Chapter 4
Spanners Escapes

In the Medi Bay of the mining ship Red Dwarf, Dave Spanners Lister sat clutching a mug of steaming hot tea with irradiated cows milk, which, among other things, had been salvaged a year or so earlier from the crashed Nova five. All things considered, he was in quite good health except for serious multi dimensional hangover and a bruised left arm. At this particular moment these were the least of his problems.

It's not as though Spanners had never been in the Red Dwarf's medi bay
either. In his first few months working within the corps Spanner's harness
broke and he cracked his spine in three places. His bunkmate Lew Pemberton
really helped him that summer. The summer he walked around like a croquet net. "The same Red Dwarf but different" he situation was the result of getting into a self destructive drinking bout with an old buddy, and somehow waking up three million years from earth. "When Spanners Lister gets drunk," he thought to himself, "he gets drunnnnnnnk!"

His immediate difficulty lie within the current residents of the dilapidated
mining ship. If he was to believe their story and his own eyes, he would have to surmise that his dimension jump was successful. But obtaining his goal had not been. He knew the odds were against him even coming remotely near the dimension his Ace had landed in, but he assumed he would be in a dimension where there was an Ace. An Ace he could help to make up for what he now knows was a mistake.

The theory of dimension parallel jumping, as thrashed out by Ace while the lab boys looked on in astonishment, went something along these lines.
A person traveling via the Dimension Jump Drive would end up in a dimension along the same destiny lines as himself. He would travel to another dimension where a duplicate of himself existed. In this case another Dave Lister.

Spanners had also assumed his destiny lines would run parallel to Iron Balls', and lead him to another Ace. After all, their destiny lines were interwoven. To his surprise seeing another version of himself really hadn't shocked him as much as he had thought it would. The same face, the familiar scouse accent. It was more like he was looking through a time machine.

Seeing a Dave Lister much like he himself while he was still young and drifting around, having a few laughs and playing the field. That was before he married Krissy Kachanski, and had their twin sons, Jim and Bexly. But this Dave Lister he found had taken drifting to a surreal art form. I mean, three million and two years of drifting. Come on, that's got to be some kind of record.
The real shock had been Rimmer. Spanners could never have accounted for this dimensions' Arnold J. Rimmer. Who could?

So Ace didn't exist here.
Spanners didn't know why, but for some reason fortune or blind luck had decided to place him in a dimension where Arnold Rimmer was a neurotic cowardly dead man. How could this be? He left Krissy and his boys because he believed stupid things, out of insecurities he should have of outgrown long ago. This was a nightmare.
Now he was stranded, three million years and a dimension jump from his own solar system.
"Mr. Lister sir, can I get you a fresh tea?" Questioned the mechanoid,
when he finished dressing his wound, bringing Spanners out of the deep thoughts that now consumed him.

"No thank you mate. Oi mech. what's your handle anyway."

"His name is Kryten. Which you would know if you weren't completely
soused when we found you." Rimmer started his own personal introduction.

"I'll have you know we all though you were in real trouble out there matie.
If I'd known it was just one of Lister's other dimensional buddies popping in for a nightcap, I personally would have voted to just let you crash."
This was Ace? How could that be? He was so warped and twisted.
His Adams apple stuck out as if he had tried to swallow hedgehog whole,
and it had gotten permanently lodged there. His hair was short and wiry, his voice a nasal disaster. And for some unaccountable reason Rimmer's left leg jiggled, as though it wants to be some where else.

"What's his problem?" Said Spanners addressing Lister.

"Has he always been this way?" Hoping beyond hope that something
had changed him into this. Maybe his death?

"Yea he's always been a smeg head. At least as long as I've known him."

"Tee, hee hee," sneered Rimmer. "I for one say let's take him and throw him back out into deep space.
In unison the Cat and Dave Lister said "Rimmer for smeg sakes!"

"Oi now about you. OK I believe your story up to a point but Rimmer may
have a something. How about I ask you a direct question and you give me a direct answer."

"Suits me."

"What were you doing drunk with a proto type test drive. Flying in that
semi functional crate. On the level man, what's going on?"

"OK look, fine. Here's how it is. I work with probably the best test pilot
in the Space Corps. He launched in a prototype yesterday. It was tested and gone over with a fine tooth comb by me personally. My friend, he likes to be called Ace, trusted me to make sure his ship was safe." He paused. "I gave him the O.K."

"So then what's the problem". asked the Cat. "He forget his lunch money or something and you had to chase after him with it?"

"I wish it were that simple".

"May haps miladdo, I can guess the scenario. Your pal Ace some rough and tough marine I'll bet. A Space Corps test pilot, there all the same you know. Rough and ready macho guys on the outside, and behind closed doors
they're drinking mint juleps and whipping the house boy. What the
prob. then Spanners?" Rimmer added as much side to Lister's counterpart's nickname as he could. "Missing you master? Humm?"

"No, actually Ace was me best mate, I would have died for him. Ten
times over," he added under his breath. "But I let some stupid idea in my head make me forget that, and I sent him out in a faulty craft. Probably to his death."

"Mr. Lister sir. I don't believe it, not for a moment. True I've only had
the pleasure of meeting you three hours and forty five point four seven three two minutes. And when we did find you, you were drunk and unconscious in a stolen space corps test ship." Kryten's anxiety chip was pinging in the red so he thought he'd veer the course of his current conversation, and get straight to the point.

"I've known Mr. Lister for only a short time, but I can safely say that he is a good and morally motivated individual, and I'm assuming you are too.
Kryten was trying to put a positive spin on things. "I find it hard to believe that you, being in a way Mr. Lister, could do something of that nature."
"Remind me to tell you about it some time Kryten, it may
teach you something about human nature."

"Look I'm really not interested in your teaching this glorified toilet plunger
about human nature or anything else. What I want is a full confession."

"A full what." the Cat questioned.

"A full confession. Clearly, and by his own admission, he not only stole
a Space Corps test ship, but effectively committed sabotage on the other working test craft. Effectively killing the poor bastard whoever it might have been. I say let's put him on the security deck, until we work out what to do with him." Rimmer stood nostrils flared standing over Spanners lookingdown at him contemptuously shaking his head left to right.

"You know I hate to agree with old Trans Am wheel arch nostrils the grease stain's got a point." Added the Cat.

"What to do with me." Spanners thought and his eyebrows jumped at the idea. He said, "Come on then. You know the Score."

"Aye What's that there then." Lister answered, "How do I know the score?"

"Well we're sort of inter dimensional in-laws.

"More like brothers."

"I wouldn't know, I didn't have any."

"Neither would I."

"Don't let this handsome mug and Salisbury Trainee mustache fool
you. I'm Dave Chinzano Bianca, Lister. Through and through."

"Yea. So am I. At least to some point."

"Tell it."

"I told it."
Spanner's looked to Dave Lister who was already looking at him. He
looked into his double's eyes, trying to work out what was going on behind them. When Dave Lister finally spoke his voice was small and tight.

"Yea," he said not looking at Spanners. "Let's take him to the security deck."
With that announcement Dave Spanners Lister jumped into action
and pelted out the door before any of the crew could move