Lister's head was killing him. He'd never experienced such a throbbing, unbearable ache. If he had any sort of hindsight, he would have rather eaten his woolly hat than open his eyes. But Lister often lacked any sort of critical thought, so he did open them.

He hissed as the light caused an electric-like jolt in his brain.

After a few dazed moments, he managed to sit up. The room span rapidly for a moment, making him instantly try to recall what kind of havoc he wreaked last night if it had gotten him this hungover. And when he noticed he was sat in the medibay, he had a disturbingly mature thought about how he needed to dial his drinking habits back.

"Welcome back, Dave," said Holly, "Wouldn't move too much if I was you."

She didn't have to tell him twice. His bones felt as if they were wrung no less than twenty times through a steamroller. His muscles were twitching and, god, did he ache. He plopped back down.

"Oh, Christ, Hol, what happened?"

"You passed out, hit with some sort of – as of right now – unidentifiable aura."

Lister craned his head to look up at the monitor, but the glaring sight of her platinum blonde hair caused another jolt of pain and nausea, and he quickly shut his eyes again.

"Urghh…Aura?"

"Yes Dave – aura. That's the only word I can use to describe it. Whatever it was, it's what's been making you and The Cat feel all topsy turvy. And, although I don't exactly know what it was, I have enough conclusive evidence to say it came from the UO."

"The UO…" he groaned, "…Oh! The UO, the UO!"

At that, everything came back to Dave at once.

"The UO, Hol, what was it, where is it?" he asked excitedly, shuffling back up in bed despite the nagging soreness.

"Well, suppose UO isn't a very good term for it considering it has slightly been identified. I suppose we can now call it the HIUO."

"…The HIUO? What?"

"Half Identified Unknown Object. We've identified half of it."

"Okay, what was the half you identified? What was human about it, Hol?"

"Honestly Dave," she sighed, "I don't know where to begin."

It was conclusive enough for Kryten to say that this boy was, indeed, human.

Somewhat. Mostly.

He had been running tests on the poor thing for almost 5 hours now, both with the aim of seeing if he was alright and, well, seeing if he was indeed as human as he was detected to be. Kryten wondered how on earth a boy seemingly no older than twelve could have survived out there in space in…whatever vessel he was in, burning up at such high temperatures, and simply just be unconscious. And, although still incredibly baffled, he had reached some sort of answer.

"Only partially human?" echoed Dave, "What do you mean?"

"Well, I think you better take a look for yourself, sir."

Lister, who wasn't allowed to be in the quarantine bay, watched the monitor in the hall as Kryten spoke over the speaker.

He was a stocky boy. Short, curly black hair, oddly tanned for being someone found hurdling around deep space. But he was indeed human – his DNA matched so closely with standard human DNA that he had to conclude that he was from a similar time period, at least without a three million years difference, from what Lister had been told anyway. But he was also something else.

There was a giant pink gemstone embedded in his stomach. At first, when Rimmer bravely jostled Kryten over to check him, they thought it was some sort of piercing from a culture of humans unknown to them. Perhaps he was even royalty – having that big of a diamond embedded into your stomach seemed to be a display of power rather than a fashion statement. But it didn't take long to figure out that, not only was this rock, whilst, made of carbon, not formed in the typical atomic structure essential to the existence of a diamond, it was also almost alive.

"Well, no, I wouldn't say that it's alive, in the same vein that you and Mr Cat are alive, sir," explained Kryten, "In fact, I would say it's more similar to me, it seems to be some sort of computer, or battery, even."

"In any sense, it seems to be a part of him somehow rather than an accessory," added Holly.

"And whilst the rest of his genetic structure is, indeed, human, the gemstone doesn't seem connected to Earth or the surrounding Solar System in the slightest."

Lister sat down. This was a lot to be taking in on a Saturday night.

"Is he alright?"

"Somehow, yes."

"Okay," said Dave, "So that's a battery for him then?"

"From what I gathered in my files sir, that's the reasonable conclusion we can draw right now, yes."

"Right. In that case then," Dave pointed to the table behind Kryten, "What are the other ones for?"

"I don't believe a word of it," Rimmer stated plainly.

Lister sighed, "What do you mean you don't believe a word of it?"

The hologram, having that glint in his eye, the one he had when he believed with upmost certainty that he was the smartest person in the room, continued, "I mean, think about it, Lister. It's far, far, far, far, far too bizarre."

"Yeah, maybe for us, maybe for people who haven't been around to see the last three million years unfold. Maybe this became the new normal for the human race, you know?"

"You are far too gullible."

Lister took a swig of plain chocolate milkshake. He was tempted to mix some lager into it, but he knew better considering they now had a child aboard. That and he was still on a considerably large dosage of aspirin and thought it would be wise to avoid keeling over just yet. He had gone to the cafeteria to clear his head a bit, followed in pursuit of Rimmer, who avoided going down to the quarantine decks, uneager to deep clean his lightbee for sanitation purposes afterwards. They's been discussing this the entire way down.

"A lot of talk from you Rimmer, considering you saw it when he came out of that sphere thing in person."

"There isn't a doubt in my mind that he's some sort of alien, that much is obvious. But I think it's pulling you on. It can't be human."

"I don't understand the point of trying to claim what he is and what he isn't when soon he can wake up and do that for himself."

Rimmer chuckled grimly, rubbing his hands together as he marched over to gaze out at the expanse of space.

"Yes indeed, Lister. When he wakes up and immediately pulverises you with whatever he was doing before that made you quite literally slump over. How do we know that those other jewels that he had aren't some…I don't know, grim trophy from him extracting the life from people? Just like the polymorph!"

"Rimmer. He's 12."

"Or so he wants you to think."

"Rimmer."

"Craig Space Boy, hurdling through time and matter in his giant pink hamster ball, powered by nothing but a handful of massive rubies and diamonds. Doesn't sound quite probable for me, Lister, but definitely sounds like something you'd keep up to date with in the Blue Peter magazine."

Lister kicked his feet back. It truly was one of the more bizarre things to happen in a while. Perhaps not quite yet up there with him giving birth to twins which were genetically his clones since he did it with a beat-for-beat female version of himself, but he still wouldn't jot this down in his diary so casually. Perhaps it was the lack of explanation, it just happening so totally out of left field, that it left him more perplexed than he should be after all of his time on the Dwarf. Either way, speculating wasn't going to get him anywhere, and he was tired of Rimmer acting as if he somehow knew better than anyone else did.

"We'll find everything out from him. He's got to have come from somewhere, and he probably knows."

"Are you hoping he could lead you back to some sort of human tribe?" Rimmer asked somewhat genuinely.

"Of course I am," Dave sighed, "I mean I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but he is human. And it's not what I expected, but it's still exciting, isn't it?"

"We have no idea how long he's just been out there rolling around. If we weren't in it's way, he would have continued on for lightyears – who's to say he hasn't been doing that already?"

"Who's to say anything? We don't know smeg all. Look, lets just stop speculating every nook and cranny until he wakes up and tells us himself."

Steven had been sitting on the foot of the bed for five minutes. He had largely been vacantly staring down at the floor, a blur of garbled thoughts circling his brain until it became too much to even think about. Instead he studied the pattern of the floor, dissociated.

He had looked around the room when he woke up. He could barely feel his body, which felt as if the life had been pulled out of it and then whacked right back inside of him like he was hit with a bed of needles.

So he just sat and stared at things – the room was nice. He could tell it wasn't gem-made; although it was sterile and a shade of cream that reminded him of the Maheswaran's house, it was warm and catering to human life. But he knew he couldn't have been in a hospital. The window by his bed overlooked the familiar sea of space. So he couldn't guess where he was.

After a while, he decided to look around. He gingerly pushed himself off the bed, but still instantly fell straight over when his legs refused to work. It hurt, but he pushed it off to pull himself back up with this pipe containing a few tubes that went into his arm. Again, another thing he recognised from hospitals, but didn't know what it was. He'd only ever been in one once.

He was very weak. He held tightly onto the pole as he walked. But he knew he had to find the others. And his clothes, which were noticeably gone and replaced with a hospital gown. Those were pretty important too.

The room was dead silent as he shuffled around. It was bare save for an empty table with a futuristic looking jug of water, reminding him that he hadn't drunk anything in a while but also surprising him when he realised he wasn't thirsty at all, or hungry. He then figured out what the arm wires were for.

That was nice of whoever these people were.

When he got to the door, he stood on his tiptoes to look out of the window, leaning against it so he wouldn't collapse over again. There was no handle, only a keypad. He wondered if he should go back and wait for someone to come in or to try and find a way out and look for the gems ASAP – but someone answered that for him.

"I've alerted the service mechanoid to let him know that you're awake. I wouldn't try and get out if I was you. Unless you want to set off the tranquilizing gas."

Steven jumped out of his skin as this disembodied voice. He looked around to see where it had come from and eventually smiled up at a face showing on the monitor.

"Hello," he said, "Didn't see you up there. I'm Steven."

"Holly," they replied bluntly, "Looks like you're doing well considering how we found you."

"Do you know where my friends are, Holly?"

"You boarded this vessel alone. Unless this is rhetorical and you don't have any."

Steven smiled a bit at that, still looking mildly distressed.

"Ha, no, they're gems. Like me," he went to lift up his shirt and show them his gem, but quickly remembered he was wearing nothing but a hospital gown. He blushed and pointed to it through the cloth, "Pearl, Amethyst, Ruby, Sapphire and Peridot. I came here with them. They…got poofed, though. So they'd only be their physical gemstones."

"We have identified five mineral crystals that we found with you which match your description. They have been safely sealed in the lab to undergo possible testing. They haven't been tampered with."

A large tension that Steven was holding in his chest dissipated as he let out a long, relieved exhale. Holly noted that he was much more distressed than his very convincing calmness let on.

"Can I please go and see them?"

"I am sure the rest of the crew will give you permission to do so when they come back to check on you."

"Where am I, Holly?"

"You are aboard the JMC mining ship, Red Dwarf."