Chapter 6:
"Major Carter, are you saying that we have found a dimension in which the Goa'uld do not exist" asked Teal'c almost excitedly.
"I pretty sure that's what I'm saying" said Carter." I mean, let's look at the facts; Holly has an IQ of 6000, am I right Kryten?"
"Maybe he started with 6000" said Kryten who then lowered his voice and said "but we think he's gone a bit computer senile. We don't think all of his amino-acids are 'left handed' any more, if you catch my drift."
Carter just smiled knowingly.
"But he's still smarter than a human, right" asked Jack; wondering what amino-acids were and what they had to do with the conversation. "He still has all the information in his data-what-sis." He turned, frustrated to his second in command and said "Carter, a little help here please."
Carter smiled at her commanding officer's usual lack of technological knowledge and said "database sir. Anything about Goa'uld's being around, Stargates being found and things like that would still be in there, right."
"That's right" answered Holly. "Even if I couldn't access them, they would still be in my database somewhere."
"Carter, can you hook up to Holly and have a good look" said Jack. "Maybe look at the historical record and see what you can find?"
"It shouldn't be too difficult sir. A lot of what I've seen on board Red Dwarf is similar to our technology."
"I'll come too" said Daniel, who really wasn't getting on with Lister at all. "Maybe I can dig up some archaeological records too."
"Thanks Daniel" said Jack who looked at Carter and wondered why she wasn't getting, stuff, ready. "Go Carter, shoo!"
"Rimmer man, take Kryten and show these guys where the mainframe is, ok" said Dave.
"But I want to stay here with Teal'c and…"
Teal'c stood up and fixed the hologrammatic equivalent of Pee Wee Herman a stare that said 'if you don't leave me alone I'm going to kill you, as would be my right on Chulak.'
Rimmer gulped and nearly ran out of the drive room as Kryten, Carter and Dr Jackson followed.
Author's Note: I just thought you'd like to know that by this stage the Cat, who is still really upset about not being able to get close to Carter, has gotten completely bored with all the smeg going on around him so he jumped up onto a console and went to sleep. Yes; I know the story is about the Cat's best find, but he's bored! Let's face it, and anyone out there who has cats can testify to this, cats have attention spans so short you couldn't even use it to time a three minute egg!
"Now, Dave" said Jack. "While the brainiacs, and Rimmer, give a Holly the once over; can you tell me what happened here and how come you're three million years away from earth?"
Lister told Jack and Teal'c everything he could remember. How he refused to give Frankenstein up to the Captain and then got put in stasis. How he woke up three million years later to find the crew had been wiped out by a nuclear explosion because Rimmer didn't fix the drive plate properly; that the Cat race had evolved on-board and that he was their god; that Rimmer was now a Hologram, brought back by Holly to keep him sane and how his plans to buy a farm on Fiji with Kristine Kochanski was probably never going to happen now..
"Holly brought Rimmer back to keep you sane?" asked Jack.
"Yea, he thought he was doing the right thing by me."
"But why Rimmer;" said Jack like he had just eaten a cigar butt from the bottom of a half-empty, day-old Miller bottle. "I've only known the guy a couple of hours and already I want to shoot him. It took nearly ten years for me to feel the same way about Maybourne."
"Who?" Dave asked and Jack told him a few quick stories about Colonel Harry Maybourne.
"What a bastard" said Lister.
"You said a mouthful buddy" said Jack who asked Dave to continue his story.
He told about finding Kryten, and then Kryten went off on Dave's space bike, and then finding him again, albeit in pieces; about the backwards reality; Dr Hildegard Langstrom and the 'holo-virus;' Rouge Simulants, GELFs, Polymorphs, Psy-Moons, Holly Hops to other dimensions and runaway nannos who eventually rebuilt Red Dwarf using the original plans; and as much as he could of the in-between stuff.
"So you've been to other dimensions?" Jack asked.
"Yep" said Lister.
"So have we, it was really strange" said Jack. "Did you meet yourself or somebody you knew there?"
"I… I… yea sort of."
Jack looked at Lister and wondered what it was that he was hiding. "Throw me a bone here Dave."
"Well, yea; I met up with my other-dimension twin type of person, only…"
"Only?"
"Only she turned out to be a girl and we slept together" said Lister; really, really embarrassed.
"You had relations with… …Yourself David Lister?" Teal'c asked, looking somewhat bemused by this information.
"You had sex with yourself?" Jack said. "Where you any good?"
"Oi! She was a female you know!" Lister said angrily. "And I was drunk so I don't remember what it was like."
"Yea yea, right, so what happened.?"
"I got smeggin' pregnant and had twins."
Silence.
Jack looked at Teal'c and Teal'c looked at Jack and then they both looked at Lister.
"YOU HAD TWINS?" they said in unison."
"Yea, it was bloody agony" said Lister as he remembered just how much.
"I'll bet, let me ask you – why did YOU get pregnant?" Jack asked.
"'Cos we were in their reality, their laws of nature applied; and in their dimension it's the guys have the babies."
"Teal'c" said Jack looking really worried. "The next time we go to another dimension; if I even LOOK at a woman…"
"I will shoot you with a Zat'ni'katel"
"Thank you!"
"Twice!"
Jack looked at his alien friend and knew; he hoped; that he was joking about the second shot.
Teal'c bowed politely at the Colonel then asked Lister another question. "So what became of your children David Lister?"
Lister said "well they grew really quickly in this dimension; they would have been dead within months; so we took them back to their father… I mean mother."
"And do you get to interact with them at all?"
"No, it really bugs me too" said Lister looking all forlorn. "But it's probably for the best; maybe sometime in the future."
Then Jack and Teal'c looked at each other and realised they probably asked way too much about that particular subject.
"So anyway, Dave" said Jack trying to change the subject. "What else can you tell us about?"
"You said you have travelled in time, David Lister" said Teal'C.
"Yea, we have" said Dave. "I didn't like that much – causality is a bitch; especially when we met future versions of ourselves. I was a brain in a jar."
"Nasty" said Jack, wincing.
"We did get to see JFK shoot himself from the grassy knoll but."
"You what?" Jack exclaimed.
"In our reality, well – one of them, I think; John F Kennedy assassinates himself."
"Why?"
"Well, it's because we screwed up Lee Harvey Oswald's attempt; by accidentally knocking him out of the window."
Jack look confused. "But that's a good thing, isn't it, Dave?"
"You had to be there Colonel" said Lister.
Not knowing exactly what they were talking about, Teal'c said "We too have travelled time, we went back to the 1960s"
"Cool" said Lister. "That's when all the best music was written, man; Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Doors, Gerry Bergermeister and the Gravediggers!"
Gerry who?" asked Jack.
"Gerry Bergermeister and the Gravediggers, they were like huge man. They had that hit 'We only spent one night together but it took me a year to cure the rash;" a smeggin' classic!"
"Never heard of them; at least… nah! That must be a difference in our dimensions." Jack said hopefully.
"You missed out man, I'm telling you" said Lister.
"Anything else you'd like to add to your story, Dave" asked Jack.
Lister thought for a moment and then continued. He told of the photos that moved, the inquisitor and the epideme virus; "then there was the time when I found out I was my own dad…"
"You are your own father" asked Teal'c, shocked. "How is this even possible?"
Lister told how they found a dimensional tunnel and met up with another version of the Red Dwarf survivors, only Dave was a hologram and Kristine Kochanski was the last human in her dimension.
Jack looked at him like he was covered in boils or something. "So you're your own father and Kristine, the woman you lusted after for however long it was, is your mother?"
"That about sums it up, yea" said Lister.
"So you and Kris finally…"
"No! It wasn't like that, unfortunately. We mixed our stuff up in a sort of test tube thingy and the baby was sort of grown, in an artificial womb."
"You're test tube baby, literally" said Jack, smiling.
"If you wanna smeggin' put it like that, yea, I guess I am."
"And what became of Kristine Kochanski, David Lister" asked Teal'c.
"Well you see; she was going to come with us but we got attacked by my GELF wife's family, and the smeggin' tunnel got destroyed, sort of like. Kris got thrown back to her side (Hey! It's my fan fic, so we use my version of history; ok?) and I just managed to catch the test tube with me in it before it drifted off into non-space. Then, when I was born we found a way to go back in time and I left myself under a pool table."
"You have GELF wife" asked Teal'c. "What is a GELF?"
"A GELF is a genetically engineered life form."
"Is she cute" Jack asked.
"Well that depends" said Lister. "If you think six foot four woman who looks like a cross between sasquatch and Magilla Gorilla is cute, then…"
"And you married her?"
"We needed an engine part man, we were desperate!"
"I believe you Dave" smiled Jack as he patted Lister on the back.
Dave looked at him like he was a pile of smeg.
"No, really; I believe you."