Captain Calvert - "Step in time" part 2

Who: Captain Jed Calvert
Where: Blue Dwarf in the future
When: The future
<snippety snip snip>
"I bet I'm sat somewhere in there with a big fat cigar in my mouth
counting my huge piles of dollarpounds." he said.
The woman looked at the tacky casino. "Yes. You are." She admitted.
"With a beautiful girl?"
She hung her head. "Two."
"Yahoo!" said the cowboy Captain. He ran off to the bar to meet himself.
<end snippety snip>
Calvert looked in awe at the new Parrotts bar. He'd always hated the
way it looked like a British pub, so stale and old fashioned.
But now looking around he was amazed. Gone were the badly padded bar
stools, gone were the wooden tables, gone were the rusty brass beer
taps. It now had tacky fluorescent lighting everywhere, flashing
adverts for various types of beer, liqueur, and some other things that
were illegal on many planets. The place was shrouded in cigar smoke,
giving it that foggy ambience where you can't quite see every detail,
therefore accentuating the things you can see.
Four girls wearing erotic silky frocks danced the can-can in the
corner on a stage area, and many men were scrabbling over themselves
to put money into their stockings.
There was a row of roulette tables, and several places to play poker
and blackjack. All tables were full and hundreds of drunken voices
shouted over the loud music to make themselves heard.
Several lapdancers seemed to be working their way around the sleazy
clientèle, who had big grins on their faces.
It was far different to the Blue Dwarf now. Jed grinned. This was his
dream. He thought about the amount of money his future self must be
making.
He was aware of a presence behind him. "I'm starting to think this is
a bad idea." said the attractive blonde woman.
Jed turned to her, the beaming grin still on his face. "Missy, ah want
to thank yer for showin' me this. Ah don't much care if ye are time
traveller, advanced being, or jus' the SCTP, you've done me a great
ol' favour today. I know what I'm gonna do when I get back."
"Call off your crew and not sabotage the Pink Dwarf?" She said hopefully.
He laughed as if she was joking. "Nah way missy. Ah'm gonna tell them
JMC to stick it an' create this."
"Let me show you some more first." She said, then looked around for
some examples that hoped would change his mind.
"Ah!" she said, and pointed over to a far corner. There was a person
sat alone, moving a pistol over and over in his hands. He had a
scraggy beard, and had bloodshot eyes.
"Is that... mah Chief Navigation officer?" Said the Captain.
"Jay Chrysler." Said the woman. "And he's not your Chief navigation
officer any more. When you turned the Blue Dwarf against the JMC he
couldn't go home, even though he wanted to leave. You ordered him to
hijack a freighter transporting 1000 gallons of peanuts and bombay mix
for the bar and his girlfriend Katrina got killed. He went into a
period of depression and you sacked him. Now he just sits there
contemplating suicide."
Jed shrugged. "So?" he pointed back to the casino and bar. "Looks like
we've got plenty o' bar nuts though."
The woman didn't stop to listen to him. She pointed outside, where a
strange creature was storming down the Promenade. It was a woman with
jet black eyes and several octopus-like limbs. She angrily pushed
someone out of the way with one of her extra appendages, then pushed
over a few barrels of beer that had been stacked up. She picked up
someone she knew and threatened him for something called 'bliss'.
"That's Amber Febuggure." Said the glowing woman. "You decreased all
crewmember's salary so she had to earn some cash on the side by
allowing scientists to perform experiments on her. One of them went a
little wrong."
Jed watched as she pulled a little packet of powder from the mans
pocket and she ran off happily into an express-lift.
"She turned to drugs when she got really depressed. Her brother was
killed by some mugger who used to be one of your crew."
"Who was the mugger?" Jed asked.
"Chris Harris. You sacked him because he didn't agree with your loose
morales. He was then evicted from his quarters because you needed more
room for the brothel on C-Deck."
Jed rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
The woman quickly pointed out another example. "That man over there
picking things out of a bin and sipping from a bottle in a brown paper
bag... Dr Keto."
"But I'd still need the medical department." Jed said.
"Of course. But you insisted on it being staffed only by hot young
female doctors and nurses. Dr Keto didn't have anywhere else to go. He
was homeless and had to burn the pink tree for warmth."
Jed folded his arms. "All this hyar proves nuthin'."
She pointed to the computer screen behind him, and tapped the screen
to activate it. Instead of the face of Holly, a more mechanical 3D
face appeared that was part skutter, part Peewee robot. "Mk10, th'
li'l robot fella?" Jed said.
"Yes. Well... no. You sent Mk10 on so many dangerous missions he went
through his version numbers pretty fast. That's actually Mk35, you
ordered his consciousness to be used instead of Holly's because his
ethical subroutines were easier to corrupt."
"Good idea." Said Jed.
"STOP TAKING NOTES!" The woman demanded. "This future is avoidable.
Things get even worse you know."
"How?"
"I..." her voice tailed off. "I can't tell you. But what you do has
galactic consequences."
"Looks like it sure goes well for me though." Jed said.
The woman's eyes squinted into slits and she shook her head. "You are
despicable!" She ranted and walked off, leaving him alone.
"Wait!" Called Jed, going after her, but several people get in his
way. "I need you to get me back to my proper time!"
As he fought his way through the crowd he felt someone reach into his
jacket and pull out his wallet. He snapped the fingers on the
backwards until it made a satisfied cracking noise. Keeping his eyes
on the direction his time-travelling conscience, he pushed past the
people without even looking at them.
They pulled him back, and grabbed his arms. Jed tried to pull away but
they had him held pretty tightly. One on front punched him in the
stomach and he tried to drop to his knees, wheezing. But the men
holding him wouldn't let him.
"It's the Captain!" he heard one of them say.
"Lets get 'im good an' proper then!" said another voice. "Teach him a
lesson for what he did to us!"
Jed formulated a plan in his whiskey-damaged brain. He hoped to pull
the men together and slam their heads together. He was just about to
put his plan into action when everyone disappeared.
Jed was alone on the empty Promenade.