Chapter 12

My Babies are Gone

Back on board the small rouge one Rimmer, Lister and Spanners with Kryten in tow, boarded the mid afternoon shuttle after waiting at the platform for forty minutes. Sitting on the plastic seats behind Lister, Kryten and Spanners fiddled with the black box recovered from the crashed ship.
Spanners was now going at it with his sonic screwdriver. So
far the device was unyielding to either Kryten's or Spanners' touch.
Like a good girl on a date with Joe Octopus Carson, she fended off all
attempts to open up her locked delights. Which made them all the more desirable.

"I'm telling you give it a rest."

"What's that there then?' Spanners answers Lister.

"The box man. We'll get it open soon enough."

"What's eating you?"
Lister was on his feet now, and in the isle.

"What's eating me? Holly calls us back because of a possible intruder
and I left my two sons here alone to go off chasing your dead pal. In the process I've lost one of my ship mates, the Dwarf may have been breached,
and all Holly's monitors are out. And all you can do is fiddle with that stupid
black box. I mean what are you going to find in there that's so important.
What's it carrying?"

The shuttle came to a curve in the bend and the track and the passengers were all shifted eighteen inches to the left, as the lights blinked off for several seconds, then back on for no apparent reason.

"Possible nothing," Spanners answered as the car grinded to a halt.
He rose to meet Lister's stare and not looking down flicked a switch and a lead which fed directly into Kryten's head causing his chest monitor to illuminate. A pixilated almost indistinguishable silhouette and the steadfast but distorted voice of Ace Rimmer filled Kryten's tinny speakers. Which seemed to make the voice an octave or two higher than it should have been.

"Egad what's going on here. I seem to have zigged when I should have zagged and turned in my breathing privileges. I'm not complaining mind you but I seem to have very little but an audio video department." Ace's cheerful personality still in tact.

"And who do I owe my timely resurrection to?" All eyes were on Kryten. Or more correctly Kryten's monitor.

Lister was going to say it, but Rimmer beat him to it. "Who the smeg is that?"

"If I'm correct Mr. Rimmer Sir," answered Kryten, "that is you. Or should I say more precisely, an alternative version of you."

"Me. What do you mean me you jammy goit?"

"He means you were right, it is a version of Rimmer, though I'm not exactly sure it's the Ace from my dimension."

Seated in the Science Room, Rimmer, Kryten and Spanners were still working on the black box which was recovered from Ace's craft The black box was now plugged directly into Holly's data banks.

"What do you mean not from your dimension, who the smeg else could it be."
Lister was absent from the group. When the others headed for the Science Room as directed by Ace, through Kryten's monitor, Lister went the other way.

"Look!" Hollered Lister "I'll join you later if all's OK," as he bolted down the corridor in the direction of the stasis pod which held his future.

"I mean that there are an uncountable number of dimensions out there, right?" Spanners talked as he removed the light bee from it's holding chamber in the charred but otherwise intact black box.

"And if the theory holds, an uncountable amount of Arnold J. Rimmers. And probability dictates that some of them are going to be Aces. The odds that this is the Ace from my dimension are literally billions to one."
Without a glint of uncertainty in his eye, and his gaze never wavering from Rimmer's accusing stare, Spanners questioned; "Ready Kryten?"

"It's just coming now sir."

Spanners eyes were now on the interface controls which connected the black box to Holly's mainframe. Spanners hit a series of buttons which opened up the proper channels of communication, and when he hit the last digit he stopped, looked up, and then around.

Kryten and Rimmer started to look around to, not knowing what they were looking for. Unknown to the bird watching trio, a blue arch of energy slowly began crawling it's way from Holly's interface, via the link to the black box.
The lights in the science lab dimmed, and the trio stopped bird watching and started staring transfixed at the now blue glowing black box.
Spanners impotently punched away at the key board, in an effort to reverse the process.

With that there was an ear pitching whistle, followed by a brilliant flash and ending with a reality-wrenching pop.
Kryten was the first to recover his sight and senses.

"Is everyone all right?"

Spanners and Rimmer were on the floor, expecting the worse.
Ironically it was probably the best. When their collective eyes came back on line they found themselves staring at a pair of gold boots, with a bit of a heal.
Their eyes inched their way past a set of white tightly clad thighs.
past a pair of hips. "Hips?" thought Rimmer.

When finally their eyes reached the top of the flowing blond hair.
There standing above them, in a brown leather flight jacket that seemed
rather bulbous and sported the flight insignia of the Space Corps, stood all six feet two inched tall of Commander Arnie J. Rimmer. Ms.

"Unbelievable holy smeggen hell. You're a woman!" Was all Spanners could
come up with as he climbed to his knees.

Out of breath Lister's boots squeaked down the corridor each step, and consequently each breath took him closer to his goal. His children.
Holly was still out of commission so Lister couldn't get a visual punched up
on the stasis pods. So boots pounding down the corridors of Red Dwarf he went.

"Please let them be all right. Please let them be all right. Please let them be all right," Lister kept repeating over and over. His blood pounded at his temples, and sweat ran down his face.

The blue light of the working stasis pod could be seen from half a corridor away. Lister had been visualizing this as he rounded the last turn and finally stopped. His hands on his thighs, his lungs red hot, greedily sucked in the
stale air of the ship.

Not seeing the blue light started him moving again.
Although this time more slowly. Trying to keep the truth away from his conscience mind as long as possible.

The first clue to the reality of it all, which actually registered in Lister's mind, was the crunching of shattered glass under his left boot.

An unbelieving "No," was the extent of his verbal reaction.
The problem had been that his eyes were fixed on something, something that hung in the space of the shattered stasis booth precisely where his children should have been.

It was a letter in blood red spray paint, a letter that had a crude circle
drawn around it. The letter was an uppercase A.
As in... Ace?