It was time for the latest cockamamie sci-fi adventure, and thank god, too, because Rimmer's RISK stories were so bloody repetitive.
Kryten had teleported into the sleeping quarters, popping up all around the room before explaining that he'd found a prototype matter paddle in the Science Room. Once they were all inside Starbug's mid-section, they were immediately formulating a plan on how to use it to their advantage.
"It's a device that converts an individual into digital information and then transmits him as light beams to another point in space," Kryten explained.
"So besides saving on shoe leather, what good is it?" Cat asked.
"Exploration," said Holly. "It can take you anywhere. It can home in on atmosphere bearing planets within a radius of five hundred thousand light years. If there are any lifeforms in the local systems this thing will take you straight to 'em."
Rimmer's eyebrows raised in an impressed fashion. "So are there any planets with an atmosphere in range?"
Kryten checked over the paddle's tiny screen with his enhanced vision. "Several according to the paddle's scanners, but the most interesting prospect appears to be two hundred thousand light years away. In the normal course of things it would take Starbug several billion years to reach it."
"So we'll have time for Rimmer's RISK story," Kochanski quipped.
"And time for another Pride and Prejudice book," Rimmer quipped back.
"Traveling subspace via the paddle we would reach it almost instantaneously!" Kryten explained.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Cat objected. "Nobody's rearranging my molecules!"
"It's perfectly safe, sir, but I do suggest that Miss Kochanski and I go on ahead as a scout party."
Kochanski looked up. "Me?"
"Well, if the atmosphere isn't breathable we won't be affected. If it is, we can send the paddle back to pick you up."
"Okay, fine, yes, but I'm a hologram – I can't touch the damn thing!"
"Well, you do have a small physical presence," Holly reminded her. "We just deactivate your image and transport your light bee."
Kochanski opened her mouth to object, but her voice became stuck in her throat as she suddenly faded to black-and-white, and then she just blipped out of existence – save for a small diamond-shaped orb that floated unsteadily in the air before them.
"What's that?" the Cat demanded. "Where's Officer Bud Babe?"
Kryten plucked the floating device out of the air and showed it to them.
"It's Kochanski's light bee," Holly explained. "Buzzes around inside her and projects her three-dimensional image."
"It's a step up from the old hologram projectors," Rimmer added, remembering events from his childhood. "It used to be an external projector. Holograms could only exist as far as they were allowed. Walk too far, and they'd just blip out of existence. Incredibly frustrating if you were in a queue at the post office."
"Now, if all goes well the paddle will rematerialize here. Simply press this green key and you'll be transported down to the planet, a safe distance from us."
"Roger," Rimmer replied.
Kryten pressed down on the paddle, and he zapped out of existence.
Kochanski felt a little strange stuck in her light bee, but after a few moments, she felt the sensation of coming back online, and she looked around to find herself standing in a field. Plenty of green grass, trees, clouds – she almost thought she saw her own breath in the cold before remembering that was impossible as a hologram. It was like being back on Earth.
"What is this place?" she asked.
Kryten was nearby, fiddling with the matter paddle. "I can't pinpoint an exact location," he replied, "but the atmosphere is indeed breathable. I'll return the paddle." He pressed a button, and the paddle buzzed away to collect Rimmer and the Cat.
"So now what?"
"Well, I suggest first we should run, ma'am. Run as fast as the local gravity allows."
"Why?"
"Because of them, ma'am."
Kochanski followed his eye line and was stupefied by what she saw.
It was something that looks like a T-rex with feathers, wings, a bird's head and all the believability of an old Star Trek monster. It reared its head back and roared fiercely, shaking the ground as it stomped. It was so cheap-looking that it seemed to fill the air with film scratches.
Kryten looked back to ask Kochanski for any orders, only to find the space next to him completely empty. "… Ma'am?"
"Run, you idiot!"
The mech turned and saw her running frantically towards the end of the field. Realizing he should take his own advice, he ran after her, listening to the freakish creature screech behind him.
The matter paddle buzzed its way back onto Starbug, so Rimmer and Cat each grasped a paddle, and Rimmer pressed the green button as instructed. The world around them went fuzzy and bright for a few seconds, and then, everything snapped back to normal. It wasn't what they expected.
It was an old-fashioned room with a chandelier and a big Nazi flag on the wall. There was a large table in the room with a fireplace in the background. There were three people in the room. The table is set out as a war planning map. There was something disturbingly familiar about these men.
"This vill be ze final push, mine Komrades. Zair resources are poor zair vill ist veek!" the man with the tiny 'tache was ranting. "Ve can crush zem, Ve can grind zem into zer dirt, Ve can chew up zair bodies and spit zem out as if zey are Sauerkraut!"
Rimmer and Cat stared at Adolf Hitler, momentarily stupefied. Then, the Nazis all turned and saw them, and they all looked momentarily stupefied as well.
Rimmer managed an awkward smile as he tried to hide the fact that he was jabbing the buttons on the paddle frantically. "Sorry, is this not the Steinburg wedding? Terribly sorry! We'll be on our way!"
Hitler snapped out of it and pointed at them. "Intruders! Seize zem!"
Rimmer jabbed another button, and with a buzz, they reappeared on the other side of the room.
"Get us out of here!" Cat wailed.
"Doing my best!" Rimmer snapped. "Just gotta find the right – !"
There was a zap, and they disappeared from the room. The world blurred momentarily, and they found themselves outside the building, beside a row of large windows.
"… button… Right, I think we're safe for now."
"Where the hell are we? Who were those guys?!"
"Well, the shouty angry one with the toothbrush mustache was Hitler," he said. "I think the other two were Goebbels and Goering."
"How'd you know that?"
"I read about them in my copy of Fascist Dictator Weekly."
Cat, for once, actually looked disturbed. "You subscribe to a magazine about fascist dictators?"
"It's just the military history that interests me, not the blatant disregard for human life! Frankly, if not for the outstanding battle plans, Hitler would've just been another squalid little dictator with an undescended testicle!"
There was a squeak just behind them, and they turned to see that Hitler and his aides were glaring at them from the now-open window.
Rimmer cleared his throat. "I meant that in a very friendly way."
"Get zem!" Hitler ordered.
The aides attempted to grab them, but Rimmer jabbed another button, and they zapped away again.
They reappeared about five feet ahead of them.
"Forget the buttons! Just run!" Cat shouted.
Rimmer agreed wholeheartedly and grasped the paddle in his arms, and the two beat cheeks over the field while the Nazis were still climbing out of the window.
"Get zem!" Hitler shouted. "Get zat device!"
Meanwhile, Kochanski and Kryten had found themselves eventually captured by – of all people – Elvis Presley and Pope Gregory. They were marched to an underground bunker, where they ended up in the company of Einstein, Pythagoras, Stan Laurel and Marilyn Monroe.
"Who are these people?" Pythagoras asked. "They are not wax droids."
"Wax droids?" Kochanski asked.
"Of course!" Kryten exclaimed. "This whole place, the entire complex, is a colossal wax droid theme park." He studied the map on Einstein's table. "See Prehistoric World? That must be where we materialized, and on either side Villain World and Hero World."
"But wax droids are programmed to repeat a simple sequence of routines over and over again."
"Well, they must have broken their programming, and now they're running amok."
Stan Laurel simpered in the corner. "You see, we've been left here all alone for millions of years, an…bu…we…"
Pythagoras took over his friend's train of thought. "You see we learned to break our programs."
"And we've been fighting this idiotic, futile war ever since," Einstein finished.
"A war?" Kryten asked.
"Good versus evil, sugar," Marilyn Monroe explained.
"And it's just you lot against them?" Kochanski asked.
"There used to be more, baby," Elvis explained. "All our best warriors are gone, man: John Wayne, Sir Lancelot, Joan of Arc, Nelson, Wellington… Hell, baby, even Doris Day. They've all died in battle, man."
"And we're all that's left," Laurel whimpered. "Just a smattering of intellectuals, pacifists, and celebrities."
"We number less than twenty," said Einstein.
"If only we numbered twenty-one, then at least we could form an equilateral triangle…," mused Pythagoras needlessly.
"Will you shut up already with the triangles?! Everything is triangles, you're driving me crazy!"
Kochanski sighed. "I'm beginning to see the problem," she muttered.
"Well, this is just dreadful," said Kryten. "There must be something we can do."
"Maybe there is… but I'm going to need the matter paddle. I only hope Rimmer and the Cat are somewhere nearby."
Rimmer and the Cat were very far away from the Hero World. They had gotten lost in the woods behind Villain World and were fighting their way through, still trying to figure out the matter paddle.
"Any sign of them?" Rimmer asked.
Cat peered around the trees. "No sign. Not a whiff of them. Weird, though. They didn't smell human."
"They didn't?"
"No, they smelled… kinda like Novelty Condom Head, but… like he was made from a candle…"
Rimmer thought about that for a moment. Then, it finally twigged. "Of course! Wax Droids! They were programmed to look and act like famous personalities from Earth's history, but they were programmed repeat preprogrammed actions and phrases. After all these centuries, they've broken their programming…"
Off in the distance, they heard shouting. Following Cat's superior hearing, they made their way through the brush and found a clearing not too far from the building they'd escaped from. They could see various soldiers marching out in formation.
"Who are those guys?" asked Cat.
"A collection of the most despicable people who dared consider themselves human," Rimmer sneered. "I can see Mussolini, Richard III, Al Capone, and… What the hell? What's James Last doing here?! He must've been brainwashed…"
Cat pointed. "And who's that one? He looks like he was just dragged through a sewer!"
Rimmer followed his finger. "I think that's Donald Trump…"
They watched in silent wonder as the wax droids brought out their prisoner. Their jaws dropped in horror.
It was Winnie the Pooh.
The firing squad lined up. The silly old bear refused the blindfold. They flinched back in shock as he was gunned down.
"Oh god…," Rimmer moaned, feeling sick. "Who's next? Thomas the Tank Engine? I won't stand for it!"
Not wanting to stay and watch the cleanup, they made their way through the woods until they were hidden in the shrubbery alongside the massive building the soldiers were going in and out of.
"What do we do?" Cat asked.
"We need to find Kryten and Kris… But we don't know how to navigate this place. There's got to be someone in this world who can help us."
They heard a voice being cleared above them, and they looked up in surprise to see a familiar bearded-face peering down at them from a barred window. "Good day, good sirs, the name's Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln."
"Of course, you are," Rimmer sighed.
"What's the deal, bud?" asked Cat. "What're you doing in there?"
"The Villain side of Wax World went mad years ago. They captured me during the last battle."
"Battle?"
"The Villains are made up of the most power-mad insane despots to ever exist, and they plan to kill all the droids from Hero World. They want to melt us down, reprogram us and make us into more of them. That's why we're so hopelessly outnumbered."
Rimmer hefted the matter paddle thoughtfully in his hands. "If we get you out of there, can you take us to your side? Something tells me it's a bit less 'shooty' over there."
Lincoln nodded. "If you could free me, sir, I'd be forever in your debt."
"Good to know. Okay, let's see if I can do this…"
Rimmer tapped a few buttons. He had a pretty decent idea which ones would work. He just had to make sure he didn't materialize in the middle of a wall. A button here, another button… Five feet ought to do it. Five feet to the right. Mentally crossing his fingers, he pressed the button.
There was a flash, and Rimmer reappeared five feet to the left, still outside the building. A trifle embarrassed, he pressed another button, and he suddenly appeared in a nearby tree. Startled, he managed to not drop the paddle, and he pressed another button. He reappeared on the roof.
Cat leaned against the prison wall. "Hope you're comfortable, bud. This could take a while."
It was another ten tries before Rimmer finally got it right. He reappeared all over the yard, and he even wound up inside a few times, but only after appearing in the wrong cell, not to mention in Caligula's office. He blipped in and out of existence before finally finding himself in the same room as Lincoln.
"Okay, okay, I never said I was good at this 'rescuing' malarkey," he grumbled. "Grab a paddle and let's get out of here."
Lincoln tentatively took hold of a paddle, not sure whether or not he trusted this gentleman, and Rimmer pressed a button.
Five attempts later, they were finally standing next to the Cat outside the building.
"It won't be long before they realize I'm gone," said Lincoln. "Come on. If we hurry, we can arrive at HQ before sunset!"
It was a long run that took a couple hours, but eventually, Rimmer, Cat and Lincoln were greeted by Jean Paul Sartre and Saint Francis of Assisi, both toting weapons. After confirming that they were indeed on their side, they were allowed entry. They made it down into the bunker where they found a large group of pacifists, intellectuals and celebrities waiting for them.
"Oh, Mr. Rimmer! Cat, sir! You've made it!" Kryten exulted happily.
"Only just," Cat grumbled. "We've seen things no one should have to see."
"Got a good glimpse of Villain World?" Kochanski asked knowingly.
"Trust me. You don't want to know," Rimmer said, holding up a hand. "Wonderful to be among civilized people at last." He noticed Elvis carrying a rifle. "… More or less," he amended.
"Well, while you've been rescuing long lost presidents, Kryten and I have been working out a plan to help these guys."
"And that plan is…?"
"Give Kryten the matter paddle."
Rimmer gratefully handed the device in question over to the mechanoid, who took it and began looking it over.
"Thank you, sir. Just need to make a few adjustments, and then we can begin."
"What's going down?" Cat asked.
While Kryten worked, Kochanski provided the explanation. "We're going to evacuate the Hero World."
"Evacuate?" Rimmer repeated. "Evacuate to where, exactly?"
"To a nearby planet. They don't need oxygen, so it doesn't really matter where. Kryten will teleport them all, three at a time. Once that's done, the rest of us are going to take care of Villain World."
"How do you propose we do that? The Villains are utterly ruthless!"
"I'll say they are," Cat agreed. "I'm going to be having nightmares involving a beloved chubby little cubby with his fluff unstuffed for years."
"That means we're going to have to be ruthless in return," Kochanski replied. "See, we figured out that, since they're wax droids, they can melt."
Rimmer nodded. "Right… Lincoln said they wanted to melt them down to make more of their own kind."
"Exactly. So we're going to melt them instead. We've determined that only the wax will melt. The circuitry and programming are heat-proofed so they can survive the molding process. That means that when the bad guys melt, they can be reprogrammed and rebuilt back into the good guy droids. Hell, they can even create extra good guy droids."
"Solid plan… but how do we go about melting every single one of them?"
"I've thought about that, too."
The next half hour was spent with Kryten taking all the Hero Droids to safety onto a nearby planet. Once that was done, he teleported back and rejoined the others in their plan to defeat the Villain Droids. Armed with a map of the area, and Rimmer and Cat toting some weapons, they made their way through the thick forest that led them to the Villain HQ.
"According to the map, the boiler room is in the Third Reich building," Kryten announced. "The thermostat there controls the whole of Wax World. They'll melt once it hits one hundred degrees."
"Then let's get going," Kochanski said, before looking at Rimmer. "You sure you'll be ready to use that thing?"
Rimmer gave her a look. "Somehow, I don't think I'll be losing any sleep shooting any of these guys."
"Fair point. Come on, team. Move out."
They all snuck down the many levels to the boiler room. Thankfully, they met minimal resistance, and the only ones they had to gun down were Goebbels and someone in a KKK hood. They all snuck down into the boiler room, where Kryten activated the temperature controls. It was a long sweltering wait, but when they emerged, they found nothing but puddles of white wax with different period costumes strewn all over the place.
The Wax War was over.
A few hours later, everyone from Hero World had been teleported back to Wax World, and they were all very excited.
"You have saved our world," said Einstein gratefully. "Now we can start rebuilding those we lost and can finally live in peace."
"On behalf of all the guys and gals living on this planet, a-thank-ya-very-much," said Elvis.
"It was our pleasure, Mr. Presley, sir," Kryten said, shaking the rock star's hand. "We'll be sorry to leave, but at least we know you'll be safe now."
"A pity it had to end as it did," sighed Pythagoras. "But I suppose it really was the only way…"
"They never would've listened to reason," Kochanski reminded him. "They were all a band of bloodthirsty, power-mad, despotic dictators."
Pythagoras blinked. "… Yes, that's what I meant. I was definitely talking about that…"
Einstein groaned. "You're upset because we didn't stop them with those blasted triangles?!"
"I'm sure if we'd kept at it, we'd have found a way!"
"Enough with the triangles!"
Rimmer rolled his eyes. "Well, as charming as this has been, we should be making tracks," he said, holding up the matter paddle. "Everybody ready for transport?"
"I believe so, sir. Just a matter of… Wait. Where's the Cat?"
They all looked around, and then they heard a noise come from the storage room. Rimmer walked over and yanked the door open to find the feline in question in a questionable embrace with the Marilyn Monroe droid.
"Cat, for god's sake!"
Cat sighed dramatically and patted Marilyn's shoulder. "Sorry, baby. Time to go home."
"Stop by anytime, sugar," she replied, kissing his cheek.
Rimmer grabbed Cat by his lapel and dragged him over to the others. They each grabbed a paddle, and Kochanski deactivated her image, allowing Rimmer to put her light bee in his pocket.
As Kryten pressed the buttons on the matter paddle, Cat waved goodbye to Marilyn.
"She's a smegging wax droid!" Rimmer hissed.
"Not my fault she's so damn realistic!"
And they zapped away.
Author's Notes: Okay! And that's the end of Series IV! Hopefully, I'll get along to Series V in the coming months!
Next episode: Holoship