Thanks very much to everyone who's reviewed/ read so far. You're darn lovely.

A bit more then. Warnings as before…I don't know where I'm going, it's dark and I'm wearing sunglasses.( geeky ones, too)

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"Rimmer? Rimmer, you awake?"

"No."

Rimmer glared, but only out of habit. In truth, he had not slept much at all the last couple of nights, with his uncomfortable cast, widespread rainbow bruising- he had discovered an entirely new colour which he provisionally named "yuk"-, and worry over their uncertain location. Although nothing had precisely threatened them so far, he was a man who had been born with a feeling of impending doom and had clung to it, possessively. Lister provided a welcome distraction.

"I've been thinking about what happened. Maybe we didn't get transported anywhere at all."

"Of course. That whole spirally thing we passed through was merely a space bruise. Probably caused by some other ship banging into the infinite reaches of space a bit too hard."

Lister chewed his dreadlocks, ignoring Rimmer.

"Maybe it just messed with our minds, screwed up Holly's charts, made us think we'd gone somewhere…"

Rimmer considered this. Lister had good intuition (something he would admit to out loud only under the influence of triple strength whisky or a number of magic mushrooms- just before the giraffes whipped out the handguns). And there was a completely normal view from the ship, no external reason to believe that they had actually moved. But then the same thing applied to that little adventure with the Holly Hop drive- at least until they saw the parallel Red Dwarf.

Rimmer shuddered at the memory-such a horrible, overbearing, clueless, charm-vacuum of a woman- if that was how he came across to the opposite sex, no wonder he had a dating problem. It was more of a mystery why the entire female population of humanity- when there was one- hadn't joined together to buy a sack and a few good, solid bricks, find a nice deep pool and make the universe a better place.

A grubby hand was waggling to and fro in front of his face.

"Rimmer, Earth to Rimmer… have you rejoined the dead?"

Lister was mildly intrigued that Rimmer failed to ignite like a grumpy volcano at this little dig. Being alive seemed to agree with him.

"Well, ok, it's possible…there's a very tiny, miniscule, tiny, small, teensy, little sliver of a possibility- but what makes you think so?"

Lister chewed his hair again, less in thought this time than because he'd discovered a mini-reservoir of curry sauce.

"I don't know, man, it's just…something feels weird about this. It all seems faker than a yacht-load of game show hosts."

"And I believe I know why."

Kryten entered with breakfast and a worried look.

"I've been doing some research on woogly space thingies. If my theory is correct then we have been transported to a place of utter terror, a place of monsters, mutants and evil bikini women."          

"Evil bikini women?!"

Suddenly, Kryten had an attentive audience.

"Do you mean the women are evil, or they just wear nefarious clothing?"

"Er, sir…"

"Rimmer, don't be an idiot…they must be women in the shape of an evil bikini…"

"Um, I believe the salient point here, important though a discussion of misbehaving swimwear may be, is that we have entered …the 1950's Horror Movie Universe."

Kryten pulled a dramatic expression, one he was rather proud of. These subtle emotions were often hard to pull off in a face with that many angles. Sadly, it was not entirely appreciated by his audience who appeared to have entered obtuse mode. They gazed blankly at him.

"Kryten, what on Io are you drivelling on about?"

"Are you saying…what, we're in a 1950's horror movie?"

Kryten reluctantly abandoned his Dramatic Face as it hampered his ability to speak.

"I'm saying, sirs, that we are in all 1950's horror movies. Or at least in the same area of space. Every hubcap spacecraft, every alien with an unrealistic forehead, every radiation-mutated giant insect is out there…in this very universe."

"But…come on, Kryten, that's fiction…and really, really bad fiction."

"All fiction originates somewhere, sirs. This is one pocket of it, a vast puddle of unreality made real- and at a discount price."

The Cat chose this moment of confused silence to swirl into the room. He combed for a few seconds.

"Listen, guys, there's something really weird out there. I never smelled anything like it. Hey, does my collar look creased to you? Be brutal, I can handle it…Guys?"

Holly confirmed the news.

"We're being hailed by a ship that, from all appearances, seems to have been made from a Fairy liquid bottle."

They stared at the bizarre craft, wobbling beside them, suspended on ludicrously visible wires.

"I think we should answer them, Dave. Their equipment appears to be more sophisticated than ours."

"We're outclassed by the squeegee people? Man, that sucks!" Cat licked his sleeve in embarrassment.

Lister shrugged.

"Put 'em online, Hol."