Last Human (eBook)

(Red Dwarf)

Doug Naylor (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
178 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-112381-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Lister gazed out of the porthole and catalogues the series of disasters that had led him to this point in space and time: the bad decisions, the poor career choices, the unreliable friendships that had led him here - on a prison ship bound for the most inhospitable penal colony in the outer cosmos...and all he'd ever wanted was to be a soft metal guitar icon. This is the beginning of the third and eagerly awaited red dwarf novel where Lister starts out by searching for his Doppelganger and ends up having the future of the human race on his shoulders.

Textauszug

CHAPTER 1

Six million years later, in a dilapidated class three transport ship, the last human being in the cosmos lay in the same foetal position as his long dead sister, murmuring remarks in the gibberish of deep sleep, until a poorly digested bowl of cabbage soup caused a noisy pocket of escaping air to flee his lower intestine and rouse him from his slumbers. For a brief nano-second he couldn't recall where he was. An inner voice, thick with spite, snickered quietly in his head. 'Embrace the moment,' it whispered. 'Hang on to the amnesia, because this tiny moment of zero recall is the best thing that's going to happen to you for some considerable time.'

Naturally Lister didn't much care for this inner voice, and was doing his best to ignore it. But nothing could stop the inner voice when it had bad news to impart, news as bad as this bad news. 'Whatever you do,' it continued to bait him, 'don't access reality - you're not going to like it one little bit.'

He struggled into a sitting position and peered through the grime of the porthole. He was on some kind of spacecraft that was preparing to land, swooping down over a series of huge canyons and ravines sculpted out of a barren sea of sandstone on a desert moon. He raised his handcuffed wrists and tried to massage a sensible expression on to his face with the balls of his palms.

Desert moon?

Why would he be landing on a desert moon? A desert moon with a complex of buildings surrounded by barbed-wire fences and tall sentry towers at each corner with huge swirling searchlights?

He pushed his face against the porthole and watched his reflection peer gormlessly back at him. He didn't recognize it at first. This hunched stranger with hooded brown eyes.

Was this him? This guy with the seven-day growth and hollow cheeks? This guy in the khaki jumpsuit and matching hat? This guy with the five rasta plaits of hair that usually slumped down his back, like slumbering snakes, but were now chained by a khaki hair-band?

Where was his usually chirpy demeanour? Where was his lopsided smile, that amiable-slob grin that was as mischievous as the fourth wheel on a shopping trolley? Where were his biker's pants, and his leather jacket strewn with badges and hand-painted graffiti?

He was staring at a stiff in a jumpsuit with a number on his hat.

He shimmied across the bench and peered down the aisle. Fifty, perhaps sixty, bodies lined the craft's ugly gun-metal grey interior — a sorry bunch of rogue simulants, renegade droids, Axis-syndrome holograms and a bizarre mix of engineered life forms.

All handcuffed.

All reluctant guests of His Imperial Majesty F'hn-hiujsrf Dernbvjukidhgd the Unpronounceable.

Then Lister remembered. He remembered everything. His face went whiter than a brand-new pair of trainers.

'Told you,' said the inner voice. 'Isn't this the worst situation you've ever been in in your entire life?'

The inner voice was wrong, but not by much.

Lister gazed out of the porthole and his facial muscles accessed the programme 'No One Home' as he began to catalogue the series of disasters that had led him to this point in Time and Space. He started to list the bad decisions, the poor career choices, the unreliable friendships that had led him here, to a prison ship bound for the most inhospitable penal colony in the outer reaches of the Cosmos. He'd never expected much from life. All he'd ever really wanted was to be a soft-metal guitar icon, thrashing out rock anthems all night to half a million fanatical hero-worshippers. Was that really too much to ask — to be mobbed nightly by hordes of emotionally unstable women who would feel compelled to smear his body with a wide range of dairy products and then remove said dairy products in a variety of interesting ways? A thin smile drove across his face and skidded to a halt at the corner of his mouth. Well, something had gone wrong somewhere. He'd never got within so much as a Whirlwind-amp-lead distance of fulfilling that particular dream.

Why? Was it bad luck? Had he just never had the breaks? Or was it simply that he'd never bothered to learn how to play the guitar?

Really play it.

Three chords.

What the hell — even four, maybe. If only he'd bought that damn book that taught you how to play in a day. One lousy day, and things could have worked out so differently. He wouldn't have wound up here, stuck in the middle of Deep Space, the last member of the human race, literally light years away from the woman he loved and a really hot curry.

Somewhere along the line he'd made a really poor career choice - he'd ignored the door that said 'Legend of Rock', instead opting for the one that said 'Useless Piece of Directionless Sputum Destined to Lose Big Time'.

Lister let out a sigh, like a newly opened bottle of chilli beer, and wondered when it had started to go wrong.

* * *

It was a mistake to wear the tie, he knew it the minute he entered the Forum of Justice. Major, major mistake. He should have worn his oil-spattered long johns with his black leathers over the top. That would have been far more suitable attire for a man on trial. Far more suitable for a man facing charges of serious crimes against the Gelf state. For a start he would have been comfortable. His one and only dress shirt was a good two collar sizes too small, and it made him feel as if all eight pints of blood had somehow been vacuumed up into his head and were trying to vacate his skull by forcing his eyeballs to catapult out of their sockets. Also, he could see now the tie itself was not a great choice. True, he had only one tie, so he wasn't exactly spoiled for choice, but on reflection a yellow kipper tie with a woman in birthing stirrups motif had probably been a mistake. Somehow it didn't give him that aura of respectability that he'd been aiming for. The wronged pillar of society number.

Silent curses chased around inside his head. If he hadn't tried so hard to look so damn distinguished he wouldn't have felt like such a schlub. He shouldn't have tried so hard to make a good impression, he should have worn his regular clothes.

It wasn't the first time he'd severely miscalculated in the ensemble department. His mind went back to the days before the radiation leak, before Red Dwarf had been sent hurtling out into the barren wastes of Deep Space while he slept, oblivious, in suspended animation.

He'd been invited to the summer party in the officers' mess.

Him, a lowly third technician.

The invitation had said the occasion was informal, so that was exactly how he'd gone - he'd worn a pair of zero-gee football shorts and a can of lager. Unbelievably, he'd been turned away by some officer in a beige summer suit. If they'd wanted him to go dressed as Noel Coward they should have said.

Now, as the mighty oak doors to the Forum of Justice hammered open and the Gelf security guards began to escort him down the aisle to his seat, he knew he'd done it again. He hush-puppied his way down the court room and took his place behind the smooth oak desk. He bowed his head in shame. Hush-puppies? He looked like a dentist.

From the rear of the Forum of Justice a door opened and the Gelf Regulator took his place on the podium. Like many of the Gelfs on Arranguu 12 he was an Alberog, a bizarre genetic cocktail of albatross, bear and frog. Seven and a half feet tall when standing upright, its body was covered in a black fur, with a crescent-shaped moon on its chest above giant frog legs. As with all Gelfs it had been programmed with slow-ageing genes, and its life expectancy was close to a thousand years.

The smooth white head with its long orange hooked bill and two eyes, colder than a doctor's hands, surveyed the courtroom then alighted on Lister. 'Do you have counsel?'

'I will conduct my own defence, my lord. During the months leading up to my trial I have made myself familiar with your legal system and I think you'll find me a pretty snazzy attorney.'

The Regulator nodded to the offence counsel. 'Let the case begin.'

Lister remained silent as the offence counsel outlined the charges against him. Finally, he sat down in a swirl of self-congratulation and Lister rose and stood before the six hooded figures of the jury. 'There is no case to answer and my defence is a simple one. I wish to take the fourth sand of D'Aquaarar and thus be protected from the breach of Xzeeertuiy by the Zalgon impeachment of Kjielomnon, as is permitted here on the asteroid settlement of Arranguu 12 during the third season of every fifth cycle.'

'What?'

A baby-sized smirk perched on Lister's face. 'I refer you to Mbazvmbbcxyy vs. Mbazvmbbcxyy. And I move for a mistrial.' He flopped into his chair, his head jutting back and forth in triumph. 'Nothing more.'

'But this is the northern sector of Arranguu 12.'

'So?'

'Not the southern sector.'

'So?'

The Regulator stared down at Lister, bewildered. 'We don't share the same outmoded, archaic, incomprehensibly bizarre legal system as they have in the south.'

'You don't?'

'Of course not. We adhere to the Jhjghjiuyhu system.'

'The what?'

'The Jhjghjiuyhu system, which is plain and straightforward and can be understood by any Hniuplcxdewn or Tvcnkolphgkooq.'

'Any Hniuplcxdewn or Tvcnkolphgkoq?'

'Tvcnkolphgkooq,' the Regulator corrected. 'That's why we always celebrate Cvcbdekijhmnhuye's day -the day we won the right to be a self-governing state and were able to throw off the shackles of incomprehensible bureaucratic legal sludge. So what do you wish to do? Take the seventh branch of O'pphjytere or hurl...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.12.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• ISBN-10: 0-00-112381-5 / 0001123815
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-112381-6 / 9780001123816