Sunrise over the tango factory: Hey y'all! This chapter would have been up last night but fan fic was playing up for me...so here we are. Enjoy! Cheers to all how've reviewed!
It was the pain that woke him up.
A dull, grinding ache at the very back of his skull, he could taste the pain in his mouth, making him grimace.
Also, something was pressing hard against his chest, he tried to raise his arms to push whatever it was off, only to discover he was pinned helplessly to the floor.
The somewhat fuzzy memories of what had happened formed in his mind.
He remembered the chase...he remembered the dart in his leg…and he remembered seeing the ceiling before he slipped into unconsciousness.
Lister forced his eyes open, blinked til his vision became clearer, and jumped slightly as he saw someone staring down at him.
A woman.
She was kneeling over him, her hands driving him into the floor.
Even at that precise moment in time, Lister noted how incredibly pretty she was.
Her ivory coloured skin seemed to shine in the light. Her hair was dyed a silvery grey and cut very close to her head except for her fringe, that hung low across her right eye making her look like a lioness peering through the savannah grass, sizing up her pray.
Her eyes travelled up and down his body, as if taking everything in before she stared him straight in the eye, her lips twitched into what could only be described as a minute smile and she raised her eyebrows slightly as if to say 'well, what have we here?'
Lister did what any normal, red-blooded male would do in that situation.
Flirt.
He smiled charmingly, "Hi, I'm Lister" he extended his hand.
The woman took his offered hand but did not shake it, instead yanked Lister to his feet with considerable force before twisting his arm behind his back and marching him off down the corridor.
Lister attempted to make conversation but it proved pointless, he received nothing back. It was like trying to talk to Rimmer whilst he was in a sulk, so the pair walked in complete silence for a few minutes.
"Listen, could you ease up a little?" asked Lister; trying not to wince at the sharp pain in his shoulder. This woman was strong, really strong and he was pretty sure if she carried on like this, she'd surely break his arm.
The woman gave him a nudge in the back with her free arm but loosened her grip nonetheless.
Lister was then led down a set of stairs, which led to a large, crudely built but sturdy jail that was spread across the whole of the room.
Before he could ask what was happening, he was pushed through the cell door and locked in.
He'd perhaps only been stood there half a second, when he was suddenly grabbed by the waist,
"MR LISTER!" shrieked Kryten, holding onto Lister so tight he was being lifted off the floor "YOU'RE ALIVE!"
"Krytes" he managed to breathe.
The mechanoid immediately let go "Are you okay sir?" he asked worriedly, "you're not hurt or anything are you? Feverish, temporary loss of vision, are you hearing voices?"
"Apart from yours no…I'm fine, man. Honest!" reassured Lister, walking about the cell, taking it all in.
"Are you sure sir, you do appear to be limping…"
Lister looked down at his leg, which was still tingling, "It's nothing" he dismissed, not really in the mood for Kryten's fussing "The girl who was chasing me fired a tranquilliser dart at my leg …it's still not wore off yet"
From the shadows there came a braying, obnoxious laugh that made Lister groan.
"Hello Rimmer…"
The hologram emerged from the darkness; a wide, slightly manic grin plastered on his face "You got caught by a girl! You're really just a little wimp aren't you Listy?"
Lister rolled his eyes and walked past him,
"It took 5 men to take me on and even then I didn't come quietly, they had a real struggle on their hands with me!" Rimmer announced smugly, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
"Are you absolutely certain that's what happened, sir?" said Krtyen "as I recall when me, you and the Cat were caught, you threw yourself at the leaders feet, begged for them to spare your life in exchange for ours and we all had to wait for 20 minutes whilst you curled up into a ball and cried like a 5 year old…."
Rimmer's face transformed itself into a sneer, "You always have to ruin it don't you" he said snidely,
It was then that Cat spoke. Up until that point he'd been in an untameable panic, he'd searched the entire cell from top to bottom…but he couldn't find a single wardrobe.
He'd been forced to lie quietly on one of the bunks whilst he tried to come to terms with the shock.
"What are those things?" he asked "They look human but there sure don't smell human…"
Kryten look towards him "whilst we were running for our lives, I did a quick search of my databanks, and I've found all about these…well lets call them people."
"What d'you by that?" asked Rimmer, a hint of panic in his voice,
"Lets start at the beginning" said Kryten "with the concept of designer babies…"
The Cat smiled toothily "sounds like me in my infancy"
Kryten waved Cat's comment aside "It started off being used for medical uses. If a child was suffering from a threatening genetic disease, the parents could have another child with a specific blood type or the right type of tissues that could help it's sibling. Scientist had the power to 'switch off' bits of DNA or, just as easily, replace sections so that a baby could be born with the specific blood type or whatever. Of course, this practise was later abused. Rich couples wanted to choose the every aspect of their child, from it's sex to it's hair colour, eye colour, IQ, even it's sporting ability…"
"So it could the perfect child?" questioned Rimmer "So that's why John, Frank and Howard were all so bloody flawless…my parents must have chosen their every characteristic"
The Cat sneered, "I guess they were having a bad day when they chose yours!"
"Sirs" interrupted Kryten, as Rimmer opened his mouth to argue, "Can I please continue?"
Cat and Rimmer nodded, and allowed Kryten to speak "This was fine for a while, scientists were making a tidy sum for creating rich couples 'dream child' but they soon grew bored of it. There's only so long that creating blonde haired, blue-eyed children can be entertaining. It was then that they started to talk about building a human from scratch in a laboratory. They would not only design every aspect of their physical appearance but also their personality. Obviously there was uproar, human rights protesters claimed it was 'playing God' and the government forbid it…"
"I'm following you so far," said Rimmer "but how does all that link into them…"
"I'm getting there sir! You need to know the background information before you can truly understand…where was I? Oh yes, the government forbid them from carrying it out, so the scientists simply went away and did it in secret, with funding from the Russian Mafia…It was a long and difficult process, there were many failures and it took 34 years for them to produce the first human free without any defects…."
"What did they do then?" asked the Cat "have a party? Go home to their wives?"
Kryten smiled "they went to the government with their creations,"
"I thought these people were meant to be smart!" snapped Rimmer "It's the equivalent of stealing a jar of sweets from a sweet shop then going in and showing the shopkeeper what you've just done…I mean, the governments not going to be too happy that the scientists did it anyway behind their backs!"
"Ah, the scientists had already thought about that. They'd designed and built something that the government would be crazy to turn down…"
"A truthful politician?"
"Nope…but I can see how that would be useful…they'd designed the 'ultimate warrior'…remember the Polymorph?"
"Only too well" hissed the Cat, shuddering at the thought,
"These people are the early forms of war G.E.L.F's, designed to be stronger and quicker than humans. They were built to capture prisoners of war…the government were delighted…they finally now had an army that needed little R and R, could withstand fatal injuries and followed orders first time with no objections…and the scientists were happy because they could stop waking up to find a horses head in their bed!"
"So how come there's a bunch of them flying around in deep space?" asked Rimmer
"They no longer had a purpose" said Kryten "as wars got more violent these G.E.L.F's proved too gentle…armies wanted things to kill their enemies rather then capture them…so the G.E.L.F's were used less and less, some died from old age, but the rest couldn't be killed as it would technically be classed as murder, so the ones that were left were shot into space…"
"Shot into space" repeated Rimmer, dumbstruck
Kryten nodded "it's the equivalent of a flooded quarry on a much larger scale…the chances of someone finding them was miniscule…"
"But how've they survived all this time…" queried the Cat, "Okay, my maths aint that good but I know it's been a very very very long time"
"They were built with the ability to breed…cloning and building a human from scratch took money and time, so it was far easier and simpler to let them breed naturally…this also meant mutations could occur that would be of an advantage, such as being a faster runner…"
"Will they kill us?" asked Rimmer after a moment of silence.
"Most probably not, sir" reassured Kryten
Rimmer nodded and walked over to the bunks before he paused and spun round "WHAT D'YOU MEAN 'MOST PROBABLY NOT'?"
His question went unanswered when the door at the top of the flight of steps was thrown open and someone began to walk slowly and menacingly down the sta