'Warning,' I heard Holly say as I worked on repairing the hull of Starbug 4. 'Warning, Kochanski Teresa, this is a warning.'

'What is it Holly?' I asked, turning off the blowtorch and pulling up my welding mask.

'I've had to seal off the cargo decks and the shuttle bay, there's an emergency,' Holly told me. 'There's a radiation leak.'

'Oh my god,' I said. 'Is everyone okay?'

'It's spreading throughout the main decks of the ship, I've issued a warning,' he said. 'You need to get into Starbug's stasis booth before it's too late.'

'Right,' I nodded sliding out from under Starbug 4 and running into the ship. 'Holy what's going to happen to the rest of the crew?' I asked, jumping into the pod once it came down.

'I'll do everything I can,' he told me and I nodded. 'You'll be safe in here, Teresa, don't worry.'


'Oh bugger,' Holly said.

'What do you mean, oh bugger, Hol?' Lister asked, turning to the monitor, slightly cross.

'I mean I've gone and buggered something up, I have,' he explained.

'What have you buggered up?' Lister demanded.

'We'll I've only gone and forgot about her haven't I?' Holly replied.

'Forgotten about who?' Lister cried.

'Teresa,' Holly replied.

'You mean Sexy Space Lady is alive?' The Cat asked.

'You mean Teresa is in stasis booth two and has been this whole time and you just forgot to wake her up?' Lister asked annoyed.

'No, I'm not a complete idiot,' Holly replied. 'She's in the stasis unit onboard Starbug 4.'

'You left her alone in the shuttle bay for 3 million and 3 years?' Rimmer asked outraged.

'Alright come on,' Lister said. 'We're going down there to wake her up.'

He turned away from the monitor to go down to the lifts to the shuttle bay to find Rimmer had already raced off down the hallway. The Cat followed a few steps in front of Lister, yowling as he moved down the hall.


'Good evening Teresa,' Holly greeted. 'It is now safe to emerge from stasis, welcome back aboard Red Dwarf.'

'What time is it, Holy,' I groaned, jet lagged and confused. 'Where am I?'

'You're onboard Starbug 4, you entered stasis when I sealed off the shuttle bay and the cargo decks to protect you from the radiation leak,' he explained.

'Of course,' I nodded squinting up at the ceiling of the pod. 'What happened, is the crew okay?'

'Most of the crew is dead, wiped out in the radiation. All that is left is Dave Lister who was in stasis during the leak and Frankenstein, his pregnant cat who was safely sealed in the hold,' Holly replied.

'So what happens now Holly?' I asked. 'Where's Lister?'

'I'm here,' I heard Lister say as he stepped into the room with the stasis pod. 'Better let me do the explainin' from here, Hol,' Lister said.

'How long have I been out?' I asked.

'Three million and three years,' Dave explained.

'Three million and three years?!' I replied outraged.

'Well yeah, the radiation had to dissipate before it was safe for anyone to come out,' Lister explained. 'You were only supposed to be in for three million years but Holly sort of forgot.'

'SORT OF FORGOT!' I raged. 'How do you sort of forget about a human you have stashed away in the shuttle bay?'

'Hey, I've been very busy I'll have you know,' Holly replied indignity.

'Anyway,' Lister dragged my attention back to him. 'It's just me, you and the Cat.'

'Frankenstein is still alive?' I asked surprised.

'No,' Lister snorted. 'The Cat, is his name. He evolved from Frankie, like we sort of evolved from monkeys, he evolved from cats over the last three million years, he's human..ish.'

'So it's you, me, a humanoid cat and a geriatric computer with memory problems,' I replied.

'Well sort of,' he replied. 'There's also..'

'Hi Teresa,' Rimmer walked into the room, dressed neatly in his uniform, tie done up to his top button and shirt tucked into his trousers. I looked him up and down and he was exactly the same as I remembered him, except he had a gigantic metal 'H' on his forehead. He was dead.

'Rimmer,' I replied, a little shocked. Probably a little more shocked than I should have been, considering a hologram was the least odd thing about all the news I'd just been receiving. I mean, 3 million years in space, a cat man, my best friend Lister being the only other survivor and the computer just forgot to wake me, a hologram was the most normal part of all this, if you could believe it.

'If you don't mind me asking,' I said. 'Why you?' I asked.

'Holly thought he was the best person to keep me sane,' Lister explained.

'Sane?' My eyebrows shot through my hairline. 'He drove you mental,' I said and then turned to Rimmer, 'no offence.'

'None taken,' he replied. 'Lister drove me mad as well.'

'I mean, why not someone who was actually capable of getting us home, like a science officer or a navigations officer?' I asked.

'We're three million years in space, there's nothing they could do,' Lister replied.

'We don't know that,' I replied. 'Alright then, where's this human cat man?' I asked.

'Yowwwwwww,' I heard a cry from the other room and a guy in a flamboyant suit skated through the room. 'You called for me baby?'

'This is the Cat,' Lister introduced.

'This is the Liberace guy from that fancy dress party, I remember him, you were hanging out with him,' I remembered.

'Actually, that wasn't really me, or it was but it wasn't me from then, it was me from now,' Lister explained, sort of.

'It was a stasis leak,' Rimmer explained. 'We found one on floor 16 and we went back to see if we could save someone. Lister was going back because he thought he was marrying your sister.'

'What's a stasis leak?' I asked.

'It's a rent in the space-time continuum,' Rimmer started to explain. 'It's singularity, a point in the universe where the normal laws of space and time don't apply.'

'The stasis room freezes time, you know, makes time stand still. So whenever you have a leak, it preserves whatever it's leaked into, and it's leaked into part of floor 16,' Lister explained.

'Seems like everything on this ship is leaking,' I muttered. 'Radiation, stasis, what's next, oxygen?'

'Cheer up smeghead,' Lister grinned his signature cheesy grin and wrapped an arm around my shoulder, rubbing his knuckles lightly on my head.

'So what now?' I asked.


'Now unfortunately,' Rimmer warned, delicately, like I was going to hit him with the blowtorch and toolkit I was holding if he said the wrong thing. 'The officer's quarters have been decontaminated but we're still working on B-Deck.'

'So what does that mean?' I asked.

'That your quarters haven't been decontaminated,' he replied.

'No, I know that Rimmer,' I put a hand up to my forehead. 'What does,' I sighed. 'How long until decontamination is finished, and where will I be staying in the meantime?' I asked.

'Oh,' he responded shortly.

'We're looking at three days to maybe a week,' Lister said, coming in, the skutters trailing behind him and carrying a box of personal things he'd most likely picked up from various quarters. 'I've been going through all the safe decks to find some things for you until we can get yours back.'

'Thanks Dave,' I smiled accepting the box from the skutters, 'I really appreciate this,' I told him.

'It's no bother,' he smiled. 'We're stuck together now, I've gotta help you,' he joked.

'How will we cope,' I laughed, taking the box of things down the hall.

'So, I'll be showing you to your temporary quarters,' Rimmer jumped in front of Lister, like a child not getting enough attention from their mother. 'It's just one room down from Lister and I, should you need anything. Anything at all,' he assured.

'Great, thanks Rimmer,' I replied walking inside the room with a single bunk on each wall. I dropped the box down on one of the beds and slumped down on the other.

'Hey Hol,' I asked, staring up at the ceiling.

'What's happening, dude?' He replied.

'How come, if, I went into stasis, a mode where I didn't exist in time or space, frozen, expending no energy,' I said.

'Right,' he nodded. 'I'm with you.'

'Then how come, I'm so tired?' I asked.

'Well,' he paused for a second. 'Either, you were tired when you went into stasis.'

'How don't give me that crap,' I rolled my eyes.

'The stasis pods in the 'bugs aren't as good as the ones on the main deck,' he replied honestly then. 'They can keep you in stasis and freeze time around you like the more advanced booths aboard the Dwarf,' Red Dwarf being more technologically advanced than something, anything, that's a new one. Red Dwarf had peanuts on-board that were more technologically advanced than the mining ship. 'So it takes a bit of energy to not exist and then start existing again.'

'That seems very pseudo, Hol,' I told him, not really believing him but not having much of a choice of other explanations.

'He never knows anything,' Rimmer stater. 'He's supposed to have an IQ of 6000 but he never knows anything.'

'He's been on his own for 3 million years,' I replied. 'It's probably a combination of him having been running for millions of years and being alone. I'll have a look at his systems tomorrow, try and figure out why he forgot me.'

'Again, so sorry for that. So sorry,' Rimmer apologised.

'You didn't forget me, why are you apologising?' I asked running a hand over my face.

'I just don't want you to be angry,' he replied. 'Or feel unimportant,' he said more quietly.

'How did you find me?' I asked.

'We found a stasis leak on floor 16,' he told me.

'I remember,' I replied. 'A conversation we had not 2 hours ago.'

'Well,' he continued. 'We went through it, I tried to save my life, get put in stasis booth 2 and when I asked Holly if it worked he said "Oh bugger," ' Rimmer explained, even doing the voice for Holly.

'Well I'm glad you did I suppose, otherwise no one might ever have found me,' I replied smiling softly. 'So you went back the day of the costume party? The day you thought you'd had another dose of the mushrooms?' I asked.

'Yeah,' he answered. 'It's an uncomfortable thought, knowing I sent myself into trip out city through my own poor attempt at cheating death.'

'It ended up alright though,' I said once I'd finished laughing. 'We're here, we're relatively safe and there's always tomorrow,' I yawned, dropping further back into the pillows.

'You should get some sleep,' Rimmer said.

'Hmmm,' I responded, barely comprehensible.

'Goodnight, Teresa,' he said softly and I muttered something even I didn't know as I tried to say goodbye.


'Goodnight Teresa,' Rimmer said as he left the room, sending one last look Teresa's way.

'Hmmm love you,' she muttered semi-incomprehensibly, words gabled as she pressed her face into the pillow and spoke in a questionable state of consciousness.

"She loves me," he thought and his heart soared, only to be snuffed out and sent spiralling down into the pavement below as he realised, she probably wasn't talking to him. In her half state of delirium, she could have been muttering to anyone. She didn't love him, it was wishful thinking. Bugger.


I couldn't sleep. After some hours of being fully, and dreamlessly, unconscious and then waking up only to be dreadfully tired and unable to get back to sleep. I tossed and turned throughout the night and sat up with a sigh. My hopes of a good night's rest were toast. I was alone in the universe, more or less. The dark, white flecked void of nothingness and my only companions were a half senile, geriatric, computer, a mutant feline, a cluster of light that was once a human being and my sister's ex boyfriend. Lovely.

I put the heels of my hands to my eyes and rested my head in my hands, sighing and trying to take it all in. I was grateful, I suppose, to have been spared from the pain of a radiation leak, of the coursing heat and chemical reaction that eradicated cells and turned you into white powder. I was grateful I suppose, to be spared from death. But at what cost?

I stood up, at some point in my sleep I'd kicked off my trousers and boots, so I was left padding through the room in my black socks and underwear, oily, sweaty, 3 million year old tank top still covering my chest. I walked over to the door in the dark and opened my mouth to speak. All that came out was a croak. I cleared my throat and very quietly asked Holly to turn the corridor lights off and then I opened the door. I walked through to Lister and Rimmer's quarters, contemplating knocking on the door, but, if they were asleep, I didn't want to wake them. I pressed the door release and discovered they'd left it unlocked. I shuffled through the dark room, and over to Lister's bunk. The telltale, chainsaw snores echoed throughout the room, and how Rimmer managed to sleep, I couldn't explain.

'Lister,' I whispered, poking the sleeping gentleman, dark figure awkwardly looming beside him.

'Hmmm,' he hummed, semi-conscious.

'Lister,' I shook him slightly.

'Hmmm, what?' He jerked awake and then he softened when his eyes adjusted to the dark and saw me. 'What's the matter?' He groaned.

'I uh, I guess I couldn't sleep,' I answered.

'What's bothering yeh?' He mumbled, bringing a hand to his face.

'How'd you cope?' I asked and he sighed, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of his bunk, patting the mattress beside him and motionioning for me to come up and join him.

'Cope with what?' He asked as I hopped up beside him.

'With this,' I gestured in the dark at the room around us. 'We're three million years away from earth, everyone we knew, everyone we've ever loved they're all gone. They're dead. Everything we ever wanted to do, every hope, every dream, every ambition, that's dead too.'

'Hmm,' he hummed in agreement. 'I didn't for a long time,' he started. 'I went down the disco, got dressed in my Hawaiian shirt and sat there, completely alone and yelling at what used to be there. I sat thinking about all that, what you said. Peterson, Chen, Selby my mates they were all dead. Krissy, she was dead, I was gonna get her back, and I never got the chance. Everyone was gone and I was miserable. I drank, I drank myself stupid. I sulked, I whinged, I moaned.'

'Then what?' I asked.

'I got over it,' he replied with a shrug. 'We've turned the ship around now, we're going back to earth. I don't care what's left, we're going back and I'm going to Fiji, whatever's left of it. I'm gonna have a farm with a sheep and a cow and three horses.'

'Your five year plan,' I whispered.

'Exactly,' he grinned. 'Krissy mightn't come now, but I've got you, me best mate and I've got the cat. Okay it's not Frankenstein but he's still a cat. And maybe we can get a tv screen for Holly and a projector or something for Rimmer.'

'Maybe,' I nodded. 'I just,' I sighed. 'This wasn't where I saw my life going. I was gonna get a house, a shitty, movie magic, typical, ordinary smegging house in the middle of suburbia with obnoxious neighbours and I was gonna have children. I would have gotten married, I'd have found someone who wasn't a total smeghead and we would've had kids and I'd have raised them and worked on building stuff in the garage. I could have helped them with their homework, in every class. And when they were older, I'd have gone into teaching, I'd work at the academy or something and I'd educate the next generation of space explorers or something. This wasn't what I saw for myself, being stuck in outer space with nothing.'

'I know kid,' he nodded, listening to every word. 'This smeggin sucks.'


Rimmer lay awake in bed, jolted awake by the sudden quietness, the chainsaw snores he'd become accustomed to no longer ringing throughout the room. He could hear voices, two of them. Lister and Teresa were talking. He listened, hands clasped over his chest as he lay back on the pillows. He listened to her, to everything she wanted for herself. And he thought about what he wanted too, eventually. What she'd imagined, it was nice. Better than Lister's idea for a farm on what was left on Fiji.

He thought, that, after he passed his astro navigations exam and became an officer, after he'd soared the ranks and been made Captain of his very own ship. After he'd gotten himself a girlfriend who loved sex and was always trying to have it with him. After he'd had lots and lots of sex, that maybe it would be nice, to settle down with a big, family house somewhere. A little wife for his children who could help them with their homework.

Rimmer thought about Teresa's life plan and how much he would have loved to have been the one to live it with her.

"Bugger," he thought. She might not love him, but he just might love her. "Bugger," he was dead, wasn't he? "Bugger."