Author's Notes: And here we are, the Series V finale - and on the twenty-eighth anniversary of its debut! Obviously, this is the most popular episode in all of time and space, so I hope I did it something resembling justice.

Kochanski had no idea that this would be the last day she spent with Holly for a long time. Had she known, she might have had a long chat with the computer, perhaps about quantum mechanics, navigation systems and tediously dull books. Later on, she'd regret not doing that.

Instead, she sat in her seat in the cockpit, watching Rimmer, Cat and Kryten on the radar as they explored an ocean seeding ship named the SSS Esperanto, and the most casual interaction she had with Holly was the agreement that there were simply too many 's' sounds in that name. It would have to do.

She read off the important details they found to the boys, about how the crew tried to accelerate the evolutionary process and got five million years worth in just three solar years. The boys repaid her info-gathering by showing her a rotting corpse of a suicide victim. They then topped themselves by finding two more suicides, plus a mutant fish thing that - surprise, surprise - also committed suicide.

Then, they found some kind of squid ink on the floor and, heroic lads they are, promptly inhaled it as they waited for the psi-scan to politely inform them it to be a hallucinogenic venom that could induce despair. As they retreated to the airlock in tears, Kochanski reflected that would be the last time she ever did anything helpful for them.

Compounding matters, she and Holly located a great big blob on the scanner scope informing them that the creature responsible for the ink had decided to pay them a visit, diving towards them.

Once back inside, Rimmer and Cat took some mood stabilizers - lithium carbonate - in an effort to calm themselves down.

"This venom," Rimmer said once his emotions calmed down. "Are we safe in here?"

"Considering it got through the hull of that ship, I'm going to go with a big fat 'probably not'," Kochanski replied, still watching the radar with Kryten. "What are our options?"

"Well, there's a lot to choose from," said Holly, "but I'd say legging it for high hell sounds like your best bet."

"I agree," said the Cat as he lowered his oxygen mask. "I ain't about to stick around and find out what the giant squid's intentions are. Nobody's that desperate for affection."

"Motion carries," declared Rimmer as he took the pilot's controls. "Holly, hit the power, and give me manual!"

A moment later, Starbug's thrusters kicked in, and the little green shuttlecraft roared through the briny deep. Kochanski stayed at the radar scope and watched the enormous blob follow their tiny little blip.

"It's gaining!" she announced.

"Change bearing, one zero five," suggested Holly. "There's some natural caverns about three clicks away. It might give us some cover."

"Right, I see them!" Rimmer called as he frantically tried to keep control. "Taking her in!"

The underwater caverns loomed ahead. Just a few more knots, and they'd be safe. Of course, then a large dark shadow fell over them.

"It's right on us!" she shouted.

"Look out!" Cat suddenly shouted.

They barely had time to react before the plexiglas viewscreen suddenly exploded inwards and sent a cascade of water into the cockpit.

Seconds later, Starbug completely lost control and collided with an underwater ridge. The damage being so great caused the engines to erupt, and the entire ship exploded in a horrible white flare that churned the water momentarily, and then, just as suddenly, it went quiet.

Everything went dark.

Then, some strange lights went off, flashing just out of her field of vision.

GAME OVER

SCORE: Four Percent

Kochanski's mind raced. If this was the afterlife, she didn't think much of it so far.

Then, a soothing female voice whispered in her ear. "For the past four years, you have been engaged in the Total Immersion Video Game, Red Dwarf."

Her vision cleared, and she briefly panicked. A large oxygen mask covered her face, and she couldn't seem to move her arms. Her hands and feet felt cold, and she saw the dirty white jumpsuit she wore didn't even cover her feet. She seemed to be in some kind of dentist's chair, gently reclined, with a food bag and a catheter attached to her, but they seemed to be disengaging on their own.

The voice continued. "As with all role-playing adventures you will experience a certain amount of disorientation on leaving the game. It will be several minutes before your real-life memories return. So, in the meantime, please disengage the game-playing machinery and relax until an attendant is free to answer any of your questions."

The mask lifted up and allowed her to regain movement of her limbs, and she felt her muscles ache.

"On behalf of Leisure World International, may we be the first to say, welcome back to reality!" the voice finally finished.

Kochanski blinked her way back into the real world. "Oh, this better not be the next form of death," she moaned, staggering out of the chair. She looked around the grungy grimy room with disgust before momentarily tripping over her bare feet and landing in someone's arms. She looked up and felt a momentary flush of embarrassment of being helped by a complete stranger, only to realize the stranger was Rimmer, albeit with a hairstyle that wouldn't have looked out-of-place in Back to the Future.

Then, she realized something as she pressed against his body. "I'm not a hologram," she said slowly.

Then, Kryten appeared behind them, also wearing a white jumpsuit, with a silver patch on his head, but also with human hands and feet. "I'm half-human!" he exclaimed.

"And what the hell happened to my teeth?!"

They all turned to see the Cat wore an equally-dirty jumpsuit, had a bowl haircut, and possessed the most prominent upper-teeth known to man.

"I can open beer bottles with my overbite!" he complained.

Kochanski swallowed and looked herself over. She didn't seem to look all that different, save for her hair being ginger and curly. "What the hell is going on?" she demanded.

Bang on cue, a door slid open, and in walked an attendant carrying supplies. "All right, lads!" he asked with a mega-thick Burmingham accent. "How you feeling? A bit wonky? Perfectly normal. You'll be as right as rain in twenty minutes. So, if you could just move through into the recuperation lounge, I can get things ready for the next lot."

"Sorry, 'next lot'?" asked Rimmer.

"Yeah, a very popular game is Red Dwarf. It's got a two year waiting list. Only got twenty machines. So! How did you get killed?"

"Some kind of squid," said Kryten, who still looked just as bemused as the rest of them.

The attendant looked surprised. "The Despair Squid?! There's no way that should have killed you! Why didn't you use the laser cannons? It's obvious!"

"Starbug doesn't… er, didn't have a laser cannon capability!"

"You twonk! Use the laser cannons on the crashed… wotsit… Esperanto. That's how you get out of it!"

"How were we supposed to know that, you brummy git?!" Rimmer snapped.

"Esperanto. That's a clue, isn't it? Esperanto - hope. Hope defeats despair. Despair - the Despair Squid. It's a blatant clue, isn't it? Blatant! If you didn't get that you must have been playing like puddings!" He scanned them and pointed at her. "So you were Kochanski, eh, luv?"

She nodded numbly, still sort of reeling. "Yeah," she said quietly, finally letting go of Rimmer. "Bit obvious, I suppose."

The attendant shrugged. "Not always. Plenty of blokes have played Kochanski over the years. She's a popular character. So - did you get Lister?"

She scrunched up her face in confusion. "Was I supposed to?"

He balked at her cluelessness. "Supposed to? That's the objective of the game for Kochanski, you twonk! You get separated to begin with and basically it's a love story across time, space, death, and reality."

Kochanski stared blankly, but her thoughts raced at a hundred miles per hour. She could've had Lister back?

"You must have got the easy stuff, though!" the attendant continued. "Here, what did you think of the Planet of the Nymphomaniacs?"

Rimmer's eyes widened. "The planet of the what?!"

"You missed that as well?! Oh, that's a riot! Some people spend years on that!" He scanned the group again. "So which one was Rimmer?"

Rimmer sheepishly raised his hand. "Me."

The attendant grinned. "Ohh, he's amazing, in't he?"

"Is he? I mean, isn't he? He is!" He paused. "... he is?"

"Oh yeah, the whole backstory is just incredible! I don't know how they came up with that! How long did it take you to suss him out?"

Rimmer floundered for a moment. "I mean… I guess it was a challenge in the beginning, but once I got going, I think it started to come more naturally."

"Oh, so you found the Captain's message right away, then?"

Kochanski frowned. "Captain's message?"

"The one that's hidden in the microdot in the 'i' in Rimmer's swimming certificate. Well, that's the clue, isn't it? Rimmer having a swimming certificate and not being able to swim!"

"Wait, what are you talking about? Of course, I can… er… he can swim!"

"Maybe you can, but he can't!"

"Micro-dot?" asked Kryten.

"He was a hand-picked special agent for the Space Corps. He had his memory erased and was programmed to behave like a complete twonk so no one would suspect he was on a mission to ensure the continuation to restart the human race after he recreates the universe!"

"I what?!" exclaimed Rimmer.

"Yeah, you know the bit where Rimmer jump starts the second big bang with jump leads from Starbug? I mean, that's the final irony, in't it? Rimmer, the ultimate atheist turns out, in fact, to be God!"

"Jump starts the second big bang…?" Rimmer said incredulously.

"Yeah, but not until they clone Kochanski from an old toenail clipping so she and Lister can help restart the human race."

Kochanski crinkled her nose. "Rather glad we didn't get that far," she murmured.

Suddenly, the door behind them opened again, and four new players, all in nice white jumpsuits, came striding in.

"All right, everyone," the attendant said, already handing out the necessary supplies to them. "You're Kochanski, eh, lass?" he asked, guiding a young svelte buxom blonde towards the seat Kochanski had just vacated. "Got the food bag, bio-feedback catheter. It's all there. You can start plugging yourself in. Here, whatever you do don't mix the food line with the catheter, will you? I had some bloke that did that and didn't spot it for two days," he chuckled.

The rest of the new crew proceeded to shove the originals out of the way as they took their seats in the chairs.

"Give us some room here, will ya, chaps?" the attendant scolded.

"Well, where do we go?" protested Kryten. "We don't know who we are - our memories haven't returned yet."

"The Re-cup-er-ation Lounge! I keep telling ya!" the attendant spelled out, shoving them away. "Blimey, no wonder you only scored four percent!" He muttered the word 'twonks' again as the door shut behind them.

Minutes later, they sat on leather sofas in another grimy rundown room. They didn't speak for fifteen minutes.

Finally, Kochanski found her voice. "So…," she murmured. "It was all a lie. Our whole lives. Everything we thought we knew about ourselves…"

"None of us are who we thought we were, ma'am," said Kryten morosely. "This is going to take some getting used to."

"I'm not Rimmer, then?" asked Rimmer.

"No."

"Typical. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of it."

"Well, if we're not who we thought we were, then who the hell are we?!" Cat demanded, still angry to be stuck with this fearsome overbite.

"Whoever we are, we've got enough time to spend four years in a computer game," said Kochanski. "Have we really got so little to live for, we could fritter away a good portion of our lives like that?"

Before any of them could answer, they heard a knock at the door and saw a woman with a white uniform and a clipboard enter. "Is there a Duane Dibbley in here?"

Kochanski looked at her blankly. "Er, maybe? We don't know yet."

The woman nodded in understanding as she went over her papers. "This is definitely the right room. Don't suppose the name Duane Dibbley rings any bells?"

They all sat in silence, but their eyes somehow knew to fall on the Cat, who looked so hapless with his head in his hands and his large white protrudences. He realized they were all looking at him and seemed to experience a sinking feeling.

"No…," he said in dawning horror. "No, no, please, no! I don't want to be Duane Dibbley!"

The nurse grabbed a bag with his photo on the ID tag. "It's you. Here are your party's clothes and possessions. The medical officer will be down in twenty minutes." She departed.

"Duane Dibbley?!" he wailed. "How can I be called Duane Dibbley?!"

Kochanski got up and peered inside the bag. "It's true. It's got your photograph, name, and address on it and everything." She dug through the possessions. "There's an anorak in here!" she almost laughed. "White socks. Nylon shirt. Plastic sandals. Aertex vest. Cardigan! Oh, and a key to the Salvation Army hostel," she concluded, shoving the bag in his direction.

Cat peered inside, horrified. "It doesn't make sense!"

Rimmer smiled and got up to walk around a bit. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid it makes perfect sense…," he said, pausing to lean in real close and cheerfully add, "... Duane!"

Kochanski giggled as he continued to rub it in. It really did make sense. Only someone as pathetic and dorky as Duane Dibbley would give his buck teeth to play someone as cool as the Cat in a computer game.

"So this is really me?!" wailed Duane, picking out his toothbrush in fear. "A no-style gimbo, with teeth the druids could use as a place of worship?!"

Next, they took down Kryten's bag. They quickly found him to be a detective working for Cybernautics in the police department, and his name was Jake Bullet. He was quite chuffed about it until Rimmer pointed out they had no idea what 'Cybernautics' even meant. It could be traffic control for all they knew.

Still, he took it upon himself to pull down the next bag. "Billy Doyle," he read on the ID tag.

Rimmer swallowed with obvious dread. "Guess that's me, then," he said. "Let's get it over with." He walked over and opened the bag, peering warily inside.

Whatever fear he had, it clearly faded as he took in the contents and became bemusement. "Oh…," he said slowly. "Well, this isn't too bad." He pulled out a few items. "I've got a Maserati GranTurismo in the long-term carpark!" he exclaimed.

Kochanski rolled her eyes. "I'm guessing that's a motor vehicle of some kind?"

"Who are you? What do you do?" asked Jake.

Rimmer dug a little more. "Let's see… Full name is William Sebastian Doyle… I work for a company called CGI… Maybe it's in filmmaking." A smirk began to form on his face. "Looks like all I had to do to achieve great things was to stop being Rimmer."

"Good for you," sighed Kochanski, heading over to the last bag. "Right then, let's see who I am."

Billy, Jake and Duane looked on as she pulled open her case. Her expression remained unreadable as she stared inside, but when she pulled out an empty wine bottle, they winced in perfect unison.

"Off to a terrific start," she muttered, setting it aside.

"I mean, it's just one bottle," said Billy helpfully.

Kochanski responded by pulling a few smaller tequila bottles, setting them neatly on the table.

"So…," Jake said awkwardly. "Did you find a name?"

Kochanski dug around a little and found the ID tag. "Alys Jones," she read with a shrug. "Bit dull." She pulled out some raggedy-looking clothes that looked like they had seen better days. Trench coat, paisley blouse, knee-length skirt, sensible shoes, and they all had muted colors. "Really dull," she continued disappointedly. She found a few country western CDs, some burger coupons and an empty coffee mug that smelled like gin and had the logo of some second rate soap opera. "Really dull," she said again.

"Do you have a job? Anything?" asked Billy.

Alys dug some more, finally finding a name tag. "Says I work in a petrol station," she said disbelievingly. "Custodian."

"Anything else?"

She emptied the bag and found a crinkled faded brochure for a university. "Some sort of school," she mused out loud, looking through it. "But it looks ancient. How did I go from some high-end academy to sweeping the gents' at a rundown stop-n-munch?"

"Duane Dibbley…?" Duane murmured, holding up one of his orthopedic shoes.

Unfortunately, much like his situation, it made perfect sense. Alys Jones clearly had a promising start in life, but somewhere along the way, she dropped out, became an alcoholic and settled for a dead end job in the lowest possible setting. Definitely a far cry from Navigation Officer Kristine Kochanski, the ideal career woman who enjoyed opera and learned to speak Japanese.

Despite having no memories yet of who they were, they all decided they needed to get out into the world in order to learn more about themselves. Wherever they were, big flowy overcoats seemed to be the big thing right now as Billy, Jake and even Alys had one. Duane, of course, simply had his nerd-drobe to put on, toting a thermos and a backpack.

Alys walked awkwardly in her clothes. She'd gotten so used to wearing trousers and overalls playing Red Dwarf that she'd rather forgotten what wearing a skirt felt like. Kind of freeing, but kind of chilly, too. She glanced across at Billy as he stepped out of the changing station, now wearing a smart-looking business suit and wide-brimmed fedora. She bit back a giggle as he posed like a runway model before the full-length mirror.

Jake emerged in his suit and coat, putting on his sunglasses. "This is crazy! We can't leave yet! Our memories haven't returned!"

"We've got to find out more about ourselves," said Alys firmly. "I refuse to accept that I'm living this life as an alcoholic who just lets life walk all over me."

"Duane Dibbley!" He still couldn't get over it.

"Right then," said Billy, holding up his car keys and a slip of paper. "Let's dash-a-roonie."

They walked down the long dingy corridors towards the car park. Along the way, Alys spotted some kind of viewer protruding from the wall. Curious, she peered inside, and her heart sank as she saw and heard the new players in the Red Dwarf game as they blazed their way through danger and destruction.

"Krissie, I can't believe you went through all that just to get me back!"

"Dave, I'm sorry I threw you away like that! I promise I'll never leave you again… if you'll have me back."

Alys' heart sank as she watched them kiss. Oh sure, the Lister in the game looked nothing like the one she'd known, but to see at least a version of him proved a mite taxing on her heart. Sighing sadly, she turned and followed the others outside.

As they left the game station and arrived at the car park level, they passed a couple of posters on the wall.

Vote Fascist for a third glorious decade of total law enforcement.

Be a government informer. Betray your family & friends. Fabulous prizes to be won.

"Charming place," muttered Billy, leading them through the cars until he found the parking space numbered on his ticket. He pulled the large grey cover off the top and about fell over.

The car looked like something out of a magazine. Small and red with four seats with a retractable roof and absolutely gorgeous.

"This is your car?" asked Alys, impressed.

Billy double checked the ticket and grinned. "Bay forty-seven!"

They all piled inside, and Billy examined the interior. To his surprise, a small screen sat in the center of the dashboard. Wiping some of the dust off with a handkerchief, he pressed it. It crackled with interference briefly before a digital menu lit up.

"Greetings, Mr Doyle," a posh female voice said pleasantly. "Please state your desired destination."

Billy looked at the others for a moment before shrugging. "Home, please," he said.

"Confirmed," the voice replied. "Taking you to Home."

The car's engine revved, and they all sat back as the car slowly pulled out of the space.

"Oh, that's disappointing," Billy complained. "I was looking forward to actually driving."

"I'm sure you'll deal with it somehow," Alys replied, glancing out the window.

The car took them through the city. They had no idea where they were. Hell, they didn't even know if this was Earth, or if Earth was even real. They felt lucky that the English language existed in this place. They watched buildings in this rundown town. The sidewalks had large zigzagging cracks with weeds spilling out of them. Buildings had smashed windows and wooden planks covering them.

As time went on, they passed through into a nicer neighborhood, with bigger cleaner houses and well-manicured front lawns. The houses got bigger as they went, until they arrived at the center of town with the biggest mansion on the lot.

Billy's mouth fell open as the car took them down the long and winding driveway and came to a perfect parallel park in front of the house.

"You have arrived at your destination, Mr Doyle," said the GPS. "Welcome home."

"I live here?" Billy asked, still staring up in wonderment.

"Working class kid makes good," Alys chuckled. She opened her door and stepped outside.

As the others joined her, they noticed a man in a suit coming down the steps. He looked absolutely stunned at the sight of them.

"Erm, hello," Billy said nervously. "Sorry, I just… is this the right house? We just sort of trusted the GPS."

"Master Doyle, sir!" the man said, sounding extremely relieved. "It's such a relief to see you home at last, sir!"

"Er, thank you… thing," Billy replied, unwillingly forced into a hug with this older man. "Sorry for disappearing like that. Just… playing a video game."

"And who are these with you?"

"Ah yes, these are my… friends… Alys, Jake and… Duane."

"I see. Well, just come right in. Your father is waiting for you."

Billy did a double take. "Sorry, my father?"

"Oh, yes! He'll be very relieved to know you're okay! He's been searching everywhere for you!"

As the butler made his way up the steps, Billy glanced at the others. "I don't believe it. I have a controlling father in this world as well."

"You don't know that yet, sir," Jake assured him. "It could be that you have a loving relationship with the man in this world, full of admiration and mutual respect."

"Do you really believe that?"

"Boy, it's great being able to lie in this world, isn't it?"

The others rolled their eyes and followed the butler into the building.

Once inside, Billy felt his hope slip away. Gargoyles lined the ceiling with two forming the base of the staircase. Weapons that ranged from swords to guns lined the walls. An enormous bear skin rug took up most of the floor.

"Colonel Doyle is in his study, sir," the butler said. "I'll let him know you've arrived."

He walked off into an office not far away.

They stood in awkward silence, not looking at each other, taking in the room. A clock ticked away the seconds noisily in the distance.

Then, they heard a loud angry muffled, "What?!" from behind the office door. An enraged mumbling broke out for another twenty seconds, wherein they all tried to back up towards the exit, when the door opened again and the nervously upbeat butler re-emerged.

"Just go right in, Mr Doyle, sir!" he said, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. "He's positively bursting to see you!"

Billy glanced back at the others. "If I'm not back in ten minutes, come and get me." He made for the door, then saw the butler hidden under the stairs breathing into a paper bag. He looked to the others again. "Make that five."

Slipping through the office door, he almost closed it, but then he saw the room's walls adorned with campaign posters. All of them presented the image of a tall gaunt man with graying hair, pale skin and a very serious expression that could halt a charging brontosaurus at twenty paces. He decided to leave the door slightly ajar.

"Ahem…," he said, entering nervously. "Father?"

"So…," an older male voice that had spent much of its life smoking by the sound of it said, "the prodigal son returns home."

Colonel Doyle slowly turned in his chair, looking every bit as terrifying as his posters.

"And just where have you been for four years?" he demanded, fixing a cold stare on his son.

Billy squirmed uncomfortably. This man reminded him too much of the father he'd had in the game. Not a trace of warmth or wisdom. Just hard anger and an insane glint in his eye.

"I was… playing a video game," he said at last. "Spent four years playing it. Then, I sort of… don't remember who I am."

His father stared at him with an unchanged expression. "Is that so?" he said flatly. He got to his feet. "So you don't remember that I'm your father?"

Billy swallowed. "I'm afraid not, sir," he said.

Col. Doyle walked around the room like a pacing tiger, hands behind his back and taking long stiff strides, staring at the floor. "Then I'll tell you everything. You were, once upon a time, destined to be my sole heir to the throne."

"Throne?"

"Yes. My throne. The one I worked for decades securing. The one I was prepared to have you sit in one day. The one you seemed perfectly fine with sitting in until you started having these blasted 'doubts'."

Billy shifted awkwardly, eyeing the campaign posters warily. "And why would I have had these doubts?"

Col. Doyle gave a bitter chuckle. "Seems you disagreed with my policies. The amount of work I put into my efforts to purge the ballot boxes, to ensure the safehood of our democracy and solidify a better future for everyone."

"Purge the ballot boxes?"

"Well, of course. How else would we keep humanity from falling into the abyss? How else would we keep our iron-clad grip on the human race, ensuring that everything is running smoothly?"

Billy felt something twist in his gut, and the question popped out before he could stop it. "And why you? Why do you get to decide what's best for the human race?"

Col. Doyle stopped pacing. His shoulders twitched. He wiped his eyes. He didn't turn to face Billy, but that didn't stop him from feeling even more intimidated. "Funny…," he said slowly. "That's exactly what you said four damn years ago."

Billy felt the need to turn and bolt for the door, but before he could even think of moving, his father whirled around and aimed a pistol at him, immediately removing the safety. Billy stumbled backwards fearfully, almost bumping into a statue in the process.

"Wait a minute, Colonel - er - father… Dad? Look, whatever's gone down between us, we can discuss it. Reasonably."

"I've tried reason, son," Col. Doyle replied, his voice unnervingly steady. "I've reasoned, bribed, threatened and tortured, but it seems nothing will get through to you. I wanted to keep this in the family, but now, I won't have any family to keep it with!"

He aimed the gun and wrapped his finger around the trigger.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

Col. Doyle turned, a shocked smile on his face and then slumped to the floor. Billy looked back and saw Jake Bullet, a half-man with a weapon aimed right at the spot where the colonel used to be standing. Alys and Duane stood with him in the open door.

"I killed him…," he said, genuinely shocked at his actions.

Alys stared at the body on the floor, swallowing down some bile. "We need to get out of here. Rimm - er - Billy, you drive."

"Yes, ma'am," Billy replied, hurrying out the door alongside them.

After a brisk jog down the length front steps, Alys shoved Duane into the backseat, and then she hooked the still-stunned Jake by the arm and bunged him in as well.

"I killed him!" Jake wailed.

"We know! We were there! In the car!" Alys shouted.

Billy fired up the ignition, and they tore out of the driveway.

The resulting car chase proved quite harrowing, sending them on the run from the fascist police, outrunning rocket launchers, bouncing over speedbumps, and speeding across a raising bridge. However, when they found themselves in the sights of helicopters, they had to ditch the car by the side of the road.

A few minutes later, they huddled in a darkened alley with their only visibility provided by some red neon lights.

The only one not bent over catching their breath was Jake, whose mind continued to reel at what had just transpired.

"I killed him…," he murmured numbly. "I killed a human."

Alys looked up in time to see him put his gun to his own head and pull the trigger. Luckily, it jammed.

"What the hell are you doing?!" she demanded.

"It is fundamental to me never to take a life, no matter what the provocation. I could have stunned him. I killed him. I must terminate myself."

Alys wanted to tell him how stupid that was, but somehow, she couldn't make the words come out. The despair suffocated whatever fighting spirit she had left, and she simply slumped against the brick wall of the burger bar in a haze of horror. This couldn't be happening. All she had in this world was a drinking problem, no career, no future and now the fascist police were after her. She couldn't believe this, but she wanted to be back on Red Dwarf as a hologram again.

She saw the faraway look in Billy's eyes and nudged him. "Are you okay?"

"No," he said quietly. "This is a nightmare. I'm on the run from the fascist police with a murderer, a uni-dropout and a man carrying a thermos. I'm the heir apparent to a company specializing in mass murder, and now my best suit is about to be splattered with an android's brains." He looked to Jake, close to tears. "I'm after you with the gun."

Alys tried to think of something, anything, helpful, but the wretched hopelessness of the situation overwhelmed her. "Yeah, count me in, too," she whimpered.

"Ditto," agreed Duane.

Jake frowned. "But there's only one bullet left."

Duane shrugged. "We could put our heads together and the bullet could go down the line," he suggested.

They all looked at each other, then nodded, too depressed to consider the logic of the plan. They lined up and put their heads together while Jake put the gun to his own head. They braced themselves and waited for the end.

"Did somebody say something?" Jake asked suddenly, looking up.

As last words went, they weren't particularly poignant or introspective, but they remained where they were, waiting for him to finish the job.

"I think… I'm going to put the gun down," Jake said slowly, doing exactly that.

Alys finally opened her eyes and looked up at him. He stared off into space, as if listening to unheard instructions.

"I… think I'm going to walk forward three paces…," he continued, taking three steps forward towards the opposite wall.

"Well! He's cracking up!" remarked Billy.

Jake picked up a fire extinguisher, seemingly unable to control his actions. "I've a strange compulsion to pick up this fire extinguisher and twist the release wheel."

"Have you quite finished being strange?" Billy demanded.

Jake looked over at him, then at the fire extinguisher, and then set it down sheepishly. "I'm sorry, sir, I don't know what came over me."

Hurrying back over, he scooped his gun off the ground and rejoined them, allowing them to put their heads together once more.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Ready," replied Alys sadly.

"You're hallucinating!"

They all jumped at the new voice - the new familiar voice - and almost instantly, the alleyway they stood in vanished, replaced instead by Starbug's cockpit.

"You're hallucinating!" the voice said again.

Blinking away the last bits of the horror, they looked around and saw everything to be normal again. Their hair, their clothes, their forms - they were all back.

"I thought you weren't going to make it! Welcome Back to Reality!" exclaimed Holly.

Alys blinked, and then realized she wasn't Alys. She was Kochanski. "What happened?!"

"You had a group hallucination! Brought on by the ink from the despair squid. You were about to commit suicide, just like the crew of the Esperanto, until the mood-stabilizer saved you."

Rimmer noticed the canister in the cockpit seat. "The lithium carbonate!"

Kochanski breathed heavily as the implications set in. "We really would have killed ourselves?!"

Kryten, naturally, recovered first as he began to figure it out. "Of course! The hallucinations were designed to induce despair! To attack the very things we each consider quintessential to our self-esteem. Take Mr Rimmer: here, he has prided himself in his ability to learn and grow, getting out from the influence of his parents. In that world, not only did his father still control his life, he raised him to be a mass-murdering butcher in a totalitarian state." He gestured towards the Cat. "The Cat lost his cool and life for him no longer had any meaning because he is so mind-meltingly shallow."

Cat grinned. "Right! 'Superficial' is my middle name!"

"And you, ma'am - you pride yourself in your refusal to be anything less than your best self, so, when you believed yourself to be a weak-willed alcoholic who let your future fall apart and left you with nothing, despair. Despair destined to drive you over the edge."

Kochanski regarded him. "And with you, it was taking a human life."

Kryten nodded sadly. "Precisely."

Cat grinned excitedly. "I'm not Duane Dibbley?!"

"No, sir."

Rimmer managed to regain control of his thoughts. "So… what happened to the Despair Squid?"

"I took care of that," grinned Holly. "Limpet mines! There's enough fried Calamari out there to feed the whole of Italy."

Kochanski looked at the computer with newfound appreciation. "Remind me to give you a promotion when we get back," she said. "Come on, boys. Let's go home."

"Here, here," Rimmer said, taking the pilot controls. "Can't believe I'm actually eager to see that old red rustbucket again."

They took Starbug up through the ocean moon, heading for the surface.

It would be a very long time before they actually returned to Red Dwarf, however…

Author's Notes: All right! That's Series V! Hope you all enjoyed! I'm writing Series VI right now, and I hope to have it ready sometime in the fall. In the meantime, let's look forward to 'The Promised Land' and try not to get sick.

Stay healthy, my friends.