Back in the Blue

WHO: Alistair Withnail
WHERE: Blue Dwarf
WHEN: Who can say with time travel?
Aside from the engineering teams who kept the vast engines of Blue Dwarf
running, nobody ever visited the deeper levels of the ship. Down here was kept
the vast machinery, huge as skyscrapers, that kept the mining ship travelling
through space. It was cramped, humid and a thoroughly unpleasent place where
absolutely nothing of interest ever took place.
That is, unless you counted the huge swirling vortex of bright blue light that
had suddenly appeared from nowhere.
The vortex swirled itself into a crescendo of energy, spitting static lighting
and tossing various pieces of litter around it. From somewhere deep inside came
a howling scream. Suddenly, and without warning, a humanoid figure was thrown
higgeldy-piggeldy out of the vortex onto the grimy floor. With a final defiant
spit of lightning, the vortex shrank away to nothing, leaving behind only a
faint smell of ozone in its wake.
The man lay still for a moment. He was completely naked and seemed to be
sizzling slightly. After a moment, he managed to summon up enough energy to push
himself over onto his back and draw himself back from the abyss of
unconciousness. His name was Alistair Withnail and he had disappeared from Blue
Dwarf nearly a year and a half ago. Those who had bothered to notice his passing
had simply assumed that the usual stresses of working a minimum wage job on the
ship had gotten to him and he had simply got drunk, stepped into an airlock and
hit the release switch, blowing himself out into the oblivion of space. This was
not so, as Alistair had invented himself a rudimentary time machine. He had
managed to crack the secret of personal, one-way time travel. However, as he had
gathered from his studies of time travel (which meant using his half-price
coupons at the cinema to watch 'The Terminator', '12 Monkeys' and 'The Three
Stooges Meet Hercules') the process of time travel created all sorts of problems
- he had no idea when he would turn up, so he had conducted the experiment deep
in the bowels of the ship.
Picking himself, rather unsteadily, up Withnail took note of his situation and
nudity and felt it was best to return to his quarters before anyone came running
to investigate what the weird flash of light amongst the engines was. Also, he
had been on Blue Dwarf long enough to know that any embarassing misfortune
suffered would quickly make its way around the ship faster than Road Runner in a
Hadron Collider.
Eventually, after several minutes of hiding and running, Withnail made it to a
storage cupboard. Thankfully, he managed to find an old maintenance jumpsuit
that was coloured a nasty dayglo orange. With his newfound disguise, Alistair
hurried away back to his cabin to regroup and figure out just when the Hell he
was; praying all the time that he'd travelled to a time before the pubs closed.
After his experiences, he was going to need a very stiff drink.
<TAG: Been out of the game for over a year. Anyone fancy filling Alistair in on
what's currently going on?>