Author's Notes: Well, after almost a year, I'm back. I always knew VII would be a slog. While I still believe VIII to be the weakest series of Dwarf, holy crap, VII is just boring. This, plus a constant stream of forty hour work weeks, means I've not finished all eight episodes. Still, I've finished the first three, so I'll get started posting those. Enjoy my attempt at a resolution to the Series VI cliffhanger!

Kochanski stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out why she would ever stare at it. As ceilings went, it functioned well enough in keeping the second floor off the first floor, and it held the warning lights adequately, but still, nothing worth looking at.

Then, she remembered how it had almost collapsed on her earlier, and she reflected how rude that was of a ceiling. All those ugly cracks and holes, raining dust down on her and letting the stanchions collapse - simply not right.

An image flashed in her mind - an explosion in the cockpit that sent Rimmer flying out of his seat and onto the floor, dead eyes staring blankly up at her. It jolted her up into a half-sitting position, propped up on her elbows in alarm.

The empty engine room stretched before her, save for the scattered remains of the Time Drive. Burnt metal and twisted circuits lay at her feet in a great mess. Then, to her astonishment, they faded away into thin air, as if they had never been there. She craned her neck to look and saw all the damage had repaired itself. It was almost as if nothing had happened.

Using a nearby crate to help herself get to her feet, Kochanski looked around in the darkness, picking up the bazookoid by its strap as she did so. The engine room looked as it had before the battle, and yet, it looked different somehow. In fact, as her eyes adjusted, it all looked bigger. Much bigger. Swallowing heavily, she made her way back up the corridor, hoping to find the mid-section again.

In the cockpit, Rimmer had a splitting headache. He massaged his temples in a vain attempt to ease the pressure. He felt very uncomfortable, and he soon discovered this was because he was lying on the grilled floor of Starbug's cockpit. Groaning, he cleared the phlegm out of his throat and rolled over, trying to remember how he'd wound up on the floor in the first place.

To his right, he heard a slight groan, and he looked up to find the Cat sprawled across the science desk. The well-dressed feline seemed to suffer from a similar ailment as he pinched the bridge of his nose in pain. In their mutual bleariness, they caught sight of each other in their odd locations and looked questioningly at each other.

"Did we get really drunk last night?" Rimmer asked.

"I hope so," Cat replied. "Otherwise I just slept in a perfectly good suit on this lumpy old console. It'll take ages to iron out these wrinkles!"

A third groan emanated from behind the console, and they both looked to find Kryten slowly clawing his way back upwards into a sitting position. The mech looked just as bad as they did. "Sirs," he said in a hushed voice. "Would you be so kind as to speak in lower tones? It seems as though I'm experiencing an increase of pressure in my cranial circuit boards."

"So are we," said Rimmer, forcing his way onto his feet. "What happened?"

Cat frowned as he slumped into his chair. "I remember… baldness… and a butt you could land an F-16 in…"

Kryten sat up abruptly, then seemed to regret this as he clutched his head again. "Oh, our future selves! The battle!" he groaned. "We must've been killed!"

"That would explain the headaches," said Rimmer, "but why aren't we still dead?"

"Possible that our future selves killing us wiped them out, so we came back to life because they couldn't exist to kill us, so by killing us, they killed themselves!"

Cat rubbed his eyes miserably. "This isn't making my headache go away."

Rimmer looked around the cockpit. "Is it just me, or does this place look different than it did this morning?"

The others looked around as well. Indeed, the cockpit had taken on a new look. Now both front seats had joysticks, the lighting had changed to something warmer, and the whole place looked newer and bigger in ways they couldn't quite put their finger on.

"Curious," remarked Kryten, taking in the new design. "Clearly a side effect of the paradox."

"It's a step up, all right," said Cat, "although anything would've been."

Rimmer frowned as he noticed the empty chair in the room. "Where's Kris?"

Kryten immediately went to his station and typed in a few commands. "Just tracing her light bee, sir." A moment later, he smiled. "Found her! Engine room! Close to where we installed the Time Drive!"

"Then let's get looking for her. Come on."

Rimmer stepped through the hatch into the mid-section, but right away, it looked very different than he'd been expecting. The old scanner table with the green light up screen across it had changed to a sleek silver table with an LED white rectangular light across it. The galley, which had been a separate room before, now stood open to them with more of a futuristic kitchen look to it. The airlock that had once taken up most of the left wall now seemed to open up to a corridor. Hell, now they saw another corridor that stretched past the other side of the galley.

"Damn," said Cat, looking around. "We've been upgraded from a grimy shithole to a sleek and shiny shithole!"

Rimmer looked around. "So… where's the door to the engine room now?"

Kryten pulled out the psi-scan and tapped it a few times. "Locking on to her light bee, sir," he said. "We'll find her."

Kochanski passed through a door and found herself in a massive room that resembled a wind tunnel. Long and curved with vented entrances. She briefly wondered if she was even still on Starbug. The bazookoid dangled limply from her shoulder, but she didn't take much notice of it. The floor interested her right now, what with it being full of water and a thick white mist that she splashed through with each step. She could see the other end, so she simply gently stepped through, trying not to slip on the curved floor.

"Kris? Are you there?"

Kochanski jumped at the voice. Rimmer's voice. Somewhere out there, reverberating off the metal walls. "Rimmer? Where are you?" she called back, trying to see him through the darkness.

"Kris - you need to get out here quickly! We need you!"

Suddenly, Rimmer walked up, but not her Rimmer. He had a gut, a yellow jacket, a cloud of white hair with a bushy grey mustache over his upper lip. "Kris! For heaven's sake, you bloody cow! We need to get going! The Goerings aren't going to wait all day! Find your boyfriend and let's skedaddle!"

Kochanski stared at not-Rimmer and felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. "No…," she gasped. "It can't be!"

But future Rimmer just glared at her. "Look, we're willing to put up with your weird relationship, but not to the point that we miss out on lunch! God knows you're never one to turn away food!" He stabbed her stomach with his long bony finger, but, to her surprise, his finger just passed right through her, like a ghost.

Kochanski frowned. "Oh," she said out loud. "This is just weird, then."

Meanwhile, the real Rimmer looked around the new expansive landing bay with Cat and Kryten. Not particularly large, but still big enough to house a smaller craft.

"This makes zero sense," he complained. "A shuttlecraft with a landing bay?"

Kryten nodded absently. "It certainly adds credence to my theory."

Cat frowned. "You have a theory? Bud, you gotta start saying those things out loud!"

Kryten's theory suggested that the battle with their future selves resulted in the timelines being mixed up a little. Elements from both times had merged into one. Therefore, anomalies from both dimensions had stitched themselves together to cope with the paradox of their future selves killing them. Rimmer actually thought this sounded very intriguing, but the mech waved it off as 'garbled, confusing and less interesting than an in-flight magazine printed by Air Belgium' before hurrying them along. Annoyed at being told how to react to the situation, he followed him further into the ship.

Using the psi-scan, they continued deeper into the bowels of the ship. "Let's see. Her signal's coming from the engine room. Should be just through here."

The engine room should've been pretty straightforward. They'd been back here making repairs often enough. A room full of pipes and gears held together with chewing gum, paper clips and rubber bands clanking and shvitzing, trying to keep the ship from dying in the middle of space.

Kryten pulled open the hatch, and after a short trip down a narrow corridor, they entered an enormous room and took a few seconds to stare up at the enormously rounded ceiling.

Cat let out a whistle. "Damn. This is gonna be a bitch for you to mop later," he said, patting the mech's shoulder.

Kochanski followed the future Rimmer through the cargo bay. Along the way, he blipped in and out of existence a few times, getting progressively younger as they went. Sometimes, one of the others popped up - Kryten in a toupee, Cat with his lack of toupee - but eventually, she found the object of his desire - the future Kochanski. She looked much slimmer than the future self she'd seen in person, although she still had a considerable gut, so obviously, this put the events before her maybe a few years before when they'd met them. She tried to ignore the headache forming behind her eyes and focused on the interactions.

"God, this is mad," future Rimmer grumbled.

"What is?" asked future Kochanski.

"Going back there. To get him. Are we really doing this?!"

The future Kochanski shot him a smug grin. "Nothing you can do about it, Arnie-boy," she replied. "It's written in the stars." She reached into her cleavage - much to the present Kochanski's alarm - and pulled out a familiar polaroid. The photo contained a bearded Lister with her in a wedding dress.

The future Rimmer rolled his eyes. "This is barmier than when we caused the JFK assassination because someone wanted more cottage cheese."

She stuck her tongue out at him before putting the photo back in her cleavage. "Look, it's been five years - more or less - and we can finally go back in time and find him. This is my big chance."

"Sure, sure, sure," the future Rimmer grumbled. "I suppose I owe you that much. Let's get this thing over with."

Future Kochanski smiled and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Good boy," she said. "Now come on. I've got a wedding three million years ago."

They turned and started to walk away down the corridor, only to fade away into nothing before they'd even reached the exit.

Kochanski stared after them, already dreading she would be hearing that conversation in her dreams for years to come. She knew what this could mean, and it made her realize just what the hell was going on. Swallowing, she headed down the corridor in hopes of finding the others.

Rimmer, Cat and Kryten stared out at the flooded cargo bay in shock. It stretched ahead like a giant wind tunnel, clanking and hissing. It didn't look like anything had been sticky-taped together.

"No way am I going out there without my designer galoshes," Cat insisted, eyeing the churning water with disgust.

Kryten tapped the psi-scan. "Just as well, sir. Her signal is moving. I'm detecting her heading back towards the front of the ship now."

They turned and climbed up the ladder towards the main corridor and found themselves back in familiar territory.

"Remind me to make a map of all this nonsense," Rimmer muttered. Then, he looked thoughtful. Designing a map would actually be fun. For him, anyway.

Kryten's psi-scan beeped suddenly. "Oh my."

"What now?" Cat complained.

"I'm picking up Miss Kochanski, but her signal has doubled. There are two signals."

"Oh god, two of her," Rimmer muttered. "If she's multiplying, we're going to be outnumbered. We'll have to get an extra chair in the cockpit, lengthen the scanner table, not to mention the mess they'll make of the bathroom."

Kryten's face contorted in a plastic frown. "Interesting. I'm picking up other life signs as well, but they're faint. Down this way," he said, leading them down a corridor.

After a bit of winding and doubling back through this new maze, they finally zeroed in on the source of the signals. They could hear some very familiar voices wafting up towards them, and they looked at each other with growing apprehension.

"Are we quite sure about this, sirs?"

"Stop your blithering, Kryten. We've checked and double-checked this damn thing too many times now."

"He's right, Krytie. Either it works or it doesn't."

"Yeah, and after all this time we spent trying to find the damn thing, we better try it!"

Cat frowned. "That last one sounded vaguely familiar."

They rounded a corner and found four figures - themselves plus Kochanski - standing in a circle in the middle of the room. Kryten held a small handheld remote - the one they'd used to power the Time Drive - and looked rather uncertain.

"Oh, I understand, sirs. It's just, with all the possibilities, to finally be able to travel through all of time and space…"

"Look, we spent all that time installing the damn faster-than-light drive. We're doing this, if only to avenge my bandaged forefinger."

"Yes, Rimmer, that's exactly what we're all concerned about."

As the conversation continued, Rimmer finally asked the big question. "What the hell is going on?"

Kryten almost opened his mouth to speak, but another voice cut him off.

"It's the future."

They all turned to see Kochanski - their Kochanski - on the opposite side of the room. She walked casually through the apparitions of them like strolling through the mist before stopping in front of them.

"Or rather, it's the future that could've been. The one we aren't going to live. With the destruction of the Time Drive, not only can they not come back in time to kill us, but they can't exist at all now. So we're basically watching that timeline disintegrate in reverse. It'll continue until it makes it to the present."

Cat looked impressed. "How'd you work that out, Officer BB?"

She smiled bitterly. "I caught the whole show trying to find my way back." She hefted the bazookoid in her hands. "Just to recap - you all died, and I destroyed the Time Drive to bring you back."

Kryten beamed. "Oh, well done, ma'am! You've deleted our future selves and saved us all!"

"Yes, no good deed goes unpunished, I suppose," she said, but she smiled as she pulled the mech into a hug.

Rimmer glanced over at the apparition just in time to see their future selves fade away. "Well," he said at last. "I guess we ought to get to work on familiarizing ourselves with the ship's new layout properly."

"I'm down with that," agreed the Cat. "I gotta get to work on making all this new stuff 'mine'."

Kochanski disentangled herself from Kryten. "Yeah, that begs the question - what the hell happened to the ship?"

"I'll explain as we go, ma'am," the mech replied as they set off for the midsection.

Rimmer tossed his clipboard aside and left the mid-section through the giant hatch that used to be the airlock and now opened up to a long winding corridor. He'd never get used to all these changes, but at least the ship didn't feel nearly as cramped anymore. He caught sight of Kochanski leaning over the railing of a nearby gantry, looking at something. Shrugging, he climbed his way up and sidled next to her.

"Well," he said in lieu of an actual greeting, "finished going over everything. Kryten said he'll have the schematics ready by tomorrow."

Kochanski gave a half-smile in lieu of an actual reply and resumed looking at the item in question. Rimmer saw it to be a small rectangular piece of paper.

"What's that?" he asked.

Kochanski swallowed before answering. "It's a photo."

"Of winter in Nova Scotia?"

"Of my wedding."

For a moment, Rimmer frowned in confusion, and then he remembered - years ago, they'd found a photo of Kochanski's wedding to Lister, which apparently had been left there by themselves from the future so they'd know to come and find it, therefore ensuring Rimmer wound up in stasis.

"But it's blank," said Rimmer.

"Yes, it is," Kochanski agreed, her voice as tight as her expression. "Remember how the future you said that in five years, we'd find another way to go back in time?"

"Technically, it's been much longer than that if you include the time spent in stasis."

"Still roughly five years of us being part of the flow of time. Anyway, my theory is that the 'way to come back in time' was the time drive, the remains of which have been flushed into space, thanks to yours truly blowing it up."

Rimmer began to realize. "But if that future can't happen, why are we all still here? We only went back through the stasis leak because of that photo, and it's because I met myself that I wound up in stasis."

"I don't know. Maybe time hasn't caught up with us yet. Or maybe tearing the timelines in a knot just now changed things more than we thought. Perhaps being at the eye of the storm means we still remember the original timeline." She smiled bitterly. "Or maybe the universe just has a sick sense of humor."

Rimmer nodded. "That would explain a lot."

"In any case, it looks like I'm not getting married any time soon." She bit her lip in an effort to stop it trembling.

Seeing this, Rimmer put a hand on her shoulder. "Kris, you did what you had to do. You saved us all - not just from death but from a horrible future. I mean, sure, you'd have got back with Lister, but at what cost? He'd be a brain in a jar, and we'd all be complete monsters. I mean, you saw my outfit. Can you really picture me in canary yellow?"

She chuckled at that. "Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's for the best. Who really wants their future laid out before them like that? Nobody! It totally ruins the end! Future echoes, stasis leaks, time drives - who needs 'em? The future's not ours to see. Ce sera sera." Her voice became increasingly strained as she spoke, and her nonchalant smile became tighter as it struggled to stay together.

Rimmer sighed and pulled her close. "Come here," he said quietly.

Kochanski stood for a moment before curling up in his arms, and she quietly began to weep. She shook with subdued sobs, clutching his waistcoat and burying her face in his chest.

Rimmer eventually felt the tears through his shirt, and he silently marveled at this hard-light technology.

In his quarters later that night, with everyone else gone to bed, Rimmer sat down on his bunk and got undressed for bed. As he got himself comfortable, he took a moment to pull out his diary, but instead of going for his usual ballpoint pen, he simply opened to a single page - one he'd turned to a few times in recent years.

A photograph fell out - the one of the future echo of him holding two baby boys. The image still existed, but it seemed faded in a way it hadn't before. Like, maybe the future they'd seen was now in flux. Maybe it will happen. Maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it would but in a different way. The future really had been changed, and they really had no idea how to get there.

Putting the photo away, he tucked his diary under his bunk again and settled in for the night. Ce sera sera, he thought, and he went to sleep.

Author's Notes: So basically, I learned what I think Rob and Doug learned when writing the series, and that is - never write the future of your characters during the first two series, because you have no idea how long the show will last and how far it will go, and therefore, you have no idea where your characters will actually end up. A pity the guys writing How I Met Your Mother didn't learn that.

Next time: Stoke Me a Clipper