Grant Naylor - Red Dwarf - Better Than Life

PROLOGUE

Time is a character in this novel.

It does strange things: moves in strange directions, and at strange speeds.

Don't trust Time.

Time will always get you in the end.

Grant Naylor (Alexandria, 25 BC)

Part One

Game Over

ONE

Rimmer sat on the open terrace, in his half-devastated dinner suit of the night before, and gazed down at the metallic blue time machine, drunkenly parked skew-whiff in the ornamental gardens of the Palace of Versailles. Breakfasting with him were five of his stag-night companions: John F. Kennedy, Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein, Louis XVI and Elvis Presley.

'That was a heck of a night,' Kennedy sparkled. 'One heck of a night.' Einstein snorted in agreement, and continued absently buttering the underside of his tie.

Julius Caesar stumbled through the french windows out on to the terrace with an ice-pack perched on his head. 'Can anyone tell me,' he asked in faltering English, 'where in Jupiter's name we got this?' He held aloft a large orange-and-white-striped traffic cone. 'I woke up in bed with it this morning.'

Van Gogh cracked an egg into his tomato juice, and downed it with a shudder. 'It's not a good night,' he grinned, 'if you don't get a traffic cone.'

'You want that?' Elvis Presley nodded at Rimmer's devilled kidneys, and without waiting for a reply scraped them on to his already full plate.

A colourless smile trickled across Rimmer's upper lip. 'Avez-vous some, uh, Alka-Seltzer?'.

'One heck of a night,' Kennedy repeated.

And he was right: as bachelor-night parties went, it had been a bit of a cracker.

A flash-frame slammed into Rimmer's brain - a scene from the night before ...

***

He was standing on a table in a 1922 Chicago speakeasy, dancing the Black Bottom with Frank 'the Enforcer' Nitty's girlfriend, and complaining for the umpteenth time that his mineral water tasted as if someone had poured three double vodkas into it.

Then ... Then ... He couldn't remember the order, but they had definitely dropped in on one of Caligula's orgies. Rimmer must have been fairly drunk by then, because he remembered spending at least twenty minutes trying to chat up a horse.

At some point they'd been in Ancient Egypt, and Rimmer had lost a tooth trying to give the Sphinx a giant love-bite ... then someone - Rimmer thought it was Elvis - had suggested a curry. And Rimmer, who hated curries, had been dragged, complaining, through Time back to India in the days of the Raj, where everyone had ordered a mutton vindaloo, except for Rimmer who had a cheese omelette served with ludicrously thick chips.

The cry had gone up for more liquor, and Rimmer suggested ... What did he suggest? There was a block, so it must have been something fairly bad. Some kind of restaurant. They'd crashed a private party, and all the people there seemed fairly put out when Rimmer and his cronies showed up dancing and singing. There were a dozen or so diners, all men, all bearded. Rimmer closed his eyes and groaned.

They'd gatecrashed the Last Supper.

What had he done? What had he said? He'd been shouting drunk. 'Private bloody party! Our money's as good as anyone's!'

Twelve of them had stood up and threatened to punch Rimmer out, but the one who'd remained seated had told the others to sit down again.

'Do one of your tricks,' Rimmer had insisted. 'Come on, I'm getting married tomorrow. That one with the fish - it's brilliant.'

***

A heck of a night.

Rimmer looked at his real-time watch. 'Well, Louis, me old buckeroo,' he said to the king of France, 'we'd better be making tracks. Big kissy-kissy to Marie and the dauphin. Thanks for the servant girls. See you at the wedding.'

Louis XVI thanked Rimmer for the Ray-Ban sunglasses and the Sony Walkman and bade him farewell.

Rimmer gingerly made his way across the lawns towards the Time copter, followed by Kennedy, Van Gogh, Einstein and Caesar. Elvis crammed a steak in his mouth, stuffed a second in his pocket, grabbed four bread rolls and followed them.

***

The man in the air traffic control tower radioed clearance to materialize, and the Time copter bloomed into existence, and chuddered to rest on the tarmacadamed runway.

The disembarkation door hinged to the ground, and the world's richest man clicked down the steps towards the waiting limo.

Two steps down, the screaming started. Hordes of teenage girls standing on the observation balcony swept forward in tides of pubescent adoration.

'Arniiiiiiiiieeee!' they roared. 'We love yooouuuuuu!'

Rimmer waved half-heartedly and shot them the thinnest of his thin smiles, before he was surrounded by a phalanx of sober-suited security guards who ushered him to the leather comfort of the limo's interior.

The eight motorcyclists twisted their throttle grips, and led the cavalcade forward, as it swished imperiously past Passport Control and the Customs building, and headed towards the exit.

Rimmer flicked idly through the stack of magazines on the limo's mahogany table: Time, Life and Newsweek. He noted with only mild interest that his portrait graced the cover of all three. According to Life, he'd just been voted 'World's sexiest man', 'World's best-dressed man' and 'Pipe-smoker of the year'. Rimmer smiled. He didn't even own a pipe, much less smoke one. Success breeds success, he thought.

The cavalcade fought its way through the screaming fans milling around the airport exit.

'Arniiiiiiiiiiiieeeeee! Don't marry her!'

Flattened adoring faces squashed up against the grey smoked glass, all of them dizzy with desire for Arnold J. Rimmer.

Rimmer was perfectly well aware that he was in the wrong plane of the wrong dimension of reality and, quite honestly, he didn't give two hoots.

The limousine gently disentangled itself from the sobbing frenzy of teenage girls and silently accelerated down the freeway, followed by a shower of moist, female underwear.

TWO

Three million years out in Deep Space, a dilapidated mining ship drifts pointlessly round in a huge, aimless circle.

On board, its four crew members sit in a horseshoe, trapped in the ultimate computer game: a game that plugs directly into the brain, and enables them to experience a world created by their own fantasies.

The game is called Better Than Life, and very few ever escape its thrall: very few can give up their own, personally sculpted paradise.

THREE

Sparkling lights looped from tree to tree along the main street, above an assortment of parked cars hummocked in white. A small brass band umpahed discordant but cheery carols in the town square, as last-minute shoppers slushed through the snow, exchanging seasonal greetings and stopping occasionally to join in a favourite carol.

In the fictional town of Bedford Falls, it was Christmas Eve. But then again, in the fictional town of Bedford Falls, it was always Christmas Eve.

Lister crossed the main street, his two sons perched on either shoulder, and headed for the toy shop.

As they passed the jailhouse, Bert the cop was removing a wanted poster from the front window.

The poster was yellow and gnarled, and offered a five-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of Jesse James and his gang. 'About time I took this thing down,' Bert said sheepishly. There hadn't been a single crime in Bedford Falls for over thirty years; not since that hot summer day when Mrs Hubble was arrested for taking a three-cent trolley ride, having paid only a two-cent fare.

Lister slid the twins from his shoulders and grasped their tiny hands, as the two four-year-olds gazed, mouths ajar, at the large blue sailing boat on sale for two dollars and twenty-five cents in the toy-shop window.

Suddenly the door jangled open and old Mr Mulligan appeared in the doorway, straightening out the yacht's sails. 'Now then, me lads,' he brogued. 'Would I be correct in thinking you'll be after doing business with me in respect of a certain sailing vessel? Only, you've been standing out there with your faces pressed up against me window so often these past few months, you're beginning to wear away the pavement outside me shop.'