Disclaimer - Middle-Earth and all who inhabit her are the property of the Tolkien estate and New Line. The locale of Lower Tadfield, which is mentioned briefly in this chapter belongs to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I should probably also point out that the depiction of mental-health professionals, and certain symptoms of mental-illness in this story is intended to be satirical rather than wholly realistic.
A/N - Well I wasn't able to pack as much into this chapter as I would have liked, but I seem to be rather bogged down with work at the moment, so I'm only really able to write at sporadic intervals. Much thanks goes out to all of the people who have reviewed so far, especially Eykar for giving me such good ideas for this and future chapters. Responses to reviews can, as always, be found at the bottom of the page. Any and all feedback is welcomed, whether it be gratuitous praised, concrit, or outraged flaming.
Elrond walked alone through the streets of London. His paces were measured and even, a testament to the dignity that a few thousand years of Noldorin ancestry bestowed. The sun was rising in the east, brilliantly lighting up the glass palaces that towered imposingly over this part of the city. He would never have imagined that the Easterlings were capable of such architectural feets as those he had seen during the last fourteen hours. The Lord of Rivendell had been heartened greatly by the fact that the authorities in this area of Middle-Earth had not yet attempted to apprehend him. Perhaps this was a sign that the Ring Bearer had been successful in his mission to rid the world of the One Ring, and the forces of darkness had finally been vanquished. Had he still been residing in Middle-Earth Elrond would have doubtless been instinctively aware that this was the case. As it was however, all that he was aware of was the irritating headache he kept getting every time he tried to use, what you might call, his extra sensory abilities.
During the night he had been assailed by a group of youths bearing knives, who had demanded that he transfer ownership of Vilya to them with immediate effect. Two minutes later all five of them had started running away, very fast, in an effort to be somewhere, anywhere, that Elrond wasn't. Having gained nothing from the encounter except for soiled undergarments and four weeks worth of night-terrors. He had then encountered a group of Rangers of the North, far from home, under a rusty ill-maintained bridge, in one of the more unkept parts of the city. At least he could only assume that they were Rangers. They slept out of doors, and wore several layers of grime over their weatherbeaten clothes, both of which were definite hallmarks of Rangerness. Unfortunately they had seemed to be even more disorientated by the sudden changes in the world than Elrond himself, and had provided him with little useful information with regards to the best way to obtain safe passage out of Rhun. Although they had managed to furnish him with directions to the nearest soup kitchen, which was something at least.
As he took a sip of weak tea from the polystyrene cup he had acquired earlier, Elrond turned a corner into what appeared to be a market square. Local merchants were in the process of setting up their stalls for the day. Stacks of odd looking trinkets were being unloaded from a multitude of horseless carriages, and arranged in as aesthetically pleasing a manner as the plywood stalls would allow.
One or two of the merchant's assistants noticed Elrond standing around and critically surveying their handiwork.
"Ere is 'ee one of them Hare Krishna's Dazza," said a gormless looking young man pointing at Elrond.
"I Dunno Gaz. I thought that Krishna's always wore them bright orange robes, and he's wearing purple," said his marginally less gormless compatriot.
"Maybe he's wearing purple 'cos he's like the head Krishna monk or summat," said Gaz in an uncharacteristic show of deductive, if erroneous, reasoning.
So Hare Krishna was the name they gave to Elves in this part of the world. Though Elrond was at a loss as to why the humans here thought that the elder race made a habit of wearing bright orange robes. Given that most Elven folk had rather pale complexions, orange was a colour that they tended to avoid for fear of looking a bit on the jaundiced side. Maybe, thought Elrond , the young men had previously encountered the last remnants of the Avari, whose sensibilities were probably not as refined as those of the Quendi when it came to selecting appropriate and complementary clothing.
Deciding that the two young men could present no possible threat to him, Elrond decided to see if they could direct him to the path leading out of the city. Although, given their general demeanour, it was doubtful that they would be able to navigate a dinner table, let alone a city the size of this.
"Do either of you know of a way out of this city?" he asked them in commanding tones.
They both stared at him morosely for a few seconds before answering. "Well you could get the tube, the stations over there" said the one called Dazza waving his arm in an easterly direction. "Where do you want to go anyway?"
"Into the west," said Elrond.
"Yeah, you wanna take the tube mate, it's over there like 'ee said," said Gaz.
Elrond turned in the direction that the two had pointed. It could of course be a trap, but he really didn't feel like wandering aimlessly around this accursed, yet strangely beguiling, city for any longer than he had to.
Fifty miles away from the spot where the Lord of Rivendell had just been conversing with Dazza and Gaz, Smeagol Gollum was waking from his chemically induced enchanted sleep. Even with the heavy Venetian blinds drawn at the window the bright morning sunshine was still managing to infiltrate the room. In response to this Gollum quickly seized control of the body, and began to vent his displeasure in the loudest way possible.
"It burnsss," he shrieked raising a fist skywards. "The cruel sun mockss uss and burnss uss preciouss."
It was not long before Dr. Hargreaves and the two women with the strange pocket watches rushed into the room.
"You did give him his medication last night, didn't you?" demanded Dr. Hargreaves as he removed a wrapper containing a large syringe from his pocket.
The two nurses merely nodded sheepishly in response. They had been in a heightened state of anxiety ever since they'd discovered Mr. Graham trying to leap a fourth story window an hour earlier. If he had managed to proceed with this suicidal attempt to fly, the great medication mixup would have been sure to be uncovered. As it was, Mr. Graham had merely been left with an indelible conviction that he was a small humming bird named Tico, who lived somewhere in the Amazon Rainforest. It was nothing that could be traced back to the enormous dose of powerful (and experimental) anti-psychotics he had been inappropriately administered the previous night.
"Looks like he's got photo-phobia," said Dr. Hargreaves.
"What's that Doctor?" asked the less rattled of the two nurses.
"Fear of sunlight," replied the Doctor, who proceeded to jab the syringe in Gollum's arm. The response that this elicited from the former Hobbit was a loud, high-pitched, wail, which caused permanent injury to the eardrums of everyone unlucky enough to be within a one hundred-metre radius. Within minutes however, the sedative began to get to work, and Smeagol Gollum was overcome by drowsiness. The nurses took advantage of his temporary docility, and quickly dressed him in a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with a charming Barney the Dinosaur motif, a pair of oversized jeans, and a pair of size 12 patent leather shoes. He was then placed in a wheelchair and pushed into a beige coloured lounge where about ten other, equally doped up, people were sitting, staring blankly forwards. For at the centre of the room stood the most wondrous contraption Smeagol or Gollum had ever laid eyes upon. It mesmerised. It transfixed. It made you forget that mundane boring reality existed. It was television, and Smeagol Gollum was hooked.
The Wildrose Park Secure Mental Hospital believed that it was the duty of the staff to prepare the patients for the reality of life outside institutional care. It was for this reason that all of the patients were required to watch at least thirty hours of daytime television per week. In the case of Mr. Smeagol Gollum this particular brand of rehabilitation was going to payoff in the most unlikely of ways.
At precisely the same time that Smeagol Gollum was being placed in front of the soul destroying yet siren like abomination that is breakfast television a troupe of psychedelic camper vans were travelling, or at least dawdling towards a small dot on the Cambridgeshire map named Lower Tadfield, where the annual Tadfield Folk Rock Jamboree was about to be held. It was an exiting time for the New Age clan who called themselves The Mystic Children of the Age of Aquarius (other people tended to call them 'that bunch of sad middle-aged hippies in the bottom field'). They had just welcomed the most extraordinary newcomer into their amiable, if a little odd smelling, fold.
It had happened less than two days ago. The group had been attending a Solstice festival near a small Village called Sheep Crossing, and the evenings' entertainment was slowly winding down, with people going, often in three and foursomes, to their respective teepee's. Blue Hawk, Merlin and Moonstone Flower Child (formerly known as Chester Poncenby-Hamiliton, Tarquin Bridges and The Hon. Lydia Pemberly respectively) had been sitting around a small camp fire sharing one or four of their special home-grown 'herbal' cigarettes, when they looked to the sky and noticed something that even they, in their current state of altered consciousness, found a bit odd. There appeared to be three giant birds circling the camp. The largest of then appeared to be carrying a man on it's back. Normally the three would have put the sight down to 'travelling to another plane of alternate existence', or to put it in laymen's terms 'doing a tad too much LSD', however it really was quite unusual for three people to travel to the exact same plane of alternate existence simultaneously. It had been then that they had met their new friend Olorin.
The bird bearing the man, landed gracefully, in a nearby grassy clearing, and its burden dismounted with ease. This was particularly impressive given the apparent age of the said burden.
"Err. Greetings fellow traveller," said Blue Hawk, who couldn't really think of anything more pertinent to say.
"Greetings," replied the robed, bearded, elderly looking gentlemen. He clearly did not seem to find anything strange about the fact that he had just arrived on the back of an oversized eagle. "I am Gandalf the White."
"Really, we've already got five Gandalf's here already," supplied Merlin, who himself was if fact the first of four Merlin's.
"In that case, call me Mithrandir," said the newcomer.
"There are two Mithrandir's as well," said Merlin.
"Olorin then. Surely there are no other Olorin's present," said the man impatiently. He did after all only have a limited supply of alternative names, and didn't really want to have to adopt Stormcrow as his standard moniker.
"No, you're the first Olorin we've ever had," said Merlin. "Welcome O' Olorin to our gathering, The Mystic Children of the Age of Aquarius."
Gandalf had almost instantly been adopted by the group. Or perhaps more accurately, the group had been adopted by Gandalf. He had the right look (his beard and robes alone were the envy of several of the men), the right pseudo-mystic way of speaking (although it was rather less pseudo than the other members assumed it to be), and he was, most importantly, willing to share his pipe-weed. He spoke often of a pressing need to find two mythical beings called Frodo and Samwise. Merlin, Blue Hawk and Moonstone Flower Child assumed he was talking about some kind of spiritual metaphor.
Unlike his fellow misplaced Middle-Earthian's Gandalf was a Maia, and as such, had been able to quickly discern that he had somehow been hurled into a parallel universe. The downside of this was that he had no idea about how he should deal with the situation. His telepathic abilities told him that Frodo and Sam were still alive, and were, like himself, trying to get their bearings in this strange world. Unfortunately for Gandalf however, the airwaves in this reality were crammed full of radio, television, and mobile phone signals, which made trying to pinpoint the two Hobbits almost impossible. He had been, when first opening his mind, and attempting to divine Frodo's state of mind, hit right in the precognition by an episode of Big Brother 5. It was an experience that he really didn't care to repeat. He was vaguely aware that the convoy of brightly painted horseless carriages were travelling in the right direction, and was quite happy, for now at least, to remain in the company of his new friends. He had initially asked Gwalir bear him further north. However after the Lord of the Eagles had been forced to evade a barrage of heat seeking missel's somewhere over the Atlantic, he had pretty much told Gandalf that he could damn well continue on foot. "There are many things that I'd do for you Mithrandir," the gigantic bird had said "but being hit in the backside by exploding bits of metal is not one of them."
Smeagol Gollum, had not moved from his position in front of the television for over eight hours. His medication had worn off, and the room was horribly bight, but he just couldn't seem to take his eyes away. It was better than raw fish, it was better than a cool damp cave, it was even, Gollum had grudgingly conceded, better than the precious. Smeagol was enthralled by the gardening and home make-over shows. Gollum had become enamoured with soap operas and reality TV. They both enjoyed a particular comedy-drama that featured a band of inept, and corrupt world leaders being generally inept and corrupt, with hilarious and devastating results, the show was apparently called The News.
The only thing currently spoiling Smeagol Gollum's viewing pleasure was presence of two other patients. To his right, was Josephine, who being an obsessive compulsive attention seeker was doing just about everything she could to distract him from his programs. To his left sat Bradley, a paranoid schizophrenic who persisted in changing the channels every fifteen minutes to avoid being detected by the forces of darkness that he believed tried to follow him everywhere.
"We wass watching that," snapped Gollum angrily as Bradley switched from Coronation Street to Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. Gollum had decided within the first hour of his television ogling career that he didn't like quiz shows. It irked him to see other people being given presents when he himself wasn't getting any.
"If I don't change the channels the Evil Goblin Men will find out where I am. They can trace you through the TV you know," said Bradley who was still shaking from his last dose of medication. "And then they'll come and claw my eyes out."
Gollum waved his hand dismissively. "All youss need to do to get rid of the nasty goblinss is hide in a nice dark cave. Then when they wanderss into your cave you pushess them under the water and eatss them. It'ss what we did, didn't we preciouss."
Bradley paused for though. This was an option that he hadn't considered until now. It would be a risky step of course, for who knew the true powers of the Evil Goblin Men. The fact was though, that Smeagol Gollum seemed to know an awful lot about goblins and the disposal thereof. He therefore decided that Gollum's plan was worth a shot, and headed without further ado in the general direction of the basement.
Gollum triumphantly picked up the remote control from the arm of what had been Bradley's chair and changed the channels. After five minutes of high soap-operatic drama involving three unexpected pregnancies, two murders, and one highly implausible case of mistaken identity, Josephine began to poke Gollum in the arm.
"What iss it?" he hissed, irritated by the disruption.
Josephine merely giggled, and began to prod him even harder.
"If you doesn't stop that we'll bitess your fingerss off, won't we preciouss," snarled Gollum bearing his teeth, and contorting his face into a mask of evil. Josephine's response was to scream and run out of the room.
Gollum sat back in his musty armchair and smiled contentedly. He was alone at last. There was nothing between him and several more hours of mental atrophy. In a fit of uncharacteristic charitableness Gollum decided that, as soon as Eastenders was over, he would let Smeagol take control of body for a while.
Unlike Smeagol and Gollum, who were currently in a state of rapturous joy, Faramir and Eowyn were not feeling particularly good. Actually, 'not particularly good' was a bit of an understatement. Completely and utterly miserable, would perhaps be a more fitting description. This was mainly because they had been whisked away from gardens of the houses of healing by forces unknown, and dumped halfway up a mountain side in the Lake District. Not that they knew the name of the place of course, the map that a family of kindly Japanese tourists had provided them with the previous day did not contain an English to Westron translation, and they therefore possessed no clue whatsoever as to where they were. One may of course wonder here why there exists a Lexical Distortion Field, which enables one to adopt the native tongue of whatever universe one happens to find oneself dropped into, but not a Graphical Distortion Field that would enable the displaced denizen of one reality to read the writing in the one they end up in. The answer is of course perfectly straightforward, the LDF is a well documented, and well-researched narrative phenomenon, whereas the GDF would just be silly deux ex machina of the kind that only the most asinine of authors would ever think of using.
It was, Faramir thought, bloody typical. You finally meet a woman you're head over heals in love with, she professes to feel the same about you, and everything is great until you both suddenly find yourselves up a cliff and completely lost in an expanse of godforsaken countryside. It wasn't as if they were even dressed for it either, Faramir was wearing what were most definitely his 'city clothes' and Eowyn was clothed in one of his late mothers' gowns. Still at least the family of travellers they had met on the way down from the first hill had been kind enough to share some of their food supplies with them, even if the picture making devices in their possession, which had flashed with brief, yet unnaturally bright light, had been a bit disconcerting.
"Do you think that we should head down into the valley? There may be some shelter to be found there" said Eowyn shivering.
"No. It is almost nightfall and there may be Orc's abroad, and we are completely unarmed" replied a sodden and depressed looking Faramir. "It would be best to head further up the hill. The crags at the top should be enough to conceal us for tonight."
Eowyn nodded glumly in agreement, and they wearily struck out on what remained of the assent to the top of the mountain. They were both tired, irritated and confused. Things like Defending cities under siege while hopelessly outnumbered, slaying Witch Kings, and almost being torched alive by your own demented father can take a lot out of a person, and Faramir and Eowyn was no exception.
The two of them took almost an hour to climb to the mountains peak. It was the fifth mountain they had scaled during the last day and a half, had they been members of the Ramblers Association they would have probably been given a certificate for this feat of endurance.
What they saw once they had reached the summit, however both startled, scared and relived them. In the valley floor on the other side of the mountain were hundreds of soldiers and tents. Their armour seemed to be almost identical to that of the armies of Gondor. Had they managed to stumble across a detachment in the middle of... well wherever this was?
"Do you recognise them?" asked Eowyn hopefully.
"I cannot tell from this distance," replied Faramir with cautious optimism. "Though their armour and banners look as if they are those of Gondor."
"Could they be impostors?"
"It is possible I suppose, though I think we should take a closer look. If they are troops of Gondor then they will gladly welcome us."
"If we keep close to the rocks then we could descend without being seen."
"Well it's got to be better than standing around here all night," said Faramir eventually. As if on cue a clap of thunder sounded, and it began to rain for the fourth time that day.
In a tent cum luxury trailer at the base of the mountain, minor Hollywood director Joel Kendrick was carefully planning the next scene of his soon to be blockbuster 'Tales of Valour', which would, with any luck, turn him into a major Hollywood director. It was going to be a medieval epic with action, romance, overacting, and lots big budget special effects. The storyline didn't actually require there to be any big budget special effects, but Joel Centrex was the type of man who liked to put them in anyway. They had just finished filming the first shots of the army of the principal villain the Duke of Darkshire, massing in the valley. Tomorrow they were going to film the climatic fight scene between the Duke and the hero Sir. James Faithful.
"Mr. Kendrick, is it alright if I come in," came the voice of Mandi, his personal assistant from somewhere outside.
"Come on in," he called back.
Mandi entered the tent looking worried and rather sheepish. "Mr. Kendrick," she said "we have a problem. Christian Willis and Bridget Helmsley have both been taken to hospital with suspected botulism." The two actors played Sir. James Faithful and his token love interest Lady Catherine La Rouge respectively.
Joel Kenrick's reaction was pretty much what had been expected. He screamed, overturned a table, smashed a few glasses, shouted several obscenities, and ranted about the catering department and how much he was going to sue them for. Where the hell was he going to find two more, relatively inexpensive replacements.
A/N - What cruel and unusual situations I put the poor blameless characters in. I think this chapter was probably a bit disjointed in places, but it's turning out to be really quite difficult to get so many POV's into one small story, hence the reason why Frodo and Sam haven't made an appearance yet. In the next chapter Gollum's television fixation will deepen, Gandalf and his new friends will pay a visit to Lower Tadfield, Elrond will finally escape from London, and Faramir and Eowyn will be thoroughly disgusted by the shoddy armaments and bad military tactics being used in the production of 'Tales of Valour'.
Responses to the reviewers:
Rabid Locus - I'm glad that you enjoyed it. If the incompetent staff at Wildrose Park carry on as they are, Gollum will probably be having a few more encounters with The King of the Butterfly People in the near future.
Eykar - Thank you once again for giving me such a good idea for what to do with Gandalf. The next chapter will hopefully see him interacting with his newfound 'friends' a little more, and being forced to use his magic at inopportune moments. As for my rather haphazard punctuation/grammar, I'm currently going through the first three chapters trying to correct the errors, but it's going pretty slowly as I'm probably the worlds most incompetent proof-reader.
SaiyanQueenVega - Thanks. I'm trying to put a new spin on the Middle-Earth character in the real world cliché, so I'm really glad that you thought it was original. As for your question about me researching the fic, the answer is both yes and no. I'm a postgraduate psychology student so I draw mainly on my studies when it comes to describing symptoms and parodying the modern psychiatry/psychology.
Aisling Niamh - Thank you for your kind words. Though I'm sure that all of this praise will go to my head J . Hope that you enjoy this chapter.