Note to the reader. In my own head, this is Clare Grogan playing Kochanski. I have no issues with Chloe Annett, but Gorgan really struck my adolescent fancy, once upon a time.
Red Dwarf's canon is malleable. The novels and later seasons assert that Dave and Kochanski had a 3-week fling and it was mostly physical. It was her ending the affair that led Lister to arrange to be put into stasis for the remainder of the ship's intended mission, which saved his life and made him the last living human being in the universe. I'm using that timeline. (This contradicts the earliest seasons in which Lister was infatuated with Kochanski only from afar). I'm also using an elaboration concerning what happened to the memory recordings of the rest of the dead crew. I don't think "canon" ever explicitly says they were destroyed but I feel they need to have been or else they would have continuously been an issue.
I know that the joke density isn't very high. But there's some.
*****
This an SOS distress call from the mining ship Red Dwarf. The crew are dead, killed by a radiation leak. The only survivors were Dave Lister who was in suspended animation at the time of the disaster and his pregnant cat who was safely sealed in the hold. Revived three million years later, Lister's only companions are a lifeform who evolved from his cat, a service mechanoid rescued from a crashed ship and Arnold Rimmer, a hologram simulation of one of the dead crew. Message ends.
Additional: It really makes you wonder if you're appreciated when you change gender and no one even notices. Could have at least said something about my hair.
The mechanoid jumped when the male human slapped the console. "Come on, Kryten, are you finished or not?"
Flustered, the mech tried to explain again. "Mr. Lister, the splice program is complete but I need to check the code! Remember, this is going straight into your brain. If there are gaps or bugs..."
They were in the old science lab aboard Red Dwarf. Kryten was hunched over a cobbled-together cybernetics console. The room was originally built only to support deep radar scans of asteroids and some mineral testing. Kryten had used parts from half a dozen derelict ships they'd scavenged over the years to put together something that resembled a VR development console.
It contained the specialized hardware necessary to create or to modify virtual reality programs.
Dave slapped the console again, this time hitting the eject button. The little thumb-sized chip lept up as if from an over-excited toaster.
He caught it exclaiming, "I can't wait any more, Kryten. I have to see her!" He ran out of the room. He ran right through a tall, curly-haired figure that had just been coming in through the doorway.
That is to say, the leather-clad Lister passed entirely through the projected-light simulation of his dead crewmate.
"Lister! How dare you! Did you just see that?" he asked Kryten, pointing down the hall at Lister's retreating back. "That was unbelievably rude. I have half a mind to write a letter to the Hologramatic and Cybernetic Personnel Union. There are regulations about proper hologram etiquette, you know."
He stepped into the room, hands on his hips. "What was that about, anyway? 'See her'? See who? Did his last brain cell finally check out of reality?"
Kryten blubbered. "Oh, Mr. Rimmer, I promised I wouldn't tell you."
"Tell me what?" the hologram asked in the stern tone he was only ever able to muster when dealing with the subservient mechanoid.
Holly answered from a nearby viewscreen. "He's gone to see Kochanski."
*****
Lister ran all the way to the lift. He was huffing by the time he got there. The doors closed and he punched in one of the storage floors. He'd set the machine up in one of the holds so Rimmer wouldn't be able to interfere. The holds covered dozens of square kilometers of deck space. Not even Kryten or Cat knew where it was.
Neither could keep a secret for smeg.
Holly knew. She kind of knew everything, even if she was a bit computer senile. Or maybe she was just very blond. But Lister had found a way to keep everything he'd done within the privacy regulations that Holly was obligated to follow. When Red Dwarf had had a full crew, those privacy regulations had allowed Holly to monitor every inch of the ship for crew safety without anyone having to worry about private or petty activities being seen.
Holly wouldn't tell anyone where Lister was. Unless something went wrong and Lister needed medical attention. Which was actually pretty ideal.
Lister patted himself on the back for how well he'd planned everything. This project had been one of the very few things he'd ever applied himself to. When he actually cared about something, he was a lot smarter than he looked. Just like when he'd used a supposedly-unquarantined cat to arrange some time in suspended animation.
He'd even used the same medical and safety loophole in the privacy regulations to achieve his current triumph. Holly was charged with keeping Dave sane. She claimed that bringing Rimmer back from the dead was calculated to best achieve that. Arnold Rimmer. Not anyone else. Not the captain, not Peterson, not the ship psychiatrist.
Not Kochanski.
Lister had given up trying to change the computer's mind on that. But he'd recently began thinking about VR. And using VR quite a bit. He'd gone on epic virtual benders. Slaughtering hoards of orcs, gunning down both cops and gangsters, fucking every imaginable type of woman and drinking oceans of beer and vodka. He'd skydived from low earth orbit and skied on both the Alps and the low-G methane-slush valleys of Titan.
One brothel program allowed him to customize the escort. He'd gotten it to produce an excellent copy of Krissi's body and it was certainly very exciting for a time or two. But the things had personalities like vending machines.
He was actually more interested in talking than in having sex.
Not that he wouldn't have sex also. Like, a lot of sex. In his brief three weeks with Kochanski, they'd been at it like rabbits on viagra. He would have never guessed that someone so petite could crave big cock so much.
He had convinced Holly to give him access to every piece of video about Kochanski. It was exactly the kind of obscene invasion Holly was duty-bound to prevent. But Dave finally convinced her of the viability of his plan and that Dave's mental health was in need of being able to talk to someone else. To talk to a friend and former lover and normally functioning human being, if only for a little while.
Kryten and Holly had created an algorithm to scan all the crew surveillance and process every word and every action involving navigation officer Kristine Kochanski.
All the way up to a certain date. One week before she broke up with Dave. He'd been clever enough to figure she would have already been planning to break up with him if he'd just given it a day or two of leeway. But surely she hadn't been unhappy for a week without him knowing.
This data was used to synthesize a consciousness model similar to those recorded to allow dead crew members to live on as holograms.
It would have been so much easier if Rimmer hadn't destroyed all the recordings of the other crew members. Petty, paranoid little shit.
Now, the results had been spliced into a VR program and Lister was finally going to be able to see and talk to and touch Kochanski again.
He thought the lift ride would never end.
*****
"He did WHAT?" Rimmer screamed, nostrils flaring like jet intakes.
"He created a consciousness model of Ms. Kochanski and spliced her into a VR unit," Kryten answered, cringing.
"Where is he?" Rimmer demanded. He didn't care about the VR much. It just showed Lister's base nature. But if the fat weasel thought he had a consciousness model for his little officer trollop, he might try to replace Rimmer!
"I don't know, sir. He didn't tell anyone," the mechanoid shrank under the technician's angry gaze. "Probably somewhere in the cargo decks."
