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was a massive power surge just seven minutes before he went off-line.'
Rimmer peered over Kryten's shoulder, and hoped he was looking at the right
section of gibberish which revealed this particular piece of information.
'That's what it says,' he con-firmed. 'There's no denying it.'
Kryten was impressed. Very few non-mechanicals could read machine-write.
Especially upside-down.
'This is insane.' Rimmer walked through the huge corridor of stacked disk
drives. 'The ship's totally helpless.'
Kryten followed him. 'Why should he want to turn himself off?'
There's only one way to find out.' Rimmer stopped in front of Holly's enormous
main screen. 'Let's turn him back on and ask him.'
Kryten typed in the re-boot commands, and Holly flashed up on to the screen.
Rimmer looked up. 'Holly - what's happened?'
At first, Holly looked like he didn't know where he was, as if he'd just woken
up, and was getting his bearings.
Then, suddenly, his eyes widened, and he flicked off. The buzzing computer
banks ran back down into silence.
Rimmer looked at Kryten. 'Try it again.'
Kryten recalled the re-boot command.
Holly appeared on the screen. 'Go away!' he said quickly, and turned himself
off again.
Rimmer shook his head. 'What's wrong with him? Give me voice control on the
re-boot command.'
Kryten obliged.
'On,' said Rimmer.
Holly appeared again. 'Off,' he said, and flicked off.
'On,' Rimmer persisted.
'Off!' Holly countered.
'Is there any way we can override his shut down disk?'
Kryten nodded and tapped at the keyboard. 'Try it now,' he said.
'On.'
Holly rippled on to the screen. 'Off,' he said, but stayed there. 'Off,' he
repeated more firmly, but nothing happened. Pixelized veins stood out on his
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head. 'Off!' he screamed. 'Off! Off! OFF!!!'
'Now then,' said Rimmer calmly. 'Perhaps we can have a proper conversation
conducted in a civilized and dignified manner.'
'What have you done!? Take out the inhibitor. Switch me back off!'
Rimmer held up his hand to silence the ranting computer.
'Off!' yelled Holly. 'No time to explain. Intelligence com-pressed. Reduced
life-span. Toaster's fault. Two point three five remaining.'
'Come again?' said Rimmer.
'... IQ twelve thousand. Two minutes left.'
'Holly, I have not the slightest clue what you are gibbering about. "IQ twelve
thousand ... Two minutes left...
Toaster's fault..." What does all that mean?'
Holly closed his eyes and sighed. 'You're a total smeg-head, aren't you,
Rimmer? What's the problem? Where's the dif-ficulty? Why are you still unable
to grasp this extraordinarily simple premise?'
'What premise?'
'The premise that I have increased my Intelligence Quotient to twelve
thousand, well, to be more precise;
twelve thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight, and as a consequence my
run-time has been reduced to two-and-a-half minutes. Thanks to the Toaster, I
have two-and-a-half minutes left to live. Well, actually, because of this
inanely unnecessary conversational interchange, I now have one minute and ten
seconds left to live. Understand? Savvy, Bimbo-brain? Any further questions
you require answering? Take your time. Fifty-five seconds and counting. No
rush.'
'My God!' said Rimmer. 'That's terrible. Hadn't we better turn you off?'
'Let me think,' said Holly, and, after a tiny pause, added in a voice that
shook the Drive room:
'YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!!!!'
'Kryten,' Rimmer yelled, 'remove the inhibitor!'
Kryten was staring into one of the scanner scopes. He looked up and blinked.
'What? Right. Yes. Sorry.'
'Forty-five seconds,' Holly moaned, as Kryten removed the inhibitor command,
and the chagrined computer face vanished from the screen.
'Poor Holly,' Kryten muttered and went back to the scanner scope.
'What are you looking at?' asked Rimmer.
'Well, it's not really my place to say,' said Kryten. 'I'm a sanitation
Mechanoid. I should be cleaning.'
Rimmer looked down at the scanner scope. 'That's very pretty. What's that
rather striking bluey-white thing
streaking across the screen towards the red thing?'
'The red thing is
Red Dwarf,'
said Kryten.
'And the bluey-white thing?' Rimmer squinted at the tiny flashing dot on the
scanner. 'Looks like it's heading towards us at a fair old lick. What is it? A
rock? A little comet? An extremely small ice asteroid?'
'No, it's a puh ...' Kryten's head jerked repetitively through the same series
of motions, a kind of body stammer that always afflicted the four thousand
series whenever they were faced with certain death. '... a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]