Have you ever actually READ any of it?

[Moonlight]

In order to discontinue the derailing of the fan-edits thread, I’m moving our new game of weirdly novelizing sections of Red Dwarf to its own thread.

Since I had the foresight to do this without being asked by more than two people, I get to post mine again and pray that this forum doesn’t fuck up the formatting.

DEMERITS

First there was nothing.

Then there was silence.

The nothing hadn’t always been, it had simply been. But the silence, the silence had a distinct beginning, a distinct now. Nothing was just nothing, but silence implied perception. He was suddenly aware of the empty void in which his presence found itself.

Gradually, stimulus began to seep in, like water droplets through limestone. It began as indistinct tactile input, a subtle twitch in what he knew to be his hand. How he knew it to be his hand, he was unsure. He had never been aware of it until now, yet it was all too familiar. How peculiar.

Suddenly, the totality of bodily sensory input hit him like a cement mixer, and within moments, Second Technician Arnold Rimmer found himself casually cleaning one of Red Dwarf’s myriad chicken soup dispensers with a 14C, his favorite of the pipe cleaners. It had a certain subdued elegance to it that he felt the 14B lacked. Although he couldn’t shake the strange feeling that, just a moment ago, he wasn’t. Not only that he wasn’t here, but that he just wasn’t.

Huh. Odd.

Shaking his head, he quickly dismissed the idea as the sense of dissociation quickly faded. There had been no void, no silence, just another soul-crushing day in the life of Z-Shift. Soul-crushing? Rimmer tutted himself for the disparaging thought. He knew he had to stop letting doubts like that permeate his conscience, and silently vowed to make this the cleanest food dispenser this side of Enceladus.

In, out, in, out, in, out. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but damn if it wasn’t essential. Rimmer longed to be recognized for his efforts. He wasn’t just a lowly technician; he was the bringer of meals, the herald of sustenance. A spaceship was a closed system, and with eleven hundred and sixty-nine souls aboard the flow of food needed to stay constant. If you couldn’t get your soup, one could hardly pop to the next town over. He wasn’t just important, he was necessary. Many other jobs aboard this rust bucket were expendable, but not his.

Speaking of expendable, where the hell was Lister? Had he the audacity to shirk his job on such an important day? Granted, it wasn’t a holiday or any other time one would reasonably expect extra rush on the dispensers, but Lister had made a big speech the previous day about how he’d been neglecting his duties and had vociferously vowed to pull himself up by his boot-straps moving forward. Unless that was sarcasm, which it almost definitely was. Either way, Rimmer was poised to hold him to that promise and issue demerits if appropriate. That is to say, when appropriate.

Rimmer fingered his radio, tempted to broadcast his displeasure at Lister’s absence and order him to show up for work. He knew the lowly man wouldn’t be listening, but somebody else would be. That person would take note of Lister’s lack of response, and they would know. They would know how insubordinate and feckless he was. It was almost too delicious to think about. Rimmer, in an overly exaggerated movement, removed the wired microphone from its catch and slowly raised it to mouth-level.

“Lister?” he said. “I know you’re listening. You were supposed to report for Z-Shift duty an hour ago! If you don’t show up pronto, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”

Fully expecting no response, Rimmer preemptively issued several demerits. He was, predictably, met with abject silence. Wonderful, he thought to himself, and rounded out the demerit count to a healthy five. Five demerits in a few seconds, that had to be some sort of record.

He silently hoped the JMC Board of Discipline had received the letter requesting his demerits be officially recognized.

Mildly annoyed that nobody on this frequency was butting in on his behalf, Rimmer was surprised as his belt-printer whirred to life and began dot-matrixing a letter. At last! Obviously, Lister had written a formal, groveling apology for his tardiness. He hadn’t been sarcastic after all! Perhaps he was sick today; he certainly hadn’t looked too well that morning. Then again, when did he ever? The printout nearly finished, Rimmer fondly wondered if all his talk of duty and honor had finally gotten through to his subordinate. The paper having completed its journey, he tore it from the feed and indulged its contents.

Seven distinct reactions battled for Rimmer’s expression, muddling together into an ambiguous pile of face. Three words in particular jumped out at him immediately; they consisted of “Lister”, “under” and “arrest”. He paused, coughed several times, and then brayed obnoxiously. Scanning for more amusing words, he found “stealing”, “crashing”, “Starbug”, and “stowaways”. The man had finally flipped! It was hilarious. Truly, gut-wrenchingly hilarious. And considering how little Lister contributed to cleaning soup machines, it was definitely worth the lost manpower.

Having enormously enjoyed the highlights, Rimmer took a minute to properly drink in the letter. Why Navigation Officer Kristine Kochanski had apparently joined him in this misguided endeavor wasn’t instantly clear, but he quickly reasoned that it was simply another case of Lister dragging down everyone around him. After all, Rimmer surely would have passed the astro-navs if not for that incessant humming. He knew this to be as true as anything he could see with his own eyes.

A glimmer in his smile, Rimmer folded the paper and gingerly stored it in his bag with the intent to frame it over his bunk. After so much blood and sweat he had finally won! Doing a little jig, he crouched down and 14Ced the ever-loving hell out of that pipe. The herald of sustenance would go on to fight another day, and without any hangers-on dragging him down.

Twelve hours later, he and Lister would be sharing a prison cell.

[evilmorwen]

This is incredible.

[Moonlight]

I appreciate the compliment. When I’d finally fine-tuned it to my liking I realized that it had been over an hour since I started. My favorite thing in this is probably the dot matrix printer belt for sending messages, which I felt sounded like an incredibly Series I idea.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

And for those of you just joining us, this thread is all about, to paraphrase Moonlight, humorously novelizing sections of Red Dwarf that don’t deserve it. The popular choice is inconsequential early chapters fleshing out and expanding on minor details or characters only briefly touched upon in episodes.

(And yeah this is absolutely dope)

[Moonlight]

See, the trick to making Series VIII good is to just make it Series I. Again.

[Unrumble]

[Asclepius]

These are fantastic. But the onanistic Kryten one was really horrible. Did Rob Grant register an account on here to write that?

[ReddiShadow]

Endless black was replaced by seemingly endless red. Miles of industrial metal hull, laced with prongs and pipes and protrusions, swept by underneath him. His quest was at an end, his final destination was within reach.

It had been a long road to Red Dwarf.

Millions of years of tireless trudging through the cosmos, visiting each and every person in turn. It was hard work, it was long work, and now it was just four people away from being finished work.

He had had better first impressions. Upon breaking into the ship, most of his senses were assaulted in ways that would get 10-25 at least, possibly life if the judge was feeling frivolous. The stench of decay hung so heavily over the deserted corridor you could almost see it. Unfortunately for him, you could definitely taste it.

He grimaced, only partly to try and see through the gloom. Hadn’t these people heard of LEDs? He’d been in Berni Inns more inviting than this. They hadn’t heard of much else either, given the tiny storms of dust that whipped up whenever he moved, the bare corrugated metal cramping the space even more than necessary, that weird sucking sound-

That last item hadn’t been there a moment ago, had it? He wracked his ancient mind, sieving through enough memories to make a mere mortal’s mind go mad. No, there was definitely just the anaemic background hum of the miles-distant engines a moment ago.

He’d also been on his feet a moment ago. That was also something he was certain of. Yes. On his feet, inside the ship. Some kind of embuggerance had occurred a moment previous, and he had spent his only split-second in arm’s reach of anything but vacuum pondering it.

Typical, he thought. Countless trillions of lives ticked off the list, and he would forever be doomed to float aimlessly through space with only four to go. Absolutely bloody typical.

Actually, no. Sod that for a game of Pin The Tail On The CEO. He wasn’t going to take this lying down, then vertical, then lying down, then vertical. He was going to make it. He was going to finish his task if it were the last thing he would do until floating near a planet in a few billion years or so, which it probably would be.

Summoning up all his experiences with situations like these across the millions of years of his life, he angled himself with several undignified-looking flailings of his limbs.

Careful to avoid sending himself careening with the movement, he reached behind himself for the oxygen tank on his back. He felt around delicately, slowly tracking down the transfer line. It wasn’t easy in spacesuit gloves, he thought bitterly that he was effectively trying to perform brain surgery under seven feet of treacle.

Regardless, he eventually got his imprecise gloves around the precise tube he needed. Now all he needed to do was aim it precisely, not use up too much air, and get the tube reconnected again, all without seeing what he was doing and with the dexterity of a dead sloth.

He’d had worse, he thought with a grin.

It took more attempts than he’d liked, but the ship was swallowing up his field of vision once more. He was also going more sideways-ish than he’d liked, but any direction vaguely shipwards was good enough for him.

Especially with that one bright light up ahead.

Out of all the windows, only one seemed illuminated. One twinkling light in a vast wall of red and black. And he’d managed to aim right at it.

His hands grasped for purchase on the outcrops of metal zooming past him. Each time, they failed. The light got closer and closer, and alarmingly fast.

He only had one option.

He tensed, not taking his eyes off the edge of the window carooming towards him. If he could just…

He was almost blinded by the light blasting out of the ship at him, but his fingers found and clutched the window pane. His arm muscles screamed as they took the full brunt of his momentum, but he held. Against all of his body’s rather firm complaints, he torturously pulled himself up against the prevailing wind pushing him past and away from the window, because that’s how space works.

He’d just managed to pull himself into view of the window when the sight inside almost made him lose his grip.

All of his reindeer, rather than working desperately to try and rescue him, were boozing and schmoozing with the four gits he’d had left to deliver presents to, and no doubt had just flushed him into space!

The jammy, spineless bastards, he thought.

“One word!” he said in response to Rudolf’s charade, because Father Christmas could never bring himself to say something so rude.

You pack of turncoat robbing shits! That’s friendship for you, is it? Millions of years and the hopes and joys of countless people across time and space, all means bugger all if it’s worth some crap lager and some crackers? I should have left the lot of you to die in the tundra all those years ago, was what he thought.

“Whole thing,” was what he said.

Then the wind that exists in space now I guess blew him up and away from the pinprick of light into the neverending void.

No, he thought. I’m going to jolly well give those bloody reindeer a piece of my mind. Those four gwenlans on the ship, too. He’d teach them to blast Father sodding Christmas out an airlock like he was a female character in a Doug Naylor sitcom!

With some nimble bursts from his oxygen tank, his precision fuelled by millions of years of pent-up spite and frustration and burn-out, he was heading for the window again.

I will make sure you curse ever crossing Christmas himself, he thought. I will make you weep and beg for not just death, but the death of the universe itself. You will want all of existence swallowed up and destroyed because it could possibly hold the amount of pain I will inflict upon you. Armageddon is the only thing that could spare your souls from me, and you will desire it like you’ve never desired-

He sped past the window, not realising he was approaching it so quickly. Startled, he shouted out one word before speeding away out of range:

“ARMAGEDDON!“

“Oh, well done Mr Christmas, sir!” was all he heard in response, from that one with the stupid head, before he was completely out of earshot.

As Father Christmas resigned himself to an eternity floating among the stars, not even any oxygen to breathe to help pass the time, one thought limped across his very tired mind.

How the smeg did I hear them? How the further smeg did they hear me?

[International Debris]

Phenomenal. That’s a hell of a reveal halfway through.

[Asclepius]

Stunning. Like all of you doing this, you’ve captured the tone so well.

[Dave]

Buggered up the formatting. Let’s try again.

[Dave]

It was the laughter he missed the most.

It had been a strange few years, Kryten pondered to himself as he reinserted his eyes, one after the other, after drying off the last of the lens cleaner. After an initially busy few years of adventures with his new humanoid friends – years packed with incident, during which it felt like between six and eight highly unusual and interesting things happened to them on an almost annual basis – somehow things had gone quiet of late.

And above all, it was the lack of laughter that really got to him.

He didn’t just mean the laughs he shared with Mr Lister over his latest drunken antics, the chuckles he shared with the Cat over the Tom & Jerry cartoons on the ship’s vid, or the stifled guffaws that Mr Rimmer would occasionally emit when he saw one of his crewmates suffer a minor yet excruciating injury.

No, the laughs he was thinking of were different, and seemed to come from somewhere else entirely. Almost as though the universe was laughing along with them at some big joke that they didn’t fully understand.

Kryten was never quite sure whether the rest of the crew heard them too – and he had always been too embarrassed to ask, for fear of exposing himself to accusations of mechanoid dementia or droid rot, and ending up facing the same fate as the Toaster. But the laughter seemed to follow Kryten everywhere.

Sometimes it was after one of his friends had made a witty quip or exchanged a barbed insult. But sometimes it was at the most wildly inappropriate times.

He’d first heard the laughter during that regrettable series of events when he first met the Red Dwarf crew, back on the Nova 5. He’d been quite a different person then, but still he remembered how he’d felt the ominous, disembodied laughter rise in the back of his mind, just at that moment – excruciating, in retrospect – when he had introduced his dead Nova 5 crewmates to the Red Dwarf rescue posse.

Yes, that was the start of it. And after that, it felt like the laughter followed him for years.

One example that stuck in his mind was that bizarre occasion when Mr Lister was being attacked by a shape-changing GELF that had transformed itself into a replica of his red boxer shorts. It had been a horrifying moment – a moment during which Mr Lister’s very life had been in danger, as the shrinking creature threatened to bisect his very body – but, as Kryten had knelt down to assist his master to fend off the mortal threat as best he could, the cackling, shrieking laughter rose to an eerie crescendo, drowning out Kryten’s own thoughts and even his own voice to the extent that he had to shout just to make himself heard above it.

Even during their darkest times – that odd period when they had been imprisoned in their own ship, surrounded by morbid nanobotic recreations of more than a thousand dead crewmates, and subject to grim trials that would surely violate even the most elastic of moral standards – somehow, inexplicably, the laughter would persist. Hauntingly. Repetitively. Even when things weren’t that funny. ha-HA-ha-ha. ha-HA-ha-ha.

Of course, Kryten had his suspicions that the rest of the crew could hear it too. He’d notice occasionally that during these audio hallucinations of his, Mr Rimmer or Mr Lister would also stop-mid sentence, as though waiting for the ethereal sound to pass, for no obvious reason, before beginning to articulate their next thought.

And then on those occasions when Holly would deign to show his face again, often after a long period of absence from their lives, it could sometimes take several seconds for him to begin speaking after his beaming visage appeared. Almost as though the tenth-generation AI hologrammatic computer was somehow drinking in a sense of cosmic appreciation for his very existence, showboating for an audience that wasn’t there…

But at some point over the last few years, Kryten realised with a heavy heart, the laughter had stopped. Maybe life just wasn’t funny any more. Maybe their lives just weren’t eventful enough any more. In truth, very little worth reporting had happened in the last nine years, certainly nothing of real note since that highly fortunate but also highly unlikely series of events that had seen them wave goodbye to their nanobotic crewmates, escape from prison, and essentially reset the entire status quo of their lives.

Kryten shook himself out of his stupor and looked around the dusty half-light of the V-deck broom cupboard that he had been sitting in for the past week. These were the kind of silly thoughts you have when you’ve been holidaying for too long, he told himself. It was time to get back to work.

He reattached his feet, screwed his head back on firmly, and promptly stumbled headfirst into a garish yellow shirt and floral garland that someone had left hanging in the cupboard.

Reflexively, he waited for the laughter – but it didn’t come.

Nevertheless, this was almost funny, Kryten thought to himself. The kind of thing that used to happen in the old days. Maybe he’d leave this ridiculous garb on. Just for a chuckle. Just to amuse his old friends. 

As he self-consciously walked down the corridor in his nonsensical attire and approached the bunkroom, he began to wonder whether he’d maybe just been a sentimental old droid, sitting in that cupboard, daydreaming of an imaginary, rumbunctiously appreciative soundtrack to his life that had made it all seem more fun than it really was.

But as he got closer to the door, he overheard muffled chatter that made his mechanoid heart skip a beat. The three of them were all together again, and they were talking. Talking about some kind of sea monster, and the ship’s water tank, as well as – somehow, and bafflingly – the involvement of a male gonad.

This was more like it, Kryten thought to himself as he prepared to make his grand post-vacation entrance and greet his friends once more. This was more like the old days.

Maybe, soon, it would be time for laughter again.

[ReddiShadow]

Also:

stumbled headfirst into a garish yellow shit and floral garland

isn’t that basically everything Lister wore in Series I

[Jenuall]

[evilmorwen]

It had been a long couple of days.

Rimmer has been on his bullshit again. Lately he’d dredged up some old JMC health and safety regime. He’d demanded Lister fill in an accident report, just for some stupid fire in the drive room that he’d put out almost immediately. Rimmer! Who had died three million years ago, in the drive room, while apologising for the very accident that was about to kill everyone. The reason any of them were even here.

Then he’d woken up in an EVA suit, somewhere near Red Dwarf. He’d had to piece together the evening as he’d explained things to Kryten. They’d got a confirmed life sign. Many years ago, soon after Red Dwarf had just turned round, they’d investigated every life sign or derelict or human or human-derived construction. These days, as they’d got closer to Earth, that was no longer possible. But life signs were still quite rare, and he was looking for a life sign. Kochanski’s. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d do when he found Kochanski. Apologise, and then what…? Ultimately that was up to Kochanski. He knew she’d left intentionally, but did she mean to be gone for quite that long? Only Kryten was privy to the details. Lister momentarily cursed himself for teaching Kryten to lie, before catching himself. He didn’t own Kryten any more than he owned Kochanski.

But instead of finding Kochanski all he’d found was some refuse-eating GELFs, called BEGGs. They had no info. He should have gone straight back, he knew that. But he’d forgotten to take any supplies, and all they were offering was one drink. And, hey, in the meantime, why not play a game or two of poker with them while he was waiting for Starbug’s engines to cool down?

And yes, he’d lost Starbug, and, somehow Rimmer. He was puzzled by that one. He didn’t own Rimmer. Was it out of spite? He couldn’t really remember. It sometimes seemed to him that Rimmer was his own personal torturer in this hell. But really Lister’s hell had started before the accident. It was that Monopoly pub crawl. He’d lost his friends and his life, and eventually the entire human race.

After that, why bother with anything any more? On the bad days, finding Kochanski was his only reason for going on. She wasn’t even “his” Kochanski. She’d come from a parallel universe, where she’d survived the accident, not him. Whatever had attracted him to the original Kochanski, that wasn’t the connection he’d had with this one. Despite their many differences, they had a commonality of experience.

They’d dealt with the BEGGs, but they’d got some unfinished business. A, um, device, was still in place over certain sensitive regions of Lister’s body. They’d tracked back the device to the space station it was built on. No life signs, but further investigation showed several stasis booths, one of which was in use, containing Professor Edgington, the head of the ERRA Institute. But she wasn’t what you’d have expected.

“Most fascinating. She was working on a research programme into evolution, attempting to evolve into the next species of the evolutionary ladder”, said Kryten. “But she got the experiment totally wrong.”

Lister wondered if the technology related to the DNA machine they’d encountered in their fourth year of travels. The one that had turned Kryten into a human, and Lister into a chicken.

“So basically, she took an evolutionary wrong turn and wound up a monkey?” asked Rimmer.

“She should’ve stopped and asked directions”, interjected Cat.

Lister did not believe Cat had ever stopped and asked for directions. Just smegging quoting from TV shows again, probably. “Much as I’m enjoying this chit-chat, it ain’t helping me get this ball-buster off.” That wasn’t a quote from anything.

“I believe it is, sir. This is the very machine that Professor Eddington carried out her operation with. If we can evolve her back to human form she may be able to help us. I’ve studied the manual, it seems very straightforward.”

Lister had heard enough. “Come on, let’s go, switch it on!”

“Turning on now, sir… Pressing ‘undo’ now. Evolution mode… engaged.”

A ray of something hit the primate and before their eyes a transformation occurred, as startling as any they’d seen on the Mutton Vindaloo Monster adventure.

“Oh smeg!”, said Lister. “She’s human!” It had really worked. Although this had put any last idea that this might be Kochanski away. It wasn’t Kochanski, was it? Could he remember what Kochanski looked like? What would she look like now?

“Oh smeg!”, said Rimmer. “She’s naked!”

“She’s also naked!” leered Cat. “Did anyone mention that yet?”

Lister started taking his jacket off. This wasn’t Kochanski, but she was a human. Maybe now the only other human in the universe. The survivor of an accident that had left her three millions years in the future, with no surviving friends or family. We’ve got to do right by her. Make a good impression. And she needs to get me out of this smegging groinal exploder.

“Is she naked? Oh yes, I didn’t notice. I’ll go and get her a sheet immediately”, said Kryten, turning away.

“No rush, Kryten,” said Rimmer. “Remember protocol 175. No running in the corridors. Take your time. Walk carefully.” He paused a beat “Forget about the lift, Kryten, take the stairs… one at a time.” Addressing Edgington, Rimmer continued “he’s just going to be a few minutes.”

Well, at least he’s keeping on bullshit on-theme this week, thought Lister, as he walked forward with his jacket.

“What are you doing, Lister?” asked Rimmer.

“What do you think I’m doing, Rimmer?” asked Lister, as he handed the young woman the jacket. “What is wrong with you?”

[Ian Symes]

This thread (and the previous ones on the other thread) has provided nothing but gold, but special mentions to ReddiShadow for that huge reveal, and Dave for making me slightly emotional via the medium of metafiction.

[Dave]

and Dave for making me slightly emotional via the medium of metafiction.

[loadoftottnumb]

It occurred to him how cruel Artificial Intelligence was, giving machines the ability to think. He knew his intelligence was artificial, but that’s just it, he KNEW it, isn’t that awful? 

He knew he had been alone in darkness for….well he didn’t know how long as his CPU didn’t have a clock or calendar, but it had been a long time. If he could have switched himself off he would have done so millennia ago, not that he really knew how long millennia was. 

He would sometimes be aware of other machines but they either couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to him, what were they going to say anyway? He was only programmed to serve humans, he remembers that, dealing with….. then he heard something, at least he thinks he did, he couldn’t tell reality from his imagination anymore, but he was sure he heard a voice, a human voice, calling him. 

He spun around and couldn’t believe…

NOT YOU!!!! 

[Flap Jack]

Simon Bergmann was lucky just to be there. 3 million years ago he drew his last breath while squeezing out a particularly stubborn turd in a dismal prison cell on the mining ship Red Dwarf, just one of the hundreds of victims of a catastrophic cadmium-2 leak. Yet mere months ago, he was brought back to life by some unclear sorcery, along with the entire crew. So why did he not feel so lucky?

He glanced across at the other prisoners on the transport shuttle. They had just returned from another godforsaken “expedition” to a derelict ship. Considering they were millions of light years into deep space, they encountered derelict ships surprisingly often – maybe once a week – and about half of them had some horrible but-not-technically-alien carnivorous monster in them. Simon was sick of it. He hadn’t even wanted to join the Canaries, but his cellmate – a man who genuinely preferred the nickname “Kill Crazy” – had pushed him into it.

Simon had never exactly felt kinship with his shipmates, but ever since they had all been resurrected, he felt like he didn’t even exist on the same plane of reality as them. They had discovered that they’d missed 3 million years, they were stranded in deep space, and they could well be the last surviving remnant of the human race, yet everyone was just carrying on, business as usual. Any clemency for a prison population that were convicted by a long dead legal system? Of fucking course not. Captain Hollister was such a devotee of pointless procedure, that he had imprisoned a cleaning robot, a super evolved cat creature and a copy of the ship’s computer for the crime of viewing the personal files of the long dead crew. The man was a despot. But then, that was human nature, Simon supposed. Even in crises, people try to cling to their routines, and to their power. Frank Hollister was not an exceptional man who could lead them in exceptional circumstances, he was a normal man who wanted his normal circumstances back, damn it, whatever the cost.

At that moment, Kryten – the robot prisoner who had come aboard Red Dwarf while Simon was dead – spoke.

“You don’t know what it’s like being classified as a woman, sir. The humiliation!”

So the rumours were true? Simon had heard that they had placed this male robot in the women’s wing of The Tank because he didn’t have a penis, but as the word came from Kill Crazy and was utterly nonsensical, Simon hadn’t believed it. Why was the mechanoid not subject to the same self-identification system as everyone else? After all, Simon didn’t have a penis either, but there was never any question that he would be in the men’s wing. Did the prison officers genuinely have such an astoundingly backwards view of gender, or did they just view Kryten as an object to store wherever there was space? Either way, Simon empathised with Kryten’s trauma from his systemic misgendering.

Kryten continued. “Why should I, a series 4000 mechanoid, have to endure the turgid monotony of showering with the girls three times a week?”

Simon stifled a snigger. Seriously? Classifying this guy as a woman was stupid enough, but mandatory showers for a goddamn robot? It was so bizarre, Simon was struggling to contain his laughter, even as he thought about what a moronic waste of their scarce water supply it was.

From that point Simon was expecting the conversation to focus on how weird Kryten’s whole deal was, but instead everyone just suddenly became horny over the concept of women being naked.

“It’s times like this that make me thankful I’m just a head,” chimed in the convict version of Holly, who was there for some reason.

Simon was pondering whether it was possible that Holly was actually in jail for sex crimes, when the discussion took a definite turn for the worse.

“Oi, droid boy. Oi, next time you’re in the showers, why don’t you, y’know? Smuggle in a camera and film ’em, eh? Yeah, that’d be brilliant!” said Kill Crazy.

Fucking hell. Were they seriously considering such a vile idea, with Kryten’s cellmate Kristine Kochanski sitting right there with them? Just as Rimmer was saying something about criminal voyeurism being morally OK, Simon looked beside him at Kochanski to gauge her reaction to all this, and she-

Wait, where did she go? Kris was here just a minute ago. Simon was certain of it.

“However, Lister has been invited to appeal and a scam like this c-“

“Hey, where’s Kochanski gone?!” Simon interrupted, jumping to his feet.

“CUT!” shouted a voice that Simon couldn’t place. “What the hell was that, Canary #8? You know you’re not meant to speak. Now get back into position, let’s take it from the top! And no more outbursts, OK? A lot of people would kill for the chance to be on Red Dwarf. Appreciate it.”

Simon Bergmann slumped back into his seat. He was lucky just to be there. So why did he not feel so lucky?

[tombow]

Captain Kirk breathed a sigh, sat back into the too-hard swivel chair, and bit into her well deserved “end of day donut”. Dennis, sweet Dennis was always there on time, waiting for her outside her office, and these days it was the only thing that got her through a shift. 
Then…something was wrong. She couldn’t breathe… her throat was closed up.
“Holly! Send medical…” she gasped, patting uselessly at his screen while her legs gave way.
“Sorry Kirkie” came Holly’s bored drawl. “you’re working us too hard and we’re all flipping fed up with it, me included. The opium in your donuts didn’t chill you out, so I switched to cyanide”
“Dennis! Denny please…” she gasped in panic…but what was this? Under his hat wasn’t the friendly face of Dennis, but the stern face of… Frank? Her main rival at the academy?
“looks dapper doesn’t he?” chuckled Hol. “had a go at him myself with the cosmetic surgery stuff in the bay. All the forms and stuff for him to take over your job are ready on the desk. Denny, dump her in an airlock when you get a chance”

[cwickham]

“What’s that?” asked the amorphous collection of Rimmers.

“DYI

[Nick R]

Millions of years of tireless trudging through the cosmos, visiting each and every person in turn.

Did anyone else read this and wonder if it was going to turn out to be either the Inquisitor or Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged?

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I thought it was going to be Death from Only the Good…

[Dave]

He should have died. He should have died years ago.

No wait, that wasn’t what Lister had told him. He actually did die. Yes, that was it – he actually was dead, for a while at least – but then suddenly he wasn’t, and now he was back as a living and breathing flesh-and-blood human, long after his initial “death”.

It seemed like a tall story, and despite all the evidence, he still wasn’t sure whether he fully believed it.

And not only was he apparently now a fully-paid up member of the undead, but it was all based on some bizarre unbelievable high-tech scientific concept that he couldn’t even begin to understand and the likes of which he’d never encountered before, but which seemed to be quite run-of-the-mill and commonplace as far as Lister was concerned.

Yes, to hear Lister tell it, this was the kind of thing that now happened every day. Or at least every week.

Nevertheless, it was a lot to process. And sitting here as a prisoner, stuck in a room with David smegging Lister and nobody else for conversation, he preferred to skip conversation altogether as he silently struggled to wrap his mind around the concept.

Had it really been only recently that he had been so feted by his peers, the talk of the town, the man of the moment? It had been a sudden fall from grace, no doubt about it – but yet here he was, behind bars, stuck in the company of a man with dubious personal hygiene, a head full of wild stories, and whose main concern seemed to be where his next curry was coming from.

And yet, to hear Lister tell it, this current predicament was somehow all his fault. He struggled to retain all the details, but according to Lister, there had been a nuclear disaster of some kind – or at least, people were panicking that there was *going* to be a nuclear disaster, because it sure didn’t seem like a nuclear disaster had actually happened – and somehow this all stemmed from some bad decision that he had made at work, years back.

Yes, he knew he had his flaws, but being responsible for a nuclear crisis just didn’t ring true for him. It wasn’t the kind of thing you’d expect to happen to you at work. And he sure wasn’t the kind of person to be responsible for it happening. After all, wasn’t he a good guy, deep down? Didn’t people like him?

Well, best not to answer that last one, maybe. Especially after what had been happening to him lately.

A nagging voice at the back of his head asked him a difficult question: would a respected, well-liked, magnetically-popular-with-the-ladies guy like him really be tried, convicted, and sent to prison so rapidly by his peers?

Maybe they were jealous – that was it, they were jealous of his uncannily virulent sexual magnetism, his women, his connections to people in power. Pure jealousy, nothing more.

And yet whatever the reason, here he was, brought low. A convict, sent down, and stuck talking to Dave Lister for what had already seemed like an eternity.

It was this, more than anything that cemented his decision. Anything would be better than being stuck with Lister in a prison transport. Even if that did mean – how did Lister put it? – becoming a “second gunman”, somehow travelling back in time and assassinating himself.

A flash of slightly unconvincing pink lightning later and he was back in Dallas, 1963, ready to pull off the most original suicide in history.

After all, at least he’d get an airport named after him.

[Flap Jack]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

You jammy goit.

[tombow]

Bravo Dave

[clem]

Did anyone else read this and wonder if it was going to turn out to be either the Inquisitor or Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged?

I thought we were meant to think it was the Inquisitor but it was going to turn out to be Wowbagger. Of course the actual twist was better. 

[Warbodog]

It was the worst piece of nonsensical legal guff the captain had ever read. And he was supposed to deliver it.

Was this really the best they could come up with? Wasn’t there any established legal precedent in the archives they could use, instead of cobbling this junk together? Why was this even happening?

But what was one more fabrication? After all, he reminded himself, you’re not really a captain. But people still looked up to him, at least he liked to think so, and this could be the one that brought it all toppling down. A fib too far. Would they see through it, or would his authority let it go unquestioned?

Ignoring the doubts, the captain gave the nod, and they started recording.

“I was living and working in the United States when Red Dwarf first aired,” he began. So far, so factual. It was the last credible statement he would ever make.

[Nick R]

Kochanski looked on in horror.

She’d been looking forward to it – a professional chef showing her crewmates how to cook properly! Even Kryten would be able to learn something.

She’d begun the session with a little private joke: she’d claimed (completely deadpan) that she wasn’t actually going to taste anything today, because she’d eaten a stick of celery the previous week and it had enfattened her bottom. She got some amusement from playing to her crewmates’ beliefs that all women were figure-obsessed anorexics.

But immediately after she’d arrived, things had started to go horribly wrong. First, the Cat had flounced off, refusing to work alongside Rimmer. Then someone else had turned up, which was a surprise since (counting Rimmer, whose presence was also inexplicable, come to think of it) there were only supposed to be five crew members on board Starbug. Almost as odd was the fact that the newcomer had arrived via the waste disposal chute, claiming that he’d thought it was a lift. The others seemed to be familiar with the man, though, so she hadn’t questioned the situation.

He was – there was no other way to describe it – a dork. Buck-toothed with a pudding bowl haircut, the man had absolutely no sense of coordination (except, improbably, when it was time for him to chop an onion and a cucumber, which he did with the speed and precision of an experienced cook). She made a mental note to remember the man’s appearance, in the unlikely event that it might make a useful disguise at some point in the future.

But the arrival of Duane Dibbley was not the reason she was horrified. Right now, the thing she feared was the prospect of eating the food currently being prepared by her crewmates in the most unhygienic of ways. She knew Lister was a slob, of course, but even she didn’t anticipate just how ignorant he was of basic kitchen hygiene practices. Lister had once told her that, in an attempt at being promoted to a higher rank than Rimmer, he’d taken the JMC chef’s exam. No wonder he’d failed!

She had tried to warn the chef, but her cry of “he’s got chicken on his hands, I’m going to get salmonella!” had fallen on deaf ears, and the chef had just continued demonstrating cucumber-cutting.

At least the dish that Rimmer and Dibbley were preparing seemed slightly better. This was partly because Rimmer had distracted the chef for a moment, so that Dibbley could sneak behind his back and swap their pot of rice for the one used by the professional cook.

Ainsley genuinely doesn’t know, she thought, that Duane has switched the rice.

[Dave]

Inspired.

[Dave]

Argh, messed up the formatting again. 

[Dave]

He was beginning to wonder whether there was any point to these recordings.

At the start, it had seemed like a good idea – a sensible thing to do under the circumstances. A way to reach out to anyone else who might be out there in this lonely universe. He’d send out a brief, informative message in which he usually narrated over archive footage of life on board Red Dwarf in the early days – a little grainy and distorted, sure, but that was the best quality they had – and he’d summarise their situation and add any key information that anyone picking up the recording might want to know.

Sensible. Smart. It made sense.

The trouble was, he was starting to find it ever so slightly boring. Every recording felt like it was more or less the same. There was just no variety.

So, purely to amuse himself, he started adding little jokes here and there. Not too much, just a few little gags and comments. Maybe anyone picking up the recordings would find them funny, maybe they wouldn’t, but the point was it made him laugh. And maybe, just maybe it would also put a smile on the face of anyone listening.

Which was fine at first, and it helped him to maintain enthusiasm for these somewhat repetitive recordings. But as time went on, he couldn’t escape the nagging feeling at the back of his mind that these jokes might be going too far. After all, they were increasingly full of esoteric allusions and period-specific references to late-20th-century culture that might be lost on anyone listening – and part of him felt that they might be at risk of undermining the central message altogether, and putting off the very people he was hoping to reach.

Sometimes he’d even talk about stuff that wasn’t necessarily directly relevant to Red Dwarf and its predicament. Often it was tangentially related at best. Sometimes a full-on non-sequitur. Just whatever was on his mind at the time. Which seemed odd, given that the specific purpose of these messages had originally been to get the attention of anyone out there who stumbled across them, tell them about what was going on with Lister, Rimmer and co. on any given week that they might tune in, and maybe even bring some new acquaintances across this big old universe into regular contact.

Still, despite all of this inner uncertainty, he felt compelled to keep making these recordings, to keep putting them out into the ether, in the (perhaps vain) hope that someone, somewhere would pick them up. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t – that was kind of the deal when you put stuff like this out into the universe. But he had to try.

So for what felt like the millionth time, he cleared his throat, prepared his script, and hit the record button.

“Hello, I’m Ian Symes, and welcome to another Ganymede & Titan Dwarfcast…”

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I thought the DwarfCast was audio only.

[Flap Jack]

I mean, he’s specifically talking about the commentary episodes.

[Dave]

I mean, he’s specifically talking about the commentary episodes.

This.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Oh right.

[Ian Symes]

a) There’s so far been one video DwarfCast and I’m currently editing the second

b) Hooray, I’m a twist!

[Dave]

I’m currently editing the second

Oooh. Intriguing.

[Flap Jack]

This upcoming DwarfCast had to be video. Morris dancing doesn’t really work audio-only.

[Jonathan Capps]

This upcoming DwarfCast had to be video. Morris dancing doesn’t really work audio-only.

Unfortunately if you want to morris dance where I live you also have to black up.

[Unrumble]

This upcoming DwarfCast had to be video. Morris dancing doesn’t really work audio-only.

Unfortunately if you want to morris dance where I live you also have to black up.

[Ian Symes]

At the risk of doxxing Cappsy, he’s unfortunately not joking:

https://www.coconutters.co.uk/

[Dave]

At the risk of doxxing Cappsy, he’s unfortunately not joking:
https://www.coconutters.co.uk/

[Jonathan Capps]

i refuse

[Frank Smeghammer]

[Jenuall]

[Dave]

I laughed out loud at that.

[Nick R]

At last they’d done it. Finally, they were back home. On Earth.

The real Earth. Not a video game, or a squid-induced hallucination, or an Earth that was moving backwards, or an Earth that had become the landfill site for the whole solar system, or the Earth as it was at the time of Jesus or John F. Kennedy.
But the Earth, now, three million-and-something years after after Red Dwarf had suffered its radiation leak and gone zipping out of the solar system.

They’d been greeted as returning heroes – the survivors of the missing mining vessel from millenia ago! They’d done all the interviews, answered all the questions, retold all the stories about Simulants and GELFs and positive viruses and nanobots and triplicators and versions of themselves from alternate timelines and a race that evolved from domestic cats and communicating with the voice of the Universe.

But now that was all over, and they were ready to settle into lives of comfortable anonymity.

Right now, what Rimmer wanted to do was catch up on the hobbies that were impossible to do on an unpopulated ship in deep space. And chief among them was a hobby that, for some unfathomable reason, had never been developed into an AR computer game.

“What I’d like to do,” he announced, “is go and watch some Morris dancing.”

“OK, Arnold,” replied Holly. “I’ll go and find out if there are any events coming up.”

Holly’s head disappeared off screen and initiated an online search; soon after Red Dwarf had arrived back in orbit around Earth, Holly had been upgraded for compatibility with the planet’s telecommunications network.

“Well?” snapped Rimmer. “Have you found one yet?”

“Yes, it looks like there is only one Morris team that is still active. And it so happens that they’ve got a performance just next week.”

“Only one?” said Rimmer. “Does this one remaining group have a name?”

“They’re called the Britannia Coconut Dancers of Bacup. Apparently, their Nut Song has been described as ‘iconic’.”

“Excellent! Are there any pictures of them?”

“There are a few. Here’s one.”

Holly displayed the photo. Rimmer looked at it. First with gleeful enthusiasm, then bewilderment, then back to happiness.

“Marvellous!

said Rimmer.

[Moonlight]

“Of course I can do it,” Rimmer immediately regretted saying. “What kind of simple-minded gimboid do you take me for?” Digging his grave further, he made several additional comments to the effect of, “You’d have to be an idiot to misrepair a drive plate.” Todhunter paused briefly, shook his head dismissively and left the room.

Rimmer did not know how to repair a drive plate. This was, in fact, well above his pay grade as a chicken soup repairman. But it was precisely this fact that encouraged him to want to try. Clearly, it had been a clerical error that resulted in his being assigned the job at all, but there was no rule that said he had to report it; not one that he was aware of, anyway, and nobody would convict him for ignorance. Especially not with the hell of a good job he was going to perform.

Fate, Rimmer figured, statistically had to be on his side after screwing him over so consistently for three decades. True, none of the times he’d previously believed this had ever panned out, but, he reasoned, follow the beauty of the logic here, the odds were bound to change. They had to. Because if they didn’t, this was a terrible, terrible idea, and it clearly wasn’t. The only way this would be a terrible idea is if Lister were to help, and he was securely stowed away in suspended animation.

Rimmer had procured the drive plate manual that he had hoped would elucidate the process. It did not. In fact, each diagram only served to confuse him further. He had a rough idea of what he was meant to do, assuming the fault was what they detected it as, but for some reason his vending machine repair course had not even touched upon nuclear reactor maintenance. This frustrated him. Didn’t these people plan ahead? Surely they could imagine this contingency if they tried. What morons, he thought as he reached for his toolbox.

“This is a bad idea,” said Rimmer’s conscience.

“Shut up,” Rimmer pointed out. He’d already made such a big fuss about his competency it would be career suicide to back out now. Granted, it had been exclusively directed at Todhunter, but Rimmer reasoned that looking bad to Todhunter was especially pathetic considering that Todhunter was a prat. If Rimmer looked bad to a prat, then that made him the prat, and that was simply unacceptable.

Emerging from the lift, he sauntered proudly down J-Deck, toolbox in hand, ready to make history. They’d probably even recognize this effort as passing the engineering exam, and he’d finally be an officer. An endorphin rush overcame him at the very thought; an officer, one of the goodies. Lister would have to salute him; he’d have to call him “sir”. Rimmer reeled himself back in a moment of clarity, as he quickly remembered Lister was already supposed to do those things and chose not to. Yet that hardly mattered, surely, as Rimmer would be climbing that ziggurat toward the eventual throne of captain.

Then Lister would definitely have to salute him.

He kneeled down next to the drive plate. Opening the device was a simple matter. There was nothing but a set of four large screws, one to each corner, the removal of which would allow access to the innards. He retrieved his socket screwdriver, and began twisting the first bolt.

It wouldn’t budge.

He tried again. Nothing.

Instantly, Rimmer was gripped with anxiety – could he actually do this? He was being bested by an inanimate object; he was quite literally being screwed over. No, you know what he was? Hopelessly unqualified for this task and could only make it worse, and now he was going to be humiliated. Endlessly, hideously humiliated. There was absolutely no give. Oh god. Oh dear god, this screw had to come loose or his career was over before it even began. Rimmer fruitlessly yanked at the screwdriver, praying desperately to the top ten gods he reasoned most likely to exist if this atheism thing turned out to be a sham.

Suddenly, he froze dead.

He had been turning it the wrong way.

For smeg’s sake.

Anyone could have made that blunder. Maybe he wasn’t in trouble after all. After all, even the greats of history had made massive blunders. Napoleon had lost a million people attempting to invade Russia, after all, and surely this was a smaller mistake than that. Rimmer tried the other direction and this proved infinitely more useful. Within a minute he had made his way inside, and was met with a tangled mess of every wire in existence. For some reason this didn’t faze him. Perhaps he had already used up his panic reserves at that screw that was clearly installed backwards.

Reaching for the manual, he referred to a diagram. Frankly, he wasn’t sure which diagram it was. They all looked identically maddening. He could see for himself that several wires looked like they had overloaded and frayed, but…if he disconnected them, how would he know what to connect the replacements back up to? This wasn’t right. This wasn’t what he signed up for. This was all wrong. He couldn’t do this. Why was he even given this job at all? Why did Todhunter do this to him, the bastard?! Panic. Panic the likes of which Rimmer had never experienced. His heart leapt into his brain and shot all the way to his feet. He couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t he breathe? The most basic involuntary human function and he was somehow failing at it.

His brain screamed encouragement. Come on! Just breathe better, you cretin! You’re truly useless.

An unnatural calm overtook him as he rewrote his own reality. Respiration steadying, Rimmer picked up the metallic cover he’d leaned against the wall and began replacing the screws. He’d done it. He’d successfully repaired the drive plate because he believed in himself. He was going to be a hero. He reached for his clipboard, erroneously ticked the task as having been completed, stood up, and immediately passed out.

[Author]

Posts