Hilarity Ensues Episode 1, part 5.

Freeing Natalie and Ben wasn't as difficult as they had feared. When the others tried to explain to them what had happened they were confused and angry. Then they all crept back along the corridor into the green room. The girls in there looked up, confused at so many people breaking the rules of boredom, but they too were quickly freed. Since Ben had a torch as well, and Tom was able to retrieve his from his bag, they now had four. Charlotte, feeling better although still with a headache, came through to join them and they discussed what to do next.

"You said everyone else was in the auditorium?" Tom asked Charlotte. She nodded. "How many people?"

"Well, Ernest, Emma, Will, Sarah, David, Matt, Zoe, Rachel, Nick...and Emily's somewhere around."

"That's thirteen. And we're eleven," Tom said.

"What about Rick?" Ruth said. "And Claire?"

"And Rob?" said Adam.

"Claire went out to get food," Patrick said. "She's not part of all this."

"I think the others were in the auditorium too," Charlotte said.

"There's too many of them," Tom despaired. "We can't just go in and shine torches at them, they'll stop us before we can free any of them."

"Will used the room lights on us, didn't he?" Adam said. "Couldn't we do the same?"

"The stage lights!" Ruth exclaimed. "If we can use them then we could get everyone at once!"

"Does anyone know how to work them?" Charlotte asked.

"I do," Ben said. "What's the pattern we need to flash?" Ruth gave him the piece of paper where she'd written it down.

"I'll need to get round to the lighting desk at the back of the auditorium," Ben continued. "And it'll be easiest if we can get everyone onto the stage, then the lights are shining directly at them."

"Can we create some kind of diversion that gets everyone onto the stage?" Ruth asked.

"We've got to be quick," Natalie said. "There's only ten minutes of boredom left, and then they'll find out what's happening."

"Charlotte, you go in first, because they won't suspect you," Tom said. "Tell them that there is an order that they must all go down onto the stage. We'll follow you. If they listen to you, they'll come down to the stage, and if they work out what's going on they'll come down anyway to try and capture us."

"Ben, you try to get round to the lighting desk and flash the signal as soon as you can," Ruth said.
"Take the torches anyway, just in case we can use them," Tom said. "Everyone ready? Then let's go."

They went down the corridor and out through the side doors into the auditorium, Charlotte leading. Looking round, while trying to look as though she was still hypnotised, Ruth saw that the people Charlotte had named were indeed there. But someone was missing- Will. Well, we can deal with him later, Ruth thought. Maybe it'll be easier if he's not here now.

"You must all come down onto the stage at once," Charlotte said. "That is an order from our leader." A few people started to do as she said, but the majority looked suspicious.

"There are still five minutes of boredom hour," David said. "You are breaking the rules of boredom."

"What's happening?" asked Emma. "Why have we got to go onto the stage?"

"Uho," said Patrick behind Ruth. Emily, the other sentry, had appeared through the curtains from the backstage area.

"What is going on here?" she asked. "You are all breaking boredom! I will inform the Leader."

"Stop her!" Tom shouted.

"She doesn't know about any order- it's a lie!" David cried. "Stop them!"

Everything happened at once. Charlotte and Patrick grabbed Emily and began flashing the torch in her face. David, followed by most of the others who were still under the influence of Will's hypnosis, hurried down onto the stage towards those who were free. It was chaos. The stage became a struggling mass of cast and technical crew, of flashing torches and flying scarves- well, just one scarf.

Ruth looked up and saw that Nick and Matt had intercepted Ben as he was trying to get to the lighting desk. He was struggling, but he couldn't escape them.

Ruth tried to shake off the people she was struggling with and ran down the steps to the floor of the auditorium. She crossed the floor and headed up the steps to where Ben was struggling.
"Get to the lights," she heard someone shouting, but she didn't have a clue how to work the lighting desk. She glanced over her shoulder at the struggling crowd on stage. The free people were getting the worst of the skirmish, and unless they could do something soon their chances didn't look good. She pushed herself into the struggle between Ben, Nick and Matt, trying to give Ben a chance to get away.

Then suddenly a bright light came on over at the other side of the auditorium. It swept across the auditorium, growing brighter and changing size, until it was pointing directly at the stage. Ruth looked round, and saw that Tom had reached one of the twofollowspots they used for highlighting main characters.

Then it began to flash. Ruth realised that it wasn't being switched off and on, but that Tom was covering and uncovering the beam with a piece of board- she wondered where he had got it from until she realised it was a "No Flirting" sign that had been used to dress the set.

People on the stage had stopped struggling and were covering their eyes. Matt and Nick had momentarily stopped struggling to see what was going on, and then Nick started to run towards Tom.

"What do you think you're doing? You'll break the spot!" he yelled. Ben ran after him to try to stop him reaching Tom, while Ruth had got out her torch and was flashing it in Matt's face.
It was a struggle, but finally he swayed backwards, the look of waking sleep in his eyes replaced by confusion. She looked round. Ben was holding off Nick while Tom continued to wave the board in front of thefollowspot's beam. Down on the stage people were staggering back, looking around them in confusion, while others tried to explain what had happened.

Ruth helped Ben free Nick, then climbed to the top of the auditorium towards Tom. "Well done," she said. She looked around. Was anyone missing? She still couldn't see Will. And Zoe seemed to be missing too...

"What'?" she asked suddenly. A loud and piercing alarm had suddenly started whining somewhere in the depths of the building.

"It must be a fire," Tom said, hurrying over to a set of the emergency exit that punctuated the top of the auditorium at intervals. He pushed against the bar, but they wouldn't open. Ruth pushed aside the curtain of the window that ran around the top of the hall and looked out. By this time Matt, Nick and some of the others had joined them.

"What?" she said again. The lake that almost surrounded the hall was being drained, and quickly too. Already most of the water-if you could call it water- was gone, and the frames of rusty bicycles and the stump of the fountain which, for health and safety reasons, wasn't used any more, were visible. A few ducks and geese wandered about disconsolately.

"Come on," Nick said, and everyone raced down to the auditorium floor. The whole society, cast and crew, poured down the steps from the auditorium into the foyer below-
And stopped in shock. The foyer was as they had never seen it before.

"What!" Ruth said a third time, as the whole building began to shake.


The story continues in Episode 2...

Hilarity Ensues Episode 1, part 4.

"Stop her," Ruth said urgently, launching herself at Charlotte. Adam wasn't far behind her. It was hard, because they were fighting a battle within themselves as well as trying to restrain the struggling Charlotte. Tom had taken off his trademark super-extra-long megascarf and threw it around Charlotte, gagging her and trying to stop her struggling. But it wasn't working very well. Ruth wasn't very strong, and Adam was not the sort who generally got involved in fights. Charlotte had managed to get her mouth free and had opened it to shout when Patrick, who was still struggling to wrest control of himself from the suffocating influence, knocked into the struggling group and caught Charlotte off balance, knocking her backwards so that her head hit the wall hard. She slid down the wall to the floor, where she crumpled into a heap.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Patrick said, crouching down next to her. "I didn't mean to hurt her."

"Is she ok?" asked Adam. Ruth shut the door, then knelt down next to Patrick, and felt for Charlotte's pulse.

"She's ok," she said. "Just stunned." She looked up. "I know it seems wrong, but we should tie her up. We don't want her screaming when she wakes up and letting everyone know what's happened."

Tom handed Ruth his scarf, and she began tying up Charlotte, firmly but not uncomfortably. Patrick still looked dazed at what he'd done. "Find some material and soak it in cold water," she said quietly to him, nodding at the sink which graced the dressing room wall. "We'll put it on her head to help the bruising."

"Won't they miss her?" Adam asked.

"Not til boredom's over," Tom said. He looked at his watch. "I think we've got about half an hour to get away."

"We can't just leave her like this," Patrick said.

"They'll find her when they come looking for us," Adam said.

"But she's hypnotised into obeying Will- they all are. We can't just leave them."

"We don't know how to break them out of it," said Tom. "I thought it was those lights, but there might have been more to it than that, it might have been anything. If we get it wrong it could be dangerous for them."

"We don't even know if we can get away," Ruth said. "Somehow I don't think we'll find the doors open, even if we can get down there."

"You mean we're trapped?" asked Adam.

"Yes. And once they find out we're not fully conditioned they'll...well, they'll try again, I suppose, and if that doesn't work..."

"We can't just sit here, we've got to do something! Tom was getting agitated.

"Just let's try to stay calm," Ruth said, standing up.

"Shh!" said Adam, suddenly. There was silence while they all looked at one another in fear. Tom opened the door a crack and looked out. "There's no one there," he reported.

"Sorry, I thought I heard something," said Adam.

There was a moment of silence again. This time the looks were of hopelessness. Then Patrick spoke.

"When they shone that light in our eyes- there was a kind of pattern in the flashes. Maybe if we can reverse the pattern, it'll reverse the conditioning?"

"Reverse the pattern...you mean flash another light in our eyes?" Tom asked. Patrick nodded.

"I've got a torch," Ruth said, reaching into her bag which, with her costume, was at the other side of the room. "You never know when you might need it during the get-out...here you are."

"But if we don't get the pattern right it might be dangerous," said Tom.

"Try it on me," said Patrick. Tom took the torch.

"Does anyone remember the pattern of the flashes?" he said. Ruth closed her eyes and tried to remember. "Umm, a few short ones, a bit of a gap, a long one, a short one, another gap, and two long ones," she said. "Something like that, at least."

"I think there were 4 short ones to start with," Tom said. He started flashing the torch. "It's hard to remember that in reverse."

"Write it down," Adam suggested. Ruth pulled a pen and paper out of her bag and scribbled.

"Nothing's happening," said Tom.

"Do you feel anything?" Ruth asked Patrick. He shook his head.

"Try just 3 short ones, rather than 4," said Ruth. Tom continued flashing the torch.

"Still nothing," Patrick said.

"Wasn't there another short one before the two long ones?" Adam said. Tom tried.

Suddenly Patrick staggered backwards. Ruth reached out and steadied him. He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes with his hands. "Are you ok?" she asked. He looked up at her.

"It was like...like breaking up through water," he said. "It's gone! It worked!" He hugged her.

"What was the pattern?" Adam asked.

"Two long, one short, gap, short, long, gap, three short," Tom said. Patrick took the torch from him and quickly flashed the pattern into Tom's eyes. As Patrick had done, Tom staggered back as he awoke. Then they freed Ruth and Adam. Ruth thought Patrick's description was a good one, it did feel like suddenly coming up from under water, or walking out of a dark room into bright sunlight. Suddenly she had control of herself without effort, the battle in her mind was over, her headache disappeared. She smiled at the others. "Now what?" Tom asked.

Before anyone could speak there was a groan from the muffled heap that was Charlotte, tied up in Tom's scarf. Ruth knelt down again. "She's coming round," she said. Charlotte's eyes opened, and she looked up blearily, her eyes still slightly out of focus. Ruth had lain her on her side, and as she struggled to sit up she felt the scarf round her, restricting her movements. Her expression changed to one of puzzlement, then to something else. "Give me the bin," Ruth said suddenly, and Patrick passed it to her just in time, as Charlotte was sick. Ruth held the bin out and supported her as she retched into it. "It often happens with people who've been knocked unconscious," Ruth said.

Charlotte blinked up at them. "What- oh." She remembered what had happened as the conditioning began to reassert itself.

"Quick, the torch," Tom said. He leant over Charlotte with the torch. She shut her eyes and turned away.

"Just look at the torch," said Ruth gently. "It won't hurt." Charlotte's eyes opened slightly and Tom quickly flashed the code.

The change this time was more spectacular. Charlotte's body convulsed, as if flash of pain had passed through her, then she was still.

"What...what just happened?" she asked slowly.

"You were under a kind of hypnosis," Ruth said, beginning to unwind the scarf binding Charlotte. "We broke it. Someone was using you, controlling what you did for their own ends."

"I remember- someone hit me, knocked me against the wall and I was stunned..."

"It was me," said Patrick. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you, I just wanted to stop you from telling Will we weren't under his control-"

"I remember," said Charlotte. "It was Will, he got me and Emily in a room and started fiddling with the light switch, and then...it's funny, I remember everything, but it's like I was kind of doing things without being able to see, without quite knowing why I was doing things- it was like being drunk."

"That's it, that's exactly what it felt like," said Tom.

"That'll be why no one noticed," said Ruth sardonically. "How would they tell the difference from normal?"

"We're not that bad," Patrick said. Ruth raised her eyebrows.

"Hmm," she replied.

"Anyway, what are we going to do now?" Tom asked quickly.

"We should free the others," Adam said.

"But what about Will?" Tom asked. "There's still more of them under his control than us."

"You were on sentry duty," Ruth said to Charlotte. "Where is everyone?"

"Most people are in the auditorium," Charlotte said, "But Marie, Laura, Karen and Helen are in the green room, and Ben and Natalie are in the dressing room next door. And they can't have moved, because it's boredom time. Boredom time- what a stupid idea. Why didn't anyone see that?"

"Because of the hypnosis," Ruth said. She looked up at the others. "We should free them," she said. "If we can free the people in the green room, then they can help us with everyone else. Does anyone else have a torch?"

"I do," said Charlotte. "I brought it for walking home across the stray. It's in that bag over there."

"I've got one too, but it's in my bag in the dressing room on the other side of the green room," Tom said. "We can't get it without going through there."

"Well, we've got two," Ruth said. "I suggest we try to free Ben and Natalie, then we can all take on the girls in the green room." The others nodded. Charlotte tried to stand up, but was a bit wobbly.

"I think you should stay here," Tom said. She nodded and sat down again.

"I really am sorry," Patrick began.

"Oh stop it," Charlotte said. "Don't worry about it. Watch out for Emily," she continued, "she'll be on patrol somewhere around. Probably guarding the doors."

"Ok," said Tom. "Everybody ready?" He and Patrick had the torches.

"If possible, we'll try to do it without violence," Ruth said, "But if not, Adam and I can grab them and you two flash the pattern as quickly as possible- I won't be able to hold Natalie for long."

"Take the scarf," said Adam. She picked it up.

"Right, let's go."


The story continues...

Hilarity Ensues Episode 1, part 3.

Patrick awoke, or at least it felt like awakening, or resurfacing from deep under water.

"Has it worked, do you think?" he heard a voice- a young woman's- say.

"It should have." A second voice was replying. "Of course, they fought it, unlike most of the others, so it may not be as secure in the long term. But at this stage we don't need long term. Once we've got this off the ground there'll be no going back, and we can deal with problems as they arise. For now, they should be fine. You go and make sure everyone's getting ready for boredom, and I'll sort this lot out."

As Patrick felt himself gaining control of his senses he recognised the second voice as Will's. The first was familiar, but he couldn't place it. A door opened and shut. With their words his memories of what had happened came back. Cautiously, fearing either the strobing light or someone noticing that he was awake, he opened an eye. The lights were steady, and the room was empty except for himself, Ruth, Tom and Adam, who were all slumped on the first aid room bed in various attitudes of discomfort, all trying to hide their eyes. As he looked Adam opened an eye too.

"Ok?" Patrick whispered.

"I think so," Adam replied.

"Have they gone?" Ruth whispered, opening an eye too.

"They'll be back," Patrick said. He reached out and touched Tom on the arm. "Tom?"

"Mmm- what? Who's that- oh." Tom opened his eyes.

"Listen, I heard them talking- they think the hypnotism worked. Play along with them- do what they say- and maybe we'll get a chance to escape."

Even as he finished whispering they heard footsteps approaching, and all lay back in the attitudes they had awoken in, closing their eyes and hoping to escape attention.

As Will came back into the room- Patrick wasn't sure how he knew it was Will, he just knew- the four of them felt a change come over them. It was hard to describe- Ruth said later that it was like something rising in her mind, something which had lain dormant and almost unnoticed rising and spreading out so that it covered almost all her thoughts. But one area- the bit of her conscious that had fought to stay awake- refused to give in to the suffocating, dulling influence.

"Awake," Will said. Ruth's body began to obey, opening her eyes, straightening her limbs. But she could still feel that little area in her brain telling her that she didn't have to do what he said, telling her that she had free will.

"Get up," Will continued. She could resist. But at the moment she didn't want to. As Patrick had said, their only hope of being able to escape was to obey, to win their trust and hope they would be left alone and be able to get away.


"It's time for boredom," Will said. "Follow me."


One by one they turned, as automata, and followed him out of the room, along the corridor, through the green room and into an empty dressing room. "Sit down," Will said, and they obeyed. Sneaking looks at the others, Ruth wondered if they too were able to resist, or whether their minds had given in to the suffocating dullness. It was hard, keeping it at bay.


"You will stay here until you hear the announcement that boredom period is over," Will said. "You will not speak, or read, or listen to music, or do anything. You will be bored. Whatever you hear, whatever you see or think you hear or see, you will pay no attention. You will remember what I have said." He left, shutting the door behind him but not, Ruth noticed, locking it.


For some moments after he had left, they remained silent. The footsteps died away. Suddenly the comms unit on the wall crackled in to life. "Boredom period is beginning. Please find somewhere to be bored. Sentry duty today will be performed by Emily and Charlotte."


Ruth looked up, and met Tom's eye. Quietly she stood up, crept over to the door and opened it carefully to peer out. The corridor was empty, but she could hear people settling down in the next dressing room. Their door was left open. The stairs were on the other side of the dressing room. Somehow she didn't think that "ignore anything you hear" included ignoring people trying to escape. Besides, there was the issue of the two sentries- normally she wouldn't have thought Emily and Charlotte would be much of a threat, they were lovely people, but now- how could you know what anyone might do, when they were under someone else's control?


Besides, even that much was an effort. Part of her wanted to sit still, to obey the orders she had been given, and she had to fight the impulse to give in and to get her body under control. It was an effort. Her head hurt, and a fear was increasing that she would be unable to keep up her resistance for long.


There was no escaping at the moment, then. She closed the door and shook her head at the others, who were watching her.


"No way out," she whispered. "Will they hear us if we talk?"


"So long as we're fairly quiet they shouldn't," Tom said. He put his hand to his head. "Whatever they did has given me a headache."


"It's from fighting it, trying to resist," Ruth said. "I've got one too. But we've got to keep resisting."


"I don't know if I can..." Patrick began.


"We must," Ruth said. "You can, I know you can." She looked at him. He was obviously afraid, but then they all were.


"Isn't there anyone who might be able to help?" Adam asked. "No one else who didn't join the cult?"


"There were a few of the girls," Ruth said. "But I don't know where they are."


"I saw some of them going out just after the matinee finished," Tom said.


"No help there, then," Adam said.


There was a noise in the corridor. Quickly they all returned to the attitudes Will had left them in. The door opened, and Charlotte came in. Ruth lay back, allowing the conditioning to control her body while still preserving that little clear space in her head. Charlotte looked round the room, then left, closing the door again. Ruth noticed the vague, half asleep look on her face. She was under the influence of the same conditioning as had been tried on them, as they had thought. No help there.


After a minute or two they sat up.


"That was close," Adam said.


"There's no way we can get out past her," Tom said. "We'll just have to wait and-"


The door opened again, and Charlotte came back in. She had obviously been suspicious, and had come back to catch them out. It had worked.


"You are breaking boredom," she said. "You will be reported to the Leader. You will be locked in here until I fetch him." She turned back to the door.




The story continues...

Hilarity Ensues Episode 1, part 2.

The four looked at one another, then as the others began to advance on them they turned and ran. The door to the stairs was behind them, and they were through it and heading upstairs. Behind them they could hear the others following them, Will and Zoe leading. They reached the corridor at the top of the building and raced along it, through the green room, where a few of the other cast members looked up, startled, and out the other side of the room just as their pursuers entered. Along the corridor here, and out through the doors into the auditorium.

It reminded Ruth, in as much as she had time to think, of a schoolgirl of ten years ago, trying to outrun bullies but never managing it, always ending up in the toilets with a locked door to give her a sense of some protection (at least, until the bullies started climbing up the other cubicles and peering over the top) and longing for the bell to ring at mean that there was somewhere she could go to get away from the nightmare. But this time there was no bell to save them.

Their pursuers were close behind them and were spreading out through the auditorium. Everywhere the four of them ran they were followed, and others were joining in the pursuit. They ran all the way around the top of the auditorium, but Matt and Zoe dashed up the stairs at the side of the stage to cut them off and prevent them going through the door to the dressing rooms. They turned back, but others were close behind them, and they had to turn and head down the next staircase to floor level.

They ran up onto the stage. Matt and Zoe had turned and were coming back down the staircase they had just gone up. Others were advancing on the front of the stage, and as they turned to push through the curtains to backstage others appeared to block their way.


"Up here!" Tom shouted, heading for the stairs at the side of stage right. The others followed, their pursuers not far behind. Some headed to cut them off, but Tom and the others got to the door first, and slammed it behind them as they headed round the corner and back into the corridor where the dressing rooms were. For a moment Ruth's memories came back as the ladies' toilets were ahead. But there was no way out of there.


"Through here!" Tom said, opening a door on the left. They hurried through it, and Tom shut it behind them quietly. It was the door to the red stairs, the stairs up to the gantry that ran round the top of the hall.


"They'll see us if we go out there," Patrick whispered.


"We'll hide here till they've gone past, then we can go back down and out of one of the doors backstage," Tom replied.


Ruth could hear footsteps hurrying along the corridor at the bottom of the stairs. They held their breath, and the footsteps died away. They began to breathe freely again, but Ruth was not entirely happy.



She turned round to see what she was leaning against. It was a large white object, shaped something like a large rubbish bin with a domed top. It was white painted, and there were several metal rods sticking out. She couldn't make out what it might be, and she was afraid to explore further in case it created noise.



"Come on," whispered Tom, making a move down the stairs. But even as they crept cautiously down the stairs, the door opened and Will was there, flanked by the others. But Will looked...different. There was something about him that Ruth did not like.


"Take them to the first aid room," he said to the others. They moved forward, grabbed Tom, Ruth, Patrick and Adam and began to drag them off, despite their struggles.


"What are you doing- leave us alone!" Ruth cried out, struggling against them. There was something strange about how they obeyed without question- it wasn't like her friends as she knew them. She looked at their faces.


"What have you done to them- are they hypnotised?" she yelled, as the four of them were pushed through the door to the first aid room.


"Aren't you clever," Will said, shutting the door and putting on a pair of dark glasses. "So close. And to think you could have ruined my plan..."


Suddenly the lights started to flicker. At first Ruth thought it was just random, but after a few moments she began to notice a pattern.


"Close your eyes," Tom yelled, "it's a trap! He's trying to hypnotise us too!" They shut their eyes, but Will only laughed. "You can't escape that easily," he said.


The light was so bright that it was still visible through their eyelids. Ruth screwed up her eyes, trying not to see, trying think, to find a way out. But the door was locked, and she expected the others would be outside it. The windows were too small and too high up, and anyway they were on the second floor. There was no way of escaping.


She could feel herself slowly losing control of her thoughts. It was like getting drowsy, but not quite falling asleep- parts of her mind seemed to be thinking very slowly, and were beginning to fall under Will's spell. But other parts were still fully awake, and could observe what was happening.


It was the drowsy part of her brain that started telling her eyes to open. The awake part noticed, and fought back with everything it had, but it took a lot of effort, and it was getting weaker. Almost as an outsider to this struggle, Ruth felt her eyes gradually opening. She continued to fight, but she felt herself succumbing...

The story continues...

Hilarity Ensues Episode 1, part 1.

Things are seldom what they seem.

"With laughing song and merry dance! With song and dance!"

It was Saturday of show week. The matinee was over, the audience had gone and the cast and crew had retired upstairs to the dressing rooms. A small group sat in a corner of the green room on the second floor of Central Hall, discussing how the show had gone and what the audience was likely to be like for the final performance that evening.

"What are the plans for the next couple of hours?" Tom asked, leaning back in a chair.

"Don't think there are any," Ruth said. "A few people are going out to get food, but most of the others are just staying here. You know that strange cult thing they've joined? They've got to do their daily observance thing- what do they call it?"

"Boredom, I think," Tom replied.

"What do they actually do?" Adam asked.

"What it says, I think," Patrick said. "They just have to sit still and be bored. An hour of boredom a day."

"But why?" Ruth asked.

"No idea," Patrick shrugged.

"Sounds a bit strange," Adam said.

"Loads of people have joined, thought," Ruth pointed out. "Sarah, and Ben and Natalie, and David and even Emma and Ernest."

"The Dorian street gang," Tom said.

"Not just them, though, even some of the girls in the chorus like Karen and Rachel and Emily," Patrick said.

"Has anyone not?" Adam asked.

"Well, us," Tom said.

"Quite a few of the girls in our dressing room," Ruth said. "The newer ones. The...I hate to say it, but the ones who are in the show, but not really in the society, if you know what I mean."

They did. There was a shifting population of people, mostly girls, who joined for a show or two but never hung around, never really made their mark on the society by being elected to committee, helping make the set or surviving a crash. No one had anything against that, of course, but they weren't quite part of the society in the same way as the old dinosaurs who had been around for four or five years, or even longer in some cases. It wasn't just a performing group, in many ways it was a community.

"It's strange, that cult thing," Tom said. "Six months ago no one had heard of it, then Will comes along and suddenly everyone's a member."

"He's strange too," Adam said. "I mean, most people take a while to make friends, to become part of things, but he...he went straight in at the top, if you know what I mean. Everyone wants to be friends with him."

"I know what you mean," said Tom.

"Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy," Adam said, "but...why all the fuss round him?"

"Going out with Sarah probably helped," Ruth suggested.

"But that wasn't till later," Tom said. "By then he was already well in with that lot- the 'cool' people."

"The Dorian street crowd," Ruth said. "That's what's really strange. I don't think the God-King is as influential as he once was."

"Times change," Patrick said. "Would anyone like a cup of tea?"

"Sounds like a good idea," Tom replied.

The four of them went down one set of stairs to the kettle that lived on a table beside the fridge directly backstage.

"Is there anyone else who hasn't joined this cult thing?" Tom asked as they waited for the kettle to boil.

"Will tried to get me to join the other day," Adam said. "I have to say it makes you feel a bit of an odd one out when so many people are part of it."

Ruth was going through people in her head. "Other than us four...and a few of the girls' chorus, like I said before...I don't think there's anyone."

"Really?" said Tom. "Not anyone?"

"That's...a bit worrying," Adam said. Ruth nodded, but before she could say anything else the conversation was interrupted as Will himself appeared through the doors to the stairwell at the opposite side of the stage. He looked a bit surprised to see them.

"Oh, hello..." he said, seemingly taken aback. "Shouldn't you be getting ready for boredom?"

"No, we don't have to do that," Tom replied carefully, not wanting to offend anyone.

"All initiates have to undergo boredom," Will said, taking a few steps towards them. The others looked at each other. There was something worrying about Will's manner.

"We're not members," Ruth said cautiously. "We won't disturb you though, we'll just find somewhere to sit. Or we can go out, if that'll make it easier for you..."

"Not members?" said Will, taking another step forward. "You haven't joined?"

"No," she said.

"How did you get overlooked?" he murmured to himself. Suddenly Ruth and the others noticed Sarah and Nick were coming through into the backstage area from the auditorium, and Zoe and Matt were coming through the others. Zoe might be small, but she was strong, while Matt and Nick were taller than any of the four, who were feeling very uncomfortable.

"These people are unenlightened," Will said to them, pointing at Ruth and the others. "Encourage them to come up and see what they are missing."

The story continues...