"Hello?" "Testing, 1-2-3." "Hello?" "Yeess!" "Well, here we go." "Ship's log... erm... one." "I've decided to keep a journal of life on board ship, and send it off in a probe." "Since turning 28 I feel a new maturity about myself, in fact I can't even remember the last time" "I tried to urinate on Rimmer from the top of D-deck." "No, wait a minute..." "Friday." "But apart from that *one lapse*, maturity-wise" "I'm practically up there with Abe Lincoln and Moses." "Now, just recently we came across a craft, piloted by ourselves from 15 years into the future." "We had a bit of an argument, and they attacked us." "See attached:" "Another lock!" "Incoming message..." "Either you give us access to the data we require, or be prepared to be blasted out of the sky..." "Cat!" ".Dead... but there may be a " "Kryten..." "Kryten!" "There may be a *what*?" "A way out of this?" "Is *that* what you were gonna say?" "Speak, Kryten!" "How can we change what's happening!" "?" "We were no match; they killed us, and destroyed everything on board ship, including the Time Drive, which meant there was no Time Drive for them to have in the future, to bring back into the past, destroy the future of their past selves in the present." "Put simply: by killing us they killed themselves, because once we were dead it was impossible for us to become them in the future, and return in time to kill ourselves in the past, even though it was the present." "Oh smeg!" "Have you been trying to explain about our future selves *again*, sir?" "I just thought I'd give it one more go " "D'oh!" "That's the third camera this week!" "The machines just can't take it, sir." "But I'm only trying to explain why Starbug's damaged, despite the timeline being erased;" "'cos this reality's unstable, and anomalies have merged from both dimensions to cope with the paradox." "Oh!" "Garbled, confusing, and quite frankly duller than an in-flight magazine produced by 'Air Belgium'!" "Now just state our position and explain we're down on supplies." "All right!" "All right!" "Wiped out..?" "Kryten, man, they *can't* be..." "I'm afraid so, sir." "The laser cannon breached the main watertank and flooded supply deck B. They didn't stand a chance." "Yeah, but surely..." "There was nothing we could do to save them, sir." "So, now we've got no poppadoms at all?" "No poppadoms, no curries, all the Indian food supplies have been totaled." "I'll have to survive without them then..." "I'll have salads." "Sir!" "You're in shock, you don't know what you're saying." "After all it's only curry." "'Only curry'?" "The enormity of it hasn't sunk in, you must mourn, sir." "Don't you see?" "You must mourn." "Curries..." "Ohhhh sirr, get it out!" "Cry like a baby!" "What am I gonna do?" "Curry night was the one little beacon I had... made me feel like a normal ordinary guy, not some sad freak stuck in deep space;" "no woman, no hope, no curry." "Worse still, a choice of only two alcoholic beverages:" "Cinzano Bianco, or advocat." "Its a human tragedy!" "You know the news?" "All the curry supplies have been destroyed." "We heard." "As a mark of respect, we thought on Sunday at 12 o'clock we could have a minute's flatulence." "It's nothing to you guys, is it?" "It's changing my life!" "Sirs, the altercation with our future selves caused dimensional anomalies which have expanded the cargo deck by 212%!" "We should ascertain that the new structure is stable." "My heavens" " I'm head head!" "Shh!" "It's only temporary." "I don't understand." "Look, I want to go back in time on a curry hunt." "Kryten said "no way"; what do *you* say?" "I can't go behind Kryten's head;" "what would he say if he found out?" "It's deceitful, wrong, and dishonest." "I'm in!" "Those are emotions I have longed to experience, but first, you'll have to override my guilt chip and disable my behaviour protocols." "Okay, show me how." "Press the 'skull release' catch behind my right ear." "Okay, here we go..." "My guilt chip." "No behaviour protocols... just call me "bad ass"!" "Healthy?" "Who cares?" "Pork away!" "So, um, Kryten, now that you've had time to think, what about that curry hunt to the 22nd century?" "Ooh, I meant to mention that, yes." "I over-reacted yesterday;" "on reflection, I think it'd be quite safe." "Safe?" "What about causality?" "Causality?" "Well, okay, you know, one event causes another, okay, but sometimes, you just gotta say:" ""The laws of time and space?" "Who gives a smeg!"" "Okay, I think what Kryten's trying to say is " "You're smoking!" "Oh, is my generator overheating again?" "A cigarette!" "Do you want one?" "Of course I don't want one!" "Do you want me to go outside?" "I think what Kryten's trying to say is that it's okay to go back in time, and order a small lake's worth of vindaloo to go." "Isn't that right?" "You bet your ass!" "Okay, so lets navigate those unreality bubbles and do it!" "Kryten, can I have a word..." "What is *wrong* with you?" "You don't smoke, you never say "bet your ass", and you never use your groinal attachment to stir anybody's tea!" "I didn't get any error commands!" "Because you've got no behaviour protocols, you spanner!" "Now get a grip or we'll be rumbled." "So uptight!" "What is wrong with that demented Tonka toy now?" "He's got a bit of a bio-glitch in his transponder calibrations." "It's only temporary." "Heyyy, Mr. Timedrive." "Okay Kryten, we want the Taj Mahal Tandoori Restaurant behind the JMC building in London." "Back table; quiet." "I'll need a moment to acquaint myself with the controls " "But you've used it before?" "Have I?" "Oh, yes, of course I have." "Sorry." "How stupid of me." "Just programming it now, matey boy." "Nice landing, Kryten, that was about as smooth as an Egyptian whiskey." "Apologies, sir, I'm, ah, I'm not sure what I did then." "This isn't right, where are we?" "Well, according to the Time Drive, the date is November the 22nd, 1963, and we're in the city of Dallas." "How come?" "Gimme that thing!" "I've always been a bit of a technical whiz when it comes to these kinds of gizmos..." "Hmm, Dallas, '63- no doubt about it." "Dallas?" "Wasn't that that place where that American king got assassinated?" "JFK." "No, it was John something, not 'Jeff Kay'..." "J" " F" " K, not 'Jeff Kay', you gimboid;" "like the airport." "I did a paper on him at school." "I wonder why anyone would want to name their kid after an airport?" "The airport was named *after* the president." "All right!" "Where did this gunman dude shoot from anyway?" "Well, if my histo-chip serves me correctly, the gunman's location was in the 'Texas Book Depository'." "It was probably from this very window!" "What, do you reckon?" "Hey, what's this?" "Hey, there's something on the end of this, giz a hand!" "Pull, everyone, or I'm in trouble!" "Hey, what's going on down there?" "What're all those people doing gathered around that giant pizza?" "That is *not* a giant pizza, sir." "It's 8 foot across, man - don't you think that's giant?" "What kind of pizza house have you been going to?" "'The FatBastoria'?" "Hey, look at this!" "I think we just pulled the gunman out of the window!" "FBI!" "Drop the gun!" "Don't shoot!" "Hands on heads!" "You are hereby charged with the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, who valiantly tried to foil your attempt to assassinate the president." "Thanks to Mr. Oswald, the president is alive but wounded." "What is that?" "Some kind of weapon?" "Kick it over here!" "Ohhhh!" "Nice one, Kryts." "Where are we?" "It says 1966, I must have prodded us forward three years." "At least it'll give us time to analyse the original error." "Hey, there's nobody here, the entire city's deserted..." "I don't understand it, all we did is save Kennedy's life." "Is that bad?" "What kind of a dude was he?" "He was a fine man." "Look!" "Can you get anything for us from his scent?" "Male." "Mid-thirties." "It looks like he was trampled to death in some kind of stampede." "Just processing." "I'll re-route the results through my chest monitor:" "President Kennedy was impeached in 1964 for sharing a mistress with Mafia boss, Sam Giancana." "It was the biggest scandal in American history," "Kennedy was sentenced to three years in an open prison in July, '65." "J. Edgar Hoover became president;" "he was forced to run by the mob, who had pictures of him at a transvestite orgy." "So America had a president controlled by the Mafia?" "Soon after the election, the USSR were allowed to install a nuclear base in Cuba in return for Mafia cocaine trafficking between Cuba and the States." "With a Soviet nuclear base 30 miles from the US mainland, people fled from all the major cities." "So am I right in thinking I could get a major nuclear explosion all over this suit?" "Cos I'm telling you guys, that stuff does *not* dry clean!" "Back to Starbug." "Starbug isn't there." "It doesn't exist." "What?" "How come?" "Er, best guess:" "Kennedy's impeachment in '64 traumatised the American nation, allowing the USSR to win the space race." "In this reality, it was probably the Russians who were the first to land on the moon." "So we're marooned." "How was I supposed to know that chicken vindaloo was going to cause all this." "But you guys said Kennedy was a great pres!" "He was!" "He was also an inveterate womaniser;" "his affairs were legendary." "They never came out when he was alive." "Every man has his weak spot, his 'Achilles heel'." "Kennedy's was just, higher up." "If I'd known this was gonna happen, I'd have had an egg sarnie, and finished the Cinzano." "Kryten, what've I done, man?" "Well, you've brought the 20th century to the very brink of extinction, sir." "Gum?" "What is wrong with you?" "Where is your compassion?" "You've got about as much warmth as a service station chip!" "That's right, you've no behaviour protocols, have you." "Any you thought causality didn't matter?" "Every action we take, has trillions of implications, how come you forgot that?" "Well, I didn't forget, sir, I just didn't care." "I've got no guilt." "Ah." "I nicked Kryten's body." "That's spare head 2;" "I removed his guilt chip." "You, have altered the entire course of civilisation from the 20th century onwards, you've brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, and worst of all " "I know, I know;" "I still haven't had a curry." "No, worst of all, the Time Drive has frozen." "Let me see." "Do you think its because the sub-space conduits have locked with the transponder calibrations and caused a major tachyon surge that has overloaded the time matrix?" "Ah, no, sir;" "I've just been jabbing it too hard." "So what now?" "We need to have time to figure out how to unfreeze it." "I suggest we, set up camp here for the night and perhaps *Kryten* can go and look for some food?" "I'm on my way, sir!" "It's hopeless, I can't fix it." "We're trapped..." "Chicken's good." "Yeah, really good." "That's not chicken, sir." "Oh, what is it?" "It's that man we found." "Well, it seemed such a waste to leave him lying there when he'd barbecue so beautifully." "Did I do wrong?" "I didn't get any error commands..." "Obviously I thought about it, because without my guilt chip or moral imperatives," "I have nothing to guide me." "But it seemed to me that if humanoids eat chicken then obviously they'd eat their own species;" "otherwise they'd just be picking on the chicken." "One minute you're down, the next you're right back up again." "I said I was enjoying that!" "I knew it didn't smell right!" "Oh my god..." "I'm a cannibal!" "Look!" "Right, lets get out of here!" "I badly need to floss a piece of roasted dead person out of my teeth!" "Where to?" "Hawaii." "Let's catch some surf!" "No, no, we've got to go back; stop ourselves from interfering with the assassination." "I don't care where we go, just as long as it's before we had dinner!" "Decorators." "Try up on the sixth floor." "Stand back, sir, our original selves are about to beam in." "When they realise their mistake they'll beam out again." "I propose *we* go down to the fourth." "First shot!" "It doesn't smell right, I think he's missed!" "He's right, sir." "By sending Oswald up to the sixth, we've made the trajectory of his shot so steep he's only wounded him." "Let's start again, and bring him back down to the fifth." "We can't use the fifth: our original selves are destined to beam in there as he fires his third shot, and this version of us are now on the fourth." "We've been copied more times than that poster of the tennis girl scratching her butt." "If we could arrange, somehow, for a second gunman to fire from just behind that little hill over there covered in lawn..." "You mean the, er, the grassy knoll, sir?" "That'd solve it, wouldn't it?" "Shoot the pres?" "Who?" "You can count me out." "And me." "Hang on... maybe, just maybe there's someone who can get us out of this mess." "Where are we going?" "Idlewild airport, July, '65..." "This is right." "He's being escorted to Hoover open prison in New York." "Give me *five minutes*." "Don't be alarmed, sir, but I have a very strange tale to tell." "I, ah, have had plenty of time to reflect on my deeds in the Whitehouse." "In all important respects I believe I did a good job." "It was right to plan a pull out of Vietnam, to fight for civil rights, and, ah, to fight congress, ah, to put a man on the moon." "It was, ah, wrong however, to, ah, act like an irresponsible jackass with all those women, and allow my enemies to wreak havoc on our nation." "But I can help, man." "I mean, Mr. President, man." "I mean, sir." "How, ah, can you help?" "Well, come with us back to Dallas, November 1963, be a second gunman." "The gunman behind the grassy knoll." "You mean, assassinate myself?" "Yeah!" "It'll drive the conspiracy nuts crazy, but they'll never figure it out." "But I, ah, still have a future here." "Jackie left me, but, ah, when I get out I can, ah, still make a contribution to the world." "See this airport, Idlewild airport?" "In our reality they renamed it 'JFK', after you." "Where I come from you're a liberal icon, and that's the person you should be." "If you're gonna be that person, you're gonna have to sacrifice your life." "And only then will my reputation be restored in history?" "Mm." "And I can get a smegging' curry." "Ask not what your country can do for you..." "ask what you can do for your country." "Hey, that'd make a pretty neat speech, that." "It did." "Heh heh." "I, ah, thank you all for giving me the opportunity to, ah, be reborn." "Smeg!" "I forgot to ask if there are any curry houses in Dallas!"