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.

Topic

[tombow]

Hollister, Kris and Lister huddled together in the vent under the pipes – the only place, he believed, they could speak safely.

“when I awoke…it was just me, Todhunter, Brown and a couple of others. Olaf the chef, a couple more. We knew the situation – but we didn’t know what was happening out there. Eventually, using my communications codes, we pieced things together. The JMC now runs the galaxy – ran humanity for a while, until people got replaced with simulants and gelfs. Abominations…” he scowled. “JMC is nothing but insane AI that oversees – and controls – all sentient life in the universe, and the rouge simulants work for it”

“Toddhunter found some combat ships…we took down some of the simulants.. .”donut boys” they called us, for the holes we left in their ships, until he was lost, the rest of the crew began to appear, and we had to flee to safety and figure out a plan”
“We managed to register the ship back on their lists to avoid destruction …the only way to survive this is to lie low. The rest of the crew need to think it’s business as usual. The AI knows you too – and your cat man, and your Arnold hologram – you’re people of interest. The only way to hide you is to put you in the prison. As crazy as it sounds, it’s the safest place for you”

“prison?” said Kochanski. “there was never any prison. This isn’t the original ship.”

“i know…” murmured the tired Captain. “this isn’t the original ship, and I’m not the original man you knew. And yet… in my mind, in my memories, this was always a prison ship as well as a mining ship.” He rubbed his eyes in confusion.
“everything’s automated. The people in these ships – they mainly now just exist to entertain the AI – to act out goofy, ridiculous scenarios to satisfy it’s curiosity about human behaviour. We need to be clowns…” he growled. “to keep the AI at ease. We need to act out a sitcom – a bad sitcom. I have to be your fool, and Arnold – our Arnold – has to be your stooge. You’ll use sex toys, aphrodisiacs, poop… act out bizarre sexual scenarios…anything to keep it’s sick mind entertained and distracted while we figure out what to do next.”

“your android…we registered him as female for a reason. A couple of reasons in fact. One, he’s known to the bounty hunters that work for the AI, so putting in the female wing might throw them off. And two, his antics in there – filming in the showers, being forced to do intimate medical checks – it’s the kind of thing this twisted mind finds funny. And an amused JMC is a safe JMC, at least for now”

“Dave when I put you in stasis, you were a maintenance worker. I know in the past few years you’ve become so much more. I regret never seeing that potential in you. But this might be your toughest test yet. Now lets get you back.”

[Nick R]

“JMC is nothing but insane AI that oversees – and controls – all sentient life in the universe, and the rouge simulants work for it”

Even the small rouge simulants?

[Author]

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