Chapter 8:
"It's a fairly long tale, fellows; so I would find a comfortable place to sit if I were you" said Sam.
The Dwarfers didn't argue with the dragon's logic. They found 3 chairs and a box suitable for parking one's rear-ends and all soon sat, waiting with bated breath for the tale.
Once seated, Lister said "OK, Sam. We're all yours, err… figuratively speaking that is."
"I know what you mean, Dave. Now; no questions until my tale is completed, please."
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Sam's Tale – There's not much humour in this first part of the tale as it tells of just how smeggy we were to the dragons.
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Dragons have existed as long a humans but for some weird reason, we were what science called 'out of phase' with the rest of the planet. It wasn't another dimension, merely a paradox of time and space which hadn't been solved up to the time of my being placed in stasis.
So throughout history we were able to exist right under the noses of the humans.
There are, or maybe I should say, were - although I'm not sure how many of us still exist, if any; Dave and I possibly have more in common than he thinks - two kinds of dragons: Meat eaters and vegetarians.
Meat eaters were usually really cranky gits who not only took wild animals for their food; they also ate farmer's animals and occasionally, for a little fun and variation in their menu, the farmers themselves. They cannot breathe fire but their breath was so bad it could stun an elephant. They were on average about 25 percent larger than the other type of dragon, of which I am one of.
We vegetarians were pretty harmless although occasionally one of us may lose our footing and trip, squashing a human; usually after eating certain types of vegetation that had either a narcotic or alcoholic effect on us. We were the good guys, but we could be right naughty sometimes. Occasionally, just for a bit of fun, young vegetarian dragons started fires and got a big laugh out of watching the humans try to put them out and unfortunately, sometimes humans got hurt.
But we were never as bad to you as you were to yourselves.
So up until the twenty-fourth century we pretty much had the run of the planet. We could eat what we wanted, play as hard as we wanted and it never entered our minds that this would ever change.
Then the humans began experimenting with dimensional portals and as far as I know they did eventually get the science right. But before that, all they accomplished was what they called 'phase alignment.'
That's when they found us.
Never, and I mean never, did they ever try to communicate with us or to try to distinguish between the carnivores and vegetarians. They experimented on us from day one; they cut us up and tried to find out why we were out of phase with the rest of Earth. When they couldn't work that out they tried to discover whether or not any part of our bodies were useful in any way; you know, like medicines and the like. But again, they found nothing.
They never found out that we could talk and they never found out that the vegetarians could breathe fire; all they had to do was stop hurting us and we would have helped them. But no; after they discovered we were pretty much useless to them scientifically, they started hunting us for sport and putting us in zoos.
The reason I was in this stasis chamber was that I and my parent; the dragon in the other one, which, as you may have guessed by now, was damaged in the crash and eventually perished; were being transported to the zoo on Charon. We were to be the first of a 10 dragon exhibit, but as you can see, we never made it there.
From what I could discover from the ships computer when we crashed, and I was inadvertently let out of stasis, was that we were somewhere between Neptune and Pluto when we went through a time hole, or in this case, a time and space hole. We were transported smeg knows how many light years and real years away from our solar system.
Afterwards, Red Dwarf III travelled for about two years in the direction they all hoped would be the right one to take them home. Then, as we passed this moon, the tractor beam malfunctioned and it pulled the ship into it. The crew got away, as you will have already found out from the ship's computer, but we were left to perish; along with the technician who caused the malfunction in the first place.
I'm not sure how long it was before my stasis chamber opened but my parent was very much a skeleton by this stage so it must have been a very long time.
I left the message you found on the computer and put myself back into stasis.
And here we are!
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By this time Lister, the Cat and Kryten were sobbing like babies and passing one of the Cat's silk handkerchiefs around.
"That is such a sad story, Mr Sam" said Kryten, oil leaking from his eye sockets.
The Cat was blubbering and cried "those poor dragons, your poor parent, you poor thing, you…"
"That's smeggin' typical though isn't it" said Lister, sniffling like he had just had a volcano-hot vindaloo. "Humans find something different so they cut it up and run smeggin' tests on it, just like they wanted to do with Frankenstein."
"Just think Dave" said Sam. "If they had got their hands on your pet cat, our friend the Cat here would never have existed."
"Yea, that's right! I suppose that's why they made me their god"
"Yawn-a-rama' said Rimmer, his hand over his mouth. "Don't go on about that god thing again Lister. You were just in the right place at the right time. I could have been god, you know; but I never catch the lucky smegging breaks like you do."
"Yea, right Rimmer; I'm the luckiest man in the universe; maybe that's because I'm the only man in the universe. Did you forget about that little detail, dinosaur breath?"
"Please, Mr Lister, Mr Rimmer; a little decorum please. Don't embarrass us in front of Sam" said Kryten.
Same laughed his unusual laugh and said "it's alright, Kryten. If these two didn't argue all the time I would have been very disappointed. It's exactly how I knew they would be."
"Yes, about that Sam, sir. This tale is incomplete, is it not?"
"What do you mean Kryten" asked Lister.
"What are you going on about Captain Condom-Head" said the Cat, still drying his tears.
"Is your smug-git chip stuck on 'smeg-head' again" said Rimmer.
"Err… Well… Yes, that is no… I… I… I…" stammered the ironing android.
"Come-on Kryten, out with it" said Lister.
"Well, sirs, it's just that the tale so far hasn't mentioned how Sam knows about us; about how he knows our names, what we've done and what has happened to us."
"Yea, that's right Sam. How did you know to get the computer to turn that tractor beam on, or leave that message and that note we found in your parent's chamber."
"Or how you knew my nick-name was 'iron-balls" asked Rimmer, smiling.
"Or about the Chicken Marengo and, oh; that reminds me, I'm really hungry" said the Cat.
"You're always smegging hungry" remarked Rimmer.
"Except when he's asleep" said Lister.
"Yes, I know I haven't covered that yet, I just thought we might have a little intermission before I continued" said Sam.
"Intermission's over, you organic gas-match" said Rimmer impatiently. "Get on with it."