CHAPTER 6

Photo Finish

Dave Lister sat back on the self inflatable travel couch and work station he had the scutters haul up to Navi-Terret 147 which he, for an undetermined amount of time, would be calling home. The work station, was to put it simply, brilliant.
Designed by a very fertile woman back in the 22nd century it adjusted to the contour of the pregnant persons body electronically, giving support to areas which have weakened bones, or give way to areas of the body which are retaining water.

In a thicker than usual square glass the last man alive sucked the last of his Safe scotch and soda, hold the soda. Tilting his glass upward, hoping to get more from his exhausted drink, until finally the ice cubes came clattering down. The second bouncing off of his front tooth. The first barely nicked an incisor, but this was OK. Lister was feeling no pain at this present time and he was working on something. Something important, if only he could remember what it was. Hell if he could only see what it was, that would
be a step in the right direction.

If the said Davie Lister could in fact see, he would be looking at a computer screen featuring a digitalized computer enhancement of the photo, featuring his future self and his future selflings, shortly after birthing them.
Earlier in fact he had the scutters set up most of the equipment, but he hadn't let them load in the photo of his future echo because that was his secret. That's where the clue was, if not the answer.

"It had to be," he thought. Or die on the operating table while a mad skutter played out the Norman Bates version of Thanksgiving on him.
The original plan was to load the photo into the computer simulation dissect photo system and fundamentally pick out each piece of background. Have the computer run a check and determine, to the best of its abilities, what the background object was.
That was the plan.

Unfortunately after manually searching barely on sixteenth of the photo Dave had grown anxious and had to pee. Simultaneously he was in the mood for a vindaloo. Depressing the auto search button, which he had recently discovered, and with the help of his easy preggo chair, patent pending, went to play vindaloo roulette. In this game the loser doesn't end up with a small hole in his head, but in the lining of his stomach.

While Dave took care of some maternal needs, and a few unmaternal ones the computer software scanned the simple instant photo. Meticulously examining every shadow, every color, every possible image down to the barest scanned and fed into the computer system. There it would measure the color, there and not, and cross reference them with the ships data base and all its information.
Dave returned thirty minutes later, in his unusually white terry cloth robe, which was now an unusually vindaloo stained, terry cloth robe.

The printer had provided a blow up of the original, with charts and lines and graphs, listing all the possible things the various colors and shadows could be.
A blue line, the tip of which started at Dave's lengthy right nostril hair, on the blow up hard copy, and lead vertically downward and ended three inches away in the outer column. Listed here were all the items and variables that the lengthy nostril hair could be: The winter coat for the venomous rattle fanged caterpillar of Ioa, A small Norwegian Elk Hound, an undetermined part of the original plan for the Statue of Liberty.

Looking to the right another blue line leads from the silver blanket which encases young Bexly to a listing in red as follows; A part of the original Apollo orbiter, a shiny new fifty pence piece, a stud on Elvis' jacket.
Another line this time black leading from an out of focus shadow, behind Lister in the Medi Bay; Some form of unknown machinery, an unknown plasmic alloy, an unknown monster, the heart and or turtle neck of Jon Paul Sartre.

The print out was covered with so many lines leading from every possible shadow there and not, to an unending list of data leading well over the boarders and obscuring parts of the photo itself. Apparently the auto check had various settings and it was currently set on the most liberal.

Bladder emptied and belly full Lister was ready for the task ahead.
After adjusting the settings on the software and pulling out specific details Lister slowly began to get the feel of the program. Soon he could pick out a detail such as a portion of the rings under his eyes in the photo, hit the right settings and the print out would come up; bruised area of human flesh, dead blood as seen through living tissue, a small wildebeest named Larry. Almost uncanny.

"Zoom in Lower left, Quadrant L7 by 13" said Lister. The machine obeyed and zoomed in on a shadow in the lower left of the photo.
"Zoom again.'

"Give full listing and cross reference with all known plastics, machinery Earth bound and space borne." The same smegging results thought Lister, "unknown, unknown, unknown." That was the problem, knowing the unknown. Or at least the unknown aspect of that piece of machinery.

"I wouldn't mind if once in a while you could happily print out, an Albanian
Washer Machine, or the shine from a holiday villa in the Algance. But no, no matter what the setting, all you give me is unknown."
Then it hit him, that was the problem, it was an unknown. Unknown to the Red Dwarf and its knowledge, which stopped abruptly some time in the mid twenty third century. The plastic's unknown, so it's from some time past my century, my time. A man out of time he mused.

Sucking absently on one of his dreads Lister went over all the events that occurred since he was liberated from stasis. He thought of times when the crew met up with things and places past his century. He fed all this information into the computer.

Dave now knew that to have a successful operation and delivery he would need a device that was currently not on Red Dwarf. A device from his past and his future. Just not his present. While waiting for the computer to finish up Dave finished the last of his safe Bourbon and drifted off into a restless slumber. Ashamed really, if he had remained awake just 9.7 minutes longer he would have had his answer. Now he'd have to wait until morning.
How daunting.

Lister suddenly sat up, back straight eyes wide open, but seeing nothing, and called out in his sleep; "Kryteeeen!"

Then his shoulders slouched and fell back in his bed. Quietly he sobbed; "Kryten, grand mum. Mum. Me mum."
To the last man in the universe the first restful nights sleep in months finally came.

That night Lister dreamt of Kristine Kachanski and Fiji.