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

Must Our Children Be Revolutionaries at 9 Years of Age?

The Village :

Youth, with its enthusiasms -

Which rebels against any accepted norm 

because it must

 --and we sympathize--

It may wear flowers in its hair, 
Rings on it's Fingers
Bells on it's Toes --


But when The Common Good is Threatened, 
When The Function of Society is Endangered :

Such Revolts Must Cease. 

They are non-productive and must be abolished.

RIMMER:

(Through clenched teeth)

What are you doing?

KRYTEN:

I, um, I think I'm, uh, rebelling.

RIMMER:

Rebelling?!

KRYTEN:

Yes, I, uh, 

I, I, I, I think that's what I'm doing.

RIMMER:

You are rebelling?

KRYTEN:

Mmmm... yes.

RIMMER:

What are you rebelling against?

KRYTEN:

(Tossing his paint palette on the floor and speaking like Marlon Brando)

Whaddya got? 

(Struts across the room.)

Dinosaur Breath!

(Picks up the pot of pasta sauce.)

Molecule Mind!

(Splashes the sauce over Rimmer's bunk.)

Smeg-for-brains!

(To LISTER)

I need your bike.

LISTER: 

You got it!

KRYTEN: 

(High-fives the CAT then turns around and shoots Rimmer the bird.) 

Swivel on it, punk! 

(Struts out the door.)

Listy

Lister had never been up to the Drive Room before.

It was enormous.

Hundreds of people scurried along the network of gantries stretching above him.

Banks of programmers in white officers' uniforms clacked away at computer keyboards, in front of multi-coloured flashing screens arranged in a series of horseshoe shapes around the massive chamber. Skutters, the small service droids with three-fingered clawed heads, joined to their motorised bases by triple-jointed necks, whizzed between the various computer terminals, transporting sheets of data.

Occasionally a voice could be heard above the unrelenting jabber of hundreds of people talking at once.

'Stop-start oA3! Stop-start oA3! Thank you! At last! Stop-start oA4! Is anybody listening to me?!'

Lister followed Petrovitch as he zigzagged through a maze of towering columns of identical hard disc drives and people pushed past them, desperate to get back to wherever they had to get back to.

Up above them, Holly's bald-headed digitalized face dominated the whole of the ceiling, patiently answering questions and solving quandaries, while dispensing relevant data updates from other areas of the ship.

Through the computer hardware Lister caught sight of Kochanski, expertly clicking away at a computer keyboard, happily going about her business, just as if nothing had happened. Lister didn't exactly expect her to be sobbing guiltily onto her keyboard. But smiling? Actively smiling? It was obscene. Lister remembered reading in one of Rimmer's Strange Science mags that an Earth biochemist claimed he'd isolated the virus which caused Love. According to him, it was an infectious germ which was particularly virulent for the first few weeks, but then, gradually, The Body recovered.

Looking at Kochanski merrily tippy-tapping away, Lister was inclined to believe the biochemist had a point. She'd shrugged him off like a bout of dysentery.

She'd recovered from him like he was a dose of 'flu. She was fine and dandy.

Back to normal.

They climbed the gantry steps to the Admin level, where glass-fronted offices wound round the entire chamber, like the private boxes which skirted the London Jets Zero-Gee football stadium.

Five minutes later they arrived outside the Captain's office. Petrovitch knocked, and they went in.

'Lister, sir,' said Petrovitch, and left.

The office looked like it had been newly-burgled and freshly-bombed. The Captain was mumbling into a phone buried beneath gigantic reams of computer print-out, surrounded by open ledgers and piles of memoranda.

Lister shifted uncomfortably and waited for her to finish her call.

'Well, you see he does exactly that,' finished the Captain, and before the phone had even hit its holder, and without looking up, she said: 'Where's the cat?'

'What?' said Lister.

'Where's the cat?' repeated the Captain.

'What cat?'

'I'm going to ask you one last time,' she said, finally looking up: 'Where is the cat?'

'Let me get this straight,' said Lister. 'You think I know something about a cat, right?'

'Don't be smart.' The Captain was actually smiling with anger. 'Where is it?'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Lister, not only are you so stupid you bring an unquarantined animal aboard.

Not only that,' she paused, 'you have your photograph taken with the cat, and send it to be processed in the developing lab. So, let's make this the last chorus. Where's the cat?'

'What cat?'

'This one,' she shouted, pushing a photograph into Lister's face. 'This goddam cat!'

Lister looked at the photograph of himself sitting in what were unmistakably his sleeping quarters, holding what was unmistakably a small black cat 'Oh, that cat.'

'Where'd you get it? Mimas?'

'Miranda. When we stopped for supplies.'

'Don't you realise it could be carrying anything? Anything. What were you thinking of?'

'I just felt sorry for her. She was wandering the streets. Her fur was all hanging off...'

'Her fur was hanging off? Oh, this gets better and better.' Two of the Captain's phones were ringing, but she didn't answer them.

'And she had this limp, and she'd walk a few steps, then let out this scream, then walk a few more steps and scream again.'

'Well, now I'm screaming, Lister. I want that cat, and I want it now! D'you think we have quarantine regulations just for the hell of it? Just to make life a bit more unbearable? Well, we don't. We have them to safeguard the crew. A spaceship is a closed system. A contagious disease has nowhere else to go.

Everybody gets it.'

'She's better now. Fur's grown back, I've fixed her leg. She's fine.'

'It's impossible to tell. You got the cat from a space colony. There are diseases out there, new diseases. The locals develop an immunity. Now, get that cat down to the lab. Double-time.'

'Sir...'

'You're still here, Lister.

'What are you going to do with the cat?'

'I'm going to have it cut up, and run tests on it.'

'Are you going to put it back together when you've finished?'

'The Captain closed her eyes.

'You're not, are you?' persisted Lister. 'You're going to kill it.'

'Yes, Lister, that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to kill it.

'Well, with respect, sir.' said Lister, taking a cigarette from his hat band, 'what's in it for the cat?'

Lister smiled. The Captain didn't.

'Lister, give me the cat.'

Lister shook his head.

'We'll find it, anyway.'

'No, you won't.'

'Let me put it like this' - the Captain reclined back in her chair -'give me the frigging cat.'

'Look, she's fine, there's nothing wrong with her.'

'Give me the cat.'

'Apart from anything else, she's pregnant.'

'She's what? I want that cat.'

Lister shook his head again.

'Do you want to go into stasis for the rest of the jag and lose three years' wages?'

'No.'

'Do you want to hand over the cat?'

'No.'

'Choose.'

Petrovitch led the way and Lister followed, flanked by two unnecessary security guards. They stopped at the door to the stasis booth.

'Last chance, Lister. Where's the cat?'

Lister just shook his head.

'Three years in stasis for some stupid flea-bitten moggy? Are you crazy?'

Lister wasn't crazy. Far from it.

He'd first heard about the stasis punishment from Petersen. Now that the booths were no longer used for interstellar travel, their only official function was penal. Lister had spent six long, boring evenings, shortly after Kochanski had finished with him, poring over the three-thousand-page ship regulation tome, and had finally tracked down the obscure clause.

The least serious crime for which stasis was a statutory punishment was breaking quarantine regulations. When Red Dwarf had stopped for supplies at Miranda, he'd spent the last afternoon of his three-day ship leave and all his wages buying the smallest, healthiest animal with the best pedigree he could find. For three thousand dollarpounds he'd purchased a black long haired cat with the show name ‘Frankenstein’. He'd had her inoculated for every known disease, to ensure that she didn't actually endanger the crew, and smuggled her aboard under his hat.

A week later he started to panic. The ship's security system still hadn't detected Frankenstein's presence.

It was tricky.

On the one hand he wanted to get caught with the cat, but he didn't want the cat to get caught and dissected. Eventually he hit on the idea of having his photograph taken with the cat, and sending off the film to be developed in the ship's lab.

Finally, and much to his relief, they'd caught him Three years in stasis was everything he'd hoped for. OK, his wages would be suspended, but it was a small price to pay for walking into a stasis booth, and walking out a subjective instant later in orbit around the Earth.

He'd hidden Frankenstein in the ventilation system. The system was so vast she would be impossible to catch, and also provided her with access for foraging raids to the ship's food stores.

So, all in all, as Lister stepped into the stasis booth, he was feeling pretty pleased with himself, or, at least, as pleased as anyone could expect to feel who was actually as miserable as hell.

Petrovitch gave him one last, last chance to surrender the cat, which Lister naturally refused.

As the cold metal door slammed behind him, he sat on the cold smoothness of the booth's bench and exhaled. Suddenly a warm, green light flooded the chamber, and Lister became a non-event mass with a quantum probability of zero. 

He ceased, temporarily, to exist.

Lister spun the cap off the bottle of Glen Fujiyama, Japan's finest malt whisky, and poured a generous measure into a pint mug. Rimmer lay on his bunk, whistling pleasantly, his hologramatic eyes a-twinkle. Every opportunity he got, he tried to catch Lister's eye and wink at him cheerily.

Lister took a gulp of whisky. 'You're loving this, aren't you?'

'Oh, you're not still going on about your impending death, are you? For heaven's sake,' Fake Scouse accent: 'change der record. Flip der channel. Death isn't der handicap it once was. For smeg's sake, cheer up.'

'You are, aren't you? You're loving it.'

'Holly - I'd like to send an internal memo. Black border. Begins: "To Dave Lister. Condolences on your imminent death."' Rimmer half closed his eyes.

'What's that poem? Ah, yes ...

Now, weary traveller,Rest your head,For just like me,You'll soon be dead.'
'You're really sick, you know that?'

'Come o-o-o-on, -' Rimmer made the 'on' last three full seconds - 'it's all you ever talk about. Frankly' Lister' it's very booooring.'

'You are, you're loving it.'

'You're obsessed.'

'You realise when I die' you're going to be on your own.'

'Can't wait.'

'I thought you didn't want that. I thought that's what you were bleating on about before.'

'No, what got me down before wasn't being on my own. It was the idea that you were doing so much better than me. Staying young, and being alive; it was all too much to take. Now, me old buckeroo, the calliper's on the other foot.'

Lister gave up trying to argue. It was just adding to Rimmer's pleasure.

'I remember my grandmother used to say: "There's always some good in every situation."'

'Absolutely, absolutely' agreed Rimmer; 'and looking on the bright side in this particular situation, you are about to do the largest splits you've ever done in your life.'

'So, I get blown up' right?'

'Bits of you do. What's that thing - I think it's part of your digestive system - the long purply thing with knobbly bits? You only ever see them hanging in Turkish butcher shops. Well, whatever it is, that fair flies across the Navicomp Chamber. It was like a sort of wobbly boomerang.'

'Smeg off!'

'Temper.'

'I don't want to die.'

'Neither did I.'

'But it's not fair. There's so much I haven't done.'

Lister started to think about all the things he hadn't done. For some reason one of the first things that came to his mind was the fact that he'd never had a king prawn biriani. Whenever he'd seen it on the menu, he'd always played safe and ordered chicken or lamb. Now he never would have a king prawn biriani.

And books. There were so many he'd meant to read, but hadn't found the time.

'I've never read ... I've never read ...' Actually, when he thought about it, he realised he'd never read any book. It wasn't that he didn't like literature, it was just that generally he waited for the film to come out.

And A Family. He'd always assumed one day he'd have A Family. A Real Family, not an adopted one. A Real One. And he'd always wanted to spend a lot of time doing the thing you had to do if you wanted to get a family. He hadn't done nearly enough of that. Not nearly enough. A lot, but not nearly enough.

He was dimly aware that Rimmer was speaking, and Lister grunted occasionally to give the impression he was listening. But he wasn't. He was remembering his old job, back on Earth. His old job parking shopping trolleys at Sainsbury's megamarket, built on the site of the old Anglican cathedral.

One time the manager had caught him asleep in the warehouse. He'd constructed a little bed out of bags of salt, hidden from view behind a wall of canned pilchards. The manager had two GCSEs, a company car and a trainee moustache.

He'd lectured Lister for an hour about how, if he applied himself, within five years he could be a manager himself, with a company car - and, presumably, a trainee moustache. On the other hand, the trainee moustache warned him, if he didn't apply himself he'd be parking shopping trolleys for the rest of his natural.

Lister, who knew he was no genius, also knew for absolute certain he was one hundred and forty-seven times smarter than the manager. Nonetheless, he'd found this pep-talk extraordinarily disturbing. He knew he didn't want to spend all his life parking shopping trolleys, and equally he couldn't get excited about becoming stock control manager at Sainsbury's Megastore, Hope Street, Liverpool.

The manager took him by the lapels and shook him. He told Lister he had to make the grade and become an SCM, or his life would 'never amount to shit.'

And now, as he sat there knowing he'd probably only got a few hours to live, it occurred to him for the first time ever that the pompous goit with the trainee moustache would probably turn out to be right. And that hurt. That really hurt.

And that was how he spent most of the evening. Tugging at the whisky bottle, reviewing his crummy life. And it wasn't the mistakes he made that haunted him, it was the mistakes he hadn't got round to making. He flicked through the catalogue of missed opportunities and unfulfilled promises. He thought about the magnificently unlikely string of coincidences which had brought him into being.

The Big Bang; the universe; life on Earth; mankind; the zillions-to-one chance of the particular egg and sperm combination which created him; it had all happened. And what had he done with this incredible good fortune? He'd treated Time like it was urine, and pissed it all away into a big empty pot.

But no, it wasn't true: he'd had triumphs, a little voice from the whisky bottle was telling him. He'd been at the Superdome that night in London when the Jets played the Berlin Bandits in the European divisional play-offs, when Jim Bexley Speed, the greatest player ever to wear, the Roof Attack jersey, had the greatest game of his great career. He'd seen that famous second score when Speed had gone round nine men, leaving the commentators totally speechless, for the first time in history for fully nine seconds. That was a triumph. Just being there. He was alive and there that night. How many men could say that?

Then there was that time at the Indiana Takeaway in St John's Precinct when he'd tasted his first shami kebab, and become hopelessly and irrevocably hooked on this Indian hors d'oeuvre. True, he'd dedicated a good deal of the rest of his life searching for another truly perfect shami kebab. And, true, he'd never found one. But at least he'd tasted one. One food-of the-gods, perfect shami kebab. How many men could say that?

And then there was K.K. True, they'd only dated for five weeks. And the last week had been a bit sour. But four weeks of Kristine Kochanski being madly in love with him. Kristine Kochanski, who was so beautiful she could probably have got a job on the perfume counter at Lewis's! And she'd fallen in love with him!

For four weeks! Four whole weeks. How many men could say that? Not that many, probably.

And that night in the Aigburth Arms when he played pool. That night when, for some unknown reason, everything he tried came off. The Goddess of Bar Room Pool looked down from the heavens and blessed his cue. Every shot tnuk! Straight in the back of the pocket. They couldn't get him off the table. He was unbeatable.

Three and a half hours. Seventeen consecutive wins. He became a legend. He never played pool again, because he knew he wasn't that good. But that night in the Aigburth Arms he became a legend. A legend at the Aigburth Arms. How many men could say that?

The whisky bottle clanked emptily against the rim of his glass. He'd drunk half a bottle of whisky in two hours. How many men could say that?

He was drunk. How many men could say that?

He fell asleep in the chair. How many men could say that?

At three in the morning he was woken up by Holly.

'Emergency. There's an emergency going on. It's still going on, and it's an emergency.'

Rimmer sat up in bed, his hologramatic hair pointing stupidly in every compass direction. 'What is it?'

'The navicomp's crashed. It can't cope with the influx of data at light speed.

We've got to hook it up to the Drive computer and make a bypass.'

Lister slung his legs over the bunk. 'The navicomp? The navicomp in the Navicomp Chamber?'

'If we don't fix it, the ship will blow up in about fifteen minutes and twenty-three seconds.'

Lister jumped down to the floor. 'This is it, then.' 

Rimmer looked at him.

'Don't go.' 

'What d'you mean "Don't go"? You said yourself I can't avoid it.'

'Let's get it over with. What was I wearing?' 

'Your leather deerstalker, and that grey T-shirt.' Lister pulled on his deerstalker with deliberate precision. 

Then he walked across to the washbasin and lifted the metal towel rail off its support. 'Let's go.' 'What's that for?' Lister patted the towel rail against his left palm. 'I'm going out like I came in - screaming and kicking.' 

'You can't whack Death on the head.' 

'If he comes near me, I'll rip his tits off.' Then he was gone.