CyborgGarfield's Red Dwarf Fan Fiction #1:
Dave and the Dragon.
Three Million years from Earth, the mining ship Red Dwarf.
It's crew:
Dave Lister – The last human being alive.
Arnold Rimmer – A hologram of his dead bunk mate.
An android named Kryten that they picked up in deep space and:
A creature who evolved from the ship's cat.
Message ends…
Additional:
Being so far away from Earth isn't so bad when you realise that you're three million years away from ever being tempted to eat another chicken nugget.
Chapter 1:
Dave Lister, the last human being alive in the entire universe (well, in this particular dimension, anyway), sat on his dead roommate Arnold Rimmer's superfluous bunk in a pair of grotty ship-issue shorts and a curry stained London Jets Zero-G Football Team t-shirt while he chewed the nail off the large toe of his left foot. It was the last toe on today's menu, having just gnawed on the other nine and in his absolute delight he had only made three of them bleed.
"Yes! A new world record! Holly! Holly, are you there?"
Holly is Red Dwarf's AI computer and he has an IQ of 6000. "An IQ of 6000 isn't really a lot" he used to say. "It's the same IQ as 12,000 Hillary Duff fans."
The black vid screen suddenly came on and the image of the greatest lover in the history of the universe appeared in all his glory. "I hope this is important, Dave. I was in the middle of a paradigm changing moment."
"It's not another smeggin' Holly Hop Drive is it?"
"Oh dear, I thought you'd forgotten all about that" said Holly, suddenly going all red in his cheeks.
"Holl, it's really hard to forget meeting a smegging female version of yourself; especially when you've slept with her! Short of another mind enema, I doubt if that particular un-wanted memory will ever leave me."
"Sorry about that, but what was it you wanted, Dave?"
Lister was about to say when he noticed something strange about Holly. Well, something stranger. "Umm… yea, before I tell you; why are you wearing a monocle?"
"Am I?"
"Yea, man you are. Why?"
"Sorry, I thought I took it off. It's so I can read properly, I've got a lazy eye."
"You're a computer! How can you have a lazy eye?"
The monocle disappeared and Holly looked up in deep thought before answering.
"I don't know. Maybe I've got a corrupted file or something."
"I think it might be more than just one smegged-up file, Holly. Man, sometimes I think you're a few Apostles short of an upper room."
"That's an insult that is. I'll have you know I'm a tenth generation AI with an IQ of…."
"6000, yea I know. So what was it you were working on anyway, Holly?"
"Err… …Umm… …it's a work in progress and if I told you I'd have to kill you. Now why did you call me?"
"Oh, yea, I just wanted to tell you…" Dave thought about it for a second then decided not to tell Holly about his record as it only just hit him that it was a pretty stupid thing to get excited about. Especially in the light of his Holly Hop memory.
'Never mind, it wasn't really important. Do you know where the others are?"
Holly rolled his eyes up into the back of his head. "At the moment the Cat's in the drive room looking for mice, Rimmer is…"
"He's looking for mice in the drive room?"
"Yes."
"That smeggin' cat is mental. If I've told him once, I've told him a billion times! There are no smeggin' mice, rats, hamsters or other rodents on the ship!" A thought entered Lister's head and an evil smiled worked its way across his face. "That is, of course, with the huge exception of Rimmer!"
Holly smiled with his usual 'I get it but its not funny' grimace. "Anyway, Rimmer is in the kitchen with one of the skutters making another pointless attempt at cooking and…"
"You're kiddin'? Rimmer's trying to cook again? Smeg! I'm only just now beginning to get my taste buds working again after that so-called Manchurian Chicken he made three weeks ago. You remember, the one everyone thought was couscous."
"Dave, you haven't had working taste buds since you ate that volcano-hot beef vindaloo takeaway you ordered on Earth before you're first tour on Red Dwarf!"
"That was three million years ago, Holly" Lister said sarcastically and smiled that chipmunk smile of his.
Holly's smile disappeared and he said "and Kryten is on downtime."
"Well, I can't blame him really; forty-eight hours straight of Rimmer's Hammond Organ Owner's Club meetings on tape would drain anyone's smeggin' batteries."
"So was there anything else, Dave? Shall I get a skutter to get you some bandaids?"
Dave looked up with a start and looked at Holly with puzzled look on his face. "How do you know I need bandaids, Holly? Here! Were you watching me while…?"
"No, Dave! Of course I wasn't." Holly smiled his award winning smile and said "I videoed your culinary madness and caught up with it while we were talking."
The screen went blank just before Lister could hit Holly with a barrage of swearing so he sat back on his bunk and just sighed. "I'm bored, again!"
Dave drifted off to sleep with visions of Christine Kochanski in a white dress, riding a horse down a drained and reclaimed beach on Fiji. As he slept and his dream became X rated he was suddenly awoken by an extremely loud alarm and Holly shouting "Emergency! There's an emergency going on… …It's still going on!"
Lister sat bolt upright and yelled "what is it Holly?"
"It's an emergency, Dave!"
"Yea, Holl, I get that bit! But what IS the emergency?"
Holly appeared on the screen in his pyjamas and night cap. His eyes were darting from left to right repeatedly like he was trying to look at 10 different things at the same time. "We're caught in a tractor beam, Dave. Our course took us pretty close to a massive moon orbiting a gas giant and then 'wham!' We're being pulled towards the moon like a flounder with a hook in its mouth!"
Lister jumped off the top bunk and started putting on his mostly unwashed clothes, testing, as usual, the condition of his socks and whether they actually bent. "Holly, wake Kryten and tell the other two to meet me in the drive room, Holly, just a quick question, you are actually trying to get us free from this beam thing, aren't you?"
"Gee, let me see! Wow, I didn't think of that, getting us free of the beam. Good idea! Gordon Bennett, Dave; I may have computer senility but I'm not so bad that I don't know to try and escape! Now, leave me alone and let me 'try' some more" he said, mumbling something about wishing he had never let Lister out of stasis when the radiation levels had become safe after Red Dwarf's 'Drive Plate' incident.
Pulling on his cap, Dave Lister moved up and down the corridors and ladders of the humongous mining ship, Red Dwarf, not knowing that he was running towards his destiny. Again!
Dave ran into the drive room at the same time as Rimmer, but 'Old Iron Balls' came in from a different door.
"Lister, what the smegging smeg is going on?"
Dave stopped and looked at the most annoying person he had ever met then his face displayed that same puzzled look that appeared pretty regularly. "Rimmer, I didn't know holograms could sweat?"
"What?" Rimmer said, running around in panic like a chicken without a head.
"You're sweating, man! I didn't know holograms could sweat."
Rimmer stopped running around and began looking for a space to hide. He yelled 'well I didn't know holograms could soil themselves either but I've just disproved that theory!"
Lister turned up his nose and backed up and foot or two. "I really didn't need to know that, smeg for brains!"
It was then they both noticed the cat, curled up in a sort of a ball on top of the navicom.
"Cat?" Dave said, amazed at his friend's ability to sleep during disasters. "What are you doin' man?"
"Don't you hear that smeggin' alarm, you stupid moggy" Rimmer said with his usual sarcasm.
"Yea, of course I do grease-stain, but I'm having my midnight between supper and pre-breakfast nap!"
"We're being pulled into a moon by a smeggin' beam of some sort" Dave said, disturbed by the cat's lack of caring.
"That's no reason to disturb my sleep. Turn that alarm thing off!"
Lister and Rimmer looked at each other and rolled their eyes. "Holly" Dave said. "We know there's an emergency, and look, Kryten's here now, so can you please turn off the alarm?"
"OK Dave."
The annoying klaxon horn stopped bleating and Kryten was still screwing his head back on as he entered the drive room. "Mr Lister, Sir! What's happening?"
"We're being pulled into a moon by some sort of tractor beam, Kryters. Holly, any luck getting away from it?"
"Well, if you call Red Dwarf being pulled down a very large and very deep crater and seconds from hitting the bottom 'getting away', then yes! We are getting away!"
Rimmer was still panicky but had enough sense of reality to say "Holly, you're a complete and utter smeg-head, do you know that?"
Holly just stuck out his tongue and blew Rimmer a raspberry.
"So Holly, how long before we…" was all Lister got out before they felt Red Dwarf touch bottom, firmly and controlled.
"About now, Dave" said Holly.
Dave put his head in his hands and sighed before asking "what are the scanners picking up, Holl?"
"We're on a moon about the size of earth. I detect no life signs down this crater nor did I detect any on the surface"
"What about this smeggin' tractor beam, Holly; can you tell us were it came from?"
"I can tell you that the moon is mostly common old iron with some other insignificant minerals all mixed in and that's about it!"
"No energy signatures, no buildings?"
"Nope, just rock!"
Rimmer was in the process of removing himself from his less-than-realistic hiding place behind a swivel chair when he said "a lot of smegging good you are, you expensive excuse for a photocopier!"
Holly ignored him but Lister asked "so there's nothing here? How did we get here then?"
"That's a good question, Dave; let me know when you find out. Oh, you might try looking in the cave."
"What cave?" Lister asked.
"The one at the bottom of the crater, Dave; I don't know how deep it goes because my scanners can't penetrate the wall of the crater."
"Right, Kryten, get me and the cat space suits. We'll go and find out."
"You heard him Krytie, they'll go outside into a dark, foreboding crater and we'll stay here and watch."
"Actually, Arnold; I want us all to go. Go and get your hard-light hologram light bee."
"But you need someone here, to watch your back and…"
"The last thing I want when I'm going into a smeggin' cave is for you to be watching my back! We're all going and that's it."
"Actually, Dave, you won't need your space suits" said Holly.
"He's lost the plot" Rimmer said. "He thinks he's one of your solid hallucinations!"
Dave ignored Rimmer and asked "Holly, why don't we need space suits?"
'Because there's a breathable atmosphere down here and the outside temperature is the same as in the ship."
"And you don't know why?"
"Haven't a clue."
"So much for an IQ of 6000" Rimmer remarked.
Lister shook the Cat and told him to wake up. He protested and moaned but Dave grabbed him by his ear and dragged him. "Ok, ok! I'm coming!"
Dave let him go and they made their way down to the bowels of the ship.
They stopped at the armoury along the way and Dave said "Let's take bazookoids just in case. Kryten here you go."
"Do you think these are really necessary Mr Lister sir?" said Kryten, looking at his firearm like it had the plague.
"I've got just three words for you Kryten: Psychotic Android Replacement!"
"Yes sir, I remember him only too well, but…"
"Does the word Polymorph ring a bell?"
'Very well sir, I get your point."
"Cheers Kryten, anyway, didn't we modify your pacifist chip so you can be at least some smeggin' use in a stoush?"
"Yes sir, but I still don't like these bazookoid things; they are very loud and…"
"Just aim and shoot Kryten, that's all I ask, ok?"
Kryten nodded nervously as Rimmer turned up in his hard-light form. Lister gave him and the Cat their weapons and they made their way to one of the airlocks located at the bottom of Red Dwarf.
Holly wasn't imagining things when he said that there was a breathable, comfortable atmosphere in the crater; nor was he seeing things when he mentioned the cave. Red Dwarf's external lighting made it possible to see the entrance which was about the width and height of a London double-decker bus.
"Look" said Rimmer in his usual whinny voice. "There's the cave."
"We didn't bring flashlights" said the cat, holding his bazookoid over his shoulder with one hand and trying to check himself out with a mirror he was holding in the other. "I won't be able to see myself in there, let's go back!"
"No need, sirs" said Kryten. "I can use one of my eyes as a torch" as his left eye suddenly spewed forth a very bright beam, illuminating the depths of the cave.
"Right Dwarfers, let's go and see what's down there" said Lister.
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