THE ABANDONED

Hey! Working class kid makes good!

The Holy Mother, saved by Cloister the Stupid, who was frozen in time, and who gaveth of his life that we might live.

Who shall returneth to lead us to Fushal, The Promised Land.

And Cloister spake, `Lo, I shall lead you to Fyushal, and there we shall open a temple of food, wherein shall be sausages and doughnuts and all manner of bountiful things.

Yea, even individual sachets of mustard. 

And those who serve shall have hats of great majesty, yea, though they be made of coloured cardboard and have humorous arrows through the top.'

“And Cloister gave to Frankenstein the sacred writing, saying, `Those who have wisdom will know its meaning.' And it was written thus: `Seven socks, one shirt--'" 

And the ark that left first followed the sacred signs, and lo, they flew straight into an asteroid.

And the righteous in the second ark flew ever onward, knowing they were indeed righteous." 

KRYTEN laughs hard, banging his head off the table, then abruptly sobers

up.

KRYTEN:

“Mum”  

I never had a mum.

CAT :

There, there, it's alright, buddy, it's all part of being drunk.

You've been through the happy stage, now you're going through the melancholy stage.

KRYTEN:

Oooooh... everybody should have a mum.

HOLLY:

I never had a mum, neither.

RIMMER: 

Well, you can have mine!  Everybody else did!

LISTER :

I never had a mum either.

RIMMER:

Oh, for god's sake, what's wrong with everyone?!

HOLLY:

Why didn't you have a mum?

LISTER: 

I was abandoned.

KRYTEN: 

Abandoned?

LISTER: 

Six weeks old.  

A cardboad box underneath the pool table.  

I was just abandoned in this pub.

KRYTEN: 

How could anybody do that?

LISTER:

I don't know.  

I never found out.

For a long time, you'll think that you were abandoned, but you weren't, man.  

You were put here to create a paradox, an unbreakable circle.  

With us going 'round and 'round in time, the human race can never become extinct.

We're like... a kind of 'holding pattern'.

LISTER reaches into the box and touches the baby's chin tenderly

I'll see ya, son.

Quietly, LISTER approaches the pool table and, bending down, gently slides the box underneath.  

He steps away

LISTER: 

Does it say what happened to the rest of the Cats? 

HOLLY: 

Holy wars.

 

There were thousands of years of fighting, Dave, between the two factions. 

LISTER:

What two factions? 

HOLLY:

Well, the ones who believed the hats should be red, 

and the ones who believed the hats should be blue.

LISTER: 

Do you mean they had a war over whether the doughnut diner hats were red or blue? 

HOLLY: 

Yeah. Most of them were killed fighting about that. 

It's daft really, innit? 

LISTER:

You're not kiddin’. 

They were supposed to be green.

Go on, Hol. 

HOLLY: 

Well, finally they called a truce, and built two arks and left Red Dwarf in search of Fyushal. 

LISTER:

But there's no such place as Fyushal. 

It's Fiji. 

I mean, how are they supposed to find it? 

“And Cloister gave to Frankenstein the sacred writing, saying, `Those who have wisdom will know its meaning.' 

And it was written thus: 

`Seven socks, one shirt--'" 

LISTER:

That's my laundry list! 

I lined the cat's basket with me laundry list! 

HOLLY:

The Blue Hats thought it was a star chart leading to The Promised Land. 

LISTER: 

Well it wasn't, it was my dirty washin’.

What happened next, Hol? 

HOLLY: 

“And the ark that left first followed the sacred signs, and lo, they flew straight into an asteroid.

And the righteous in the second ark flew ever onward, knowing they were indeed righteous." 

LISTER: 

This is terrible. 

Holy wars. Killing. 

They're just using religion as an excuse to be extremely crappy to each other. 

TOASTER: 

So what else is new? 

 15 Int. Another corridor.

LISTER: 

Cat! Come on, kitty, kitty! Meow ... meow ... come on, kitty ... come on, Cat, the crispies are getting warm ... come on, Cat...

16 Int. Cargo hold.

Everything is covered in dust and cobwebs. 

There's an improvised altar (a filing cabinet with some cat figurines and candles on top), a big statue of Cloister (wearing a doughnut on his head), and a bed, on which an old, blind Cat priest wearing red robes and hat (complete with arrow) lies. 

The other CAT (the one we know) is there too.

CAT: 

Aaaooowww, yeah yeah yeah yeah, (to the figurines on the altar) 

Hey fellas! 

Yes sir, I'm back! 

Feeling good! (To the priest) 

Feed me. 

PRIEST: 

You're always leaving me! 

Where do you go? 

CAT: 

Investigating! 

See, I have these feet-- 

PRIEST: 

I'm dying. 

CAT: 

I'm telling you about my feet! 

My investigating feet. 

PRIEST: 

Don't you hear me?! 

I'm dying. 

CAT: 

Yeah. But I'm telling you about my feet. 

PRIEST: 

Oh, why should you listen to me, a blind old priest that's lost his faith. 

CAT: 

I'm not listening to you. 

I'm trying to tell you about my feet. 

PRIEST: 

What do you care? 

CAT: 

I don't care! 

You're the one who's doing the dying, not me. 

Why should I let it spoil MY evening?

17 Int. Corridor.

The corridor is dusty and cobwebby. LISTER is still looking for the CAT.

LISTER: 

Cat? ... Cat?

He pushes on a grille marked "Supply Pipe 28" and falls through it.

LISTER: 

(Picking himself up) 

Oohh. Cat, when I get you I'm going to turn you into a kebab. 

Holly? Can you still hear me?

Cat...?

18 Int. Cargo cathedral.

PRIEST: 

Here. 

(Takes his hat off.) 

Burn the sacred hat. 

CAT: 

That's a fearsome hat. 

PRIEST: 

Burn it, burn it! 

It's a symbol of the lies.

The CAT takes the hat and puts it on. Meanwhile, LISTER's face appears at a window.

CAT: 

It's burnt. 

PRIEST: 

All my life I've served a lie. 

Because you're not there, Cloister, are you? 

You've never been there! 

YOU DON'T EXIST!

In the antechamber, LISTER has grabbed one of the golden doughnuts off the head of a statue of Cloister and put it on his own head. As the priest shouts his disbelief, LISTER pushes open the doors.

PRIEST: 

Who's that? 

LISTER: 

It is I, Cloister! 

PRIEST: (To CAT) 

Who is it, boy? 

LISTER: 

I told you, it's me, Cloister. 

I've returned from The Dead. 

PRIEST: 

Is it him? 

Is it truly him? Does he look like a king?

LISTER quickly grabs one of the giant golden sausages that line the entrance and holds it threateningly over CAT.

CAT: 

A king?!

Yeah, yeah! 

PRIEST: 

Is he wearing the doughnut and the golden sausage? 

CAT: 

Yeah, yeah! 

PRIEST: 

Then it truly is him! 

Oh, I've failed you, Cloister. All these years I kept my faith. 

I wore the Holy Custard Stain and the Scared Gravy Marks.

LISTER suddenly realises that the priest's robe bears the same stains as his own T-shirt.

PRIEST: 

I renounced coolness, and chose the righteous path of slobbiness. But in The End, I failed you. 

LISTER: 

Why didn't you go on the arks with the rest of the Cats? 

PRIEST: 

They left us behind. 

The sick and the lame. 

Left us to die. 

But then, The Boy was born  - to the cripple and the idiot. 

CAT: 

What idiot? 

PRIEST: 

Your father, boy. 

CAT: 

MY father was a jelly-brain? 

PRIEST: 

Yes, that's why he ate his own feet. 

CAT: 

I did wonder. 

PRIEST: 

But, as one by one we died, my faith died also. 

You tested me, Cloister, and I failed you. 

LISTER: 

Oh, no. You didn't fail, old man. 

You passed! I'm giving you ... 

I'm giving you an A+ distinction. 

PRIEST: 

You ... you mean there's a place for me on Fyushal? 

LISTER: 

A place? Got your own bathroom, own suite, cork floors, your own barbecue on the patio, double glazing, a phone, everything! 

PRIEST: (Horrified) 

My hat! I've burned my sacred hat! 

LISTER: 

No you haven't! (Grabs it off of CAT's head and replaces it on the priest's.) 

PRIEST: 

A miracle! (Tries to stand up.) 

This is the happiest day of my -- uh -- aaahhh--

The priest suddenly collapses back on the bed, as dead as some doodoo. 

LISTER sits down, appalled. 

CAT puts his arm around Lister's shoulders.

CAT: 

Did I ever tell you about my feet? My investigating feet? Once upon a time, there was an old man...

“From the moment he discovered that the cadmium II had achieved critical mass, Holly had less than fifteen nanoseconds to act. He sealed off as much of the ship as possible - the whole cargo area, and the ship's supply bay. 

Simultaneously, he set the drive computer to accelerate far beyond the dull green-blue disc of Neptune in the distance, and out into the abyss of unknown space. Then he read the Bible, the Koran, and other major religious works: he covered  Islam, Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism, Zarathustrianism, Dharma,  Brahmanism, Hinduism, Vedanta, Jainism, Buddhism, Hinayana, Mahayana, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism and Confucianism. Then he read all of Marx, Engels, Freud, jung and Einstein. And, to kill the remaining few nanoseconds, he skipped briefly through Joe Klumpp's Zero Gee Football - It's a Funny Old game. 

At the end of this, Holly came to two conclusions. First, given  the whole sphere of human knowledge, it was still impossible to determine the existence or not of God. And second, Joe Klumpp should have stuck to having his hair permed. 

In the hold, Frankenstein's four offspring began to breed. Each litter produced an average of four kittens, three times a year. At the end of the first year, the second generation of kittens started to breed too. 

They also produced three annual litters of three to four kittens. 

When Frankenstein died, at the great old age of fourteen, she left behind one hundred and ninety-eight thousand, seven hundred and thirty-two cats. 

198,732 cats, who continued to breed 

 

Still Red Dwarf accelerated. 

Holly witnessed at first hand phenomena which had never been witnessed before. He saw phenomena which had only been guessed at by theoretical physicists. 

He saw a star form. 

He saw another star die. 

He saw a black hole. 

He saw pulsars and quasars. 

He saw twin and triplet sun systems.

He saw sights Copernicus would have torn out his eyes for, but all the while he couldn't stop thinking how bad that book was by Joe Klumpp. 

 

The cats continued to breed. 

 

Red Dwarf continued to accelerate. 

The forty-square mile cargo hold was seething with cats. 

A sea of cats. 

A sea of cats, sealed from the radiation-poisoned decks above with nowhere to go. 

Only the smartest, the biggest and the strongest survived.

The mutants. 

The mutants, who had rudimentary fingers instead of claws, who stood on their hind legs, and clubbed rivals to death with crudely made clubs. Who found the best breeding mates. 

And bred. 

Felis erectus was born.

Red Dwarf, still accelerating, passed five stars in concentric orbits, performing a breathtaking, mind-boggling stellar ballet. 

Not that Holly noticed. 

He'd been on his own now for two million years and was no 

longer interested in mind-boggling stellar ballets. What he was really into was Netta Muskett novels. The young doctor had just told Jemma she had only three years to live, as he held her in his powerful masculine grip, his dark brooding eyes piercing her very 

soul. Outside, the suns danced into a perfect pentagon and span, end over end, like a gigantic Catherine wheel. 

 

But Holly didn't see it. He was too busy reading Doctor, Darling. 

Then there was a plague. 

And the plague was hunger. 

Less than thirty Cat tribes now survived, roaming the cargo decks on their hind legs in a desperate search for food.

But the food had gone. 

The supplies were finished. 

Weak and ailing, they prayed at the supply hold's silver moun-

tains: huge towering acres of metal rocks which, in their 

pagan way, the mutant Cats believed watched over them. 

Amid the wailing and the screeching one Cat stood up and held aloft the sacred icon. The icon which had been passed down as holy and one day would make its use known. 

It was a piece of V-shaped metal with a revolving handle on its head. 

He took down a silver rock from the silver mountain, while the 

other Cats cowered and screamed at the blasphemy. 

He placed the icon on the rim of the rock, and turned the handle. 

And the handle turned. 

And the rock opened. 

And inside the rock was Alphabetti spaghetti in tomato sauce. 

And in the other rocks were even more delights. Sugar-free baked  beans. Chicken and mushroom Toastie Toppers. Faggots in rich meaty gravy. All sealed in perfect vacuums, preserved from the 

ravages of Time. 

God had spoken. 

And Felis sapiens was born. 

Holly was gurning. He was pulling his pixelized face into the most bizarre and ludicrous expressions he could muster. He'd been gurning now for nearly two thousand years. It wasn't much of a hobby, but 

it helped pass the time. 

He was beginning to worry that he was going computer-senile. 

Driven crazy by loneliness. What he needed, he decided, was a companion. 

He would build a woman.

A perfectly functioning human woman, capable of independent thought and decision-making. Identical to a real woman in the minutest detail. 

The problem was he didn't know how. 

He didn't even know what to make the nose out of. 

So he gave the whole scheme up as a bad idea, and started  gurning again. 

And there was a war between the Cats. 

A bloody war that laid waste many of their number. 

But the reason was good. 

The cause was sensible. 

The principle was worth fighting over. 

It was a holy war. 

Some of the Cats believed the one true father of Catkind was a man called Cloister, who saved Frankenstein, the Holy Mother, and was frozen in time by the evil men who sought to kill her. One day Cloister would return to lead them to Bearth, the planet where they could make their home. 

The other Cats believed exactly the same thing, except they maintained the name of the true Father of Catkind was a man called Clister. 

They spent the best part of two thousand years fighting over this huge, insuperable theological chasm.

Millions died. 

Finally, a truce was called. 

Commandeering the fleet of shuttles from the docking bay, half the Cats flew off in one direction, in search of Cloister and the Promised Planet, and the other half flew off in the opposite direction, in search of Clister and the Promised Planet. 

Behind them they left the ones who were too weak to travel: the old, the lame, the sick and the dying. 

And one by one, they died. 

Soon only two remained: one a cripple, one an idiot. 

They snuggled together for warmth and companionship.

And one day, to the cripple and the idiot, a son was born.