This story is the work of Bill Brennan and is not intended to infringe any copyright. It is done with the love of a fan for his favourite shows. All characters don't exist yet, so you can't sue him either!

Part Six, uploaded 7th October, 2001

CAST:
DAVE LISTER.................EDDIE
ARNOLD J. RIMMER.......BRAD MAJORS
THE CAT........................FRANK N FURTER
KRYTON........................RIffRAff
HOLLY...........................CRIMINOLOGIST

(Final) Part Six.

Eddie Lister sat up at his table, eye's wide, mouth agape. He stood up and looked around the disco...everyone was gone. No Chen, no Freeman, no crew...no Columbia. Just him, Edward Lister, standing in an empty room, drunk as a skunk, wearing last month's lucky underwear, holding a postage stamp sized photo of a red haired woman that was three million years dead.
"Smeg this," said Eddie. he stormed out of the bar and hopped on his bike, roaring down the long, empty halls of the Red Dwarf, leaving only the sjutters to look at each other in mechanical wonderment...

"Your going to do WHAT??" asled Brad J. Rimmer Majors. The "H" on his forhead, located directly above the thick rimmed glasses, went up a few inches in suprise.
"Im turning the ship around, Rimmer. Im going home."Eddie said again.
"What...what about ME?" Rimmer said, in his usual self-centered way.
"No problem, man. Me and the Cat will go into stasis, Holly and Kryton will take care of the ship whiole we sleep, and we'll turn you off."
"You trust this riffraff handyman and a senile computer with a chicken foot in his forhead and an ass on his chin to run things for all that time? No sir, me bucko, that won't do. It isnt safe. Ergo, you dont turn the ship around."
"Forget it, Brad, Im going home."
"And that'll be the end of me, then, wont it. You wont have any need of me, then, and I doubt the ants or whomever runs the place now have found a cure for death..."
"Brad, I'll turn ya back on, dont worry...nothing will go wrong," Eddie said.

"Everything is going wrong," Eddie said to the Holly.
'Relax, Eddie. Emotion-a disturbance of mind, or ecited mental state. It is also a power and irrational master..." said the computer.
"Huh?" asked Eddie.
"Nothing, just rambling on, you know how it is when you have an IQ of 5000 and no one up to your speed." Holly explained.Eddie had no idea what the senile computer ment, but didnt comment. He was bust going down the list of things they had to do before starting home: fuel cells had to be filled, sections of the ship shut down, navigational arrays to be midofied...and on top of that, Eddie was having a problem getting the Cat to understand what he ment when he said "pack only the bare essentials." Like now...

"Cat, what's this?" asked Eddie. The dark haired, corset wearing young man pursed his lips and batted his eyebrows with pride.
"This, bud, are my "bare essentials." It was a clothesrack, hung with garment.
"This here is my black cape with silver lining, this here is my leather jacket, and-"
"We're not bringing all this into stasis, it wont fit," Eddie explained
"I am NOT having my wardobe turn to dust over 3 million years. I am too FINE looking to go around wearing only one set of clothes..." the Cat was interrupted by a sudden shuddering of the ship.
"Holly, whats that?" asked Eddie.
"Come to the bridge, everyone, and I'll explain. Hurry..."
The ship shook again, and Eddie and the Cat ran for the flight deck.

When they got there, Rimmer and Kryton were already seated.
"Its a black hole, non-rotating, we came across it at near lightspeed, which is why gravimetrics didnt give us any warning," said Brad.
"How close are we?" asled Eddie.
"Just near the event horizon," answered Holly.
"For Gods sake, get us out of here, you senile olf bugger," exclaimed Rimmer.
" Wait, Brad. Eddie, did you know that a black hole warps time and space?" asked Holly.
"Time and space? Like a time warp, you mean?" asked Eddie.
"Exactly. If we ride the event horizon time waves like a surfer on a board, we can ":surf" back to the time before you even left, by a few million years. We can arrive back at the Dwarf in time to stop the crew from being killed."
"But what if we miss?" asked Brad, terrified.
"Well, its a time warp, isnt it? WE can just keep going round till we get it right, cant we?"
"And this can get us home, in time to save Columbia?" asked Eddie with a grin.
"Yes."
"Lets lets do the time warp again!" exclaimed Eddie with a shout and a smile...

"Everything is in readiness, Master. We mearly await your...word," said the thin, blond haired mechanoid.
"Kryton, my name is Eddie, not Master," said Eddie as he gulped last nights stale lager and fiddled with a spanner wrench that hung from his neck on a chain. They were about to enter the time warp in a few minutes. Next to him sat Rimmer, who bit his nails, and the Cat, who was looking at his teeth and his pearls and his "BOSS" tattoo in a mirror and ignoring them all.
"Here we go, lads," said Holly, and the drives came on. The Red Dwarf got closer and closer, and started to shake. It was just bumpy at first, but soon enough things were really rattling around.
"I have a coolant line breach in drive room sixteen, Eddie. Main drive will overload in fifteen minutes of it isnt re-routed, and we'll miss our stop.
"I'll be right back," said Eddie as he got up.
"Great Scott!" said Brad. Kryton only sneered, and the Cat spoke to himself as he watched his own reflection.
"It was strange the way it happened," the Cat said to himself, "suddenly, you get a break. The answer was there, all the time..."

Eddie was in the drive room. He had been gone perhaps five minutes when the problem was finally re-routed.
"Brad, Ive fixed the problem. Im comming back up," he said.
"Eddie! Where the smeg have you been for the last hour? Were about to enter the main warp!" Brad shouted over the link.
"Two hours?" asked Eddie. "Its been five minuites." Eddie said, confused.
"Mr. Lister Sir," responded the high voice of the handyman. " We have been most concerened. Your last comminucation with us was three days ago..." said the droid handyman.
"THREE DAYS?" exclaimed Eddie.
"Two weeks and eight days now, Sir. You see, the closer we get to the main warp, the faster time travels. Its faster here because we are closer to the drive, and slower for you. By the time you get this, we will already have passed through to our stop. I wanted to warn you that you must get strapped in as stress factors are growing geometrically..."
The ship thundered, and sparked flew from a nearby vending machine. Part of the wall collapsed, and a skutter was smashed. Another shutter, and a siren, now two sirens, started to blare. The air turned cold and Eddie feld a chill wind-that ment only one thing, a hull breech. The way back was blocked -he had to get to a Starbug or Blue Midget right away!
"Oh, I ment to tell you, Sir. The way back is blocked, you'll have to get to a Starbug or Blue Midget right away," said Kryton.
Eddie hopped on his motorbike and speed away as fast as he could. Falling debris hit him in the face, opening uip a long gash over his forhead. He just made it to one of the docking bays, got into a Starbug, and blasted off. He almost made it our safely. As the Starbug slipped out of the time field envelope, it blew its motors, and the ship carreened madly through space, heading towards a small planet that circled around a dim sun.
"Rimmer! Kryton! Im going down, mayday mayday!" Eddie yelled into the link.
"Stay calm, Eddie!" said the voice of Rimmer, "we'll beeeeee baaaaaaaccccckkkkkkk!"
The ship fell into the atmopshere and all communications were lost.

The Red Dwarf popped out of time/space totally fine. Holly had the ships course reversed in about an hour, and they went back for Eddie right away. They found the planet with ease, and located a single energy source. Kryton Rimmer,. and the Cat hopped into a Star bug and made planetfall.

The place was a junkheap. Someone had been dumping trash here for thousand, or even millions, of years. There was the pojt source: the crashed remains of a starbug, the fusion engein still working. The house next to the remains looked something like a castle out of an old Hammer horror film: spires and walls, thin windows, statues on the roof of all kinds. Rimmer knocked on the door, and soon enough an old man answered. He had a long, grey beard, wore a faded black leather jacket, and was overweight and stooped over.
The old man looked Brad over with suprise, and then something disgust.
"Hello," the old man said.
"Hi. My name is Captain Bradley Rimmer J. Majors of the ship Red Dwarf. This git next to me is Kryton, a mechanical pile of junk, and the preening sissy in the knickers is the Cat."
"Hiya," said the cat.
"We uh, were looking for a friend oif ours, maybe youve seen him? He owns that ship thats crashed in your front yard."
"You are a total smeg head, arent you, Ace?" said the old man.
"Excuse me?" said Brad with shock. How would the old man know about the nickname that no one would call him.
"Smeg head. You. As in, you are a smeg head, old Iron Balls," spat the old man.
"It couldnt be," said Brad.
"We'll bee baaaaccccccckkkkkk," said the old man, and Brad said "Great Scott!"
The old man standing there was Eddie.

"Do you know how long Ive waited for you to come and get me?" demanded the old man named eddie Lister. he shuffled about the room, wearing a faded "London Jets" t shirt. the place was a mess: bric-a-brac covered oin cobwebs everywhere, paintings, reproductions, of "American Gothic"and "Mona Lisa" hung about. There was an old fashioned lift, a throne, a dining room with all mannor of tablewear on it...a total hodge-podge of decor.
"Please understand, Eddie, its only been a few hours, relative time, for us," said Holly.
"Well, its been fifty years or so for me...fifty years of being alone..."
Eddie shuffled over to a frame that hung on the wall, and stopped, looking at it.
"Fifty years," he said again, and looked closer. In the middle of the huge frame was a small photo, the size of a postage stamp. The face in the photo was of a young woman. She had red hair, racoon eyes, red lips, a mole, and wore a cat collar. A tear ran down the odl mans face, and he sniffled.
"I'll get her back one day, you'll see," said the old man, and he closed his heartbroken eyes.
"Of course you will," said Brad, with uncharacteristic kindness...

They were all back aboard the Dwarf, getting ready for the time warp.
"This may be unwise,he has a weak heart," said Holy. "He may not make the jump."
"Well we just cant leave him hear to die on cockroach world, can we?" asked Brad. Then they all agreed to take the risk, especially Eddie.

"Three, two, one...GO!" The drives kicked in, the ship went back into the event horizon of the Red Dwarf...and Eddie grabbed his chest in pain. He was too od, had eaten too many curry vindaloo's, drank too many beers.
"Cardiac arrest," said Kryton as the ship buckled. "He's going soon,"
"Great Scott, what can we do?" asked Brad.
"Man,. he dont look god," said the Cat.
"There's only one chance to save him. Quick, get him to the docking bay.." said Holly.

Eddie woke up and fell from the ground to a standing position. The pain in his chest faded away, and he started waling backwards, away from where the Red Dwarf escape pod lay in the ground. His eyes went wide as he saw the explosive bolts explode, fall back into the door which fell back into place, and the ship took off in reverse. Dirt filled the hole and Eddie walked away, stunned.He walked into a pub called "SNANNERB" and thought "what a smeg head name for a pub."
He walked in and took a seat. He promptly vomited up his beer into an empty glass. A waitress came, took the glass, and gave him a five pound note. Eddie put it in his pocket, and felt a scrap of paper. He took it out and read it.
"Mister Lister Sir," it began, and Eddie assumed it was written by Kryton.
"You suffered a heart attack and would have died had we not discovered this alternate time line. In it, time flows in reverse. As you were only thirty when you were aboard Red Dwarf, we will come back for you in fifty year, pick you up, and we can return to Earth. This will be fifty years your time, almost right away to us. Good luck Sir, see you in fifty years."
Signed, "Rimmer, Kryton, Holly, and The Cat."
Brad smiled. Those crazy bastards! Well, at least he wasnt dead. Now, all he needed to do was wait fifty years. Now, who was he on this world,what was he supposed to do?
And a woman walked into the pub. She was old as well, her red hair faded to a silver white, wrinkles under the racoon eyes, and her smile...it was amazing. It was the pinball smile that he had fallen in love with amost three million and fifty years ago.
"Columbia?" Eddie asked.
"Eddie!" the old woman screeched, and fell into his arms, kissing him.
The memories of this timeline were just now starting to catch up with him: he had married Columbia. They had moved to a small farm in Fiji. They had three sons, Jim, Bexley, and Franklin. They had been in love, and had lived happy ever after, for all those years. And he had fifty years to do it all again, only this time in reverse...and in fifty years he could bring Columbia with him, and they would have yet another whole lifetime to be together.
"Hot Patootie, bless my soul," said Eddie with a smile, and he kissed the woman he loved back...

The End

ITS COLD OUTSIDE, THERES HARDLY ANY ATMOSPHERE
I'M ALL ALONE MORE OR LESS
I WANT TO FLY, FLY AWAY FROM HERE
WELL HAVE FUN FUN FUN
IN THE SUN SUN SUN...