MESSAGES FROM 3,000,039 YEARS AGO... AND ONE UNIVERSE TO THE SIDE

Sports in The 23rd Century

Jim Bexley Speed - star roof attack of The London Jets

By the 23rd Century (when The Red Knight was setting off on its fateful voyage) there had been a seismic shift in sports, due to advances in technology.

The two most popular spectator sports now were Zero-Gee Football (a combination of football, American football, rugby, mixed martial arts, and jet packs), known as Aeroball in Europe.

Played in an arena, as shown below, the idea is for the jet-packing wearing players to get the ball into the elctro-spike-protected goals (or 'score tanks'), secured hundreds of feet in the air, up enormous metal poles at each end of the playing area.

Teams of seven, equipped with state-of-the-art jet packs, would defy gravity and common sense every weekend in stadia around the globe to do aerial battle.

Artist's impression of The Berlin Bandits' "Thrill Bowl" 

Famous teams included The London Jets (home to superstar player, roof attack Jim Bexley Speed) and the Berlin Bandits.

From the personal collection of Captain Lister, a lifelong fan of The London Jets

Meanwhile, sports such as cricket and baseball had merged with the technology of the day to create jetball. 

A souped-up version of baseball which, like Zero-G Football, employed robotic referees to eliminate the risk of human error (and financial corruption) in the big money world of global sports.

A Selection of Movies Available on RedNet

Captain Lister's favourite movie

Incubus: JMC's mandatory Esperanto movie (every crewman must watch at least once)

Long-lost silent movie, reconstructed and upgraded (with sound) by A.I. technology

Sleeping Quarters

With a crew complement of 1,169, The Red Knight needs a lot of sleeping accommodation.

While senior officers are entitled to individual rooms, the rest of the crew are all in shared, double-bunk, quarters.

Voice-activated toilet

Unsurprisingly, the lower down the pecking order a crewman is the more basic his sleeping quarters.

The lowest of the low - such as the crew that maintain Sector 7B - get the basic "ocean grey" colour scheme, a computer terminal, table and chairs, a sink, storage lockers, and a voice-activated toilet, hidden in the wall that pivots out when required.

Note: The inflatable banana does not come as a standard fitting.

The JMC Marketing Department felt the addition of an inflatable banana to their publicity shots would make the quarters feel more "appealing" and distract from the soul-crushing industrial greyness of an area where people would spend a lot of their off-duty time.

Did it work?

Captain Lister inspects the crew quarters

Officers' quarters tend to be brighter coloured (cream or red, generally) with more room and better facilities (personal showers, food dispensers etc).

It is a JMC practice to house most crew in double rooms, so that crewmen aren't left on their own for long periods of time in the depths of space.

The general feeling is that it is better to have someone to talk to, even if you don't get on with them, than staring into the abyss on your own for weeks on end.

Officers' quarters

Officers have more spare dollarpounds for 'souvenirs' and reminders from home to clutter up their rooms

Some officers go to great lengths to "customise" their sleeping quarters

Stasis Booths

Originally developed for extrasolar travel, the stasis booth (or "pod") allows its incumbent to survive journeys of extreme lengths without ageing a day.

"The stasis room creates a static field of time. See, just as X-rays can't pass through lead, time cannot penetrate a stasis field. So, although you exist, you no longer exist in time, and for you time itself does not exist. You see, although you're still a mass, you are no longer an event in space-time, you are a non-event mass with a quantum probability of zero."

- Lt. Cmdr Frank Todhunter, JMC

The concept of "stasis" was originally devised for interstellar travel for astros in search of extraterrestrial life, based on work done by Albert Einstein.

Einstein gave up on the theory after having an affair with Marilyn Monroe and spent the rest of his life having cold showers.

After those initial interstellar expeditions failed to find anything, human interest in space exploration waned.

Also, due to the use of the stasis field, many astros were now younger than their decedents, which made billions for the greeting cards industry.

Although the presence of a stasis booth on The Red Knight could now be regarded as rather archaic, it is a requirement under JMC guidelines as it can be used as a punishment for certain shipboard crimes where a miscreant is locked away for the duration, forfeiting his pay for that period.

Crewmen are also able to "rent" time in the pod, where they can spend an evening or so "not ageing".

It's also a good place to avoid ship-wide disasters.

NB. Captain Lister has his own, personal, booth in his cabin - which he uses to preserve food and drink.

Meet Your (Late) Captain

Prior to "the accident", the Captain's Office (adjacent to the Drive Room, on Level 147), was occupied by Captain David Lister.

A former technician on The Red Dwarf, he saved that ship and its crew through his discovery of a faulty drive plate, thus preventing a catastrophic Cadmium II radiation leak.

That brought the life-long London Jets fan to the attention of the JMC top brass and quicker than you can say "up the ziggurat lickedy-split", he was on a fast track to becoming captain.

Captain Lister

After several jags on The Red Dwarf, and now married to a exotic dancer, Crystal (who danced on table nine at The Multiverse strip club on Venus), he was offered the captaincy of the JMC's flagship miner: The Red Knight.

As part of his deal with JMC for saving The Red Dwarf, the mustachioed, cigar-smoking Lister refused the cash settlement he was offered and instead negotiated for shares.

No one could have foreseen that the Dwarf would soon stumble upon a planet rich in Helium-7*, making Lister a fortune.

After returning the Dwarf to Earth one final time, Lister took over the reins of The Red Knight for what would turn out to be a life-changing voyage for most of its crew (i.e. changing them from alive to dead!).

One aspect of his time on Red Dwarf that Captain Lister had transferred with him to the Red Knight was a personal stasis booth in his office, which he used to store food and drink, ensuring it was always fresh.

* Helium-7 is an extremely rare - and thus valuable - natural resource, highly prized by the Jupiter Mining Corporation. However, it was also highly combustible.