THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RED DWARF
PART 3"Please, let me cut his head off." a glowering Gimli urged Legolas. "He was rude to me and threatened to toss me overboard. He has to die." Legolas, of course, was still too hung over to think straight . . .
And then an
obnoxiously cheerful Kryten came in with breakfast.
"Good morning, sirs, I just thought I'd take the liberty of bringing
you--"
Legolas took one look at the food and sprinted for the bathroom.
"Oh, dear," Kryten said. "I hope he's all right."
"Elves," Gimli chuckled as he took the tray. "Can't hold their
liquor."
"Apparently they can't hold their food either." Kryten observed under his breath (or what would have been his breath if he weren't a mechanoid).
"Well, I'll just
leave the tray in case he feels better later on. I'll just pop next door and
see to them." Kryten wheeled the cart out of the room and went to the next
door down. He tapped on the door.
It opened slowly.
"I thought you might like--"
"FOOD!" Not even a raging hangover can stand between a Hobbit and his
food.
Kryten wisely stepped far back from the tray as Merry and Pippin wolfed down everything on it.
The ship's PA system
came on.
"Attention: this is Arnold J. Rimmer, Acting Senior Officer. We will be
having a meeting in the Drive Room in ten minutes. There will be
refreshments."
"I just hope it's not going to be a Hammond organ recital or a slide show with his stupid telegraph poles." Lister said to Kryten. "Smeg, if I have to look at one more telegraph pole I just might take that axe of Gimli's and smash the projector."
Rimmer had set up
three rows of folding chairs for them. He stood before the vidscreen, pointer
in hand, in full-on Patton mode.
"Are we all here, then? Where's What's-his-name? The blonde? He's not
still being sick all over everything, is he?"
Silence.
"Good. Then we'll just..."
BLEAHHHHHHHH!
That answered that question. The unfortunate Elf had just entered the room, supported (somewhat) by Gimli. They took seats in the back row as the skutters started to clean up the mess.
"Somebody make the floor stop bouncing." Legolas moaned.
"I've asked
Holly to prepare some slides for my presentation . . ." Rimmer said.
"Smeggin' 'ell," Lister muttered under his breath.
Rimmer glared at him. "If I may continue?"
The company came to order, except for Aragorn, who was watching Legolas with
some concern.
"Thank you. The history of the Jupiter Mining Corporation begins in 2160,
with the advent of faster-than-light ships . . ."
"I'm hungry," Pippin complained. He and Merry were eyeing the food
table with great anticipation.
"You just had breakfast an hour ago!" Frodo exclaimed.
"Yeah, and it's nearly time for Second Breakfast."
Rimmer raised his voice to drown out the little voices from the front row.
"Now then, as I was saying . . ."
It was some time
before Rimmer noticed not one of his audience was paying attention.
He skipped to the good part, about the role semiconductors had played in the
JMC's grand history, and heard actual snoring
from the second row.
Time for a command decision.
"Why don't we take a little break? We'll meet back in--" He looked at
his watch--"ten minutes? Go on and have some coffee and pastries."
The Hobbits needed no further invitation. They fell on the food like ravenous
wolves.
"No manners at all." Rimmer shook his head, disgusted. "You are
planning to leave some of that for the rest of us, aren't you?"
"Smeg, I knew
Rimmer would blow this." Lister whispered to Kryten. "What do we do
now?"
"If I may make a suggestion, sir . . . "
"What we need is
an expert in the field of quantum mechanics, who can explain the ins-and-outs
of time/space distortions in a way these people can understand."
"But we don't have anybody!" Lister exclaimed. "The whole crew's
dead!"
"So?" Cat said. "So's Rimmer. Incidentally, you gotta get over
to the table before those little guys scarf down the last donut."
"But we tried having another hologram!"*
"Here's an idea," Holly offered. Anything to forestall more slides.
"We ended up with two Rimmers because Rimmer's disc was in Kochanski's
box. So where do you think Kochanski's disc was?"
Lister's jaw dropped as he realized . . . she'd been right there all along.
"Smeg, you're right! I'm goin' down to the Hologram Generation Suite.
Stall them!"
"How?" Cat demanded.
"I dunno. Give them more food."
"There is no more
food! The little guys ate it all!"
"Get some out of the dispensin' machines!" Lister ran to the lift,
hoping that this would work.
It didn't take long
for Lister to find Kochanski's disk in the Holographic Projection Suite; once
he found it, he told Holly, "OK, Hol, shut down all non-essential systems.
I'm about to activate Krissie's disk."
"OK, Dave."
"Here, drink
this." Aragorn had moved up to sit beside Legolas, and was offering him a
small bottle full of dark liquid.
"What is it?"
"Something to help you feel better."
"If you could just make the walls stop going in and out," the Elf
said, "that'd be great."
Aragorn almost smiled. "Just drink it."
Legolas drank. It tasted awful, but almost as soon as he had swallowed it, he
felt his head beginning to clear.
Boromir took a seat directly behind them. He had a paper cup full of coffee in
his hand. "He doesn't know what he's talking about, does he?" He
nodded toward Rimmer, who was double-checking the slide placement for the
second half of the presentation.
"Not a smegging clue." Lister agreed.
"We've got a
surprise for the second half," Lister continued. "Somebody wanna wake
up Gandalf?"
The wizard, snoozing in the next chair with his hat over his face, was the
source of the snoring Rimmer had heard earlier.
"Huh?" Gandalf said when he emerged from his impromptu slumber.
"He's comin'
back," Lister said. "It's gonna get better in the second half. You'll
see."
Meanwhile, Cat had taken the Hobbits outside to show them how to get all the
food they wanted.
"Fish!" he said.
There was a whirring noise, and a plate of trout a la creme dropped into the
slot.
"That's amazing!" Sam exclaimed.
"It just comes out of the wall like that?" asked Merry.
"Any time you want," said Cat.
Lister stuck his head out of the Drive Room door. "We're startin' up
again. You'd better come in 'ere."
"We're getting food out of the wall," Pippin told him.
"Yeah, I know, but..."
"It's okay," Merry said. "We can come back. We'll bring the sleeping bags."
"Merry!" Frodo hissed. "We don't belong here! We have to go home!"
"But--the food comes right out of the wall! As much as we want! Whenever we want!"
Lister and Frodo exchanged despairing looks.
"How about when
we leave here, we take as much food as you want?" Frodo offered.
This seemed to satisfy his cousins, so they went inside, with the promise to
return as soon as possible to collect more food.
Lister then resumed his journey to the holographic projection suite...
"Okay, Hol,
switch 'er on."
Moments later,the
holographic reincarnation of Kristine Kochanski popped up in the projection
suite."Where is everybody?"she asked Lister."Where's the
captain?Petersen?Todhunter?Mr.Ackerman?"Glancing her reflection on a
monitor screen,she added,"And where did this 'H' on my head come
from?"
Lister decided it was best to tread light when approaching this particular
topic."Well,you see,Kris,we had a bit of an accident...and...."
"And what?"
"Well..."
It was a good thing
holograms couldn't go into shock.
"All dead? Three million years? How? Why? I don't--"
Lister wished he could just hold her, but of course he couldn't since she was a
hologram.
"What's this other problem you want me to solve for you?" she asked.
"Um, see, there's these people on board, and we don't know where they came
from, and we were kinda hopin' you could explain to them where they are. They
don't even understand the concept of space!"
"People?" Krissie asked. "I thought you said the human race was
extinct."
"Well, it is. I mean, now, it is. But they're not from now, are they?
They're from somewhere else. Oh, smeg, you'll see. Come on."
He led her up to the Drive Room and told Kryten, "Get Rimmer off the
podium, whatever you do!"
"That shouldn't be a problem, sir," the mechanoid said. "He's
been threatened with at least four different weapons already, and I believe a
fifth is standing by."
"Who are these people?" Kochanski mused.
"Get ready," Lister said. "This is gonna be a real trip."
* Holly figured out how to create a second hologram in "Confidence and Paranoia", and we saw the gruesome results (two Rimmers) in "ME2"
