Part 2
For about thirty seconds, Lister forgot to breathe. Well....worse than that— he forgot *how* to breathe. But for those thirty seconds it was the last thing he cared about.
Smeg, smeg, smeg.....
He told himself that it wasn't possible to be 3 million years in the past. But then, he remembered all the other things that had happened in his bizarre lifetime and decided that he couldn't rule it out.
He took one deep breath. Then was it true? *Could* it be true?
Lister sat up on the bottom bunk, tapping his fingers on his knee nervously. There was no way that he could fathom what all this would mean for him. He would live his life over again from this point...he'd have to go through it for a second time.
That, of course, was *if* he wasn't just dreaming.
He closed his eyes and pinched himself on the arm. Nothing. He pinched harder. Then harder still. Still, nothing happened. He slapped himself on the wrist, then on the upper arm, and finally, in the face. He screamed from shock. But nothing happened.
This wasn't a dream.
'What am I gonna do, then? This is totally unreal!' He was staring directly at the wall opposite him. 'This couldn't get any worse....it couldn't.....'
There was a noise, and Lister jumped up from the bunk. Someone entered, and they stopped, staring at Lister as he stood straight in front of the bunk.
"What is it now, man, you sit on that tac I left for 'ya?"
Lister said nothing. He just gawked. Because the man he saw standing before him was himself.
The other Lister was gawking now, too. "What is it, then? What're you starin' at?" He waved his hand in front of Lister's face.
"Uhhhhhh....."
The second Lister shrugged. "Whatever, man. I'm goin' out." He grabbed his leather jacket from the top bunk and headed for the door.
"...But...."
"But what? You lonely? I see you've been readin' that bloody hypnosis book again...." He glanced at the bottom bunk and snickered. "I'm outta this crap hole." He walked out the door without another word.
Lister still stared. It was like what he'd just seen was still struggling to be absorbed into his brain.
He'd been cloned! Not only was it a time machine he'd stepped into— it was a bloody duplicator! There were two Lister! He—
'You stupid gimp,' his brain scolded him, 'could you be any thicker? Try again.'
"If I'm thick, then that means you are, too!" he said to his brain. Hey, that was it— he must be crazy! Why else would he see himself and then start talking to his brain afterwards?
'Beeep! Wrong again! Though I don't think you're too far off with the insanity thing.'
Ok, ok...he wasn't completely bonkers, he hadn't been cloned.....what else was left?
He sat down on the bunk again, preparing for another round of wall watching, when his rear encountered the corner of the hypnosis book.
Lister turned.
There was the hideous book, the one he'd teased Rimmer about ceaselessly (along with a billion and one other things). He looked at it for a moment, then his heart began to race.
Looking at his uniform again, he realized that it was not a third technician uniform like he had thought, but moreover it seemed to be one of slightly higher rank. His heart banged like a bat against his ribs as he read the name etched on the fabric. It wasn't his. It was...
He choked. Not, it wasn't. It just *WASN'T*. It *COULDN'T* be.
Like a zombie, he stood from the bunk again and trudged over to the sink, looking directly down at the floor as he did.
He bumped into the edge of the sink.
Gulping, he lifted his head— very slowly— to look upwards. He saw the sink, the faucet, then the bottom of the mirror that was just above it. He looked at the reflection in the mirror.
He saw a face with whiny looking eyes that screamed sarcasm. There was a mouth that seemed to be forced into a constant smirk, and a nose that could house a small family of elephants in each nostril, and maybe a couple of tigers when they were flared. Big ears jutted from the sides of the face that Lister was sure would lift his whole body from the ground if he were to wiggle them. This face was one he knew all too well.
It wasn't his at all. It belonged to Z-shift 2nd technician Arnold Judas Rimmer.
"Holy smeg....."
Lister fainted.
* * * *
Rimmer looked nervously to Holly again. "Anything?" He was twiddling his thumbs pensively as he waited for the computer to respond.
"Still trying to retrieve him, Arnold."
Rimmer huffed and turned away. Kryten was punching things into one of the consoles, and the Cat was busying himself with his comb and portable mirror. Rimmer frowned.
The stupid cat. This was his fault— lots of things were his fault, and every time something was his fault it was the same. He acted like nothing had even happened and went on with his agenda (which was either sleeping, eating, or preening). It hadn't bothered Rimmer so much before when the Cat did something daft, but now it involved something a little more vital than a broken plate or a careless mess.
There was a very real possibility that Lister was gone. Forever.
It'd been nearly an hour since they'd lost him. And there wasn't a trace left of him.
'He must have evaporated!' Rimmer had thought initially. He'd stared in horror as they'd tried to bring him back, helplessly watching the accelerator as if it would make his 'friend' reappear.. He found that he actually felt bad for Lister, for once. He'd thought so many times that life without Lister would be preferable, but now the prospect of never seeing his rival again scared him.
How could Rimmer go on without another real 'human' to talk to? It was crazy! *He'd* go crazy!
"Wait, blokes, I've got something!"
Rimmer jumped. Kryten and Cat looked up at the screen.
"I've tracked David.....but you're not going to believe where I found him."
"What?! Where is he?" Rimmer asked in an exasperated tone.
"He's back .....on Red Dwarf, it seems."
Kryten stepped forward. "He's back on Red Dwarf? Oh, how silly of us! We'll just go back to the ship and Mr. Lister will be there. No worries!"
Holly let out a kind of a nervous computer laugh. "That's not quite what I meant, Kryten. He's back on Red Dwarf, yes, but he's not in the same time as we are. He's about 3 million years in the past."
"What the smeg are you saying? That this thing is a time machine?" Rimmer folded his arms.
"Of sorts, yes."
Rimmer turned white. Kryten would have, too, had he been able to do so. The Cat wasn't even listening.
"So.....what do we do, then? Is there anything we...." Rimmer trailed off.
"The thing is," Holly went on, "we can't just hop in and find him. It seems that the time destination of the accelerator is, in a way, completely random. Wait— I'm going to scan this computer information document I've just found in the main database...."
A moment passed.
"Wow....that's a fine bit of news."
"WHAT? WHAT'S happening, Holly?"
"I just learned that this thing— the whole station— is a secret experiment that was tested on earth and, after a few quirks were worked out, it was rebuilt in secret in deep space. The goal of the experiment was time travel, but like the first it developed a fluke and the time destination became random."
Rimmer was growing annoyed. "But *what* fluke? You mean the fact that once you send someone off through time, you can't get them back ever again and you don't know where they're gonna go?"
"They *can* get back, but let me explain, won't you? In the first experiment, the man who was sent through time could only go *back* in time, and within his own lifetime. But every place he ended up, he had to fix something in time to make wrong things right. Like, saving someone or making them do something that would change their life. After he did that, he could move — or 'leap', as they called it— to another point in time. So maybe if David does something good where he is currently in time, he will be lucky enough to 'leap' back here again."
There was silence for a time as everyone— except the cat, who was curling up in a cozy ball on the floor— pondered the situation.
"That's all fine," Kryten said at last, "but how will Mr. Lister *know* that he's supposed to do anything, or *what* he's supposed to do, for that matter?"
Holly swayed her head. "There is one way to contact Dave, but only one, and you may not like it much."
"Get on with it," Rimmer urged.
"Well, we can use the Imaging Chamber over there to transform someone into a hologram and hook them up to Lister's brain waves so he can see them. There's this thing called a Hand Link that transmits information from me as I find it, so the hologram can tell Lister and help him out a bit. I'm afraid that's all I really know."
"That's very confusing of you, Holly." Rimmer thought for a moment. "Well, Kryten, you're the natural choice to go in the Imaging Chamber. You'll help Lister out the most, I think, being that you're more logical than me or the Cat." Rimmer unfolded his arms and placed them at his sides.
"I'd agree," Holly said, "but this station is low on power as it is and it'd use up less power if we used someone who was already a hologram." She glanced at Rimmer. "We need all the power we can get, to keep the database up. We are getting a stable amount of power from the generator, but we wouldn't want to throw it accidently with an overload. If we lose it, we lose all the information on Lister's situation."
"Me?" Rimmer gulped. "Me? I can't help Lister— I don't know anything about....stuff like that! What am I supposed to do?!"
The door to the Imaging Chamber opened, and a small colorful device— the Handlink— appeared in hologramatic form in Rimmer's hand.
"We'll use your current power source to save power on the station." Holly nodded. "Go on, then, into the chamber."
Rimmer walked slowly. "But WHAT DO I DO??!"
"All you have to do, Arnold, is inform Lister of his situation and tell him information as it appears on the Handlink. It's all very simple."
"Yeah," he mumbled, "Simple to a computer that has wits equal to a rabid goldfish."
He walked into the chamber.
"You can come and go as you wish, from Lister's time back to ours. If you need to come back here, press the button on the handlink."
"Yeah, alright, then."
"Ready?"
"Good luck, budddy," called the Cat, barely waking from his nap. "Bring me back a souvenir!!"
"See you later, Mr. Rimmer, sir."
Rimmer nodded from within the chamber, and the door swished shut.
There was a 'whoosh' sound, and he saw nothing but white.
-----
...To be continued....
-----
AN I know there will be inconsistencies, so sorry if there are just too many to cope with in this fic. To those who reviewed this— stop reading my mind! =) J/k. Heh, until next time....
For about thirty seconds, Lister forgot to breathe. Well....worse than that— he forgot *how* to breathe. But for those thirty seconds it was the last thing he cared about.
Smeg, smeg, smeg.....
He told himself that it wasn't possible to be 3 million years in the past. But then, he remembered all the other things that had happened in his bizarre lifetime and decided that he couldn't rule it out.
He took one deep breath. Then was it true? *Could* it be true?
Lister sat up on the bottom bunk, tapping his fingers on his knee nervously. There was no way that he could fathom what all this would mean for him. He would live his life over again from this point...he'd have to go through it for a second time.
That, of course, was *if* he wasn't just dreaming.
He closed his eyes and pinched himself on the arm. Nothing. He pinched harder. Then harder still. Still, nothing happened. He slapped himself on the wrist, then on the upper arm, and finally, in the face. He screamed from shock. But nothing happened.
This wasn't a dream.
'What am I gonna do, then? This is totally unreal!' He was staring directly at the wall opposite him. 'This couldn't get any worse....it couldn't.....'
There was a noise, and Lister jumped up from the bunk. Someone entered, and they stopped, staring at Lister as he stood straight in front of the bunk.
"What is it now, man, you sit on that tac I left for 'ya?"
Lister said nothing. He just gawked. Because the man he saw standing before him was himself.
The other Lister was gawking now, too. "What is it, then? What're you starin' at?" He waved his hand in front of Lister's face.
"Uhhhhhh....."
The second Lister shrugged. "Whatever, man. I'm goin' out." He grabbed his leather jacket from the top bunk and headed for the door.
"...But...."
"But what? You lonely? I see you've been readin' that bloody hypnosis book again...." He glanced at the bottom bunk and snickered. "I'm outta this crap hole." He walked out the door without another word.
Lister still stared. It was like what he'd just seen was still struggling to be absorbed into his brain.
He'd been cloned! Not only was it a time machine he'd stepped into— it was a bloody duplicator! There were two Lister! He—
'You stupid gimp,' his brain scolded him, 'could you be any thicker? Try again.'
"If I'm thick, then that means you are, too!" he said to his brain. Hey, that was it— he must be crazy! Why else would he see himself and then start talking to his brain afterwards?
'Beeep! Wrong again! Though I don't think you're too far off with the insanity thing.'
Ok, ok...he wasn't completely bonkers, he hadn't been cloned.....what else was left?
He sat down on the bunk again, preparing for another round of wall watching, when his rear encountered the corner of the hypnosis book.
Lister turned.
There was the hideous book, the one he'd teased Rimmer about ceaselessly (along with a billion and one other things). He looked at it for a moment, then his heart began to race.
Looking at his uniform again, he realized that it was not a third technician uniform like he had thought, but moreover it seemed to be one of slightly higher rank. His heart banged like a bat against his ribs as he read the name etched on the fabric. It wasn't his. It was...
He choked. Not, it wasn't. It just *WASN'T*. It *COULDN'T* be.
Like a zombie, he stood from the bunk again and trudged over to the sink, looking directly down at the floor as he did.
He bumped into the edge of the sink.
Gulping, he lifted his head— very slowly— to look upwards. He saw the sink, the faucet, then the bottom of the mirror that was just above it. He looked at the reflection in the mirror.
He saw a face with whiny looking eyes that screamed sarcasm. There was a mouth that seemed to be forced into a constant smirk, and a nose that could house a small family of elephants in each nostril, and maybe a couple of tigers when they were flared. Big ears jutted from the sides of the face that Lister was sure would lift his whole body from the ground if he were to wiggle them. This face was one he knew all too well.
It wasn't his at all. It belonged to Z-shift 2nd technician Arnold Judas Rimmer.
"Holy smeg....."
Lister fainted.
* * * *
Rimmer looked nervously to Holly again. "Anything?" He was twiddling his thumbs pensively as he waited for the computer to respond.
"Still trying to retrieve him, Arnold."
Rimmer huffed and turned away. Kryten was punching things into one of the consoles, and the Cat was busying himself with his comb and portable mirror. Rimmer frowned.
The stupid cat. This was his fault— lots of things were his fault, and every time something was his fault it was the same. He acted like nothing had even happened and went on with his agenda (which was either sleeping, eating, or preening). It hadn't bothered Rimmer so much before when the Cat did something daft, but now it involved something a little more vital than a broken plate or a careless mess.
There was a very real possibility that Lister was gone. Forever.
It'd been nearly an hour since they'd lost him. And there wasn't a trace left of him.
'He must have evaporated!' Rimmer had thought initially. He'd stared in horror as they'd tried to bring him back, helplessly watching the accelerator as if it would make his 'friend' reappear.. He found that he actually felt bad for Lister, for once. He'd thought so many times that life without Lister would be preferable, but now the prospect of never seeing his rival again scared him.
How could Rimmer go on without another real 'human' to talk to? It was crazy! *He'd* go crazy!
"Wait, blokes, I've got something!"
Rimmer jumped. Kryten and Cat looked up at the screen.
"I've tracked David.....but you're not going to believe where I found him."
"What?! Where is he?" Rimmer asked in an exasperated tone.
"He's back .....on Red Dwarf, it seems."
Kryten stepped forward. "He's back on Red Dwarf? Oh, how silly of us! We'll just go back to the ship and Mr. Lister will be there. No worries!"
Holly let out a kind of a nervous computer laugh. "That's not quite what I meant, Kryten. He's back on Red Dwarf, yes, but he's not in the same time as we are. He's about 3 million years in the past."
"What the smeg are you saying? That this thing is a time machine?" Rimmer folded his arms.
"Of sorts, yes."
Rimmer turned white. Kryten would have, too, had he been able to do so. The Cat wasn't even listening.
"So.....what do we do, then? Is there anything we...." Rimmer trailed off.
"The thing is," Holly went on, "we can't just hop in and find him. It seems that the time destination of the accelerator is, in a way, completely random. Wait— I'm going to scan this computer information document I've just found in the main database...."
A moment passed.
"Wow....that's a fine bit of news."
"WHAT? WHAT'S happening, Holly?"
"I just learned that this thing— the whole station— is a secret experiment that was tested on earth and, after a few quirks were worked out, it was rebuilt in secret in deep space. The goal of the experiment was time travel, but like the first it developed a fluke and the time destination became random."
Rimmer was growing annoyed. "But *what* fluke? You mean the fact that once you send someone off through time, you can't get them back ever again and you don't know where they're gonna go?"
"They *can* get back, but let me explain, won't you? In the first experiment, the man who was sent through time could only go *back* in time, and within his own lifetime. But every place he ended up, he had to fix something in time to make wrong things right. Like, saving someone or making them do something that would change their life. After he did that, he could move — or 'leap', as they called it— to another point in time. So maybe if David does something good where he is currently in time, he will be lucky enough to 'leap' back here again."
There was silence for a time as everyone— except the cat, who was curling up in a cozy ball on the floor— pondered the situation.
"That's all fine," Kryten said at last, "but how will Mr. Lister *know* that he's supposed to do anything, or *what* he's supposed to do, for that matter?"
Holly swayed her head. "There is one way to contact Dave, but only one, and you may not like it much."
"Get on with it," Rimmer urged.
"Well, we can use the Imaging Chamber over there to transform someone into a hologram and hook them up to Lister's brain waves so he can see them. There's this thing called a Hand Link that transmits information from me as I find it, so the hologram can tell Lister and help him out a bit. I'm afraid that's all I really know."
"That's very confusing of you, Holly." Rimmer thought for a moment. "Well, Kryten, you're the natural choice to go in the Imaging Chamber. You'll help Lister out the most, I think, being that you're more logical than me or the Cat." Rimmer unfolded his arms and placed them at his sides.
"I'd agree," Holly said, "but this station is low on power as it is and it'd use up less power if we used someone who was already a hologram." She glanced at Rimmer. "We need all the power we can get, to keep the database up. We are getting a stable amount of power from the generator, but we wouldn't want to throw it accidently with an overload. If we lose it, we lose all the information on Lister's situation."
"Me?" Rimmer gulped. "Me? I can't help Lister— I don't know anything about....stuff like that! What am I supposed to do?!"
The door to the Imaging Chamber opened, and a small colorful device— the Handlink— appeared in hologramatic form in Rimmer's hand.
"We'll use your current power source to save power on the station." Holly nodded. "Go on, then, into the chamber."
Rimmer walked slowly. "But WHAT DO I DO??!"
"All you have to do, Arnold, is inform Lister of his situation and tell him information as it appears on the Handlink. It's all very simple."
"Yeah," he mumbled, "Simple to a computer that has wits equal to a rabid goldfish."
He walked into the chamber.
"You can come and go as you wish, from Lister's time back to ours. If you need to come back here, press the button on the handlink."
"Yeah, alright, then."
"Ready?"
"Good luck, budddy," called the Cat, barely waking from his nap. "Bring me back a souvenir!!"
"See you later, Mr. Rimmer, sir."
Rimmer nodded from within the chamber, and the door swished shut.
There was a 'whoosh' sound, and he saw nothing but white.
-----
...To be continued....
-----
AN I know there will be inconsistencies, so sorry if there are just too many to cope with in this fic. To those who reviewed this— stop reading my mind! =) J/k. Heh, until next time....