These excerpts are from the Red Dwarf book “Backwards”.
If you are a fan of the Red Dwarf TV series, I guarantee you will love these books.
I recommend you read them in the following order:
Red Dwarf – Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (ISBN 0140124373)
Red Dwarf – Better Than Life (ISBN 0140124381)
Red Dwarf – Backwards (ISBN 0140171509)
Red Dwarf – Last Human (ISBN 0140143882)
Kryten settled down to his book. As he did so, he experienced
a pang of guilt that would have been strong enough to turn a human being into a
Roman Catholic, but for him it was a fairly moderate dose, and he barely
noticed it. He had long suspected, correctly, that the circuits controlling his
guilt responses had somehow got themselves cross-wired with one of his
accelerator boards, but it was against a mechanoid’s creed to fiddle with its
own workings, and the very prospect of doing so sent his guilt quotient off the
scale, immobilizing him for hours on end.
There was very
little for him to feel guilty about – he had done and re-done his chores and
Starbug’s interior was as clean and tidy as it could possibly be. There were
areas of rust, of course, especially along the central stairwell leading down
from the observation room to the social area, but scrubbing it away would have
eradicated the entire structure completely, so, barring the unlikely discovery
of replacement parts, he had no choice but to live with it.
The book, which was the only volume on board he had
not read, was a Western called: Big Iron at Sun-up by an author whose nom
de plume was ‘Zach Rattler’. It was not a good book, but Kryten had gone
through the rest of Starbug's meagre library with ill-considered haste, and it was
all he had left for entertainment. It was one of a series of novels chronicling the adventures of a
mysterious stranger known only as ‘Big iron’, due to the extraordinary length
of his weapon, with he dispensed random justice all over the frontiers of the
old American West, ‘Answering to no man, beholden to no women’, as Big himself
put it.
Big wasn’t much of a hero, to Kryten's way of
thinking, his solution to every problem seemed to involve putting bullets into
people who offended him, from distances a computer-controlled smart missile
would have found challenging. Kryten would have preferred his hero of choice to adopt a more
conciliatory approach to the problems confronting him, at least every once in a
while, but he was stuck with Big Iron's single, if effective, method of
negotiation.
Perhaps Kryten would have found less to criticize in
the book, if he'd spent less time reading it, but it was the only remaining
book available to him, and so he had to ration the time he allotted to it.
To date, he'd spent a little over forty-five years
ploughing through it. His calculations permitted him to read only point eight
two one nine seven eight words a day, and every time he came across an
"a" or an "I", he was compelled to adjust downwards for the
next word the following day. He
was prepared to accept that this method of reading was perhaps not the best one
for enjoying the flow of the novel, but he doubted it would be much more
fulfilling at twice, or even three times the pace.
He sat back in his chair, found his bookmark and
scanned down the page. Yesterday's eight tenths of a word had been
"cact" followed by a small portion of the letter "u", which
was disappointing, since Kryten guessed the entire word was going to be
"cactus", spoiling some twenty percent of today's adventure.
His eyes flitted to the correct point and he sighed
with displeasure. Unpredictability was not high on Mr Rattler's list of
talents. Worse still, the subsequent word comprised only two letters, so Kryten
was only able to read seventy-five per cent of the first vertical line of the
letter "u".
He snapped the worn paperback closed, and, as was his
wont, spent several minutes trying to derive some philosophical insight from
his day's reading. As usual, nothing came. Big Iron was in a fist fight in the
desert with a bunch of desperadoes (bless that day, the "desperad"
and a portion of "o" day - reading bliss) and was about to force a
cactus somewhere. Up somewhere,
probably, Kryten couldn't help guessing, but he'd have to wait until the day
after tomorrow to find out where.
Kryten double-checked his internal clock. It was time for shift change-over. He’d better go and rouse young Mr
Lister. He slipped Big Iron at Sun-up into his private cubby-hole in the galley and mounted the metal
staircase.
As usual, young Mr Lister didn’t need rousing, as
such. He was clad in the helmet,
gloves, boots and harness of the Artificial Reality games machine which they’d
recovered from a derelict vessel they’d found on the periphery of the Black
Hole.
Kryten clucked and shook his head. It was a horribly irresponsible waste
of their dwindling power reserves. He waddled over and tapped on Lister’s helmet.
‘Mr Lister, sir? Time for shift change.’
Lister didn’t hear him, as usual. Unsurprising. Even Kryten had to admit the game provided a stunningly
realistic simulation of reality. Electrodes in the helmet that pierced the skull and fed data directly to
the hypothalamus stimulated accurate physical and emotional responses. Augmented
by feedback sensors in the boots, gloves and body harness.
Frankly, Kryten was surprised that Lister even
considered using the thing: they’d all had a rather unpleasant, near-death
experience with a similar device some years ago. True, this simulator was not so thoroughly addictive – at
least the player was aware he was in a game – and it was a simple enough matter
to get out: clap your hands, and switches on the palms of the gloves retracted
the electrodes and powered down the simulation.
Not so simple, though, to get a fifteen-year-old’s
attention when he was in the midst of some thrilling adventure. Kryten sighed, flipped open a panel in
his chest and pulled out his interface lead. As usual, he’d have to plug himself Into the game to drag
Lister out of it. And once again,
they’d be late for shift change.