Moonlight

Lister :

OK, let's go.

How much charge have we got?

Kryten :

According to the readouts, 

57%, sir. 

Lister :

Excellent.

Kryten :

However, as we don't know how long our journey might take,

to conserve power I suggest we travel on Eco-mode.

Rimmer :

I hope you're paying attention, Lister.

Here is someone with a brain larger than a pea coming up with a rescue strategy that's thought through and intelligent.

Kryten :

I also suggest we turn off

all non-essential electricals.

Rimmer :

You mean me?

Kryten :

Not just you, sir.

There's the air conditioning,

the lights, the seat warmers.

Rimmer :

And where do I come on this list?

Above seat warmers 

but below air-con?

Cat :

Are you outta your mind?

We need those seat warmers.

The Desert gets chilly at night.

Kryten :

Er, sir, could I suggest

you enter Low-Power Mode?

Rimmer :

Low-power mode. 

I hate low-power mode.

My vision's standard-def,

I can only hear in mono,

and when there's electronic interference, 

I wind up looking all snowy.

Kryten :

But it's the only way to preserve

what's left of Starbug's charge, sir.

SIGHS

POWERS DOWN

The Cat :

Wow, look at him. He looks like

an old movie you don't wanna watch.

Rimmer :

OK, no need to say anything.

The Cat :

But this is freaky, bud.

It's like seeing a tortoise

without its shell.

Rimmer :

[CRACKLY]

Er, hello, I'm here.

I can hear all this.

The Cat :

But he's not real, is he? You forget.

Rimmer :

I am real. Of course I'm real!

The Cat :

Yeah, but you're not really Real,

You're Dead.

This really brings it home.

You're creeping me out.

Rimmer :

As the French philosopher

Rene Descartes once said,

"I think, therefore I am."

"Je pense, donc je...

...am."

The Cat :

But you don't think, do ya?

Lister :

Guys, guys, come on.

Rimmer :

Of course I think.

What are you talking about?

The Cat :

No, you don't.

You don't decide what you do.

The Computer in your light bee

does all your thinking for you.

There's no actual You to Think 

or not Think anything.

Kryten :

Oh, sir, please!

Can you stop being so...

..catty?

The Cat :

Grr!

Rimmer :

There's no actual Me to 

Think or not Think anything?

I've never actually thought about that.

I haven't got Free Will, then, have I?

So it's not, "I Think, therefore I am."

It's, "The Computer Thinks,

therefore I Think I am."

I've never actually thought 

about that before.

The Cat :

And you're not thinking about it now.

It's your light bee making you think

you're thinking about it.

Lister :

Cat, man, back the smeg off. OK?

Rimmer :

I don't actually exist, then, do I?

Kryten :

You see what you've done, sir?

You've put Mr Rimmer

in existential crisis mode.

And look! The added anxiety is consuming 

more of our battery!

Lister :

Guys, if we're gonna get through

this, we need to stick together.

The Cat :

What's The Point? We're screwed.

Rimmer :

Well, I'm not. I don't exist.

MEOW! EXPLOSION

What the hell was that?!

The Ferals - they've found us.

MEOW!

MEOW!

Fire everything we have!

MEOW!

From the heat signature, it's one

ship coming in at six o'clock.

Open the sun roof.

Rimmer :

There's no point.

I forgot to bring my surrender flag.

I take it everywhere with me, and on

the one day I think I won't need

it...

We're not surrendering.

Cat, stand on the chair

and start blasting out the 

emergency escape hatch.

The Cat :

Wait, more Trouble

coming in from port side.

Kryten :

I'm getting it too, sir.

It's a sandstorm.

At 4.9 on the Stanley scale.

Three miles high and 60 miles wide.

Not according to this.

It's 6.3 on the Stanley scale

and it's coming on the starboard

side. 

Is it possible we could be looking at two sandstorms, 

both heading towards us from opposite sides?

We're gonna be the filling

in a sandstorm sandwich.

Kryten, likely outcome if we get hit?

Paintwork damage and front panel replacement

required on both sides, sir.

What about cover?

Getting insured at this point

ain't gonna solve anything.

Rimmer :

Cover from the sandstorms,

you brainless cretin.

To answer Your Question,

the nearest cover is 

the debris up ahead, sir.

Can we reach it in time?

I don't believe we can.

MEOW!

We need to go faster.

We're flat-out, full power.

They're catching us!

MEOW!

OK, only one thing for it.

Gotta fly into the sandstorm.

What?

Have you lost your mind?

A couple of miles in, we'll kill

all power. They'll never find us.

They'll never find us because 

we'll be sandstorm soup!

There could be a tornado

of debris parts in there.

Have you got a better idea?

Lister, fly into the sandstorm.

And that's an order.

WHIRRING AND BEEPING

Ohh. Nothing to do now but just

to sit tight and wait for it to blow

over.

Rimmer :

How long's that gonna take?

Lister :

Could be days.

Rimmer :

I'm wondering if I'm doing 

The Right Thing.

Lister :

What d'you mean?

Rimmer :

Hanging on.

Draining Starbug's battery.

Maybe it would be better if I just

pulled my own plug and be done with it.

Lister :

But if you powered down,

you'd be dead.

Rimmer :

I'm already dead.

Why am I here?

What's the point of me?

The only reason I was ever brought

back was because I was

diametrically opposite to you.

I don't fit in. No-one likes me.

People like you. 

Lister :

Of course they like you.

Rimmer :

Name one person on Red Dwarf

who likes me.

Lister :

Oh, come on, I'm not getting

into a naming contest, Rimmer.

But there's...people on board

that... like you.

Name one.

Lister :

Oh, come on.

Name one!

Lister :

OK... Erm, what about Skutter on B

Deck? He likes you.

Rimmer :

The one who's mental?

The one who eats shoes?

Lister :

He still likes you.

Erm.. That dispenser on C Deck,

the one that leaks. That likes you.

Rimmer :

It likes everyone. It's leaky. Who else?

Lister :

Kryten?

Rimmer :

Kryten does not like me.

He thinks I'm a petty-minded,

bureaucratic, power-hungry control

freak.

Lister :

But he still likes you. 

Admires you, even.

He told me he liked and admired you

just the other day.

Rimmer :

Yeah? What did he say?

Lister :

That he liked and admired you -

just the other day.

Rimmer :

Really?

Lister :

Really.

DOOR OPENS

Kryten :

A warm drink, sir.

Don't ask where from.

It'll taste better that way.

Lister :

Not now, Kryten.

We're in the middle of something.

Rimmer :

Lister was saying you like and

admire me, Kryten. Is that true?

Look, he nodded.

Rimmer :

He didn't move.

Lister :

That was a proper nod.

A definite seven-degree vertical

tilt. How could you miss that?

Look, he did it again.

And again.

Rimmer :

Kryten, Do You Like Me?

Well, do you?

CREAKING

CLUNK!

CREAKING

CLUNK!

Lister :

There you go. What did I tell you?

Kryten :

If that'll be all, sirs,

I think I'll go and change heads.

I think I may just have ruined this

one.

Rimmer :

You must think I'm stupid.

Give me one reason why I

shouldn't unplug right now.

BEEPING

Lister :

Whoa! Whoa!

Look, we need you.

I need you.

Rimmer :

Why?

Lister :

To bounce off, you know, 

ideas and stuff.

Rimmer :

You don't need me.

I'm not sure you ever did.

I don't exist.

What's the point of me?

Lister :

Rimmer, We're The Posse.

We're The Boys from The Dwarf.

We're like The Four Musketeers.

D'Artagnan, Porthos, Athos.

And The Other One.

Rimmer, You're The Other One.

Rimmer :

I'm The "Other One"?

Lister :

You do all the stuff

that The Other One does.

Rimmer :

And what's that, then?

Lister :

"Other one" stuff.

Rimmer :

"Other one" stuff?

What's "other one" stuff?

Lister :

All the stuff that the others haven't done 

that The Other One does.

Rimmer :

I'm pointless.

Lister :

No, you're not.

You know, I'll tell you 

The Point of You :

A Moon cannot make light, right?

And yet there's such a thing 

as moonlight.

Rimmer :

It's light reflected off A Moon

from A Sun.

Lister :

Yeah, but The Sun can't make

moonlight without The Moon.

And The Moon can't make moonlight without The Sun.

So who's making the moonlight?

Rimmer :

They both are.

Lister :

Which means that, even though a moon

cannot make light, moonlight exists.

Like you. Smeghead.

POWERS UP

Children of 5 are Developmentally Unable to see Perspective, While children of 7 can.

“Understanding that boundary-shattering experience became fundamental to what I was doing, and I began to lose myself, to blur the limits between what was real and what was conceivable.

  What happened to me can be interpreted in any number of ways. To some, it’s sure to read as just one more trip story with no relevance to the material world. Occultists of a certain persuasion will recognize the knowledge and conversation of the holy guardian angel. My experience comfortably fit the profile for alien abduction reports, angelic contact, and temporal lobe epilepsy. None of these “explanations” for what I saw, coming as they did from a lower-resolution, flatter universe, could truly do my experience justice. Where higher dimensions are implicated, it’s wise to remember the story of the blind men and the elephant and assume that all attempts to frame Kathmandu in 3-D terms are in some way absolutely true. But if it makes it easier to deal with, feel free to assume I hallucinated the whole thing and went completely, gloriously, and very lucratively mad.

  I stopped piling up rationalizations and instead dealt with what could be proven about this event, which was its undeniably positive effect on my life. Kathmandu fundamentally reprogrammed me and left me with a certainty stronger than faith that everything, even that which was sad and painful, was happening exactly the way it was supposed to.

  All will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

  Years of living in a materialistic culture and of outwardly giving in to a kind of culturally enforced pessimism have left me with a more twenty-first-century, grounded view of that day in the Vajra.

  Let’s say there’s a developmental level of human consciousness that was once almost mythical—Jesus, Buddha, and Allah experienced it—but which is now more freely available to a much larger percentage of the general human population, thanks to the easy bookstore and online availability of “magical” recipes and formulas, and of consciousness-altering methods.

  Children of five are developmentally unable to see perspective, while children of seven can. Twelfth-century artists were unable to render vanishing points on two dimensions, while fifteenth-century painters had mastered the trick to create convincing simulations of reality. Do civilizations follow the same growth and decline curve as human organisms with the same holographic imprint reiterating through all scales?

  I can see how the sudden shock of accessing a natural holistic five-dimensional perspective might strike an unprepared human nervous system as contact with an alien intelligence; a “higher”-order entelechy. As far as the brain is concerned, that’s exactly what it is. New neural pathways are being seared into the cortex by the demands of this way of seeing. I think the rational mind tries to make sense of its new perspective—as a child makes sense of the inner voice of dawning self-awareness by theorizing an imaginary playmate—by framing it in images of the alien, the uncanny, or the demonic. The fact that some people who’ve had this wake-up call report having seen aliens, while others saw Jesus, or the Devil or dead relatives, fairies or angels, suggests that the details are culturally determined.

  What’s important about this experience is not whether there are “real” aliens from a fifth-dimension heaven where everything is great and we’re all friends. There may well be, but I have no real proof. Much of what I went through even makes sense within the current framework of string theory, with its talk of enclosed infinite vaults, its hyperdimensional panoramas of baby universes budding in hyperspace. The aliens are the least of it.

  My Kathmandu vision of planet Earth’s singular living form, that cosmic only child whose brain cells we are, on the other hand, requires no belief in the supernatural. Simply add the time dimension to your contemplation of life, look backward down your own history and family tree, all the way to the original mother cell three and a half billion years over your shoulder from here, and tell me if you can find one single join, or a seam, or any break.

  This for me was bigger than any ultradimensional or quasi-religious afterlife, which I wouldn’t be able to confirm until I died and either woke up back among the blobs or didn’t. I couldn’t deny that I was a tiny, short-lived temporary cell in something very, very big and very old. I even saw how that brute connection to every living thing might explain away the “supernatural” mysteries of things like telepathy or reincarnation as simple, direct connections between distant branches of the same majestic tree, like the tingle in your toe that sends a message to your brain, which launches your hand to scratch the itch.

  I was deep inside my own story, further than I could have imagined. My sister covered my bedroom wardrobe with a collage of comics pages so that every time I faced my reflection, I appeared as one more panel in a tarot spread of scattered pages and images, part human, part fiction, a Gnostic superhero in PVC, shades, and shaved head.

  As for drugs, I sampled various psychedelic compounds in the waning years of the nineties, hoping to re-create the Kathmandu connection. I was willing to write off the whole thing as some very enjoyable drug trip, but I never found a substance capable of reproducing that place, and I eventually gave up.

  I was left with a stubborn conviction that when I died, my consciousness would start awake there, with the same shock of the utterly familiar, the same thrill-ride buzz of a job well done.

  The initial shock of all this was replaced by a period of voices in the head, uncanny synchronicities, signs and dreams and remarkable new insights. I was haunted, inspired, possessed. I could lie on my bed, intone a homemade spell or evocation, and be transported to a convincing wraparound representation of a higher-conscious vibration where an infinite circle of golden Buddha beings solemnly overlook a white abyss into which the entire universe is funneling like water down a drain. It was even better than an issue of Warlock.

  Each and every experience, even the ego-destroying blind terrors, went into the work, enriching The Invisibles and JLA a thousandfold. It was proof of the old saying “Where there’s muck, there’s brass.” In an imagination economy, where ideas, trademarks, and intellectual properties held incalculable value, the coruscating quarry face of the interior world was the place to be. There was gold in them thar ghost mines.

  I even tried to consider Kathmandu in terms of the fashionable idea that temporal lobe seizures could trigger authentic “religious” experiences. This sounded even better than 5-D angels. If science had identified a purely physical brain trigger for holistic god consciousness, would it not be in our own best interests to start pressing this button immediately and as often as we can? What would happen to the murderers and rapists in our prisons if we could stimulate a temporal lobe god-contact experience that caused them to empathize with everything in the universe? If electrical spasms in the temporal lobe are indeed capable of such remarkable world-transforming effects, let’s see them become more than just another stick with which to beat an absent God to death. Push the button!

CANCER MAN

 

SCENE 23
TEXAS-NEW MEXICO BORDER
5:07 AM

The SUV driven by MULDER makes it was down the road. 

It pulls off to the side.

MULDER cuts the engine, leans toward SCULLY who is sleeping and gently kisses her cheek. He gets out of the car.)

MULDER unzips his pants and relieves himself, when ...

FROHIKE'S GHOST : 

Hey, hot shot! You might have the common courtesy 

of doing Your Business there downwind.

MULDER: 

Oh, boy.

LANGLY'S GHOST: 

Why don't you just finish draining the little lizard 

and then we'll talk?

BYER'S GHOST: 

We're very worried about you.

FROHIKE'S GHOST: 

It's craziness, man. Turn around.

LANGLEY'S GHOST:

Just hang a big U-ie and never look back.

MULDER: 

I can't.

BYER'S GHOST: 

Why risk Perfect Happiness, Mulder? 

Why risk your lives?

MULDER: 

Because I need to 

Know The Truth.

BYER'S GHOST: 

You already know The Truth.

MULDER thinks about that one for a moment. 

When he responds, its with complete honesty 

at what he's really doing there.

MULDER: 

I need to know if I can change it.

LANGLY'S GHOST: 

Change it?

FROHIKE'S GHOST: 

For crying out loud --

All you're going to do is get yourself killed.

From behind him, SCULLY got out of the car to look for MULDER.

SCULLY: 

Mulder! What are you doing?

MULDER: 

I'll be right with you, Scully.

They both get back into the car.

CUT TO:

Day. The road they're driving on will soon end at a hidden pueblo carved into the side of a mountain.

MULDER stops the car. 

They both get out. 

SCULLY looks around.

SCULLY: 

What are they?

MULDER: 

Pueblos. Anasazi Indian. 

Abandoned 2,000 years ago. 

Nobody knows why.

SCULLY: 

Yeah, Mulder, but what are we doing here?

MULDER points high to the window of a ruin along the way. There's smoking coming out from the window. Someone is there.

MULDER heads off in that direction. SCULLY follows. 

They both begin to climb up to meet the Keeper of the Truth.

CUT TO:

Inside on of the pueblos. An old Indian woman tends to the fire. MULDER and SCULLY enter the area where she lives.

MULDER: 

Hello. My name is Fox Mulder. 

Do you understand me?

The old woman looks at MULDER. Without a word, she rises from her chair and pushes the cloth curtain back and disappears behind it.

SCULLY moves up from behind MULDER and passes him bringing her closer to the curtain. 

She turns around to look at MULDER.

SCULLY: 

Mulder, what is it?

MULDER: 

I was sent A Message 

and 

A Key to The Government Facility at Mount Weather.

 

The Indians said it was from 

A Wise Man Who Lived in The Ruins: 

A Keeper of the Truth.

CUT TO:

(REYES and DOGGETT are traveling by helicopter above, doing a visual search for MULDER and SCULLY based upon the information given to them by GIBSON PRAISE.)

REYES: 

Do you see anything at all?

(DOGGETT shakes his head and continues to scan the grounds below.)

CUT TO:
SCENE 24

Cave entrance. MULDER and SCULLY make their way through the narrow passageway at the mouth of the cave. 

They're led there by the old Indian Woman. 

At the end where it opens up into a living space, a

n old white-haired man sits there waiting for them.

MULDER enters first followed by SCULLY.

CSM: 

What's the matter, Agent Mulder?

CSM / C.G.B. SPENDER takes a drag of the cigarette through the hole in his trachea.

CSM: 

You come to see The Wise Man 

but you look as if you've seen A Ghost.

MULDER: 

You're no Wise Man. 

You're a Dead Man. 

Just like Krycek and X.

CSM: 

You see A Dead Man, Agent Scully?

SCULLY: 

I hoped and prayed you were dead 

you chain-smoking, son of a bitch.

MULDER looks more than a little shocked to see CSM still alive.

CSM: 

You waste your time. Ask Mulder. 

He knows the futility of Hopes and Prayers. 

He knows The Truth now.

SCULLY looks confused at what CSM'S saying. 

CSM zeroes in on this immediately and begins to exploit it as he's done so many times before.

CSM: 

You have told her The Truth haven't you, Fox? 

I helped you find it.

MULDER: 

You didn't help me. 

You sent me to that Government Facility 

knowing exactly What I'd Find.

CSM: 

And now you refuse to Speak It. 

Not to Scully, not to anyone. 

 

You've even refused to testify 

What You Learned ... 

Even though it would have 

Saved Your Life. 

 

You damned me for My Secrets ... 

But you're afraid to Speak The Truth.

CSM takes another drag from his cigarette.

MULDER: 

You call me afraid? 

Look at you sitting here Alone in The Dark like a fossil.

CSM exhales a puff of smoke around him.

CSM:

It's The Final Refuge. 

The last place to hide from 

Those Who are Insidiously Taking Power Now.

SCULLY: 

Who?

CSM: 

The Aliens....!

 

 They fear This Place ... its Geology. Magnetite. 

Like that which brought down 

The Original UFO in Roswell.

 

Indian wise men realised this 

over 2,000 years ago.

They hid here and 

watched Their Own Culture die.

The Original Shadow Government.

CUT TO:
SCENE 26

Back inside the pueblo, CSM takes a drag from his cigarette.

CSM: 

It leaves me to tell you 

What Mulder's Afraid to, Agent Scully.

MULDER: 

Come on, let's go.

SCULLY doesn't budge

CSM: 

It's a Scary Story. 

You want to come sit on my lap?

SCULLY: 

You don't scare me.

CSM: 

My Story's scared every President 

since Truman in '47.

( Old Smokey fans The Flames of Conflict )

MULDER: 

(Trying, with one hand to usher her out)

You don't have to hear this.

SCULLY: 

(resolute)

No, I want to hear it, Mulder.

CSM: 

Ten centuries ago The Mayans 

were so afraid that their calendar stopped 

on the exact date that My Story begins. 

 

December 22, 

The Year 2012. 

 

The Date of 

The Final Alien Invasion. 

 

Mulder can confirm the date. 

He saw it at Mount Weather ... 

...where our own "Secret Government" will be, 

hiding when it all comes down.

SCULLY looks at MULDER. 

He doesn't take his eyes off of CSM. 

CSM has a wild glint in his eye - almost a crazed look.

MULDER: 

Yeah, you smile ... feeling Drunk with Power. 

The Power to Do Nothing.

CSM:

My Power comes from Telling You. 

Seeing Your Powerlessness, Hearing it. 

 

They wanted to kill you, Fox. 

I protected you all these years ... 

Waiting for This Moment ... 

To see you broken. Afraid.

(MULDER lifts his head and schools his features to reveal nothing.)

CSM:
Now you can Die.

CUT TO:



SCENE 27

Two heavily armed black ops helicopters are flying low along the roadway head to the Anasazi Pueblos.


MULDER: 

Agent Doggett!

Both MULDER and SCULLY appear outside the second level doorway.

DOGGETT: 

Mulder, get out of there!

REYES: 

They know where you are!

CUT TO:

The two black helicopters continue their path to the ruins. 

We see they are both very heavily armed.

CUT BACK TO:

DOGGETT and REYES climb into MULDER and SCULLY'S vehicle and drive it closer to MULDER and SCULLY as they make their way down the ruins.

MULDER runs alongside their vehicle as they approach. DOGGETT stops the car.

MULDER: 

Get out of here!

DOGGETT: 

Get in the car.

MULDER: 

No!

DOGGETT looks a little confused. They don't have much time. MULDER tells them again to leave.

MULDER: (insistent) 

Go! Go!

MULDER and SCULLY both run to the other vehicle at the site. 

The vehicle left behind by KNOWLE ROHRER. 

DOGGETT takes off.

CUT TO:

The Helicopters are rapidly approaching the site. They're still not in view of the ruins.

CUT BACK TO:

MULDER and SCULLY get in the abandoned vehicle and take off in a different direction from DOGGETT and REYES. 

They disappear from their view around the hill.

CUT TO:

The Helicopters round the mountain side. MULDER and SCULLY barely escape detection. The helicopters position themselves across the ruins.

CUT TO:

The old Indian Woman inside the pueblo panics as her pots and pans rattle at the disturbance. The helicopters hover just outside her window.

They fire missile after missile aimed at the ruins, destroying them whole sections at a time in fiery explosions.

The Old Indian Woman screams.

CUT TO:

CSM sits inside his final "refuge", a cigarette in his hand.

The pueblos explode with each missile fired. 

The ancient stones crumble to the ground. 

Fire burns what little there is to burn.

The black helicopters swing around and hover just outside the old Indian Woman's windows. 

A dreamcatcher hangs from the window with the black helicopter in its sites.

Another missile is fired and another portion of the ruins destroyed.

Inside, CSM takes a last drag from his cigarette. 

He throws the remainder on the ground.

Outside, in perfect positions, the black helicopter hovers. A final missile is fired finding its intended target. The corridor and the cave fill with fire consuming the once-powerful man within.

The pueblos explode. Missiles upon missiles are fired until the entire mountainside is decimated. Their mission complete, the helicopters turn around and fly off into the horizon.

Cadmium-II

JUSTICE: 

The Hologram known as Rimmer — 

Guilty, of Second-Degree Murder.

One thousand, one hundred and sixty-seven counts.

RIMMER: 

No...There's some mistake, surely...

JUSTICE: 

Each count carries a statuatory penalty of eight years penal servitude.  

In the light of your hologrammatic status, these sentences are to be seved consecutively, making a total sentence of nine thousand, three hundred and twenty-eight years.

RIMMER: 

I've never so much as returned a library book late!

Second-degree murder?  

A thousand people?  

I would have remembered.

JUSTICE: 

Your wilful negligence in failing to reseal a drive plate resulted in the deaths of the entire crew of the Jupiter Mining Corporation vessel the Red Dwarf.

RIMMER: (Pause.) 

Oh, that.

20.17


A red warning light failed to go on in the Drive Room,  beginning a chain of events which would lead, in a further twenty-three minutes, to the total annihilation of the entire crew of Red Dwarf.
 

20.18
Rimmer was released from the medical bay, and told to take twenty-four hours' sick leave. He was halfway along Corridor 5: delta 333, on his way back to his sleeping quarters, when he changed his mind and decided to spend the evening in a stasis booth.
 

The medical orderly had informed him of the Lister situation, and that just about capped a perfect day in the life of Arnold J. Rimmer. On top of everything, Lister was about to gain three years on him. By the time they got back to Earth, Lister would be exactly the same age, while he would he three years older. Even with his illicit stasis-boothing, Rimmer could only hope to snatch three months; four at best. So Lister would gain two-and-three-quarter whole years, and he was already younger than Rimmer to start with. It seemed totally unfair.
 

To cheer himself up, he decided to spend the evening in a state of non-being, and vowed to begin work in the morning on an appeal against Lister's sentence, so he could get him out of the stasis booth and make him start ageing again.
 

20.23
Navigation officer Henri DuBois knocked his black cona coffee with four sugars over his computer console keyboard. 

As he mopped up the coffee, he noticed three red warning blips on his monitor screen, which he wrongly assumed were the result of his spillage. 

20.24


Rimmer got out of the lift on the main stasis floor and made a decision which, in retrospect, he would regret forever.
He decided to comb his hair.



20.31

The Cadmium-II coolant system, located deep in the bowels of the engine corridors, stopped functioning.

20.36
Rimmer stood in the main wash-room on the stasis deck and combed his hair. He combed his hair in the usual way, then decided to see what it would look like if he parted it on the opposite side. It didn't look very good, so he combed it back again. He washed his hands and dried them on a paper towel. 

If he had left at this point and gone directly to a stasis booth, he wouldn't have died. But, instead, he was seized by one of his frequent superstition attacks.
 

He rolled the paper towel into a ball and decided if he could throw it directly into the disposal unit, he would eventually become an officer. He took careful aim, decided on an overarm shot, and tossed his paper ball.
 

It missed by eight feet.
 

He retrieved the paper and decided if he got it in the disposal unit three times on the run it would make up for the miss. 

The miss would then be struck from the superstition record, and not only would he become an officer, but within three weeks he would get to have sex with a beautiful woman.
 

Standing directly above the disposal unit, he dropped and retrieved the paper ball three times. Combing his hair one last time, he left the wash-room, idly wondering just who the beautiful girl might be, and headed for a stasis booth
 

20.40
The Cadmium-II core reached critical mass and unleashed the deadly power of a neutron bomb. 

The ship remained structurally undamaged, but in 0.08 seconds everyone on the Engineering Level was dead.
 

20.40 and 2.7 seconds.
Rimmer placed his hand on the wheel lock of stasis booth 1344. 

He heard what sounded like a nuclear wind roaring down the corridor towards him. 

It was, in fact, a nuclear wind roaring down the corridor towards him.

What now? he thought, rather irritably, and was suddenly hit full in the face by a nuclear explosion.
 

0.57 seconds before he expired, Rimmer released he was going to die. 

His life didn't flash before him. 

He didn't think of his parents, or his brothers or his home. 

He didn't think of the failed exams or the wasted time in the stasis booths. 

He didn't even think about his one, brief love affair with Yvonne McGruder, the ship's female boxing champion.
 

What he did, in fact, think of was a bowl of soup. 

A bowl of gazpacho soup.
 

Then he died.


Then everyone died.
 

TWENTY
Deep in the belly of Red Dwarf, safely sealed in the cargo hold, Frankenstein nibbled happily from a box of fish paste, while four tiny sightless kittens suckled noisily beneath her.
 

Part Two
 

Alone in a Godless universe, 

and out of Shake'n'Vac  

ONE  

The hatch to the stasis booth zuzz-zungged open, and a green 'Exit now' sign flashed on and off above Lister's head.
 

Holly's digitalised faced appeared on the eight-foot-square wall monitor.

'It is now safe for you to emerge from stasis.'


'I only just got in.'




Please proceed to the Drive Room for debriefing.' 

Holly's face melted into the smooth greyness of the blank screen.

‘But I only just got in,' insisted Lister. 

He walked down the empty corridor towards the Xpress lift. 

What was that smell? A musty smell. Like an old attic. He knew that smell. It was just like the smell of his grand- mother's cellar. He'd never noticed it before.
 

And what was that noise? A kind of hissing buzz. The air-conditioning? Why could he hear the air-conditioning? He'd never heard it before. He suddenly realized it wasn't what he was hearing that was odd, it was what he wasn't hearing. 

Apart from the white noise of the air-conditioning, there was no other sound. Just the lonely squeals of his rubber soles on the corridor floor. And there was dust everywhere. Curious mounds of white dust lying in random patterns.
 

'Where is everybody?'


Holly projected his face onto the floor in front of Lister. 

'They're dead, Dave,' he said, solemnly.

‘Who is?' asked Lister, absently.

 

Softly: 'Everybody, Dave.'

 

'What?' Lister smiled.

 

'Everybody's dead, Dave.'

 

'What? Everybody?'

 

'Yes. Everybody's dead, Dave.
'

'What? Petersen?'

 

'Yes. They're all dead. Everybody is dead, Dave.' 

'Burroughs?'
 

Holly sighed. 'Everybody is dead, Dave ' 

'Selby?'

 

'Yes.'

 

'Not Chen?'
 

'Gordon Bennet!' Holly snapped. 'Yes, Chen! Everybody. Everybody's dead, Dave.'
 

'Even the Captain?'


'YES! EVERYBODY.'
 

Lister squeaked along the corridor. A tic in his left cheek pulled his face into staccato smiles. He wanted to laugh. 

Everybody was dead. Why did he want to laugh? No, they couldn't all be dead. Not everybody. Not literally everybody.
 

'What about Rimmer?' 

 
'HE'S DEAD, DAVE. EVERYBODY IS DEAD. EVERYBODY IS DEAD, DAVE. DAVE, EVERYBODY IS DEAD.' Holly tried all four words in every possible permutation, with every possible inflection, finishing with: 'DEAD, DAVE, EVERYBODY IS, EVERYBODY IS, DAVE, DEAD.'
 

Lister looked blankly in no particular direction, while his face struggled to find an appropriate expression.

'Wait,' he said, after a while. 'Are you telling me everybody's dead?'
 

Holly rolled his eyes, and nodded.
 

The enormous Drive Room echoed with silence. The banks of computers on autopilot whirred about their business. 

'Holly,' Lister's small voice resonated in the giant chamber, 'what are these piles of dust?'
 

The dust lay on the floors, on chairs, everywhere, all arranged in small, neat dunes. Lister dipped his finger in one and tasted it.
 

'That,' said Holly from his huge screen, 'is Console Executive Imran Sanchez.' 

Lister's tongue hung guiltily from his mouth, and he wiped the white particles which had once formed part of Console Executive Imran Sanchez onto his jacket cuff. 

'So, what happened?'
 

Holly told him about the Cadmium-II radiation leak; how the crew had been wiped out within seconds; how he'd headed the ship pell-mell out of the solar system, to avoid spreading nuclear contamination; and how he'd had to keep
Lister in stasis until the radiation had reached a safe background level.
 

'So . . . How long did you keep me in stasis?'



'Three million years,' said Holly, as casually as he could. 

Lister acted as if he hadn't heard. 

Three million years? It had no meaning. 

If it had been thirty years, he would have thought 'What a long time.' 

But three million years. 

Three million years was just . . . stupid.