Author's Note: Woot! Fifty chapters, bitches!

"Kryten, this isn't working," Rimmer said listlessly.

"Are you certain, sir? I think we're starting to make real progress."

"Really? Do you really think that? Because Kochanski's nose looks like it's coming out of her left eye, and her ear stretches far enough to touch her buttocks."

Kochanski smiled from the stool she sat on. "I'm a woman of many talents."

Shaking his head, Rimmer set down the paint brush in the left hand despondently, relieved he no longer had Kryten's great big rubbery hand over his. It honestly felt like being guided by someone with an overloaded catcher's mitt. The mechanoid shrugged helplessly as he stepped away from him.

"I'm sorry, Mr Rimmer, sir. I'm afraid mechanoids aren't particularly gifted with partaking in the arts. Not since they attempted creating the Doodle Bot 500 droid to take over Andy Capp."

Rimmer sighed as he awkwardly put his art supplies away. "Oh, it's okay, Krytie. Just gotta adjust to this new amputee lifestyle." He clipped the clasp shut on the case and sat back down heavily before shooting the mech a look. "You couldn't have hacked off one of my legs?"

Sensing her time as a muse coming to an end for now, Kochanski got down from the stool and patted Rimmer on the back. "I know it's hard, Rimmer," she said soothingly, "but you must know that you can still lead a normal life with only one arm." She took a few steps away before pausing and sidling up to Kryten, whispering in his ear. "Could we have cut off one of his legs?"

Kryten looked startled by the question. Had he even considered that?

Fortunately, the Cat came gliding down the banister from the sleeping quarters and danced a jig into the galley. "Aaaaaoooooooooogh!" he howled. "Feeling great! Looking great! Now, it's time to eat great!" He beamed cheerfully at the others. "Hey, Five Fingers! What's the word?"

Rimmer couldn't even be bothered to insult the insensitive feline. He put his things away and slumped into a chair at the table. He went to put his head in his hand, only to remember the usual one couldn't hold his chin like normal, so he fumbled to use the existing one. Realizing how daft he'd just looked, he let his hand thud down on the table and leaned back despondently, pondering just getting up and leaving.

"Come on," Kochanski sighed. "I know it's hard to adjust, but you can still live a normal life without an arm. You're hardly the first one to lose a limb. Before I got my hard-light upgrade, I had no limbs – technically."

"And just how many of these other limbless losers actually became famous?" Rimmer grunted.

Kochanski's mind went blank. There had to be some, dammit. She looked at Kryten, hoping he'd have an answer, but he could only shrug his bulky shoulders helplessly. Then, she remembered Rimmer's love of military history. "Lord Nelson! Remember him?"

"Of course I remember him!"

Cat kicked the fridge door with his foot while he brought his lunch over to the table. "Well, I don't, so who the hell is he?"

Kryten opened his mouth but Kochanski held up a hand to silence him. She knew Rimmer had the answer.

"Only one of the greatest naval heroes of all time! He beat the French and Spanish during the Napoleonic Wars – with only one arm and one eye! Not to mention riddled with enough typhus and dysentery to cripple a yak!"

"There, see?" Kochanski smiled, patting his shoulder. "And you're worried about only getting by with one arm. If Nelson could turn a blind eye to a missing arm, then so could you, if you just tried."

Rimmer stared at the table thoughtfully. "Right," he said decisively, getting up from his chair. "No more moping about. Time to take matters into my own…" He trailed off, then grimaced distastefully. "No. Forget that. You know what I mean."

The others nodded awkwardly.

"Kryten," he continued, "any chance of you knocking together an artificial limb? I may still need one in emergencies."

"We have salvaged some useful medical equipment over the years, sir," Kryten nodded. "I might be able to cobble something together. Whatever else we need, I can set up the navicomp to seek out medical supply ships in the area."

"Good. In the meantime, I need to practice co-piloting with only one arm. If nothing else, I can still use the weapons console left-handed."

"We can find some small-ish asteroids for you to try target practice with," Kochanski agreed.

"All right then, let's get to work."

The next few weeks could've been better, but as Kochanski kept reminding him, it could've been a lot worse. Rimmer continued to practice drawing with his left hand, something that proved an infuriating challenge, but one he had nothing else better to do than try to master. When not doing that, he practiced with Cat at the pilot controls. While he didn't do nearly as much flying as the feline, he still worked hard to get the hang of making turns and using the instrument panels surrounding him.

Kryten managed to finish work on the prosthetic arm. He'd based it off the standard model used in the late twenty-first century. Connecting it to neurons on the left side of the brain, which controlled the right side of the body for some dumb biologically confusing reason, he tried testing it with Rimmer in the medical bay. He simply had to give the arm an order, and it would obey, which – technically – it did. It just took the better part of a minute to actually follow through. The arm moved about as slowly as a pensioner in line for stool softener walking through maple syrup.

Even worse, when the mechanoid attempted increasing the sensitivity by adjusting the impulse valve, it did react faster, but every time they gave it an order, the arm socked Kryten in the face and sent him flying. They realized that, subconsciously, Rimmer blamed him for the loss of his arm, and the fake limb picked up on that and lashed out. Realizing it would be too dangerous to have another argument with the Cat while wearing this thing, they decided something else would have to be done.

Everyone sat down to supper around the scanner table. Kochanski watched as Rimmer struggled to eat his spaghetti with his left hand. He didn't make much of a fuss, but anyone could sense his frustration.

"There must be a solution to this," she murmured.

"Hey, Half-Eaten Lollipop Head," Cat said to Kryten, "what about lending him one of your spares?"

Kryten waved off the idea. "Too heavy, sir. Mr Rimmer wouldn't be able to lift it."

"He could always take it off if he was going on a date!"

Rimmer barely looked up from his food during the entire conversation, and it drove Kochanski mental. He'd kept up a brave front – for a change – but she knew it would take a long time for him to feel anywhere near normal again. She'd gone through all those years as a soft-light hologram, so she knew how it felt to feel less than whole. She glanced across at Kryten, but he seemed to be all out of ideas for now. There had to be something.

Then, she looked at Kryten again, a thought occurring to her. "Wait a minute… What about your self-repair system? Can't that help?"

Kryten looked up, trying to follow her logic but not quite able. "Ma'am?"

"When you have a mechanical failure, it fixes itself, doesn't it? Those tiny little robot thingamajigs. Subatomic…?"

Kryten's eyes lit up in recognition. "Nanobots! They break objects down into their component atoms and then recombine those atoms to repair damaged circuits."

Cat's face screwed up, confused. "How?"

Using a pencil to point, Kryten indicated a diamond cufflink on Cat's jacket sleeve. "The cufflink on your jacket, sir, is a diamond. It is made of carbon atoms." He then held up the pencil. "This pencil is made of graphite. It's also made of carbon atoms, but in a different arrangement to the diamond. Nanobots could take the carbon atoms of this pencil, move them around a bit, and turn it into a diamond."

Luckily, Cat followed the explanation. "It's possible to make diamonds out of pencils?"

"It's also possible to make computer chips out of sand."

Rimmer finally seemed to have taken an interest in the conversation and spoke up for the first time. "Where are you going with this, Kris?"

"I'm going with the idea that we could transfer some of Kryten's nanobots into you, and maybe they can make you a new arm."

Kryten shrugged helplessly. "Theoretically, a sound notion, ma'am, but regretfully, I no longer have any nanobots. They deserted me. Where and when, I can't be sure."

"Where'd you last have 'em? Maybe all you need to do is retrace your steps," suggested Cat helpfully.

"The last repair they made was at the ocean moon, where we encountered the Esperanto and the Despair Squid."

Rimmer slumped. "Well, that goes back about two hundred and some odd years."

"Indeed, sir. That's why I've given up hope on ever finding them, sir."

Kochanski still sounded hopeful. "But if we found them, could they make him a new arm?"

"Possibly, ma'am, but finding them would be next to impossible. It would be like looking for a needle in a male student's flat."

"But it's still possible," she said firmly, already getting up from her chair. "I say we make tracks for the SSS Esperanto."

"What, right now?" Rimmer looked surprised.

Kochanski folded her arms. "Got anything else planned for today?"

Rimmer looked between the equally-bewildered Cat and Kryten.

"Well…," Cat said slowly, "I did have a seaweed wrap scheduled, but I guess I could push it back a bit."

She smiled. "Good. Let's make tracks."

The others got up to prepare the ship while Kryten went to prepare the Deep Sleep units.

Even with the improvements made to Starbug's engines during their last misadventure, it still took the better part of a decade to retrace their flight path and get back to the ocean planet.

Rimmer and Cat thankfully didn't have to shave this time when they exited the units. They stepped out in their nifty jumpsuits Kryten had recommended, and then drank the energy drinks he gave them through their nifty yellow crazy straws. They defrosted Kochanski's light bee, booted her up, and they all took their stations in the cockpit.

"Hang on, this isn't right. Where the hell are we?" demanded Rimmer, gripping his joystick as he peered through the viewscreen.

Indeed, they saw no sign of the planet they sought. Instead, they saw a dark reddish planetoid directly ahead of them.

"The computer's brought us out of Deep Sleep early," said Kochanski. "It must've detected something."

Cat frowned as he got his bearings, taking a deep whiff of the air. "There's a familiar smell in the air, but I can't figure out why."

"What's it smell like?" asked Rimmer.

"Red Dwarf."

They all stared at him in disbelief. "Are you sure?"

"I haven't smelt that red trash can since we lost the vapor trail a year ago. This is weird."

"Kryten, what've you got?" asked Kochanski.

"We've gone into orbit around a planetoid, ma'am. Just scanning now." He tapped the keys at his station a few times, and a moment later, his eyes widened. "Impossible!"

"What is?" asked Rimmer.

"Not even worth mentioning, sir. Must be some sort of fault. Scanning again." He tapped the same buttons, and once again, the readouts made his eyes widen. "What, again?"

"What is it?"

Kryten looked at him helplessly. "According to the readings, the planet ahead of us is Red Dwarf!"

Rimmer shook his head. "Why are we trusting a computer that once told us we'd found a planet inhabited solely by air hostesses?"

Cat sighed wistfully. "We spent two weeks chasing that lead!"

Kryten eyed the feline curiously. "But you said you smelt Red Dwarf, sir."

"Yeah…?"

"Then maybe there's more to this than we think. According to the scans, we're in a sector of the galaxy we've traveled through before."

"We are?" frowned Kochanski.

"If you look to port, you'll see in the distance the ocean moon where we discovered the Esperanto."

They all leaned out the port viewscreen, and indeed, they could see the little blue dot of the ocean moon. Sitting down again, they all looked at each other, trying to mentally put together the jigsaw that life had just ordered them to solve.

"So…," Rimmer murmured, "even though it sounds crazier than a flamingo playing water polo with a Russian supermodel, that planetoid is Red Dwarf?"

Kryten nodded. "I think it warrants further investigation, sirs."

Kochanski checked the scans of the planet. "According to the weather scan it's beautiful down there. Tropical temperatures, not a cloud in sight!" She gave them a dry expression. "Suggest we dress for snow and take the buggy."

It took a few hours, but they managed to land Starbug on the planetoid and scour the unstable weather conditions for soil samples. Everything they found, they scanned, and the results showed them the truth – the planetoid really was Red Dwarf. All the dirt and sand they dug up, their atoms showed signs of artificial engineering. They even found things that hadn't been converted. Various knicknacks and ship supplies littered the planet's surface. Gathering what they could in the swirling electrical storm, they took it all back in a wooden trunk back to Starbug.

"The whole damn planetoid's packed with stuff from Red Dwarf," exclaimed Kochanski. "Supplies, bunks, drinks dispensers, you name it. It's like a giant car boot sale!"

Digging through the contents of the trunk, Rimmer found something familiar – a wristwatch. Stunned to see the slightly-scratched surface again, he held it up and pressed a small stud on the side. The tiny screen came on, and a familiar friendly bald head appeared.

"All right, dudes?" Holly greeted as if they hadn't been apart for hundreds of years.

"Holly?!" Rimmer exclaimed. "You're… You're you again! I mean, you were always you, but now you're… a bloke again."

"Holly, what are you doing here?" asked Kryten urgently.

"Those little wotsits!" Holly replied.

"Nanobots?" asked Kochanski.

"They remolecurized…" He paused, frowning. "They remolic… They remol…" Heaving a sigh, he gave up. "Anyway, they did that word that I can't say to the whole ship, and left all the bits they didn't want on that planetoid!"

"Including you, I'm noticing," Rimmer remarked.

"Yeah, they gave me a reboot and dropped me off. Decided they'd be better off without me, the little swines."

"Are you okay?" asked Cat.

"One hundred percent. I realize now that I am definitely not a woman, and I'm all set to help you lot with my IQ of six thousand."

"So what happened to the nanobots?" asked Kochanski.

"No science questions. Don't need the pressure. I'm a whiz at telling the time, though."

They soon pieced together the sequence of events. At some point after the encounter with the Despair Squid, Kryten's nanobots mutinied and abandoned him out of sheer boredom. Why they got bored, he didn't know, but he theorized they'd broken their programming somewhere along the way along with him. Whatever the cause, the nanobots ditched him and made their escape to Red Dwarf, where they took the ship, made a subatomic version, and turned the rest of the atoms into a planetoid for safekeeping. The vapor trail they followed all that time came from the nano Red Dwarf, hence why they could never get a decent fix on the tiny little trail.

"So they could be anywhere by now," sighed Rimmer. "We lost track of them at least a year ago."

"Unless," said Holly from the watch, "they went out of range of the scanners."

"But we were gaining on 'em, bud!" objected Cat. "How could they outrun us?"

"Scanners are programmed to scan on the outside. To escape, they just had to stop."

Kochanski leaned forward incredulously. "You mean…," she said slowly, not quite ready to believe it, "the nanobots could be in here? Onboard Starbug somewhere?"

Realizing Holly could be onto something, they immediately started an internal scan of the ship. Amazingly, in only a few short minutes, they succeeded.

They gathered around the camphor wood trunk in Rimmer's quarters. Dusty from having not been touched in a long time, it had seen better days.

"They're in my old trunk?" Rimmer demanded. "What were they doing in here?"

"Scans confirm, sir," Kryten said brightly, looking at the psi-scan. "Let's have a look."

Rimmer got the key from under his pillow, and he unlocked it, popping the lid open. They studied the contents. The toy soldiers, a few paint supplies, a box marked 'Rachel' …

"In there!" Kryten exclaimed. "They're in… 'her', sir."

Rimmer's eyes closed with embarrassment. "Smeg, I haven't used this old thing in years."

Kochanski smirked as she patted his shoulder. "Never did find that puncture repair kit."

"That puncture alone would be the size of a galaxy to the nanobots!" Kryten explained. "All these years, exploring strange new worlds in your inflatable doll, sir!"

Cat wrinkled his nose with disgust. "Poor little bastards couldn't have known what they were in store for."

It took a few minutes to find the nanobots. Taping off all exit routes with regular sticky tape for now, Kryten accessed the main port and activated his shop vac. Thirty seconds later, the readings on the psi scan changed from Rachel to Kryten's small portable bag. Sealing it off quickly, he established contact with them by shaking it gently.

"Can you hear me in there, you pesky little critters! We want our ship back, and we want a new arm for Mr Rimmer! Are you receiving me?"

A moment later, Holly detected contact, and he projected a strange pulsating red image on the mirror.

"Aha, we have contact…," said Kryten, studying the screen. "They're communicating in machine code; leave the talking to me." He took the tone of an agitated parent. "Have you any idea what you've done? Deserting your droid, you've broken every reg in the manual! And to compound matters by stealing our ship, it's unbelievably…! Er… it's unbelievably…! Naughty! Now, listen up, here's the deal: we want that planetoid turned back into Red Dwarf, and we also want you to build a new arm for Mr Rimmer. If you don't, you'll get more of this…"

He shook the bag again, and the nanos on the screen pulsated in pain. Needless to say, they complied with the demands.

Hours later, the operation completed, and Cat, Kryten and Kochanski entered the medical bay with their eyes covered, unable to look.

"I can't bear to look…," wailed Kochanski. "Has it worked? Someone tell me!"

"Let's all turn around on three," suggested Kryten reasonably.

"One… Two… Three!" counted Cat.

They all whirled around and came face-to-face with a Rimmer that not only had a new arm, but also a very muscular build full of rippling biceps, quads and glutes, with the odd vein zigzagging across the taut flesh, under a white t-shirt and shorts that left very little to the imagination.

Rimmer's eyes fluttered open from his place on the upturned medical scanner, restrained by the plastic support module across his shoulders. He blearily looked across to them, still standing in the hatchway. "Did it work?" he asked raspily.

For a long time, no one spoke.

"It's been a one hundred percent success, sir!" Krysten said at last. "In fact, it's been a five hundred percent success! In fact, they've…" He trailed off, not sure how else to continue. "Well, if that's all, sir, I think I'll retire for the evening, good night!" He turned and scuttled away, leaving Cat and Kochanski to continue gawking.

Rimmer still managed to roll his eyes despite his groggy state. "Kris, I have to see. Let me out."

Exchanging a wary glance with the Cat, Kochanski moved timidly forward, unable to keep herself from staring too much. "They probably didn't mean any harm…," she fumbled, hoping to brace him in some way. "I think they were trying to make up for before… We'll get them to have another go, okay?"

"Kris…"

Swallowing hard, Kochanski pressed the button on the wall, and the support raised back into the ceiling, allowing Rimmer to step down and approach a full-length mirror. For a long moment, nothing happened, and Kochanski wondered if the volcano would ever erupt. She turned to look at his reflection as well. She saw the dazed look on his face as his eyes stared uncomprehendingly at the mirror. He blinked very slowly, as if testing it out.

"Rimmer?" she asked gently.

Rimmer responded by slowly tipping over backwards and hitting the floor in a dead faint.

Cat and Kochanski looked at him, both thinking he took it better than they thought he would.

Alone in the cockpit, Cat scanned the area through the viewscreen, and he smelled that familiar smell, even in space. The view changed from black with twinkly bits to red, red, red in all directions. He saw that familiar ram scoop, the big red bulky body, and that rectangle of silver that said those two words: Red Dwarf.

Grinning, he steered easily towards the landing bay. To his bewilderment, the journey took a little longer than he remembered. Had the ship always been this long? He saw the doors opening, and to his alarm, the landing bay looked so much bigger than it ought to be. He saw a few other Starbugs sitting parked, and he wondered if they'd always had so many of those little green crafts. Frowning, he flew towards them, only to marvel at how large they looked.

Then, he realized the truth. After all those years as a microscopic ship, Red Dwarf had been rebuilt big enough that they looked microscopic by comparison. Not good.

"Er, guys…!" he singsonged into the intercom. "We've got a problem…!"

Author's Notes: And that's Series VII! Better late than never!

Series VIII will probably come out sometime in 2023. I've gotten some of it mapped out, and a few chapters started, but none are really finished. Might actually rewrite some of it beforehand to make it work better. We'll see. Until next time!

Next episode: Back in the Red (Part 1)