Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't own Red Dwarf or any of it's characters, blah, blah, blah.

Author's note: I love this chapter, especially the first paragraph. Possibly the longest chapter so far, apart from the Prologue. Some of this stuff is actually quite relevant to the story ahead so PAY ATTENTION!

Rimmer took a good look at himself in the mirror. He put his hand over his forehead and looked again. He thought he looked so much better without the dominating 'H.' He brought his hand away and sighed. There was nothing he could do about it, the 'H' was there for good. He could get Holly to change any part of his appearance. He could get her to give him rock hard pecks, washboard stomach, chiseled good looks, but he couldn't get her to take the 'H' away. That was almost a depressing a thought as not having had a sex life for four and a half years. He looked at himself again. He was much happier with his new blue uniform than he had been with the red, green or khaki ones. It was a much more flattering colour and it took the attention away from his hectic, reddish hair. But what he loved most about it was that it meant he was a hard-light hologram. He could touch things and interact like a normal human being. But the fact was he was dead. You could have given him a multicolored, tailor-fitted, gold-lined uniform for all he cared; it didn't make him alive again. Nothing would.

Lister walked into the Officers' Quarters that he and Rimmer had made their home a long time ago. Kryten waddled beside him.
"Hi, ugly!" Lister regarded Rimmer.
"Smeg off, Lister," Rimmer said, wearily turning round, "I am smegging not in the smegging mood, O-smegging-K?"
"What's with all the 'smegs'?" Lister asked.
"I'm having one of those moments when you realise that nothing ever has or ever will go right for you, that's all. It's just a bad day."
"Excuse me for interrupting, sir" intercepted Kryten, "but when do you ever have a good day?"
Rimmer sighed and turned back to the mirror.
Lister looked at Kryten and shook his head. When he had tried to rebuild Kryten a couple of years back, there had been a few odds and ends left over. They had soon figured out that one of them was his 'compassion' chip. He was just about able to replicate the emotion with the 'guilt' chip combined with the 'understanding' chip, but sometimes it came out a little wrong. This was one of those times.

"Look," said Lister, trying to change the subject, "the reason we came here was to tell you we're picking up an unidentifiable object on the scanners. Thought you might be interested, you know, aliens and all that."
Rimmer gave a small shrug. He had long abandoned his obsession with aliens as he realised he was probably never going to actually meet one. But he was bored and miserable so he decided to go anyway.
"Holly?" the blonde face appeared on the screen.
"Yes, Arnold?"
"Can you convert me to soft-light, please?"
Holly nodded and Rimmer's red uniform returned. He knew that if they lost track of this U.O. they would blame it on his hard-light projection unit wasting too much energy, and he wasn't in the disposition to be yelled at.

As they joined Cat in the Drive Room, they saw the U.O. on the screen. A blue and white capsule that seemed to be heading straight for them.
"Is it a missile?" Rimmer asked.
"No, sir," said Kryten, "It's far too small. It resembles a stasis capsule."
"A stasis-what?" Lister asked, confused.
"A stasis capsule, sir."
"So what's one of them when it's at home?"
"It is a stasis field contained within one craft. Someone gets inside the capsule, plots a course and activates the stasis field. It was banned after 3 years because they found dangerous radiation enters the brain during travel."
"So, if it was banned..." Rimmer began.
"It means the capsule has been traveling for well over 3 million years. Yes, sir." Kryten finished.
"Is there any chance of human life?" Rimmer was growing more and more intrigued by the second.
"There is a great chance, sir. After all, when they went to destroy these capsules, they found three were missing. One of them, coincidentally, was from Red Dwarf."
Rimmer was excited now.
"Kryten, scan for human life. Let's bring this baby home."

A/n: OK, warning, the next couple of chapters are going to go at quite a slow pace. I've got to set the scene a little more, but after that it will move a bit quicker (obviously not so fast that it's "blink-and-you-miss-it," but, you know what I mean.)