PERSONALITY CHANGE
Cat walked down a corridor, not even sure which floor he was on. He didn't really care either, he was irritated, but on a mission.
"Where is it?" he asked himself, getting more and more desperate.
Cat walked into the nearest room, which turned out to be the Drive Room. He knew the thing he was looking for wouldn't be in here but Holly was on the screen, so he might be able to help.
"Hey, head!"
"What is it, I'm busy."
"Have you seen my leg wax?" Cat asked.
"You what?" Holly was stunned at the question, especially since his mind was occupied by something a little more important than the evolved feline's beauty regime.
"I've lost my leg wax. I had it yesterday, I think one of the women must have stolen it."
"Never mind that, Cat, get down to quarantine."
"What for? I'm looking for my leg wax, that's my number one priority."
"I found a pod."
Cat looked around the room, uninterested in anything Holly had discovered. Holly needed Cat to get down there, and knew there was only one way that could happen.
"And the women will be down there, so you can ask them about your leg wax."
"That makes all the difference. I'll be down in less time than it takes for a pickpocket to steal a wallet."
Cat ran down to quarantine, a room he thought he'd never have to see again ever since Rimmer had locked him in there with Kryten and Lister. He still had the nightmares, but if he was going to find his leg wax, he would have to be brave and go back.
When Cat got to the correct floor, the rest of the crew were already there, except Gemma. He marched straight up to Kochanski.
"Hey, have you used my leg wax?"
"No, I have my own." Kochanski replied. She'd learned her lesson the last time she had found a jar of leg wax that turned out to be his and discovered that Cat had the same retracting claws as his ancestors.
"Where's Little Miss Sunshine?" Cat asked, just as Gemma walked round the corner, giving him a scowl to show she had heard him.
"Right on time. Have you used my leg wax?"
"No you pathetic moggy, I use a razor. Anyway, I heard you found a pod." Gemma looked past Cat at Rimmer for confirmation of what Holly had told her.
"We did, but we don't know what's in it. We know it came from Earth though." Rimmer replied.
"We do know what's in it, nothing, it's empty." Cat cut in.
"You know Cat, the thing I like most about you is your absence." Rimmer answered, with a scowl similar to Gemma's.
"Thanks bud. Never like you though." grinned Cat, completely missing the sarcasm.
"Actually there was something in the pod." Holly cut in, making sure there wasn't an argument yet.
"Eh?" Lister said, wishing he could think of something more intelligent to say.
"I was picking up life signs when I brought the pod in, but they've gone now. So whatever was in there has escaped." Holly explained.
"I haven't picked up any life signs either, but we should all keep a look out for anything unusual." Said Kryten, worrying that whatever it was would disturb his laundry schedule.
"Like Rimmer cracking a funny joke?" Lister offered.
"Smeg off Lister." Rimmer retorted.
The group started to walk away from the cell the pod was in, Gemma at the rear.
"OK freak face, I'll keep a look out…OW!" Gemma turned round and started looking on the ground behind her.
"What is it?" Kochanski asked.
"Something bit my leg!" Gemma cried, still staring at the ground. She knew whatever it was had been small, because the bite was not particularly painful, and only a few inches above her ankle. But whatever it was had strong teeth; she was wearing heavy black boots.
"Are you bleeding or anything?" Lister asked, getting concerned with an unknown living thing on the move.
"No, I don't think so…Ah!" Gemma collapsed onto her knees, hands forming fists on the ground. The others watched, concerned, but unsure of what they could do. Gemma stood up and looked around her, not seeing anyone else.
"Are you OK?" Kochanski asked, concerned.
Gemma looked up towards the ceiling, and talked with a high pitched, girlish voice.
"Mummy, why don't I have a daddy?"
Gemma's voice changed, becoming deeper, and similar to Kochanski's. Her innocent girlish became a scowl, and she looked back, towards the floor.
"Because he's gone Gemma."
Her voice changed again, her face becoming innocent looking.
"Where?"
"No idea. I worked with him on a mining ship in space. I never told him I was having you, and left the ship. By the time I got back to Earth, the ship had disappeared. But promise me something Gemma. Promise me you will find your father."
Gemma became girly again, her face moving as if following someone kneeling down next to her, and stared straight ahead.
"How can I do that Mummy?"
Gemma kneeled down and turned round to face the space she had just occupied. By now the crew had realised Gemma was reliving some memory of her with her mother, but they could do nothing to help.
"Join the Space Corps, Gemma. I can't go back because I've been gone too long. Promise me you will find out what happened to Red Dwarf, and find a man called David Lister. That's your father Gemma. Promise me you will bring him back to me. I know he'll come back if he knows about you."
Gemma stood up again.
"I promise Mummy, I'll find him."
Gemma collapsed again, and the others watched her, unsure of what to do or say. Finally, Cat broke the silence.
"What the Hell was that?"
"I think she just relived a memory of her mother telling her about her father." Lister said.
"You mean Kochanski telling her about you." Rimmer pointed out, because he couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Geez, yeah." Lister realised Rimmer was telling the truth.
"We'd better see if she's OK." Kochanski stepped towards Gemma, uncertainly.
Gemma turned her head to face Kochanski, and felt hatred burning up inside her like she had stepped into a fire. She growled and hurled herself at Kochanski, grabbing her by the throat, trying to strangle her.
"Smeggin Hell!!" Lister yelled as he leapt forward to get Gemma away from Kochanski. Gemma let go for a second, before elbowing Lister to make him let go, and went for Kochanski again.
"Help me guys!" Lister yelled. Kryten and Cat grabbed Gemma, and Rimmer stood in front of Kochanski to try to shield her from the maniac grabbing air and snarling, trying desperately to get back to choking her mother.
"Are you alright?" Rimmer asked Kochanski.
"I think so. What happened?" Kochanski rasped, feeling her tender throat, which had been badly scratched by Gemma's nails.
"It looks like your daughter gets serious PMT."
"We'd better get her to her sleeping quarters and lock her in until we can work out what happened to her. Rimmer, keep Kris away from Gemma. Kryten, Cat, we'll drag her up to the habitation decks." Lister said, shaking and trying to make sense of this change.
"Sleeping quarters? We are on the quarantine floor, Lister." Kochanski yelled.
"Oh yeah." Lister felt as dumb as a dunce at a foreign affairs quiz.
"We'd better get her to the closest quarantine room." Kryten said, dragging Gemma back in the direction they had come from.
Gemma was still trying to reach Kochanski until they reached a quarantine room. Cat opened the door and Kryten and Lister pushed Gemma into the room before Cat locked the door. They didn't noticed that Gemma had stopped fighting back, and they looked through the window in the door to see her falling to the floor, holding her head in her hands. They walked back to where Rimmer and Kochanski were still standing, waiting to hear that Gemma was locked up.
"We must try to find out what bit Miss Gemma. That must have been the cause of her outburst." Kryten knew he had the steadiest nerves in the crew since, being a mechanoid meant he had few emotions, but even he was shocked by Gemma's behaviour.
"Something in that bite made her relive a memory involving me, which made her attack me." Kochanski whispered, thinking she had started to get along with Gemma.
"But how do we find out what when we don't know what we're looking for? Holly can't find it and we don't know what it looks like. We might as well fight a cloud." Rimmer asked, knowing no one would know the answer.
"That's probably the hardest thing you're willing to fight anyway." Cat retorted, feeling his courage coming back to him.
"We have to find out more about it." Lister added.
"Right. I'll go back down to quarantine, to see if I can find anything at all in the pod that will give us a clue." Kryten said, before walking away from the rest of the group.
Rimmer was starting to reply when he felt a sharp pain in his ankle. He grabbed at it before crying out in shock more than pain. As everyone turned to face him, Lister knew what had happened.
"Not him as well!"
Rimmer collapsed as Gemma had and the crew watch, fascinated to see if his reaction would be the same, but scared that they would be the target. Rimmer stood up, looking bemused.
"I can't believe it, I've failed my exam again."
His voice became more like Lister's, his stance more casual. As he spoke, his manner and voice changed the same way Gemma's had.
"There's a surprise. How many times is that?"
"Nine, not that it matters. It must have been your fault."
"My fault? You failed that exam eight times before I even got here!"
"But I've had to train you, show you the ropes, and you've hummed."
"Hummed?"
"Yes Lister, you've hummed. I told you I needed concentration to pass my exam. I told you I needed quiet. But you hummed and sang and played that bloody awful guitar for the entire time I spent revising.
"I'm not listening to this, I'm off down the pub with Petersen."
Rimmer collapsed again, and Lister was too fascinated watching him to think about the next part. Rimmer stood up and tried to strangle Lister.
"Get him off me!" Lister yelled with his little remaining breath.
"At least that proves the memories are connected to whoever gets attacked." Cat tried to be helpful.
"Lister, go to the Drive Room. Cat and I will take Rimmer down to quarantine, it's only two floors down." Kochanski said quickly. She was positive Rimmer was putting up less of a fight than Gemma had.
Lister ran away, and Rimmer instantly calmed down and started looking depressed.
"Oh God, I'll never be an officer. My parents were right, I'm just not good enough, it's not Lister's fault, I'm just not officer material." Rimmer wailed.
"Let's get him down to quarantine, we'll put him in the room next to Gemma's. For some reason he's getting depressed about failing his exams." Kochanski said, more to keep her mind occupied than anything else.
"He's finally realising he's stupid." Cat replied.
When they had left Rimmer in the room, weeping quietly to himself Cat and Kochanski decided to look in on Gemma. She was sitting on the bed in the room, talking to Holly whose face had appeared on the mirror.
"So Kryten sent you to spy on me?" she asked.
"Something like that. You won't try to do me any harm, I'm only a computer." Holly explained, while he was poised on his switch off command to get away if anything got ugly.
"The only person I wanted to kill was Kochanski. I wasn't interested in anyone else." Gemma said. She felt emotionally drained and more exhausted than she could remember ever feeling before.
"Do you remember what happened?" Holly asked.
"Yes. I was six. That was the year before my mother tried to re-sit the entrance exam. When she failed, she started getting grumpy and stopped talking to me. That memory was the start of everything that screwed my life up." Gemma mumbled.
"Do you still want to kill her?"
"If she walked in, I would rip her head off, remove her intestines and use them as a skipping rope." Gemma replied, her voice and expression getting harder and more angry.
"That's a yes then."
"Yes."
"We don't know what caused it yet."
"I don't care any more. I've realised something."
"Being stuck in here and leaving the rest of the crew to fight has its perks?" Holly quipped, trying to lighten the mood.
"All my life I have been able to blame my parents for my miserable life with my father leaving my mother, my mother getting more and more obsessed with finding Red Dwarf. Now I've realised that my misery was not caused by my parents, but their misery was caused by me."
"Still is really. You've opened some can of worms turning up out of the blue and trying to kill your mother."
"Thanks for the support Holly. Just leave me alone. I'm not in the mood to fight with anyone any more. Bugger off." Gemma lay on her bed and turned away from Holly and stared at the wall.
Cat and Kochanski looked at each other, lost in their own thoughts. Cat was wondering where his leg wax had gone, and glad that Gemma had finally flipped so they could get rid of her. Kochanski knew there was a link between the outbursts and the attacks, but exactly how they were connected was impossible to tell so early. She just hoped that they would be able to work out how to reverse the personality change before it affected the entire crew.
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