"BETTER THAN LIFE"
Three million years from Mobius, the mining ship, Red Dwarf.
It's crew: Sonic the Hedgehog, the last Mobian alive; Shadow the Hedgehog, a hologram of his dead bunkmate; and a creature who descended from a wild hedgehog.
Message ends.
Additional: Loneliness weighs heavily on us all. Personally, the only thing that keeps me going is the thought that we are over sixty billion miles away from the nearest Tourist Inn.
Flying through the emptiness of space, signal bound and locked onto Red Dwarf, a rocket powered metal pod approached and was quickly picked up by Knuckles, Red Dwarf's computer with an IQ of 6000.
Sonic was spread on his bed with pain written into every feature on his face as he clutched a bottle and spoon in his paws, trying to scrutinise what the label said.
"For a mild stomach upset, take one teaspoonful," he read out in a shaky voice, "For acute indigestion, take two."
He was panting heavily as he quickly read the label again to make sure he had it right and then discarded the spoon, emptying most of the medicine into a glass and gulping it back with a grimace.
Shadow waltzed in happily dressed in a chef's uniform, rubbing his hands together.
"Well," he smiled as Sonic chugged the milky white medicine, "a highly enjoyable meal all round. Obviously you can't expect perfection first time but I was quite delighted with the way my dumplings went down."
Wiping his mouth, Sonic stared through watery eyes at his bunkmate.
"Shadow, real dumplings, proper dumplings, when they're properly cooked to perfection, PROPER dumplings should not bounce."
"True, but compared to what I thought they were going to be like, they were quite superb." Shadow smacked his lips with his fingers and admired himself in the mirror. He could say that because, as a hologram, he had no need for food and didn't get hungry so he hadn't had a bite of his own cooking.
"So how's Silver?" Sonic asked, folding in on himself.
"He's just sleeping off the stomach pump. He'll be alright," Shadow answered casually. "The lamb was a bit of a flop though."
"The lamb?" Sonic felt like laughing, "Everybody thought the lamb was the cheese. And that lemon meringue pie, man, what was in THAT?"
"I thought you liked that, you brought some back."
"Yeah, I wanted to try some on my athlete's foot!"
"It's not easy, Sonic - cooking," Shadow sighed and he put on a sad voice, "...When you're dead, when you don't exist, when you're made entirely of light."
There it was again. Shadow loved to bring up the fact that he was dead. He seemed to think that it ought to draw out some form of sympathy from his fellow crewmates and ordinarily it would have done... if Shadow wasn't such a smeg head about it.
"That's your excuse for everything, isn't it?" Sonic groaned, curling tighter before stretching back out, "Being dead?"
"I'm just trying to rehabilitate myself, trying to do the everyday, normal things that most living people take for granted."
"You've got the Skutters to help you," Sonic pointed out.
"What? Pinky and smeggy Perky?" Shadow scoffed, "What use are they? It's like giving a mole contact lenses."
"They only do what you them to."
"Ah, but they don't do they? You say, 'keep an eye on that lamb' and they do! They sit there for three hours and watch it burn!"
"So? They've got no emotion, have they? It's not built into their software." Sonic was fond of Gamma and Omega, the Red Dwarf Skutters that tootled about the ship.
"Have you seen their broom cupboard?" Shadow said, "It's full of pin-ups of John Wayne. That cannot be right, can it?"
Knuckles appeared on the screen in their room just at that moment.
"Oi. What's happening, dudes?" It was how he usually greeted the hedgehogs, a far cry from the competent, respectful, computer that used to run the ship and greeted everyone like a super computer ought to.
"Hi Knux," Sonic greeted back.
"Guess what?"
"What?" Shadow asked.
"Go on, have a guess," Knuckles chuckled.
"What is it vaguely about?"
"No clues, just have a guess."
Shadow and Sonic looked at each other in exasperation.
"I knew you wouldn't get it," Knuckles smiled triumphantly, "Post pod's arrived."
"What, the mail?" Shadow said in surprise.
"It's been tracking us since we left Mobius," Knuckles nodded, "Now we've turned round, it's caught up."
"Do you mean it's taken 3 million years?" Sonic asked, sitting up properly and hanging his legs over the side of his bed.
"Yeah, that's about average for second class post."
Gamma and Omega were chasing one another around the corridors, one dressed as a native american and the other dressed as a cowboy, when Sonic and Shadow passed them on their way to pick up the post pod.
Later on, they had piles and piles of mail lying around them in one of the computer rooms.
"There's everything here!" Shadow exclaimed, desperately wanting to sift through the post but everytime he tried, his hand passed right through, "All the mail, entertainment cassettes, a new batch of movies..."
"Yo, the new Friday 13th movie?" Sonic said, pulling a case from the pile and reading the cover. "Friday the 13th Part 1649."
Also among the post was a re-made version of Cassablanca, a cassette of a whole year of Mobian news and two seasons of zero-g football - something that Sonic couldn't wait to dive into.
"What are 'total immersion video games'?" Shadow then asked, tilting his head at one of the cases stacked in a pile.
"Where?" Sonic gasped excitedly. "Ohhhhhh these are brilliant!" He picked up one of the cases. "You can't get hold of these for love nor money! These are like Venus' arms!"
"What are they?" asked Shadow, half suspiciously. He wasn't really one for video games, as one would guess.
"Well they're computer games, aren't they?" Sonic replied, "But electrodes are inserted into your frontal lobes and hypothalamus right? So you actually feel as though you're really, really there. Yes!"
Shadow couldn't care less. "Fine. Knuckles, there's something here for you. It's a video letter."
"Bung it on."
Sonic inserted the cassette and another computer face appeared on the screen, looking somewhat similar to Knuckles except it was wearing glasses.
"Strike a light, it's Locke!" Knuckles gasped, looking pleased.
"Who's Locke?" Shadow frowned. The new computer face didn't look especially special.
"He's the next generation AI computer aboard the 'Scott Fitzgerald'. He's got an IQ of 8000," Knuckles answered in admiration.
"Alright, Knux?" the other computer greeted amiably in a voice that belied the IQ estimation. "It's uh... It's Locke."
"Awesome, his intellect. I'll tell you." Knuckles shook his head and smiled.
"I'm just sending on the latest move in our chess game," Locke said, "My move is Pawn, right - that's the little knobbly ones down the front - Pawn to King Four. Your move. Well, I'd better sign off now. See you, Knux. Bye." The face looked around a moment, confused. "How do you turn this off then?"
The video ended and Shadow looked at Knuckles. "You were playing postal chess with him, were you?"
"A chance to lock horns with an intellect of that calibre? I'd be a fool not to," Knuckles said and he looked off to one side, thinking, "Pawn to King Four eh? He's a sly one."
"So who's winning, Knux?" Sonic asked, interested to hear what their computer did when he wasn't trying to irriate them.
"Well, he is really," Knuckles admitted, "That was the first move."
The letters that had been divded from the main pile was slowly being organised as Sonic made his way through it back in the bunk, dividing his mail from Shadow's into two seperate piles.
"Me... Me... Me... You... Me..."
"It's all junk mail, yours, you know," Shadow felt the need to voice. He didn't want Sonic to think of himself as being more popular simply because he had more letters.
"...Me... Me... Me..." Sonic continued.
"You send off for every bit of rubbish going, you do," Shadow still pouted, "Just so you'll have some mail to open."
"...Me... Me..."
"'Please rush me my portable walrus polishing kit'," Shadow mocked in a silly voice as he lay on his bed, "'Four super brushes that will clean even the trickiest of seabound mammals. Yes I AM over eighteen, though my IQ isn't'."
"...Me... Me..." Sonic paused and his eyes grew. "Smeg! 'Outland Revenue'."
Shadow sucked in his breath and finally became cheerful. "Ooohhh, 'Outland Revenue'."
That meant there was money to cough up and usually a lot of it.
"8500!?" Sonic cried, staring at the paper.
"8500?" Shadow repeated happily, "That's a lot of tax, isn't it, Sonic? How on Mobius are you going to pay for that, eh?"
"I'm not!" Sonic huffed, throwing the paper aside, "...It's yours."
"What?" Shadow sprang from his bunk, and stared at the paper where it had fallen. "No, this is wrong. It's wrong. This is well wrong, Sonic."
"Relax," Sonic said, "It doesn't matter now. They're not going to catch you now, are they?"
"What do you mean? Just because we're three million years into deep space and the Mobian race is extinct? That means NOTHING to these people. They'll find us."
Sonic felt like pointing out that the Mobian race WASN'T extinct. Not until Sonic popped his own clogs would the Mobian race be extinct. And even then, the hedgehog species might live on through Silver. Might.
He continued sorting. "...Me..."
"Gah, I'll be worrying about this all the time now," Shadow moaned, pacing the room.
"...Me..." Sonic checked again, "No, another one for you." He read the front of the red envelope with a frown. "Rear Admiral Lieutenant General Shadow?"
"That's from my mother," Shadow stiffly told him, raising his chest.
"Rear Admiral?"
"Every time I take an exam I tell her I passed," Shadow admitted sheepishly, "It's getting embarassing now. I should be Commander in Chief of the whole universe."
"Do you want me to open it?" Sonic asked and Shadow nodded. So, opening the envelope, Sonic began to read. "'Dear Shadow'... Is this from your mum?"
"That's mumsie!" Shadow nodded.
Sonic shrugged. "This handwriting's terrible. 'I hope this epistle finds you adequately healthy to discharge your duties'... You know, maybe I shouldn't be reading this deeply personal stuff."
"Just get on with it." Shadow had his back turned and his arms folded over his chest.
"'I write to-' ... I can't read that... Oh! 'I write to inform you that your father is dad'. Well of course he is!"
Shadow had gone stiff and he turned his head slowly, an expressionless face appearing over his shoulder as he stared, his breath hitching in his throat.
"Maybe," Sonic tried, "it's your father stroke dad."
"It's 'dead'."
"I can't make it out." Sonic held up the letter and squinted at the bad handwriting.
"My father is dead."
"What?"
"My father is dead."
"Oh yeah, it's an 'E'!" Sonic laughed, "That's what it is. You're father's 'dead', Shadow!" He stopped his celebration, realising what he had just said and what the letter was about. "Oh," he gulped, "I'm... I'm sorry."
Shadow swallowed and simply nodded, turning to face the table.
"Is that all she says?" he asked in a strained voice.
Sonic was looking a little sorry for himself and quickly skim-read the letter.
"Just that, 'He passed away peacefully in his jeep'." Kicking himself, Sonic corrected himself after looking at the letter. "...'sleep'."
Later on, Shadow took himself off to mourn in the Observation Dome.
The Dome was a glass bubble on top of Red Dwarf where people could stand and gaze out into space. The science officers used their telescopes there to look for new planets and anything else lurking in the depths.
It was also a good place to quietly stand and properly think about things.
Shadow had been gone a long time and Sonic eventually came to find him.
"Can't sleep?" he asked gently, standing next to the hologram. Shadow hummed and looked away. "...No, my neither."
Sonic leant on the bars and tried thinking about what to say. He wasn't used to comforting people who'd lost family or friends. It was out of his league completely but there was a soft, compassionate side to Sonic that may have been rarely seen but was there all the same.
"I remember when my dad died, you know," he began to say softly. "I was only six. I got loads of presents off everyone like it was Christmas. I remember wishing a couple more people would die so I could complete my Lego set." He smiled ruefully and stared at his fingers. "My grandma tried to explain. She said he'd gone away and he wasn't coming back... So, I wanted to know where, like, you know. She said he was very happy and he'd gone to same place as my goldfish."
Sonic thought back to his childhood. He was an orphan, found abandoned as a hoglet underneath a pool table in a pub, but the couple that took him in and became his honourary parents and gave him his great honourary grandma had been good people. His 'dad' had been a guy interested in sports but wasn't exactly the athletic type.
Working class. That was Sonic's background.
"So I thought they'd flushed him down the bog. I thought he was just round the U-bend, you know. I used to stuff food down and magazines and that for him to read." Sonic sniffed. "They took me to a child psychologist in the end because they found me with my head down the bowl reading him the football results."
Shadow blinked. He was wrapped in a dressing robe and his hands were sunk into his pockets.
"I knew he was dead," he mumbled in reply and gave a soft chuckle. "I mean, they're ALL dead, aren't they?"
It was the first time the pair of them had voiced that. The first time the two hedgehogs had properly stood together and faced the fact that they were all that remained of the original crew of Red Dwarf and, beyond that, the only ones that remained of planet Mobius. All their friends and family and distant relatives... all those mere aquaintences that you passed by, the familiar faces behind the counter at stores... They were long gone.
...School friends, brothers, sisters, former lovers...
"Just," Shadow sighed, "getting that letter makes it seem like it happened yesterday."
"You never said much about him," Sonic said, pleased that Shadow was opening up and trusting his bunkmate with his feelings.
"No," Shadow nodded.
"You must have been pretty close."
"Close?"
"Was it very close?"
"Close?" Shadow's face hardened and he clentched his jaw. "I hated him! I detested his fat stupid guts, the pop-eyed, balding git."
Sonic was taken aback. "Eh?"
Shadow went on to explain what sort of hard man his father had been. A demanding, controlling military type who only wanted his sons to get into the Space Corps and become officers. He'd stretch them so that they grew to regulation height and withold food from them unless they answered correctly to any astronavigation questions he asked at meal times. That was how, apparently, Shadow had almost died of malnutrition.
"I had no idea," Sonic breathed, "I thought you adored your parents." Then again, thinking about it, Shadow always called them 'the wrong gnobby parents'.
"When I was fourteen I divorced them," Shadow said.
"What?"
"I took them to court. I got paid maintenance until employment age and access every fourth weekend to the family dog.
"So why are you so completely blown away about him dying then?" Sonic asked.
"Oh, it doesn't mean to say I don't respect him, didn't look up to him," Shadow explained, stalking back and forth accross the deck. "It was only natural - he was my father."
"There's nothing natural about your family, Shadow," Sonic decided, wondering what Shadow's father would have made of him. Wondering what he would have said to Shaodw's father had he known them back then.
"It's just," Shadow sighed, "I always wanted just once, just once, for him to say to me, 'well done'."
"...For what?"
"For something, for anything. I wanted him to be proud of me, just once..." Shadow stopped and dropped his face. "...And now..."
Silver, the Prince of Bad Timing, suddenly bounded up the steps into the Observation Dome, poking in his silvery spiked head beside Sonic, headbutting and shoving him.
"My stomach has been pumped and now I'm hungry! Hey there you are!" he sang, not realising, or just plain ignoring, Sonic trying to shush him and move him away. "Hey man, I'm so hungry, I just HAVE to eat."
"Shhhh!" Sonic hissed at him and then said in a low voice, "Not now, man. Shadow's dad's died."
Silver glanced over to Shadow's forlorn face and shrugged.
"I'd prefer chicken," he whispered back.
Back in the sleeping quarters, Shadow was still moping and watching 'Groovy Channel 27' with its hologram newsreader as he lay on his bed.
That's when Silver came in, hoping to make up for his poor timing before.
Silver and Shadow had a strained relationship, one that revolved around having as little respect for the other as was naturally possible for two hedgehog boars. But Silver was climatising to living alongside other hedgehogs which, to his credit, was a hard thing to accomplish when wild hedgehogs were known for being loners, and he tried making the effort by sitting at the end of Shadow's bunk, next to Shadow's feet.
"Listen," Silver started to say which meant Shadow had to pause his watching of 'an entire years worth of Mobian news'. "About your father," Silver went on, "If it's any help, he's in the ground now. Sure it's bad news for him. But on the other hand, it's party time for all the little worms." Silver waggled his finger excitedly and licked his lips.
Shadow stared at him with a deadpan face and gave Silver enough body language to get the message accross that he wanted nothing more than for the would-be comforter to get off his bed, get out of his room and throw himself into an airlock.
A lot could be said by 'quill-talk'.
Silver got to his feet and turned to find Sonic leaning against wall, giving him a disbelieving look.
"There's just no consoling him," Silver said in a low voice, not realising that he'd said something wrong.
After Silver had gone, Sonic gestured over his shoulder.
"Shadow, listen," he said, "Me and Silver were going to play a T-I-V. We wondered if you wanted to come?" He was referring the Total Immersion Videogame, 'Better Than Life'. Shadow shook his head miserably. "Oh come on!" Sonic tried again, "Knuckles says he can key you in."
Again, Shadow shook his head 'no'.
"No?" Sonic tutted and waited. But Shadow didn't change his answer so the blue hedgehog reluctantly walked away.
"Play," Shadow ordered and the video continued on with 'Groovy Channel 27'.
"-had he succeeded, experts believe the middle class would have been wiped out within three weeks. Techno news. The new sensation sweeping the solar system is the total immersion video game, 'Better Than Life'. Using the new senso lock feedback technique, 'Better Than Life' is able to detect all your desires and fantasies and then make them come true."
Shadow sat up, beginning to take notice.
"So great is the appeal of 'Better Than Life', when one store in Station Square ran out of stocks, rubber nuclear weapons had to be deployed to disperse the crowds. Sport. Soleanna's underwater hocket team's tour-"
The Newsreader was talking to no-one - Shadow had already bolted away.
Two hedgehogs, one silvery grey and the other black and red, watched eagerly while a third hedgehog, bright blue in colour, finished setting up the console system and fished out the game.
"Better Than Life, here it is!" he announced, holding it up like a trophy.
"Brilliant!" cheered Shadow.
"Let's play!" giggled Silver, hopping up and down in his excitement.
All three put on headsets (Shadow needed Knuckles' help with his) which made some worrying noises and caused all three to drop their heads as they passed from the real world to the video game world.
They were in a corridor, steam swirling around their calves as if someone had left a stage fog machine on. They walked in a line - Shadow on the right, Silver on the left, Sonic in the middle - as they passed through two sets of imposing double doors to finally find themselves on a beach.
"What sort of game is this?" Sonic asked, looking around and kicking at the sand. If he didn't know any better, he would never even consider the idea that he was really still on a space ship in the middle of space.
"It's incredible," Shadow replied, also looking around. He reached down and picked up some of the sand. It felt real. It slipped through his fingers as he would expect sand to do. "It's just like being here."
"Yessss!" Sonic cheered, enjoying the feeling of supposedly real ground underneath and feeling supposedly real wind blowing through his spines.
For Silver, it was an entirely alien world altogether. He had never been to Mobius and so he was experiencing these things for the first time. The crash of the rolling waves, the squalls of the gulls and the woman in a white dress walking down the beach past them.
A woman!
Silver stared at her, breathing in all those new pheromones. It wasn't a hedgehog woman, it was... well he didn't know what species she was. All he knew was that she was female. He hadn't smelt something female since his mother had died and left him to raise himself.
She waved at them and carried on walking, winking at Silver as she left.
"That's whatshername, the actress from the 20th century! Err... Mary Magdelene."
"It's Marilyn Monroe, you gimp!" Sonic laughed and nudged Silver. "I think she fancies you."
"What does that prove? She's not blind!" Silver grinned, bursting with pride and then called after her, "Hey baby, I'm a little busy right now. I'll catch you later, ok?"
Shadow wasn't listening to Silver. He was too busy getting an autograph from Napoleon Bonaparte and relishing the fact that he could actually touch things. When he returned to Sonic and Silver he was grabbing their sleeves and feeling their spines. He'd nearly forgotton how sharp hedgehog spines were!
"Gentlemen!" suddenly said a man they didn't recognise. He was the Better Than Life Guide, smiling warmly at them. "Welcome to 'Better Than Life'. Well, you must be hungry and there's a restraunt just a couple of miles down the beach."
He was a friendly person and they decided to trust his word and made their own seperate ways to the restaurant - Sonic took Silver (because Silver was still technically Sonic's responsibility) on a Harley Davidson motorbike and Shadow conjured up an E-Type Jaguar car.
Some time later, at the restaurant full of colourful, if slightly odd, people, Sonic and Silver were sat at a table by themselves.
"Where's Shadow?" Silver asked, "I thought he was right behind us."
Not that he was missing Shadow - not when the nice 'Better Than Life' Guide appeared as a waiter for them and gave them food: beetles, still alive, for Silver and chili dogs, pepped and spicy hot, for Sonic. Silver was so happy to be fed that he rubbed the waiter's hands with his face, licked his fingers and squeaked happily.
Sonic remembered his pet hedgehog, Jules, doing that whenever he fed him.
Shadow arrived ten minutes later, dressed in a natty motorist's outfit which included goggles.
"Mr Shadow, sir," greeted the Guide/Waiter, "They're on Table K on the second terrace."
"Excellent," Shadow smiled and trotted off to join them at the table. "Sorry, I don't know what happened. I was driving along and suddenly there was McGruder! Well, one thing led to another and... Good lord, this is a great game!" He laughed and checked the wine menu before helping himself to the complimentary bread. "Twice in one lifetime. I'm turning into Hugh Grant!"
"You can touch things," Sonic smiled. Since the accident, he'd never seen Shadow eat. Holograms didn't need to eat. But here, everything was different. Gone was the 'H' on his forehead.
"I know," Shadow grinned smarmily, "...Why do you think I was so late?"
That was something Sonic could have done without picturing.
Moving the subject away, the three hedgehogs began to excitedly talk about how great their rooms were and how amazing everything seemed to be - like Silver's wardrobe that was so big it crossed an internation time zone.
It was nice really, that the three of them could sit together without throwing criticism or insults at one another. That Sonic and Shadow could sit opposite a table and actually have a pleasent conversation like two old friends. That Silver could have proper company and really feel what it was like to have friends and to be on an organic planet teeming with life. Hedeghogs were solitary animals by nature but, for some reason, the urge to roll into a ball and snuff angrily at others only happened once when they first entered the building but that feeling was gone now.
Later, Shadow took his leave of the others to go and join a table of admirals and captains and marshalls and other high ranking officers for drinks and cigars while Sonic decided to go and take Silver to enjoy some games.
That was when the first unusual thing happened.
Shadow was sat at the head of the table, a glass of whiskey in one hand and a fresh cigar in the other, entertaining the rest of the table with stories from his academy years and from the voyage through space on Red Dwarf, stopping to sign his auto-biography for a young cadet.
Mid-story, Shadow stopped and noticed another approaching the table. It was a tall, dark man with dark clothes and a burning red eye.
Shadow felt his throat tighten.
"Father," he said.
"Son," Shadow's father nodded back. He was stood stiffly, as though embarassed to be there.
"What are you doing here?" Shadow asked, truly shocked. Was this part of 'Better Than Life'? Was he really going to hear the words that he had craved to hear from his father?
"I'm sorry to barge in on you and your," Shadow's father glanced at the smartly dressed people in uniform who were looking at the newcomer rather coldly, "...er, officer chummies, but..."
"Yes?"
"I just wanted to tell you..."
"Yes?"
"I... just wanted to say..."
"Yes?"
"I just... wanted to say... You're a total smeg head!"
Golf. Easy enough, Sonic had thought. You whack the small ball with the stick and try and get it in the hole.
A dirty-minded individual may have sniggered at that.
Silver had decided to really take part in the whole experience by dressing as a professional golfer, hat included, whereas Sonic was in his usual black leather jacket and baggy black trousers.
He wasn't playing with a whole deal of style and simply gave the ball a good thwack and watched it sail off in roughly the direction of the flag at the end of course.
"Hey, move over man. I want to plant my egg," Silver said cupping the golf ball in his paw and giving Sonic a nudge.
"It's called a ball," Sonic corrected with a hint of amusement, watching Silver nestle the ball on the grass.
"Are you trying to tell me how to play this game?" Silver asked crossly, "You think wild hedgehogs never played golf?"
Sonic couldn't see how wild hedgehogs would have even started playing golf. There wasn't facilities on Red Dwarf for that kind of thing. Maybe, when all of Silver's relatives had left Red Dwarf to find a planet of their own (abandoning Silver and his mother) they would have found a sufficient golf course.
Silver eyed the ball carefully and then took a big swing, spinning round and round and round before throwing the golf club as far as he could after Sonic's ball. Sonic imemdiately dropped to the floor, rolled into a tight ball, while Silver hopped about, watching the flight of his club.
A few rounds later and they were on the Green, Sonic's ball a a meter or so away from the hole and Silver's club nearby. When Sonic and Silver went to finish their game, they were surprised to find Knuckles there to meet them.
Knuckles had his own mobility device which had a television screen on top for Knuckles' face to cheerfully look out from. The walking television wasn't an unusal sight to see on Red Dwarf but it wasn't often seen on a Golfing course.
He greeted them in his usual way and then revealed that he could enter the virtual videogame too but not to play, as such, but rather to keep Shadow patched in.
And that reminded Sonic - where exactly had Shadow gone?
A heavily loaded little car parked up outside a country house by the garden wall. The doors opened and a swarm of screeching, exciteable children came pouring out, chasing each other and throwing sticks at one another as they played.
Out from the driver's side stepped Shadow, in the midst of a ferocious argument with their mother, McGruder.
Sonic and Silver poked their heads over the wall and took in the scene with shocked faces.
"Shadow!" Sonic called, "What happened to you?"
Shadow looked relieved to see them. He ambled on over while McGruder sought to herd up her wild brood.
"Sonic," he smiled, like he was greeting an old aquaintence. "Ah, this is a great game, Sonic. I couldn't be happier." He leapt up and over the wall to stand with his former crewmates.
"Who are all those guys?" Silver asked, tilting his head. There were small mini Shadows running about with smaller versions of... whatever animal Molly McGruder was supposed to be. Silver couldn't really tell.
"It's McGruder," Shadow replied, his smile waning, "She got pregnant, so this morning she made me marry her and this afternoon we had seven kids. Bliss."
Sonic looked at the beat up old motor that some of the children were climbing on.
"Where's your E-type?" he asked. He'd liked the look of that Jaguar. He had been tempted to ask Shadow if he could conjure up one his own.
"It was too impractical," Shadow explained, "With all the kids and everything."
"Shadow, you fantasised that you had seven kids and a mortgage?"
That was when Shadow cracked. He threw his hands forward and grabbed Sonic by his jacket collar pulling him in so that their faces were a fur's length apart.
"Help!" he begged. From over the wall, McGruder was calling for him.
"My brain's rebelled," Shadow admitted. He was now dressed like a drunk in a long brown coat and a bottle in his hand. "It just won't accept nice things happening to me. It just keeps fantasising horribleness." He slid down the wall as an official looking man appeared to stand ominously over him.
He told Shadow about the Outland Revenue and gave him a demand for immediate payment which came to 18,000 mobiums.
"If you're unable to pay, sir," the man said, "I am instructed by the Revenue to break both your legs and pull off your thumbs."
"What am I going to do?" Shadow whimpered, "I'm broke."
"I'll pay," Sonic immediately told him, wanting to bail his friend out of this mess, "I'll pay." He looked through his pockets but couldn't find any cash at all. "Where's all my money gone?"
"Oh no!" Shadow cried, "I just fantasised it all away. This is getting worse. Help me!"
"Don't move!" Silver gasped, "A huge, black, furry spider with big teeth just crawled up your trouser leg!"
"I know," Shadow moaned, "I put it there. It's the thing I'm afraid of most in the whole world - a trantuala crawling up my trousers!"
"Shadow, this is getting out of hand," Sonic said, trying to shoo the Revenue man away.
"Do you think I don't know that? Ah! He's past my knee!"
"Close your eyes and wish it away!"
"I can't!"
"Concentrate man!"
"I can't!"
Next thing they knew they were all back on the beach only this time they were all buried up to their necks in the sand with strawberry jam on their heads.
Even Knuckles was there, his computer face smeared with jam, as his motorised monitor was buried in the sand. He didn't look very impressed.
"What's he done now?" Silver complained, licking his lips to taste the strawberry jam.
"I'm sorry!" Shadow said, "I'm really sorry!"
"What's going on?" Sonic asked in panic, trying to move his arms and legs.
"Our faces have been smeared with jam and we're about to be eaten alive by killer ants!"
"Why!?" Silver screeched.
"Why not?" Shadow answered.
"You can't take him anywhere, can you?" Knuckles sighed and pulled them all from the game before things got really out of hand.
No, things didn't often go right for Shadow. But he realised that being stuck on Red Dwarf in the middle of Deep Space with Sonic and Silver wasn't the worst reality he could be living in.
Next time...
After "senile" Knuckles' incompetence endangers the crew one too many times, a back-up computer named Ix takes control of Red Dwarf. It isn't long before Ix's tyranny causes the hedgehogs to miss their old computer, Knuckles.