YES IT IS

Authors: pennylane_fic, jenny_wren28 & lovelyrita_mm

Starring: The Beatles and Maggie Sue

Rating: M for language, implied sex (though none of it is explicit) & implied drug use. Characters used in this story are either our creation, or are historically-based (ie, The Beatles).

Disclaimer: We don't own any of the Beatles, this obviously never happened, and is a complete work of fiction.

What does John think of 2006?

Chapter Sixteen

Maggie had no idea what else she was supposed to do. The fear was bubbling in her stomach, threatening to spill out and she found herself having to pull out of her analytical thoughts and the repercussions her brain was throwing at her. It was like a war between her mind and her heart. She was secretly glad John couldn't go back, yet she was waiting for the world to come crashing down at any moment because of her destruction of the timeline. In the back of her mind, she was still hoping that the fact that the world hadn't halted yet was due to the fact that somewhere in the not-too-distant future, she had figured out how to get John home. For now she was trying to force herself to live in the moment, and wait until things had calmed down so that she could think about it properly and try to puzzle the solution out. A solution was out there, she was sure of it; she just had to sit and think. Maggie knew she wasn't in the proper mindset to be capable of that right now. That, and she didn't think she really even wanted to find the solution at all. At least, not yet.

So, true to her word, Maggie took John back to her apartment and made good on her promises several times. She was tired, emotionally exhausted, and frankly, glad to be home, amongst her own things. She began to pick up the pieces of her life. She called the London hotel where she had been staying, and had them ship her things to her, stating that she'd had a family emergency and had needed to leave quite suddenly. She called her office to tell them she was back, and would come into work in a few days. Things were returning to normal. Except for the fact that John Lennon was sleeping in her bed. A 26-year-old John Lennon who had time-traveled with her from 1966. It was too unreal to be believed, so she pushed that little fact aside. She was home.

But, in the middle of the night, as John slumbered soundly beside her, she still questioned if she was doing the right thing. As much as she tried to push those thoughts aside, more often than not, she failed miserably. What else could she do? Have John look at pictures at himself on the internet, hoping that one of them might send him back where he belonged?

The days went quickly, as John eagerly embraced Maggie's life and her world. Both of them found it amusing when he discovered new things, or when she had to explain something that she generally took for granted. The internet and computers seemed to be the biggest topic of interest for him. For days he was filled with questions about the contraption sitting on her desk and Maggie had to break it to him that most of the world was now ran by them.

"That's fucking disturbing." John said with a grin, running his fingers over the top of her Macbook and taking delight in pressing the little button to get it to whir to life. Despite his words, Maggie knew that this little machine excited him. Most everything he saw now did. She remembered hearing him frantically calling her name one morning. Jumping out of bed, thinking something was wrong; she had run into the living room, searching for him. She found him on the sofa staring at the TV in amazement.

"They just said 'fuck' on the telly!" he stated in astonishment, pointing at the TV. Maggie looked confused for a moment before figuring out that HBO would be a novelty to him as well.

"Yeah, they can do that now. Well, at least on pay-TV. They even say it on music albums too."

"The little things you call CD's can say 'fuck'?" he asked, amused by the prospect. He insisted they spend the rest of the day on the sofa watching a Sex and the City marathon, so they could cheer any time the TV said a naughty word.

To both show off modern movie technology, and to fill John in on the last 40 years of the space program, Maggie took him to see an IMAX show at the Air & Space Museum. The wonder and glee which were clearly apparent on John's face was only furthered as Maggie explained to him the basic principles behind everything. He seemed to have a voracious appetite for knowledge and his curiosity was never sated.

Unfortunately, Maggie also had the job of explaining the less fun rules of modern society to John, in particular, the "no smoking" rules and the fact that she had no idea how she could go about scoring drugs. He seemed utterly confused by both statements, almost not believing her until Maggie had shown him information on the smoking bans on the internet. That led to a whole other series of questions as John wanted to know just how she got that information so quickly and Maggie had to look up the history of the internet for him. They didn't call it the information super-highway for nothing. He was amazed that you could look up any piece of information at the touch of a button – and had to be persuaded that it was better not to look up his former bandmates. Maggie had been tempted many times, but had yet to bring herself to find out just how badly John's disappearance had screwed up Paul and the others. They would have to face it eventually, but she kept promising that they would do it tomorrow.

When they weren't talking or exploring, their time was filled with music. Maggie had bought more music then she even knew what to do with during the course of her life, and most nights she would wake to John listening to some new sound; modern music was something that fascinated him to no end. Maggie had to laugh every time he heard something he particularly liked. His eyes would light up, and he would back it up, listening to the same chord progression over and over again. He hardly slept, in fact, wanting to spend his nights instead soaking up what the modern world had to offer. Maggie knew that later Beatle music was much more avant garde than their early Please Please Me days, and couldn't help wondering if it was his time in the future that had given the Beatles this different sound. This once again allowed her the small hope that she had succeeded in getting John back to the past. If she hadn't, would any memory of later Beatle music even exist for her? Would her memory of her present be affected by all the changes to the timeline, or were she and John outside of it? Too many questions.

In her less philosophical moments, Maggie had to giggle to herself as she pictured John explaining to their poor sound engineer that he wanted his song to sound like an orange.

"No one is going to know what you mean by that," she laughed at him, when he brought this very thing up.

"Why not?"

"Because an orange doesn't have sound."

"It does if you're on acid, luv."

Maggie rolled her eyes. They were listening to Maggie's XM radio (John still couldn't believe that there were over 100 different stations to pick from), laying with their heads together on the bed after another bout of "promises" were fulfilled.

As the song changed, Maggie found herself drifting off to sleep a little, beginning to slip away. John sat up quickly though, jolting her out of her hazy feeling.

"Is that Mick?" he asked. Maggie frowned, listening for a moment before nodding. "I've never heard that one before," John said.

"That's because that album came out last year," Maggie replied.

"The fucking Stones are still together?" he laughed, not quite believing it.

Maggie nodded once more while yawning. "And they're touring and making albums. Type them into Google or Wikipedia and you'll see them."

Hoping from the bed, John did just that, but pushed himself away from the computer at the sight of one of their pictures. "Keith looks like a fucking corpse!"

"Hence the reason why I don't like you doing drugs." Maggie yawned again.

John frowned. "I can type any name I want into this thing and information will come up about them?" John had been in the future for long enough to know that the information on his former bandmates was out there. John's query made it seem like he was ready to know. They had put it off long enough. Maggie steeled herself.

"Basically," Maggie looked down. "We should really look up the others so we can see how badly we screwed up their lives by keeping you in the future. I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it."

John barely even heard her as he started to type in names, the internet dispassionately informing him of the drug-related deaths of so many of the people he knew or had partied with. He felt his stomach roll in protest. The thought of people he had seen only a few weeks earlier dead and gone, because of something that they all indulged in often, horrified him.

"Oh God, no… Brian…" John stared horrified at the computer screen, reading about Brian Epstein's accidental overdose in 1967. "Maggie, I need you to look, I need you to tell me that the other three are OK, that they're still alive. I… I can't do it. I can't look. But I need to know."

Maggie leaned over John's shoulder while he squeezed his eyes shut, and quickly scanned over the bios of Paul, George, and Ringo. "They're fine, John, they're still alive." At her words John seemed to crumble – both in relief that they were ok, but also grief that so many of his friends were not.

Maggie silently led John over to the bed and held him while he shook, silently crying, mourning the deaths of so many. She had not told him what else she had seen displayed on the screen about the other three. At last she was confronted by the truth of what they had done. They had been so happy in their little bubble, just the two of them, but she had known it couldn't last forever. And so now she knew. And seeing John's profound sadness, she couldn't help but keep it all to herself for now. She knew he would feel compelled to look again later, perhaps while she was asleep or at work. He'd learn how the remaining Beatles' lives had deteriorated after John had suddenly disappeared. How Ringo had gone back to drinking heavily and was now currently serving a life sentence for vehicular manslaughter after killing three people in a drinking and driving incident. How George had moved to India and become a complete recluse after his first solo work had bombed. Without a few more years as a Beatle, George had not had the time to develop as a songwriter and hadn't yet been prepared to go at it alone. And worst of all, how Paul, having never met Linda, had gone through more relationships than seemed humanly possible. He was now on his 6th divorce, completely broke because of all his alimony and child support payments, and was something of a joke in the music industry. She hadn't even dared look up Julian and what fate held for him, and didn't even allow herself to think about the unborn Sean.

After John had finally fallen asleep, Maggie made herself examine her shelf of Beatle CDs, finally seeking the answer to her late night ponderings. Every Beatle album she owned from Sgt Pepper on was gone. Maggie liked her CDs to be organized so they were all alphabetized on her shelves. Feeling like listening to some Crowded House, she flipped through the C section. There weren't any Crowded House CDs on the shelf. They were all missing. She ran through all her albums, letter by letter – more than just Crowded House was missing. ELO was nowhere to be seen. Oasis, gone. Well, she'd never been a big fan of Oasis – but still – so much music gone.

I guess John never goes back, she thought to herself. Was it because they never found a way to send him back, or because her selfishness had kept him here, with her, in her modern world? The idea that she was solely responsible for the misery of George, Paul, and Ringo, and that she had also single-handedly changed the face of modern music by depriving them of what had once inspired them was overwhelming.

All she knew was that she couldn't burden him with any of this knowledge, not now, not ever. She was afraid he would hate her for being the cause of it all. And she made an important decision. She just had to find a way to get him back to the past.

* * *

A/N:

NO CROWDED HOUSE!!!! *gasp* NO ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA!!!! *sob* NO OASIS!!!!! *YAY!* what??? oh, sorry about that, I mean *OH NOES!!!* ;) At anyrate, what will Maggie Sue do??? How will this brilliant Physicist get John back to 1966??? How long can she keep from John knowing what really happened to the other Beatles??? And most importantly, who knew John Lennon would be a "Sex & the City" fan? ;)

This is a complete story, so you won't be left hanging! We are planning on post approximately 2 chapters a week.

Also, we'd love to know what you think so far, so please drop us a line. :)