"A happy one..."

Bill was certain he had the best job on the ship. Better than the freudian
thrill of being Captain of such a huge throbbing mass of power, better than
the smug supperiority of the guy who checks if people need replacement ship
issue condoms, better even then the guy (and it was so obviously a guy) who
programmed the chauvenist jokes into the tampon dispencer.
Bill had to mind the Stasis bay. Basically a ship as big as the Blue Dwarf
was bound to need replacement crew members occasionally, and there weren't
that many space stations this far out. So the ship had a whole deck filled
with substitute crew members put into stasis. After all, the ship carried
replacement parts for virtually everything else on the ship, so it only made
sense.
Bill's job was to mind them, this was pretty easy, nobody wanted to steal
somebody in stasis, they were pretty damned useless until you brought them
out of stasis, and once they were out of stasis the novelty wore off.
Nothing could go wrong with someone in stasis, technically for them time
didn't exist, and nothing can go wrong in no ammount of time. So Bill just
sat, and thought, and read books, and cultivated a relationship with the
local vending machine verging on the romantic.
Then, one day his peace was momentarily broken. The monitor that gave him a
direct link to the ship's computer crackled to life, and the computer
appeared on the screen, albeit in the form of a bald head, in this case a
bald head with felt tipped horns and a moustache drawn on (Bill did get very
bored at times)
"Hi Bill," the computer said, "Communications Officer topped himself this
morning, we need a new one."
"Can't you generate another hologram?" Bill asked lazily.
"Sorry, haven't got the RAM for it," the computer apologised, "Now come on,
it's not that often we need you to get a crew member out."
Bill sighed and got up, walking between the aisle of huge racks, filled with
glass coffins containing the ship's replacement crew. You could wipe out the
Dwarf's entire living crew tomorrow and they'd be enough of these guys to
replace each of them several times. There were less replacements the further
up the ladder you got. There wasn't a single replacement Captain, since any
Captain who could only get a job as a replacement was probably dangerously
inadequate anyway, there were five or six science officers, a couple of
hundred navigators, two thousand chicken soup machine repair men and three
million lawyers.
Bill came to the aisle marked Communications Officers, about six hundred of
them.
"Make it a happy one," the computer added, following Bill round on it's
little wheels, "All these suicides are starting to damage crew moral."
Bill nodded, and turned to an elaborate layout of handles and buttons. He
gradually pulled and pushed each one of them, persuading a pair of robotic
arms to go along the shelf and pick Communications Officer Three Hundred and
Forty Six. The arms clasped the case, and slowly lowered it to ground level.
Then one of the robotic arms whipped out a cloth and wiped the ice of the
glass front. Behind it Bill could see a face with a mad gormless grin on it,
attached to a figure in the middle of a hopelessly enthusiastic salute.
"A happy one," Bill growled.
He had the arms move the figure over to the reanimation cubicle. The glass
box slotted into the cubicle with ease. The door closed, there was a humming
sound, then a ping. The door swung open and the figure stepped out, still
grinning, "Communications Officer James Johnson reporting for duty!" James
said, before collapsing onto the floor.
When they had woken him up again James was sent up to the drive room to get
to work.
"Wow!" he gasped as he walked through the corridors of the ship, staring out
the windows into the depths of space.
"Wow!" he said as he stepped onto the drive room and saw the hundreds of
complex computers and highly trained crewmen.
"Wow!" he gasped as he ordered hot chocolate from the vending machine and
got vegetable soup.
On the bridge he was met by a sour faced Ensign who directed him to a small
microphone in the corner of the room.
"You know what you're supposed to do?" the Ensign said.
"Scan all known frequencies for any form of communications and in the event
of first contact make the diplomatic gambit while evaluating the situation
before handing communication over to the Captain?" James asked.
"Well, you keep your finger down on the red button, and say 'Red Dwarf,
please respond, this is Blue Dwarf,' over and over again, on the off chance
they respond," the Ensign said.
"Why not just get a tape to repeat the message continuously?" James asked.
The Ensign looked shocked, "You think we can afford that type of
technology!" she gasped.
"So, that's all I do then," James said, feeling slightly deflated, Lt Uhura
had always made it look so much more interesting. At least she got to say
things like "Opening hailing frequencies"
"No," the Ensign answered, "Sometimes you get to make coffee."
"Oh," James said, feeling more deflated still.
"Don't look so glum," the Ensign said turning to leave, "and remember, I
take three sugars."
"Red Dwarf, please respond, this is Blue Dwarf, Red Dwarf, please respond,
this is Blue Dwarf, ditto, ditto, ditto..." James continued.
Whilst continuing his duties as communications officer, Johnson passed the
time reading the recent ship's log. Apparently shortly before topping
himself the last guy had found an actualy alien space probe! If only he'd
topped himself a week or so earlier Johnson could have been there at an
actual first contact. Oh well, he shrugged, when the reached the Paradise
Planet there would be lots of communications to do, lots of aliens to make
first contact with, and unless TV had lied to him, semi-naked women with
more than the usual number of breasts.
NRPG: Hello! I'm the new communications guy for those of you who couldn't be
bothered to read the post. If you're including him in your posts (Go on,
please, you know you want to) try and think of him as a cross between George
in Blackadder Goes Forth and the work experience kid that everybody kicks
around.
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