and forty-two women have claimed to be the assassin, but none of them have been able to prove it."

"And next time, on 'Depressing Tales of Dead Rock Stars . . .'" Kit quipped, trying to change the subject.

Len nodded. "I guess it is kind of depressing. A lot of them died young."

"My dad used to say they were trapped by their own fame. Like Elvis."

"Elvis?" Len looked at him in confusion.

"Presley?"

"Never heard of him."

Now it was Kit's turn to look confused. It was only a moment before Len smiled and said, "Gotcha!"

"Dude! Not funny!"

"Okay, okay. I won't do that again. Let's go through the stack and see if there's anything else I recognize."

They ended up with three piles: the first, groups and/or albums that Len knew; the second, those that he knew but in a slightly different form (different songs on the album, different people in the group); and the third, those he'd never heard of at all.

"This is so weird," Kit said. "I wonder what else is different in Ventara?"

"Well, let's see. Where do you keep your bread?"

"Why? You want to compare grocery items now?"

"No, I haven't had lunch yet."

"Oh. Guess we'll take a break, then."

"That is weird," Chris said. He looked around. "Len hasn't come back yet? Should we be worried?"

"He'll be fine," Kit said.

"It's getting dark."

"Give him a few more minutes."

But when an hour had passed and Len still wasn't back, Kit went looking for him.

He didn't have to look far. Len was sitting on the curb in front of Kit's building, watching the windows of the building across the street as if he were waiting for something to happen.

"Everything all right?" Kit asked, sitting down beside him.

"Huh?"

"You look like you're expecting trouble. Anything going on that I should know about?"

Len just sighed. "It wouldn't be so bad," he said, "if it were all strange, or all familiar. But when so much is the same and so much is different at the same time . . . I don't know. I just don't."

He looked so sad that Kit wanted to do something, but he didn't know what.

"I wish . . . I wish I could just click my heels and have everything go back to the way it was, before. Everything happened so fast. I just . . . I just don't know if I can fix this."

"You're not alone," Kit said. "Together, we can make things right. I know we can."

"Let's hope so," Len said. He drew his jacket tight around himself and shivered. "It's cold out here."

"I'm not cold."

"I am."

"You've been sitting here longer. That's probably why. Time to go inside."

"Yeah, you're right." He got to his feet slowly, and Kit followed suit.

They spent the rest of the night watching Yellow Submarine, which Kit had found behind two other movies. It seemed just the thing to lift Len's spirits, and, in fact, he loved it.

"They made more movies?" he asked, when it was over. "They didn't in my world. The Quarrymen made one pathetic film that nobody liked, and that was it."

"Too bad you couldn't bring it," Chris said. "I'd watch it. Even if it was terrible."

"Really?"

"Sure. Might be interesting."

By this time it was getting late, and Kit, who had been out and about all day long, was falling asleep across the arm of the couch, his head hanging down like it weighed ten tons. Len watched him with some amusement. It was the strangest sleeping position he'd seen since his friend Jeremy had curled up on top of a table. Jeremy, he recalled, could sleep just about anywhere.

"Should we wake him up?" Chris asked.

"Give him a minute, see if he wakes up on his own."

"Or falls off the couch."

"Or that."

Kit did neither one, defying gravity as he slept. Chris and Len picked him up as gently as they could and brought him in to bed. Once he was settled, they walked to the door together.

"I'll see you tomorrow, man," Chris said.

"Dorothy was right, you know."

"Huh?"

"There is no place like home," Len said. He looked around, and smiled. "But this is almost as good."

"Oh. Um . . . yeah. See ya."

"Take care, man."

He locked up and went back to the TV, rewinding Yellow Submarine so he could watch it again and learn some of the songs. Another item on the list of things in this world that made it worth fighting for.