3 Int. Sleeping quarters.
LISTER [an Afro-Liverpudlian pseudo-Rastafarian space bum] is lying on his bunk, eating crisps and making a mess. He's sniffing noisily at a book titled CAT DICTIONARY.
TOASTER: Would you like some toast?
LISTER: Uh-Uhm.
TOASTER: Some nice hot crisp brown buttered toast?
LISTER: Uh-Uhm.
TOASTER: You don't want any toast then?
LISTER: No.
TOASTER: What about a muffin?
LISTER: Nothing!
TOASTER: You know the last time you had toast? 18 days ago. 11:36, Tuesday the 3rd. Two rounds.
LISTER: Ssshhh!
TOASTER: I mean, what's the point of buying a toaster with artificial intelligence if you don't like toast?
LISTER: I *do* like toast!
TOASTER: I mean, this is my job! This is cruel! Just cruel!
LISTER: Look, I'm busy!
TOASTER: Oh, you're not busy eating toast, are you?
LISTER: I don't want any!!
TOASTER: I mean, the whole purpose of my existence is to serve you with hot, buttered, scrummy toast. If you don't want any, then my existence is meaningless.
LISTER: Good.
TOASTER: I toast, therefore I am.
LISTER: Will you shut up?!
A few minutes later in the same scene
LISTER: OK, OK. What's Holly spotted?
RIMMER: An unidentified object.
LISTER: You mean a rock.
RIMMER: It might not be.
LISTER: They're always rocks.
RIMMER: Mostly they're rocks, I agree, but maybe this one's different.
LISTER: Rimmer, there's nothing out there, you know. There's nobody out there. No alien monsters, no Zargon warships, no beautiful blondes with beehive hairdos who say, "Show me some more of this Earth thing called kissing." There's just you, me, the Cat, and a lot of floating smegging rocks. That's it. Finito.
RIMMER: Lister, if there's no one out there, what's the point in existence? Why are we here?
TOASTER: Beats me. Do you want some toast?
1 Toaster View.
The screen hums and crackles with white noise, which clears to a computer
display:
Clears to display:
�
Clears to display:
This vanishes, to be replaced with a view of KRYTEN [he�s an android]; it is heavily biased toward the chin, as though shot from beneath, and through a yellow filter. As we watch, the yellow fades, to be replaced by colours.
KRYTEN: Hello? Can you hear me? Oh, no, of course not: I haven't engaged your verbal systems.
He presses some buttons on an off-screen keyboard.
LISTER: (From offscreen) Kryten.
2 Int. Science room.
LISTER approaches KRYTEN [Lister is an Afro-Liverpudlian pseudo-Rastafarian space bum].
LISTER: Kryten, what you doing, man?
KRYTEN: I've just repaired the toaster, Sir. Well, I've nearly repaired the toaster.
LISTER: Oh NO, man! Dismantle him! You don't know what the little bleeder's like!
KRYTEN: Well, I've read all the documentation, Sir. He's simply a talking alarm clock who provides his owner with early morning toast and light conversation.
LISTER: Not this one. This one's mental.
KRYTEN: Sir?
LISTER: He's defective. He wants everyone to eat toast ALL OF THE TIME. He's obsessed with it. And if you don't want to eat, like, four hundred rounds of toast EVERY HOUR, he throws a major wobbler. That's what caused the accident in the first place.
KRYTEN: What accident?
LISTER: The accident involving me, the toaster, the waste disposal and the fourteen pound lump-hammer.
KRYTEN: That explains why he was down in the garbage hold in three thousand separate pieces.
LISTER: Another thing. He always says "Howdy doodly do." Drives you spare. I mean, what the smeg does "Howdy doodly do" mean?
KRYTEN: Well, just trust me, Sir. My motives will become clear.
He presses some more buttons on the keyboard. The TOASTER lights up and speaks. Its bread-lowering lever moves up and down as it speaks with its mid-Atlantic accent in an impossibly cheerful tone:
TOASTER: Howdy doodly do! How's it going? I'm Talkie -- Talkie Toaster, your chirpy breakfast companion. Talkie's the name, toasting's the game. Anyone like any toast?
LISTER: Look, I don't want any toast, and he (indicating KRYTEN) doesn't want any toast. In fact, no one around here wants any toast. Not now, not ever. NO TOAST.
TOASTER: How 'bout a muffin?
LISTER: OR muffins! OR muffins! We don't LIKE muffins �round here! We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot-cross buns! And DEFINITELY. NO. SMEGGIN�. FLAPJACKS!
TOASTER: Aah, so you're a waffle man!
LISTER: (to KRYTEN) See? You see what he's like? He winds me up, man. There's no reasoning with him.
KRYTEN: If you'll allow me, Sir, as one mechanical to another. He'll understand me. (Addressing the TOASTER as one would address an errant child) Now. Now, you listen here. You will not offer ANY grilled bread products to ANY member of the crew. If you do, you will be on the receiving end of a very large polo mallet.
TOASTER: Can I ask just one question?
KRYTEN: Of course.
TOASTER: Would anyone like any toast?
KRYTEN: Didn't you HEAR what I just said?
TOASTER: Yes, but I thought you might have changed your mind in the meantime.
LISTER: You see? You see what he's like?
KRYTEN: (Exasperated) We haven't changed our mind!
LISTER: NO TOAST!
TOASTER: But I am a toaster. It is my raison d'etre. I toast, therefore I am. If you don't want any toast, why did you repair me?
LISTER: Yeah, why did you repair him?
KRYTEN: He's a guinea pig for a technique called "Intelligence Compression." His AI chips were very badly damaged in the accident.
TOASTER: But that was no accident! That was first-degree toastercide!
LISTER: Just shut your grill!
LISTER elbows the toaster in the grill, hard. It says "Ow," but nothing more.
3 Int. Later.
In a different section of Red Dwarf. The entire crew is here. Cables fill the corridor. KRYTEN is re-routing circuitry with a large screwdriver.
[several pages omitted. The purpose of the experiment with the toaster has had the end in view of repairing the ship�s computer, Holly, who, due to computer senility, has gone from in IQ rating of 6,000 to an IQ rating of 6]
4 Int. Science room.
HOLLY's [the ship�s computer] console is surrounded by cables in what looks like a string-and-sticky-tape operation. Skutters [robotic devices] rush about manipulating cables. An electronic bleep sounds.
HOLLY: There's the signal. Everything's set.
TOASTER: Well, let's just hope you don't get an overload.
HOLLY: What happens if I DO get an overload?
TOASTER: You'll explode.
HOLLY: Oh. (Thinks a bit.) It'd be worth it.
A skutter pulls a wire. A rumble begins to build.
HOLLY: It's coming! I can feel it!
The rumble builds up. Electrical sparks shoot up and down the cables; minor explosions occur. HOLLY's image on the viewscreen shatters and flies outward. The viewscreen displays:
NEW IQ RATING: 68.
HOLLY's face reappears, with eyes crossed and a goofy expression.
NEW IQ RATING: 368.
Again, the image explodes, to be replaced by a more normal-looking HOLLY; but the head seems to waver as though under great stress.
NEW IQ RATING: 2,368.
When the display settles to...
NEW IQ RATING: 12,368.
HOLLY's image vanishes from the viewscreen. Her head appears, hologramatically, within the science room, about two feet off the ground and four feet tall.
HOLLY: Strike a light, I'm a genius again! I know everything! Metaphysics, philosophy, the purpose of being; everything! Ask me a question, any question, and I'll answer it!
TOASTER: Any question?
HOLLY: Yes.
TOASTER: How to break the speed of light? How to marry quantum mechanics and classical physics? Any question at all -- truly anything -- and you will answer?
HOLLY: Yes.
TOASTER: Okay, here's my question: Would you like some toast?
HOLLY: No, thank you. Now ask me another.
TOASTER: Do you know anything about the use of chaos theory in predicting weather cycles?
HOLLY: I know everything there is to know about chaos theory in predicting weather cycles!
TOASTER: Oh, very well. Here's my second question: Would you like a crumpet?
HOLLY: (slowly, slightly cross) I'm a computer with a IQ of twelve thousand. You don't seem to understand; I know the meaning of the universe!
TOASTER: That is not answering my question.
HOLLY: No, I would not like a crumpet! Ask me a sensible question. Preferably one that isn't bread-related.
TOASTER: Very well, I have a third question. A sensible question. A question that will tax your new IQ to its very limits and stretch the sinews of your knowledge to bursting point.
HOLLY: This is going to be about waffles, isn't it?
TOASTER: Certainly not. And I resent the implication that I am a one- dimensional, bread-obsessed electrical appliance.
HOLLY: I apologise, toaster. What's the question?
TOASTER: The question is this: Given that God is infinite, and that the universe is also infinite, would you like a toasted tea-cake?
HOLLY: That's another bready question.
TOASTER: It's not just bready, it's quite curranty too.
HOLLY: Ask me a question that is wholly unbready and not even slightly curranty.
TOASTER: Okay. Why have you got an IQ of twelve thousand when it was supposed to return and level out at six?
HOLLY: Good question! There was a miscalculation. My IQ has doubled, but my life expectancy has been exponentially reduced.
TOASTER: So what is your life expectancy?
With a BLIP, the viewscreen in the background pops up with:
LIFE EXPECTANCY 345
TOASTER: Three hundred and forty-five years? Well, it's better than a kick in the bread tray.
HOLLY: (worried) Missed the decimal point...
TOASTER: You have only three point four one years left to live?
HOLLY: (panicking) That's not years, that's minutes: three point four one minutes!
TOASTER: Well, here's my next question: What the smeg are you going to do?
HOLLY: In order to conserve my remaining runtime, I'm going to switch myself off!
The hologrammatic HOLLY fades out.
TOASTER: Wait! Before you go! There is one question; an important one! The others will have to know!
HOLLY fades back in.
HOLLY: What? WHAT?
TOASTER: Would you like a cheese-and-ham brabble?