What Probably Didn't Happen Next - Chapter 2

AN: The management takes no responsibility for people's eyes shrivelling up and falling out while reading this fanfic. Am writing while on the run from strange beer/chocolate spread mutants. Completely off topic, but does anyone write Yes, Minister fanfics? That would be interesting. Sir Humphrey is cool.

"The Minister doesn't want the truth, he wants something he can tell Parliament!"

EdahStellap aka Sutcac Ykoops (using a false name to avoid getting sued about eyeball incident)


Rimmer wasn't a sausage any more, which was generally a plus. But considering the fact that he was now an enormous breath mint, he wasn't so sure. Starbug was now gone, and he was in a desert. An enormous breath mint in a desert. Fantastic.

In the distance he spotted someone, and tried to make his way towards them, despite the fact that breath mints are not known for their ability to move under their own power. But it worked. Oh yes. He was now a flying enormous breath mint in a desert. Marvellous. But maybe those other people would have some clue as to what was going on.

He reached them after a meaninglessly long amount of time, somewhere between Infinity and the time it takes to eat a pickle. Unfortunately for him, by the time he got there the sensible-looking people had gone, and all there was was a video screen showing a penguin and a man with arms about two miles long.

The voice came again. "Ten to the power of seventeen million to one against, and falling."

Rimmer screamed at the sheer inconceivability of it all. He wasn't sure if 'inconceivability' was even a word, but he screamed anyway. The thought struck him that breath mints are not known for their screaming powers any more than they are for their flying ones, and he realised he was human again. It was in situations like this that you felt you were justified to go find a quiet corner, hide under a table and use your uniform as a latrine, but that didn't seem possible now.

Anyway, he wasn't in uniform. He was wearing a rather fetching red and white gingham dress with a matching hat and a penguin hand-puppet. And it was hard to panic properly, what with all the terriers in tweed jackets running around.

Meteors collided. A small stick failed to land on a crack for the millionth time. Four dogs playing poker were astounded to realise that they had each been dealt a full suit in the correct order, especially as it as five-card poker. All over the world people were being struck by lightening for the eighth time and bumping into Elvis at their local laundrettes.

"What the smeg is going on?" Rimmer howled at the universe in general.

"Ten to the power of fifteen million to one against, and falling."


The landscape was barren and rocky, and still damp from a recent torrential rainstorm. Strange noises echoed through this prehistoric land, the voices of creatures that modern-day people can only guess at the nature of. There was a rainforest in the distance, and further away, volcanoes, but here there was just dirty, dusty ground scattered with huge, misshapen rocks.

A young human figure traversed this landscape. Mammals of her size and intelligence had yet to evolve here, but she was an outsider. Her clothes were soaked from the rain and her dark hair clung to her face, giving her the appearance of a drowned rat. She had a strong feeling that she ought to be somewhere and somewhen else, but this was a feeling that had grown so familiar to her over the course of her life that she had come to accept it as the norm.

There was a dinosaur on the plain, although the human could not see him. It was behind a rock, not because it was hiding, but just because that was where it happened to be. It was a big reptile with a small brain, a gigantic carnivore much like Earth's Tyrannosaurus Rex. To him the human looked like lunch...

The dinosaur leapt, but when it landed the human was not there anymore. Dinosaurs, much like their evolutionary descendants, birds, are not known for their intellects (where do you think the insult 'bird-brain' comes from?), and this one was no exception. It took it a good few minutes to realise that the human must have dodged. When it had finally figured that out, it stood up and lurched after her, tiny useless arms scrabbling viscously at the air. But the human was ready for it. She had a rock. Unfortunately a giant hungry dinosaur the size of a building is unlikely to be effected by anything so tiny as a rock to the head.

For a moment the human looked startled by the lack of effect her normally overwhelming rock-to-the-head trick had, then she recovered herself. But instead of running away the way any sane person would, she threw more rocks. Bigger ones. None of which came anywhere near to stopping the giant lumbering closer, slavering jaws open, razor-sharp claws outstretched. It was almost close enough for another, deadlier lunge when...

A certain heroic-looking floppy-haired blond man in a shiny flight jacket raced to the rescue, possibly while riding backwards on a futuristic motorcycle. He skidded in the dirt, spraying it into the dinosaur's eyes. This was enough to attract the creature's attention, and he drew it towards him and away from the girl. It was about to lunge for him when he rode behind a rock, causing the dinosaur to knock itself out on the jagged stone. Then he stopped the bike right in front of the girl creating an impressive furrow and a cloud of dust.

Finally, he answered, or at least acknowledged the girl's question, which she had been screaming at the top of her lungs, mixed with random obscenities and even a certain unrepeatable-except-on-Earth country name, while the man had been doing all his fancy motorbike tricks. The question was, or at least had been the first time she said it before she really got angry, "Who are you and what the Blgm are you doing?"

"The name's Ace Rimmer. There'll be time for explanations later." Ace hesitated. For a moment a crack in his armour showed through a little unprofessionalism, and for a second his bearing was more that of a weasel than a cougar. He was sure there was a second part to that particular Aceism, but the girl might be a bit young for that, for him anyway. He settled for saying, "There may be more of those chaps around."

He made no move to leave. Instead he settled for looking at her in a heroic and knowledgeable fashion, as if he could tell which damsel she was and what castle she needed returning to just by that.

Damsel was not a good word for her. She was about fifteen or sixteen, with shoulder-length brown-black hair that hung down over her deep brown eyes. She was quite tall, but she held herself in a slouched, round-shouldered way that seemed to match her almost-permanent dark scowl. Her soaking clothes were dark-coloured and unremarkable. Far more attention-grasping were the chipped black-varnished fingers of her right hand which relentlessly held a warning, defensive grip on a sharpened rock.

She glared back at him, sizing him up. Guy called himself Ace. Stupid name. Stupid floppy hair, even stupider jacket - didn't he know that thing was out of date?

"So, uh... do you have a name?" he asked finally.

She shot him a particularly smouldering look. "Random Dent." She said. The look on her face said he wasn't going to get any more of an explanation than that.


"Probability of ten to one... two to one... one to one. We have normality, repeat we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem."

Rimmer, now finding himself in his normal outfit in a dingy metal corridor, was not really any less panicked now. This seemed a little anti-climatic after that crazy nightmare. "Isn't there anything you think you should be telling me?" he asked the voice, not seriously expecting a sane response.

"Welcome to the starship Heart of Gold. Please relax. You will be sent for shortly." After a pause, the voice continued, and it sounded less cheery, more apologetic. "Or possibly not. It depends what kind of a mood Mr Beeblebrox is in, I'm afraid. I'll see what I can do."


Up on the bridge, the assumed-dead ex-President of the Galaxy was watching a monitor with growing dismay.

"Not another monkey!" groaned the left of his two heads.

"You wouldn't have wanted him to die, would you?" burbled the computer nervously.

"C'est la vie." said his right head.

"Shut up."

TBC... please review!