The door unlocked with a resounding clang and swung open. Out came a tall, long-haired man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, matching shorts, and plastic sandals, who paused for a moment to look very confused and acclimatize himself to his situation. He was standing in a military-grey corridor stretching out in front of him, the floor covered with white powder.

"Good morning Manny, it is now safe for you to exit Stasis." A cheery female voice spoke from an unidentified source.

"But I just got in." he said.

"Please make your way to the Drive Room."

"I've only just got in." repeated Manny. He shrugged and walked down the corridor, then turned around and headed back the other way, turned left at a junction and found himself in an examination room. There was some more white powder on the floor, which he tentatively poked and, concluding it to be safe, tasted.

"Where is everybody, Fran?" asked Manny.

The answer echoed across five miles of empty corridor.

"They're dead, Manny."

Manny dropped the white powder. "Who's dead?"

"Everybody, Manny."

Manny started running down a corridor. "What, everybody?"

"Yes everybody, everybody's dead Manny." Fran was starting to sound exasperated.

Manny turned a corner and pelted down White Corridor 159, passing a large selection of books stacked higgledy-piggledy by the wall. "What, Tim?"

"Yes Tim, everybody!"

Manny stopped in an elevator and pressed a button marked "Floor 1". He then spent several minutes checking his watch, coughing, looking around at walls and mirrors, and tapping his wrist to some light music.

When the elevator stopped he continued to the Bridge. "Mike?"

"They're all dead, everybody's dead, Manny!" Now she was definitely showing signs of exasperation.

"Not Paul?"

Fran's frustration was definitely showing now. She made a sound like a person breathing in sharply. "Oh for god's sake. Yes, Paul, everybody. Everybody's dead, Manny."

Manny stopped, panting, and pulled out his inhaler. "Brian?" he asked between puffs.

"He's dead, everybody's dead, dead, Manny, everybody is."

"Even Bernard?"

"He's dead Manny, everybody's dead!"

Manny stopped. "Wait a minute. Everybody's dead?"

Fran snapped. "Manny, if you ask me one more time if everybody's dead, I will open all airlocks and flush you into space."

Manny entered the Drive Room and sat in a chair. On the many TV screens dotted around the control consoles the head of a mid-30s, dark haired woman floated against a black background.

"What happened?" asked Manny.

"Alright. So you remember those Drive Plates, the ones you and Bernard were supposed to be fixing?"

Manny thought for a second. "The Drive Plates? The Drive Plates… Yes, I remember the Drive Plates."

"Well," Fran continued, "it turns out they weren't actually repaired properly, and there was this Radiation surge…" she started cackling inanely, "And this is the funny bit- it killed everybody!"

Manny stared despairingly at the computer interface. Then panic started to set in. Fear, loneliness, resentment, and finally slightly peckish. He pulled out of his pocket a book marked "The Little Book of Calm" and flicked through it for some helpful advice.

"Stroke… stroke a…. no… trifle, eat a trifle, no, no, eh… ah! Visualize the ocean."

Manny started flailing about and shouting as if he was being tossed around by a strong current. Sensing this was not helping, Manny rechecked the book. "Oh, calm ocean." Manny took a deep breath and sighed. Fran coughed. Manny picked up more white powder and tasted it. "What is this powdery stuff, Fran?"

"That was Sgt. Mike Watt."

Manny froze, then quickly tried to put as much of the powder back as he could. "Oh. Sorry, Mike." He turned to Fran. "Hang on a minute. How long have I been in stasis?"

Fran thought for a moment. She started clicking, while a pair of hands appeared on the screen and counted up. Eventually she said, "Round about Three Million Years."

Manny looked back at her blankly. "…" He couldn't take it in. Three years seemed a long time. Three Million! He couldn't think of a Million things. Maybe, at a push, about ten things, but after that his brain would start to cloud over and he would have to retreat to his little hideaway to make himself a Crisp Sandwich. Crush crush crush, num num num num num. Three Million!? He had trouble remembering where he left his house keys half the time! Three Million!?

"Uh."

Fran looked apologetically back at him as he pulled a paper bag out of his pocket and started blowing. "Sorry. I had to wait until the radiation was at a safe background level before I could bring you out. Now I know this may all come as a shock, but honestly I'm sure you'll get over it."

Manny slumped on the desk. "How did you get over it?"

Fran took a long hard gulp from a bottle of wine on the screen. "How the Smeg do you think? I drink 'till I'm p*ssed every night!"

Manny sank back into his seat, deflated. "Oh, god. Three Million Years with no-one to talk to but you."

"Actually," Fran interjected, "that's not strictly true."

In marched a man, also in his 30s, with a messy gorse of black hair and a look in his eyes of complete scorn to everything that dared cross his line of vision. Right now he was looking, full-blast, at Manny.

"You Judas! You Iago! You Space Gandalf!"

Manny stared at the apparition standing before him trading insults. "Bernard, you're alive!"

Bernard gave himself a facepalm. "No actually, I'm dead. How are you?"

"What?"

Bernard looked at him resentfully. "Yes, that's right. I'm actually, physically dead. It's not so funny now, is it? There I was, worrying myself into a shrivelled husk, while you were in there having your tan done." Bernard brushed his hair back to reveal a shiny Roman-font H on his forehead. At once Manny nodded in understanding. This was not Bernard L. Black. This was a projection of his physical presence coupled with Dolby sound and a psychological profile based on a brain scan taken when he first joined the Space Corp. – in short, this was a Hologram of Bernard L. Black.

"What are you doing here, Bernard?" Manny stood up, walked across the room, and programmed the dispenser for soup.

"I'm haunting you, that's what I'm doing. I'll bet anything you just did this to annoy me."

Fran piped up at this point. "Bernard, you were always complaining about Manny. You said he ate Frosties too loud."

Bernard raised his hands in self-defence. "He did! If he'd wait one minute to let the milk sink in- but no!" He tried to pick up a wine bottle on the middle table. His hand passed straight through it. He tried again several times, before eventually came to the conclusion that "Being dead is a real drag."

Manny stepped over the white powder on the floor. "Look at this place. It's like Dresden back here." He took a sip from his soup and walked to the other end of the room.

Bernard looked in his coat pockets for a packet of Cigarettes. "The place isn't that bad."

Manny came back in from the corridor. "Didn't you have a cat?"

Bernard snapped to attention. "Oh yeah. Where'd he go?"

"I found him."

"Nipsy! Brilliant." Bernard made to go see Nipsy but Manny blocked him. There was a loud clattering noise.

"No, no. You don't want to see him."

Suddenly, in burst what appeared to be a well-dressed man with sharp teeth, howling "Aiow yeah! Oooh whee! How am I lookin'?" He pulled a small mirror out of his breast pocket and checked his reflection. "I'm lookin' nice!" He then realized he had company. "Uh oh."

Bernard yelped and ran for a chair, hoping to swing it at the Cat. Being a Hologram, he passed harmlessly through the chair, lost his balance, fell through the Cat, and knocked himself out on the wall.

Manny looked to Fran. "What's that?"

Fran looked at Manny. "Hmm? Oh sorry, I was just thinking. Anyway, Nipsy was safe from the radiation leak in the hold, and that creature in front of you is the result of Nipsy's descendants cross-breeding for Three Million Years."

Manny held out his hand. "Hello, mister… Cat."

Cat looked at his shoulder. "Whoah! Crease!" From thin air appeared an iron he used to iron out the crease.

Manny looked Cat up and down. "So that's what happened to Nipsy. But where are all the other Cats?"

Bernard lifted himself up off the floor. "Who cares? This is insane! Let's just get rid of it!"

"Don't call him 'it'". Fran said.

"I don't trust it! It has no nasal hair! It's probably not even a nice cat, it's probably a bully, he probably sprays everywhere! Come on, he's begging you to do it. No-one needs to know." He imitates cocking a rifle and pulling the trigger. "Bada-bing, bada-meow!"

"No," Manny said, "we'll take him back with us to Earth."

"Earth? EARTH? You want to go back to Earth!? How do we even know that Earth still exists? For all we know it might have been invaded by heavily armed mutant creatures, Zombies, Cyborgs and PE Teachers!"

Manny necked his soup. "I don't care. I say we go. If there's one thing I know about this crazy Universe, it's that knowing is definitely better than not knowing. Fran, set course for Earth."

Bernard tutted to himself and sat down in the Captain's chair. He fell straight through it and landed on the floor. Fran shrugged. Cat preened himself. Manny looked quietly out of the window. The road back would be a long and bumpy one, and the company left a lot to be desired, but that was just the way it was. All he could do was make the best of it for the time being. Because the one thing they would never run out of, Manny thought to himself, was time.