Better Than Life

by Grant Naylor

'You mean you've got to get out of here. I'm putting up your bail.' Lister hammered on the cell door and called for Bert the cop.

  ***

  Bert the cop sat at the old wooden desk and finished counting out the ten-dollar bills that represented Lister's life savings. 'Sign here,' he said curtly, and slid a release form across the desk. 'Your life savings,' he tutted. 'I sure hope she's worth it.'

  'Believe me, Bert,' said Lister, 'she isn't.'

  Out on the main street, it was still mayhem. Two fire engines were fighting a losing battle to save the orphanage. Dozens of people ran up and down, carrying water in anything they could find, and hurling it over the small fires that still pocked the main street. Families camped out, under homemade tents made of blankets, while the injured were carefully stretchered into the back of farm vehicles and ferried to the County Hospital, more than sixty miles away.

  'Don't get too down,' said Rimmer, patting Lister tenderly on the shoulder. 'None of this really exists.'

  'You must have a hell of an appetite for destrol fluid, Rimmer. Here.' Lister waved his arm at the row of parked cars. 'Pick one of these and drive it away. No one will mind. Just get the smeg out of here.'

  'You don't understand - you've got to come with me. You've got to help me find Cat and Kryten. We've all got to leave the Game together.'

  'I'm not leaving Bedford Falls.'

  'But it's not real.'

  'So? What have I got in reality? I'm the last human being alive, three million years out in Deep Space, without a prayer of ever getting back to Earth. Everything I want is here: my ...' he was going to say 'my wife', but he checked himself, 'my ...' but the kids were gone, too. His wife, his kids, his home, his little shop: Rimmer's single visit to Bedford Falls had laid waste the whole of his fantasy.

  'Don't you see? There's nothing to keep you here, now. My mind destroyed it all. And if we don't get out of the Game and back to reality, there's no telling what my psyche will do to us.'

  'I'm going to stay. I can start again - get Krissie back, and the boys. It'll be all right.'

  Rimmer shook his peroxide blonde head and pulled the trenchcoat he'd borrowed from Lister around his shivering form. 'You don't understand, do you?'

  A huge triple tanker air-braked to a halt beside them. The driver leaned out of his window, and spat a lump of chewing tobacco spittle on to the floor. 'Hey, lady,' he addressed Rimmer, 'can you tell me where the Bedford Falls nuclear-waste depot is?'

  Lister walked over to the cab. 'Bedford Falls doesn't have a nuclear-waste depot.'

  'Sure it does,' the driver nodded. 'Opens tomorrow. S'posed to be somewhere near the new town sewage plant on, lemme see,' he consulted a clipboard, 'Sycamore Avenue.'

  'Sorry,' said Rimmer quietly.

  'There is no sewage plant on Sycamore Avenue,' Lister insisted.

  'Sure there is,' the driver pointed into the murky, smoke-laden sky. 'You can see the stacks.'

  Lister looked. All around Bedford Falls were huge, obscene configurations of industrial chimneys, belching thick black clouds into the night air.

  'Look.' The driver spat another brown plume on to the street. 'If you can just direct me as far as the prison, I'll find my way from there.'

  'What prison? You mean the jailhouse?'

  'No, the new prison. The new open prison. The one they've just opened for the rehabilitation of psychopathic serial-killers.'

  Lister looked at Rimmer, who just shrugged hopelessly. They walked across the street and headed for the line of parked cars. As they passed the rubble that had been his home, Lister spotted something. He stooped, tossed aside a couple of bricks, and picked up a blue sailing yacht, which still bore the price tag: '$2.25¢'. He smoothed down the sails, and clutched it to his chest. 'Come on,' he said, finally, 'let's get out of here.'

  They climbed into one of the cars, an Oldsmobile; Rimmer in the driving seat, Lister beside him. Rimmer started up the engine.

  'Hang on,' said Lister. 'Might be an idea if I drive.'

  They swapped places. As Rimmer slid into the passenger seat, there was a crunch of broken wood. He arched his back and fished out a squashed yacht. 'What the hell's this?' he said, and tossed it out of the window.

  Lister wiggled the gear lever into first, and the Oldsmobile bumbled down the devastated main street, and up the hill, out of Bedford Falls.

  As they reached the hill's crest, Lister stopped the car and craned round.

  He'd been in BTL now for nearly two years, and he had never thought he'd leave. Bedford Falls was his own personal nirvana. His psyche had created a town and a community based on his all-time favourite movie, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, and this was where he'd wanted to spend the rest of his days.

  He'd been aware, though he had never thought about it too much, that BTL would eventually kill him. His body, out there in reality, would gradually waste away and die. But it was a deal he'd been prepared to accept.

  Here, in the Game, he'd had everything he had desired: a community full of good people, his kids, his little shop and, best of all, he was married to Kristine Kochanski.

  Out there in reality, he had none of this, nor any chance of ever getting it. And worse still, in reality Kristine Kochanski was dead.

  Kristine Kochanski had been the one and only good thing that had happened to Lister since he'd signed up with Red Dwarf. In fact, she'd been the only good thing to happen to him since that drunken night of his twenty-fourth-birthday celebration, which ended with him coming to in a burger bar on Mimas wearing only a pair of yellow fishing waders and a lady's pink Crimplene hat. Ever since that night, his life had been a constant struggle to get back home to Earth.

  Frankly, he hadn't had much success. He'd gone from Earth to Mimas, and from there to some unknown location in the middle of Deep Space, and now here he was, in the wrong plane of the wrong dimension of reality.

  Well, he'd had enough. He'd quit.

  BTL was where he was staying.

  This was where he wanted to be. Because it was the only place he could be with Kristine Kochanski.

  Now it was over. He had to go.

  He stared down at the ruined town, then turned back and started to release the handbrake, as five jet fighters from the new Bedford Falls Airforce Base screamed in formation above him.

  'Thanks a lot, pal,' he said to Rimmer, 'thanks a lot.'

  SEVENTEEN

  The Cat curled up happily on his dogskin chaise longue, flicking idly through the TV channels with his remote control.

  Because of his notoriously short boredom threshold, most Cat programmes lasted less than two minutes, and the advert breaks in between were a short sequence of flash-frame blips. He flicked on Channel 2. It was a TV phone-in, where cats with sexual problems called in, and a panel of experts laughed at them.

  'Line seven now: what's your problem, Buddy?'

  'I met this female ... and, uh, for some reason, I still don't understand why ... but for some reason ... I felt like hanging around after we had sex.'

  'You felt like what?'

  The panel screamed and slapped their hands on the desk.

  The Cat snorted, 'The guy is sick!' and flicked channels.

  He joined the middle of a cookery show which was demonstrating a hundred and one different ways of preparing hairballs. He flicked again, and found a fashion show which had been recorded the night before and was consequently massively out-moded, this being the middle of the following afternoon. Next was some stupid love story. With the same plot as all cat love stories: boy meets girl, boy leaves girl, boy gets another girl. The Cat shook his head. Romantic slush.

  Flick. Mouse tennis.

  Flick. At last something interesting. MTV - the twenty-four hour mirror channel. The Cat gazed lovingly at his reflected image, while smoochy music piped softly through the speakers. The programme was totally ruined less than three hours later when a thirty millisecond advert break spoiled his concentration, and he flicked the set off in disgust.

 
He slipped the gold fob-watch out of his waistcoat, flicked open the cover and stared at the dial. The Cat had replaced the conventional numbers with a series of symbols, which stood for 'food', 'sex', 'snooze', 'light snooze', 'heavy snooze', 'major sleep', 'self-adoration hour', 'preening' and 'bathtime'. Right now, it was twenty past sex, or, to put it another way, quarter to food. He snapped the watch closed and tugged the bell-pull by his side.

  Then, instead of ten half-naked oiled Valkyries charging through with silver platters, piled high with every kind of fish imaginable, ready to tend his smallest whim, absolutely nothing happened.

  He jerked the bell-pull once more.

  And again, absolutely nothing happened.

  Slightly panicked, the Cat consulted his watch again. This was serious. His whole schedule was getting messed up. He was less than twenty minutes away from his seventh major snooze of the day and he still had to cram in sex and lunch.

  Where were the Valkyries?

  He went over to the wall, opened the dumbwaiter hatch, climbed in and shimmied down the rope to the kitchens.

  Kryten, as usual, was in the kitchens mopping the Cat's huge, black-and-white-checked stone floor.

  'I've nearly finished,' said Kryten to the Cat as he climbed out of the hatch. 'Just a few more minutes, and then we really must get back to reality. Oh, look at this,' he orgasmed, 'a custard stain. And it goes right across the length of the floor.'

  'Where are the Valkyries?'

  They formed the "Valkyrie Sex-Slave Liberation Movement”, and left for the mainland. You just missed them.'

  'They what?'

  'Yes, they were sick and tired of bowing to your every whim and desire.'

  The Cat slumped into a carved oak chair. 'Why?' he said, genuinely mystified.

  'Well, if you'll pardon my directness, it's fairly obvious, isn't it?'

  'It is?'

  'Of course it is.'

  The Cat wrinkled his nose. 'What's that smell?' He stood up and sniffed around. 'It's like bad cheese. What is it?' He flung open a leaded window and looked down. 'The moat's curdled. It's never done that before.'

  'Don't worry,' said Kryten. 'I'll clean it all out, and put in some fresh milk, just as soon as I've finished ...' He stared down at the broken mop handle in his hand. 'Well, that's curious.'

  The Cat leaned back in from the window. 'What's that out there?'

  Kryten waddled over with his broken mophead, and his suddenly leaking bucket, and joined him.

  'That's a volcano,' said Kryten.

  'Never noticed that before,' said the Cat. 'And what's that funny red smoky bubbly stuff coming out of the top?1

  'Magma,' said Kryten chirpily, pleased he knew the answer to the question. 'Also known as molten lava.'

  'Is it dangerous?'

  'Only if it's heading this way.'

  'It is heading this way.'

  'Duh-duh ... duh-duh ... duh-duh ... duh-duh ...' said Kryten, his circuits locked in panic mode.

  'I don't get it.' The Cat scuffed his spatted boot against the wrought-iron stove. 'What's going on here?'

  'Perhaps she can explain that,' said Lister.

  The Cat and Kryten turned to see Lister standing under the expansive arch of the kitchens' doors with a peroxide blonde in fishnet stockings, eight-inch stilettos and a huge army trenchcoat.

  'He's right,' she said. 'It's my fault, all of it.'

  The castle rocked as the volcano's plug was blasted into the stratosphere, blackening the sky and showering the Cat's estate with volcanic ash and flaming boulders.

  The Cat was the only one who kept his footing. 'What are we going to do?'

  'We're going to do what we should have done a long time ago,' said Lister, climbing to his feet. 'We're getting out of here. We're going back to reality.'

  EIGHTEEN

  The LCD display melted from 06:59 to 07:00, and, a millisecond before the alarm was set to bray into life, Lister's arm stretched out from under the regulation-issue duvet and clicked it off with a satisfying plip.

  His body was spiced inside with that red-letter-day feeling -like something wonderful had happened, but his half-awake mind hadn't quite remembered it.

  He right-angled his body, swivelled round, slid his feet into the soft warmth of the slippers, and shuffled over to the viewport window. He gazed out into the black felt of space. Diamonds of light glimmered and gleamed a welcome home.

  I'm back, he thought.

  Back on Red Dwarf.

  Back in reality.

  A contented smile spread itself into a yawn on his face. He turned and opened the sleeping quarters' fridge. He pulled out a jug of freshly squeezed orange juice and a Saran-Wrapped half-grapefruit. He flicked the percolator to 'Espresso' and went through to the shower cubicle as the coffee-machine gurgled its good morning.

  We've done it.

  We've beaten it.

  We're out.

  He spun the taps and water niagarad on to the pine-scented rubber shower mat. He pushed his hand into the curtain of water. Warm and perfect. Not hot, not cold. Just perfect.

  It was good to be alive.

  He scrubbed himself first-date clean, grabbed a thick white towel and dabbed himself dry. He padded back to the coffee-machine and sluiced down a quite superb cup of espresso. He poured himself another. The second cup tasted even better than the first.

  And that was when Lister started to think.

  The second cup tasted better than the first?

  The second cup never tasted better than the first.

  He clicked open the fridge door. It looked like an advert for refrigerators. It was packed with fresh vegetables and crisp salads. There were eight kinds of cheese, various slices of lean cooked meat, a whole salmon, a rack of lamb tipped with little paper chefs hats and a bottle of champagne on chill.

  Was this really his fridge? Where was the curdling milk struggling out of the top of its carton? Where was the strange smell that sent his stomach into a loop-de-loop and was impossible to track down? Where was his spare pair of trainers? He usually kept them in the ice compartment to cool down. There was nothing in the ice compartment, except a varied selection of delicious-sounding ice-creams, and for the first time in history, some ice. Ice? What was ice doing in the ice-making compartment of Lister's fridge? And where was that indefinable green mush in the salad tray? The one that resulted from decaying vegetables blending together, so it was impossible to tell where the lettuces ended and the cabbages began.

  No, this was a fridge that belonged in a mail-order catalogue. This was the fridge that the Great Gatsby flung open when Daisy came calling.

  There was something wrong.

  And what was wrong, was there was nothing wrong.

  He looked down at his ship regulation-issue bath towel. Space Corps towels were famous for two features: firstly, they were as thin as damp poppadoms and about half as absorbent; and secondly, they were too short to wrap around the waist -they always left a Balinese dancing-girl gap down the side of one leg.

  Not this one. This was thick as a rug, and lapped his waist twice.

  Maybe he'd got thinner.

  Maybe.

  Lister caroomed over to the bread-bin, and flipped the lid. He groaned. There was bread in it. Freshly baked. White, brown, wholemeal, multi-grain, baps, rolls. He hauled out a farmhouse loaf, carved a slice and slammed it under the grill. He paced up and down impatiently waiting for the bread to toast.

  His mind rewound to the night before. The four of them, passing through the Exit gate and emerging in the cargo hold, Rimmer changing en route from Trixie LaBouche's body back to his own hologrammatic form. Their conversation with Holly. The pauseless journey back up to the sleeping quarters - the shuttle bus, the ship metro, the Xpress lift up two thousand and fifty floors - they hadn't had to wait for any of them.

  He looked under the grill. The bread was ready.

  Feverishly, he buttered it, and then spread a thick layer of chunky lime marmalade over its evenly bro
wn surface. He held the toast in his hand, parallel with his chin, five feet from the floor and dropped it. It spun end over end and landed. He looked down.

  It was marmalade up.

  He tried it again.

  Marmalade up.

  And again, and again. Twenty times, it landed marmalade up.

  Lister rifled through the sleeping quarters. Nothing was right.

  The half-full sauce bottle had no congealed brown rivulets running from neck to label; the remote control for the vid-screen wasn't missing and, even more damningly, the batteries hadn't been taken out and used for something else.

  Another test. He microwaved a roast beef and Yorkshire pudding frozen dinner. It tasted like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

  That just wasn't possible. A microwaved dinner that tasted better than its cardboard container?

  He opened his locker and glanced at his collection of videos. They were standing in neat ranks, side-by-side, all boxed and labelled in his own hand. And, worse, he found at least thirty he'd recorded and actually wanted to watch. This wasn't right. This wasn't normal.

  He was frying his twenty-third egg without breaking a single yolk when Kryten bustled in.

  'It's incredible! The most marvellous thing has happened. I was mopping the floor - you know that really dirty one on the stasis corridor? The one with the really wonderful stains? When, guess what? I looked in the suspended animation booths, and not all the crew got wiped out in the accident. Three survived.'

  'Let me guess,' said Lister. 'Rimmer, Petersen and Kristine Kochanski.'

  'Yee-ss!' Kryten clapped his hands in delight. 'How did you know?'

  'We're still in the Game, Kryten. This isn't reality.'

  Rimmer skidded in through the sleeping quarters' hatchway. 'Guess what?' he beamed. 'Something incredible's just happened!'

  'This isn't reality,' said Lister.

  The Cat's smile entered the room, followed by the Cat himself. 'Hey. hey, he-ey! You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you ...'

  'We're still in Better Than Life,' said a crestfallen Rimmer.