Chapter Text
Lister’s first month back on Earth was not filled with celebration and all-night pub crawls. Nor was it filled with a more subdued, shell-shocked appreciation that, deep down, he’d known was more realistic.
No – he was welcomed home with a massive pile of paperwork.
He couldn’t even slough it off – because somewhere, in this mountain of legal jargon, there might be a way to make JMC turn Rimmer on again.
As soon as the lifeless light bee had fallen out of the air, Lister had voiced his objections. Then he’d yelled them. Then he’d stood up, trying to argue more – but during the commotion, the shuttle had landed. New customs officers came on board to escort him away, and not one of them seemed to care at all about the cold piece of metal rattling around on the chair next to Lister.
That’s when the paperwork began. It was a sizable stack to begin with – mountains of documents and wavers to be signed – and it seemed to expand every time he mentioned Rimmer’s name. Weeks had gone by without even making a dent in it all.
Finally, after a disorienting cycle of phone calls, something promising cropped up.
So now he sat in a stark white conference room at the JMC Earth Outpost Office in London. The barely padded, tastefully minimalist chair didn’t allow for slouching, so he leaned forward just slightly to tap his fingers against the shiny table. A massive monitor dominated the room – in fact, the room was completely devoid of anything else to look at, outside of the white plastic furniture and a small clicker on the table. Lister stared at the screen warily, tugging at a sleeve of the scratchy jumper that Kryten insisted he wear.
Finally, the screen lit up with a spinning icon. A cheerful chirping ringtone filled the air. “bzzzzzt! bzzzzzt!”
He pulled in a quick, fortifying breath and pressed a button on the clicker.
The screen immediately switched to a pretty woman with big white teeth and a white blouse, sitting in front of a blank white wall. “Hello Mr. Lister! My name is Lucille, and I am a part of the Jupiter Mining Corporation HR department.” Her voice was as bleached as every other part of her. There was the barest twinge of a continental accent, but it had been polished into the clipped, pleasant tones of a BBC newscaster. “First things first – may I call you David?”
“Er, Dave’s fine.”
“Wonderful, Dave!” She smiled, showing off her teeth to dramatic effect. A certifiable Rachmaninoff concerto of a smile. “We understand how difficult this situation must be for you, and hope that, together, we can find the best possible solution.”
Lister nodded – then, looking around at the blandly corporate room, added, “Yes, that sounds very, er, effective, and synergized, and all that.” Maybe if he tried to be professional, or something close to it, he could succeed, here.
The smile didn’t falter. “I’m glad you think so.” She leafed through a tidy stack of paper in front of her, humming softly. Finally, she pinched one sheet between dainty fingers and pulled it out, setting it on top of the stack. “I see that you were inquiring about spousal compensation after the death of Arnold Rimmer.”
“Well, that’s not exactly–”
“We are so deeply, deeply sorry for your loss, Dave.”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “Er. Thanks.”
According to Kryten, the JMC process for dealing with accidental death was a pretty standard one for deep space industrial work within the Space Corps. There were legal hoops to jump through, but it basically boiled down to a simple choice for the family: a payout, or the hologram data for the deceased.
As soon as holograms became a standard feature of deep space industrial ventures, a troop of lawyers had been brought in. They’d determined, and legally codified, that if a family could bring back an electronic recreation of their loved one, then they hadn’t really lost them. Therefore, the employer couldn’t be held financially responsible for their death.
This decision had been applauded up and down the meeting rooms of mining corporations and terraforming ventures – but, much to their disappointment, the prohibitive cost of running a hologram meant that very few families would ever choose that over a payout. Sometimes they would tearfully ask for a disk of the files as well, knowing they’d never have the necessary funds to run them – however, the lawyers had been quite firm. If the family had a hologram’s files, then individual in question wasn’t gone, and didn’t need be compensated for.
(They would, of course, still be legally deceased. Holograms were naturally subject to a series of legal restrictions of their own. But that was an entirely different matter.)
“Dave,” Lucille said, smile flipping into a neat little frown, “I’m afraid that we have no documentation of your marriage. Our databases show that Arnold Rimmer’s next of kin is one Mrs. Rimmer."
Dave sat up a bit straighter in his chair, a trickle of dread running down his spine. “Oh yeah, that’ll be his mum. Y’see, we weren’t married when all that paperwork was done, right? I didn’t even know him before Red Dwarf!” Thinking back to his days as a contraband taxi driver on Mimas, he corrected, “Not well, anyway.”
Her head bobbed slightly, eyes darting back and forth between Lister’s face and the crisp white paper on the table. “Mmm-hmm, I see.”
“Yeah, we actually got married on the ship, so it wouldn’t necessarily be in your paperwork.”
“Yes, Ron made a note of you saying that, here.” She pointed a slim finger down at the paper. “Unfortunately, when we looked into the ship log, we found no indication that Captain Hollister officiated any on-board marriages.”
Lister pulled in a breath. He knew that he didn’t have a strong argument, here. No matter – he just needed to take what he had, and make it sound official, respectable, sensible, and all those other dreaded “ible” words.
“Ye-e-e-e-eah, well. You see. This was after the captain died, right?” He smiled, trying to mimic her pleasant expression. “After the whole crew died. So technically Rimmer – er, Arnold – was the highest ranking crew member.” He shrugged. “Acting senior officer. But you can’t marry yourself. I mean, can you?”
Lucille shook her head. “No, I don’t believe so.”
“So, yeah, we did the next best thing.”
“And what was that, Dave?”
Lister faltered, trying to think of a way to sell this. There probably wasn’t a jurisdiction in the universe that would see Kryten – a sanitation mechanoid who hadn’t even been invented yet – as a valid officiator. “Well, er, we had the next most senior crew member do it,” he stammered.
“Wasn’t that you?”
“I meant after me. Technically he wasn’t a crew member on the Red Dwarf, but at the time we were actually on Starbug – it’s a long story, but we lost Red Dwarf for a while – and we were a new crew on a new ship, ‘s how I see it.” He shot Lucille a grin. She didn’t return it – just nodded and looked vaguely perplexed.
“So, then…” she started, frowning back down at her paper. “Who was this crew member?”
Lister coughed once, rubbing the back of his head. “Well, Kryten,” He said, quickly.
“The mechanoid you were traveling with?”
“Er. Yeah.”
“Mmm-hmm. I see.”
Silence fell as she picked up her pen and made several notes on the paper. Lister sat up straight and tried to look exceedingly responsible. All was silent, save for the light scratching of ballpoint.
Finally she placed the pen down, and looked up. Her face was a perfect mixture of sincere and professional – eyebrows tilted up just so, lips turned down a touch, but not too far. “I understand that this must be very difficult for you, but JMC is not able to legally recognize the marriage. As such, we won’t be able to proceed in the compensation process.”
Lister fell forward, elbows on the table, and felt the trickle of dread begin to bubble up into a panic. “Okay, okay, I understand that, but you can just talk to Rimmer, right?” He gulped. “If you turn him on for a minute, he’ll want to get this all worked out. He’d–” Lister stopped himself before he could say how much Rimmer would hate the fact that his mother was in charge of settling his affairs. He had the strong impression that it wouldn’t help. “…he’d want to have stuff updated,” Lister finished, lamely.
“There is really nothing that can be done,” Lucille explained with overwhelming kindness, “because JMC is based out of the Jupiter system, and marriages are not legally recognized for deceased citizens.”
“Okay, yeah, okay,” Lister said, “But look. Okay.” He pulled in a shaky breath. “I’m not actually looking for any smeggin’ compensation, okay? I just want his hologram files, can you do that? No money, nothing like that – just the files. It’s not like you’ll need them! He was a technician, and a pretty crap one, at that!”
He wasn’t being entirely honest – he wanted the files, obviously, but he had no intention of walking away without the light bee, as well. He knew that there wasn’t going to be another chance at hard light for Rimmer, and he wasn’t going to give it up.
“I’m very sorry...”
“Yeah, yeah, haven’t heard that one!”
“—but JMC is not permitted to release personal employee information to non-family members.”
It was almost funny, and Lister almost laughed. “Oh, I see,” he said, voice a half octave higher than usual.
“Thank you for understanding, Dave.”
He could see this meeting spiraling to a close, and taking any hope of getting Rimmer back with it.
“Wait! Wait. Look, I know things are different for holograms. But Rimmer was–” he swallowed, trying to loosen a suddenly very tight throat. “He was basically the only thing that kept me sane all those years, right? And he was dead, yeah, but also he also wasn’t really.”
Lucille frowned. “Dave, I know it’s difficult to deal with, but Mr. Rimmer is dead. If you need help dealing with this, we can direct you to counseling services.”
“No, he smeggin’ isn’t!” He stopped, pulling in a breath. “Well, yeah okay. He is. But you know what I mean! His personality is totally intact, you could just flip him on and he’d be here, he – he had a smeggin’ body, and I don’t know what qualification you’re looking for that he didn’t have!”
“I can see where you’re coming from, Dave. This must be very frustrating, but you need to understand that there’s nothing that can be done. I’ll be sending you a list of resources to help you understand the issue. Hopefully, JMC can help as you move on.” She paused, then maneuvered her lips into a smile that was almost, but not quite, too bright for a discussion about a dead spouse. “I am happy to tell you that JMC will be awarding you the employee disaster compensation, even though your employment had been terminated before you were put into stasis. You should be receiving a check, and a letter of condolences, within ten business days.”
Lister shook his head, “I’m not looking for compensation!”
She tilted her head to the side. “Would you like to forgo the compensation? That can be arranged, if you would prefer.”
“No –” The truth was, Lister badly needed the cash. Without it, he wouldn’t have a dollarpound to his name. “That’s not what I meant….” he trailed off, unable to phrase what he did mean.
“I see. Well, please make sure that your address is up-to-date in the company records.” her smile flashed one notch brighter, and she gathered up the papers in front of her, slotting them into a folder. “Do you have any questions?”
Lister sat, trying and failing to articulate just how incomprehensibly terrible this all was. He couldn’t find a way to say it, though – not for lack of words, but because the words he kept turning up were not coolly reasonable corporate speak. They were, in their natural form, quite loud and full of swearing.
“…if that will be all, I’ll end this meeting. Please do go over the resources I’m sending you.” There was one last glimmer of teeth, smiling out at him. “And once more – we are deeply, deeply sorry for your loss, Dave. Good-bye.”
The screen went dark.
-
Kryten rose from a sleek plastic chair in the sleek plastic waiting area as Lister pushed his way out of the conference room. “How did it go, sir?” he asked, as if Lister’s hands weren’t clenched into fists.
“About as well as Rimmer’s patch job on the drive plate. Let’s get out of here.”
Lister ignored Kryten as they walked to the metro, head buzzing too loudly to listen to the mechanoid’s string of questions. It was only after they’d been funneled into a rattling, dented trolley that Lister could get himself to regroup.
“That was a smeggin’ bust,” he said, wriggling around in the narrow seat to try and find a comfortable position.
“It was?”
“Yeah.” Lister squirmed more, accidentally kicking an empty soda can. It scuttled across the trolley’s metal floor, but could barely be heard over the ambient noise of trains, passengers, and electrical humming. “Apparently we’ve got no claim to his files. They can’t give ‘em to us. It’s all up to his mum – and you’ve heard what Rimmer’s said about her.”
“That’s a shame,” Kryten sighed. He patted a clunky hand against Lister’s shoulder. “Oh well, I suppose there was no harm in asking.”
“Yeah.” Lister rubbed his eyes, wishing that the ordeal had reinvigorated him. Lit an angry fire under his arse. But he was just exhausted, right now. “What do we do next?”
“Well sir,” Kryten whirred thoughtfully, “I suppose it might behoove you to find an apartment. The people running the transitional housing facility have been rolling their eyes at you when you’re not looking. And – I’m very sorry to say it, sir, but you might need a job.”
Lister groaned. “No, not that Kryten!”
Kryten’s head bobbed vigorously. “Oh yes, sir, of course not – we’ll think of something other than employment for you!”
“No, I mean – what are we going to do about Rimmer, now?”
Kryten gaped at Lister, gears audibly grinding. “About… Mr. Rimmer? Sir, you were just asking about that. Don’t you remember? They said that they can’t do anything.”
“I’m not okay with that.”
“But – sir, according to the Space Corps Directive, when a hologram is –”
"I don't give a smeg about the Space Corps! Never have!" Lister shook his head with enough vigor that his temples throbbed.
The corners of Kryten's mouth dipped down. "Oh,” he said, “I just knew it was a bad idea."
"What?"
"Letting you marry Mr. Rimmer. It's gone and made you feel obligated." He gave a tut. "Shutting him off was perfectly according to regulation – why, some would even say that it was his duty – but now you won’t move on with your life!"
"It's not that.”
“I should have seen it coming!”
“Look. Remember how I spent ages teaching you to break your programming?"
“Well, yes, of course sir!”
Lister nodded. “Before that, you were saying all kinds of tripe about your program being finished, and needing to shut yourself down, yeah?”
Kryten paused, tilting his head to one side, ruminating, before his expression scrunched in disgust. "Sir, that’s entirely different! Yes, I’ll grant that my continued existence after the Nova 5 was... extraneous. But you provided me with brand new purpose in life – learning how to lie, cheat, and generally be impolite!" He counted out his newly acquired vices on his fingers. "I daresay Mr. Rimmer never did much of anything to improve himself."
"Well yeah. He's a git."
Always had been, always would be, as far as Lister was concerned. He couldn’t even imagine Rimmer improving himself. It would be as impossible in death as it had been in life. The idea of Rimmer becoming, for example, kind and generous... well, it was as ludicrous as him becoming an officer, Spirit of Christmas Future be damned.
Holly had chosen to provide Lister with an obnoxious stack of neuroses for human company, and he'd long ago come to terms with that. Made peace with it. Against all odds, found himself grudgingly fond of it.
"No one should have to fix themselves up to justify being alive," he continued, scratching idly at the arm of his jumper. "Smeg, look at me."
Kryten looked him up and down quizzically, but didn't seem to find the correlation between Lister's appearance and the argument at hand. "Well," he said, "My situation is still entirely different from Mr. Rimmer’s. None of my parts were ever JMC property. You have full claim to them per the Interstellar Salvage Act of 2135. The same simply can't be said for him!"
"Kry-ten," Lister ground out in two deliberate syllables, "Quit it with the lawyer crap. I wouldn't give a rat's arse about all that if they'd hauled you away, either."
The mechanoid slumped in his seat, misery poring out of every plane of his angular face.
“I don’t get it,” Lister sighed, staring out the fingerprint smudged window. The trolley squeezed through concrete and steel structures, shuttering as it took tight turns between badly placed buildings. “What’s got you so tetchy? He was our crewmate. He was a smeghead, but we can’t just abandon him, can we?”
Kryten slumped further, a high pitched whine beginning to sound above the din of the trolley, starting to slow as it approached a station.
“What?!” Lister snapped as people bustled down the aisle, collecting by the doors.
“Sir,” Kryten said, “I do understand trying to get Mr. Rimmer back – but must you compare me to him like that? It really hurts my feelings.”
Lister gave him a flat look. “Er. Sorry.”
Kryten sniffed once, then got to his feet. “I forgive you," he said, smiling. “Well, here’s our stop –”
Lister remained in his seat. “Nope,” he said, staring out the window. “Got a few stops left. We’re gonna visit the Red Dwarf.”
-
The sky overhead was packed with shuttles and smog, blocking out all sunlight with dirty, blotchy grey. The trolley rattled to a stop, and Kryten and Lister stepped out, flanked on all sides by working class astros, mechanics, and the occasional space stewardess. The bay was packed with people. Shuttles staggered back and forth between the grimy streets and ships that could barely be seen, so high above the atmosphere.
Lister and Kryten pushed their way through the crowd. At first the going was slow – people swarmed in uneven mobs, and Kryten was far too polite to barrel through. Gradually, though, the crowd began to thin. The shuttles got dingier and smaller, the people got shabbier and fewer, until, finally, they arrived at the breaking yard.
It wasn’t really a breaking yard. That was in India – there was a beach there made up entirely of ocean-worn metal scraps, where England sent all of their dismantled ships for final deconstruction. This place was more of a morgue, where ships got cut up, posthumously diagnosed with whatever ailment had pulled them out of commission, and prepared for their final journey to the real breaking yard.
The Red Dwarf was here.
It was massive, dominating the entire space. It had crushed several old warehouses. A ship of this size was never supposed to enter the atmosphere – it should have been dismantled in space. But because of the catastrophic nature of the Red Dwarf disaster, as well as the scientific curiosity surrounding a ship making its way 3 million years into the future, then back again, the decision had been made to ground the ship, intact. It had cost almost as much to land the ship as it had to build the thing in the first place. It would probably stay right there, looming over London, for decades to come.
At the moment, that suited Lister just fine.
“See any security guards?” he asked Kryten.
The mechanoid looked around the yard. “Over there,” he gestured to a yawning man in an ill-fitted uniform, meandering around the property line.
Lister nodded, looking back and forth between him and a fin of metal jutting out from the dingy red side of the ship. “Okay,” he said, “as soon as that guy swings around the corner up there, we go.”
“Do you know how to get in?” Kryten fretted.
“Yeah,” Lister said, grinning. “I know this bit of the ship, here. I painted this smeggin’ wall, and I remember where the airlock is.”
-
The airlock needed to be forced open – in fact, they only got in because of the downhill slope leading to the door. Kryten, with a running start, was able to gain enough momentum to smash his way through the old metal, already weakened by its journey through Earth’s atmosphere.
The hallways inside were almost entirely dark. Kryten pulled up a penlight built into his middle finger, and started helpfully pointing it around the empty passages. It barely illuminated the space a few feet ahead of them, but it was better than nothing.
Lister flipped every switch they passed, but nothing so much as flickered with power. “Of course there wouldn’t be anything, sir,” Kryten explained as Lister kicked at a dead vending machine, “If the ship isn’t in motion, it can’t collect debris for the nuclear generator.”
“Don’t suppose we could kick enough enough gravel into the engine to get a pack of pork scratchings?”
They made their way to the stairwell and steeled themselves for the 34 flights of stairs between them and the Hologram Simulation Suite.
Lister was gasping and Kryten’s fans whirring with exhaustion by the time they’d staggered out of the stairwell.
“Almost there,” Lister panted, wobbling up to a big, metal door just a few steps down the hall. He tugged at the door – nothing. “Krytes,” he said, doubling over as he leaned against the wall, “You- you’re gonna have to break through this one, too.”
“I can’t!” Kryten’s voice whined in his attempts to overpower the din of his whirring internal mechanisms. “There – there simply isn’t enough room, sir,” He wheezed, then continued, “and this door is stronger than the one outside.”
Lister pulled himself up, and kicked at the door, setting himself wobbling again. “But – but we made it all the way here,” he said.
He stretched up to peek through the high, narrow window set into the door. The room was completely dark. “Kryten,” he called, “Can you shine your finger in there?”
Kryten extended his finger long enough to reach up over Lister, then pointed the light in. It illuminated dark screens, powerless consoles, and a huge stack of disks.
“That’s the crew, right there,” Lister said, tapping at the window.
“Do you see his light bee, sir?”
“No – can barely see anything at all, really.” He pushed back, sighing. “And we can’t get through this smegging door.”
Kryten nodded. “If it’s any consolation, sir, even if you had the file in your hand right now, it would require so much power that we wouldn’t be able to turn it on for more than a few seconds at a time.”
Lister sagged. “Yeah.” he pushed away from the door, starting back to the stairway. All downhill from here. “It was a stupid idea. C’mon, let’s go home.”
-
“Let me get this straight,” Cat said, leaning out of the flat’s master bedroom, which he’d claimed for his closet. His hair, which had always been dramatic, now seemed to defy every law of gravity. He’d been enthralled with Earth’s wide variety of hairsprays, and hadn’t yet figured out which was his favorite. “The guys who have Goalpost Head say that you can't get him, because his family gets him.” he said, “Except they probably don’t want him, so they’re getting money. But you also got money.”
“Yeah,” Lister said, rereading the number on the check he’d just received in the mail. 100,000 dollarpounds. It was more money than he’d ever had in one place, before.
He was still getting used to the idea of being back on Earth – with the whirlwind of legal problems surrounding his return, it hadn’t had time to sink in. It wasn’t like he’d been doing anything to celebrate – he hadn’t met anybody, really, and spent most of his time in one room, trying to read piles of legal documents. He’d been so caught up in the situation with Rimmer, he hadn’t even started to unpack, yet. The walls of the flat were lined with messy stacks of overflowing boxes. It wasn't even his flat. He just hadn't gotten around to finding one yet.
He was too busy to feel like he’d made it home, yet. The idea of being home, and also rich, was just a bit beyond him.
“And this is a bad thing?” Cat asked.
“Yup.”
“Well, if you’re going to be crazy...” Cat shrugged, suit jacket glinting with the motion, “...then why not trade with them?” He pulled out a glimmering, fish shaped wallet. “Trading money for stuff is my second favorite thing, out of all the things I’ve done on Earth!”
Lister didn’t follow.
“But Mr. Cat, why would he trade his money for different money?” Kryten asked, looking up from the pile of mail he’d been sorting. “And… where are you getting money to buys things with, anyway?”
Cat ignored his last question. “Well, what if his family got Goalpost Head, and they traded for your money? Then they get money, like they wanted, and you get Goalpost Head!” He scrunched up his nose. “Man, his family is ripping you off! Money is way less annoying than that guy.”
Lister looked at Kryten, then back to the Cat, who was throwing his fish-shaped purse up in the air and catching it in one hand. “Would that work?” He asked, to both of them and no one. “No way they’d be willing to do that, right?”
“It’s difficult to say, having never met Mr. Rimmer’s family. It seems unlikely that they’d cooperate.”
Lister snorted, leaning against a wall. “Yeah. They’re all gobshites.”
Kryten shook his head emphatically. “I wouldn’t say that at all! Mr. Rimmer always spoke very fondly of his family. Like how he’d play games of “hold your breath in the toilet” with his brothers!”
“Sounds very Norman Rockwell.”
“What I meant is that your settlement check isn’t the only mail that you received today.” He held up a narrow envelope between his blocky fingers. “This was sent from Io.”
“Oh hey?”
“Yes – it’s what I believe you might call a ‘cease and desist’ letter, sir.”
Lister snatched the envelope from him, pulling out the paper inside, and began to read. “Inappropriate? Smegging hell. And get this: ‘Attempts to steal from a widow’. Like I’m some monocled, mustache twirling villain!” He tossed the paper back to Kryten. “Well sorry Cat – I don’t think your plan’ll work out.”
“Why’s that?” the Cat asked.
“’Cause I’d have a better chance of recreating Rimmer’s files with randomly generated binary code.”
Kryten tapped a finger and hummed. “They seem to believe that you’re trying to get their settlement money, sir.” He tilted his head to one side. “Maybe if you clarified the situation, they’d be more understanding?”
“No way, man, not Rimmer’s family.”
“Are you totally sure of that? You’ve only heard about them from Rimmer, and if you’ll recall, he most recently referred to me as a ‘malfunctioning bog bot’.” He scoffed, shaking his angular head. “Preposterous! I’ll have you know that my programming is still ship-shape, and I can clean many rooms, not just the lavatory!”
“Yeah, bud,” Cat added, “why would you listen to that guy? He’s wrong about everything!”
Lister groaned. “Because I don’t want to go all the way across the solar system to meet with Rimmer’s lousy family, when I know that they’re not gonna help me!”
The idea was a bad one, and the timing was even worse. The Earth just happened to be on the entirely wrong side of the sun, and timely travel to Jupiter was about twice as expensive as it would be in six months.
But Lister didn’t have six months to wait – if this was going to work, it would have to work soon before Mrs. Rimmer agreed to a settlement amount. It didn’t even seem to be worth considering.
“There’s just no way, man – Rimmer’s family are totally mental, I’d bet you anything on that. And they already hate me! It’d be a waste of time.”
The Cat snorted. “You kidding? It’s already a waste of time – I’ve had vomit that’s more worth saving than Alphabet Face.”
“Probably,” Lister shrugged, “but we’ve gotta try.”
“Uh-huh,” Cat said. “Well, if his mum’s the only person they’ll give the thingies to, it’s probably better asking than sitting around here, looking ugly.”
“I have to agree, sir – I’ve checked and double checked the Space Corps Directives.” Kryten brushed a loose sheet of tightly typed policies off of his shoulder, and it fluttered to the floor like the world’s dullest butterfly. “There’s simply no other legitimate way to go about this.”
“Alright then, let’s get illegitimate.” Lister clapped his hands together. “Storm the castle. Break some kneecaps.”
“Sir, there is no castle, and the breaking of kneecaps is only done in ice-skating and bad American mobster films!”
“Well, what the smeg else am I supposed to do?”
Cat and Kryten looked at each other, then they both shrugged.
“Give up?” Cat said. “Take a nap? That’s what I’d do.”
“It might be for the best, sir,” Kryten agreed. “There’s so many other irritating people you could meet, I’m sure we can find someone who will feel just like Mr. Rimmer!”
Lister pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think. There had to be something else he could try. There had to be.
-
There wasn’t. He spent an absolutely unreasonable amount of his new money on one demi-lightspeed ticket to Io. It was pricey enough that, even with his newfound wealth, he decided to go alone.
Kryten was horrified. “What will you do if your seat isn’t clean, sir?”
“Kryten, my trousers have axle grease marks and four different curry stains – I think I’ll survive.”
The Cat, naturally, didn’t really care.
Lister wanted to get the ordeal over with as quickly as possible, so within hours of buying his ticket, and with an arm sore from a new batch of inoculation shots, he was on his way to the Jupiter system.
-
He had only been to four moons in this solar system, but after only a few minutes on Io, Lister was quite sure that it was his least favorite.
Titan was fun. Titan was a blur of neon lights and bustling people and Saturn hovering at the horizon, bathing the streets in a warm, if weak, glow. Mimas had been a depressing, revolting, seedy moon with no prospects and a constant reek of ammonia and rubbish but – hey – Lister had grown up on Earth. He liked Earth. A bit of stench didn’t really bug him. Mimas didn’t have the charm of Earth – no actual, real atmosphere and weather, for one, and alcohol was disturbingly expensive – but hey, you could get a pretty good paella there.
He’d been to Ganymede, as well, but had been bevied up enough that he didn’t remember much. Got a decent shot of the Jupiter Rise, at least.
Where Titan was busy and Mimas was seedy, Io was stark and utterly scrubbed of personality. The moon prided itself on its learning institutions, and each of the domes seemed to be meticulously kept – and meticulously void of anything remarkable. Tidy, boring buildings on boring streets, leading up to a glass wall where you could see a boring field of yellow sulfur stretching off toward the horizon. Jupiter stretched menacingly across the sky – but it never moved. Io was tidal locked.
Rimmer had explained to him once that Io was really quite remarkable in its own way – it was a geological marvel, with hundreds of active volcanoes on a moon that was only just larger than Earth’s own moon. “Nothing in the whole solar system spews noxious gas like Io, present company aside,” he’d said.
Lister had hoped to see an eruption while he was here. But, of course, that would be interesting, and Io couldn’t have that – so the domes were built on flat, rocky, yellow plains, far away from any volcanoes.
He walked down what on Earth would be considered a suburban street – of course, to be a suburb, one would usually expect to find an “urb” nearby. There was nothing like that on Io. They’d collectively decided that cities were smelly and drug-filled. No rural spaces either – they’d decided that the countryside was smelly and bug-filled.
Instead, they’d decided to model their entire infrastructure off of Doris Day movies.
They had picket fences. They had petunias. There was white paint, and rows of houses with differences so minute that they may as well have been exact copies of each other. The gardens were all meticulously manicured, with every blade of grass pointing exactly straight up. Most houses had large greenhouses in the back – as if being inside one glass bubble wasn’t enough.
Lister checked the addresses he passed with the one on the paper in his hand. One upside to the massive piles of paperwork that had been building up around him like ash after a volcanic eruption – even if he couldn't remember Rimmer's listed home address, he probably had about ten different forms of Rimmer’s details on him at any given time. Mostly in scrunched up papers sticking out of pockets, but one time he’d stuffed a sheet into his hat like a cheap artificial feather.
He didn't even need the exact address, in the end – it probably shouldn't have surprised him to find that the Rimmer’s house was marked with an ostentatious sign. "The Rimmer Residence" it read, in looping cursive painted with glimmering gold.
It looked like a nice place, if indistinguishable from most other houses on the street. Green manicured garden, white paint, an intricate greenhouse peeking up above the gables of the roof. A big, but sparsely branched tree rose out of the center of the tidy front lawn. From its thickest branch, a single wooden swing dangled. The fussy arrangement of pale petunias and marigolds growing underneath it made it clear that no one had played on that swing this year – and for many years prior, Lister suspected. It frankly looked more decorative than functional.
If there was one thing about this house that stood out, it was the light color of the flowers growing in the garden. The anemic yellow marigolds scattered around the Rimmer garden looked almost ill when compared to the explosive peonies in the adjacent lot, or the roses that gleamed a dark, vivid purple across the street.
He walked up the concrete steps to the front door and, not seeing a bell, gave a couple of quick knocks on the wood of the door. He left his hand up for just a moment after knocking, looking at the fingerless gloves he wore – comfortable, old black leather. They looked great with his jacket. It was an old jacket with frayed lining, but the leather was still kicking it and the studs and painted patterns were some of his best work.
He'd put it on today without thinking much about it. But a quick glance around the street made him wonder if, maybe, he should have worn that awful jumper that Kryten had given him.
The door lurched open, catching him by surprise. Only after his brain caught up with his heart rate did he realize that he was still holding his fist up – he dropped the hand to his side immediately, then grinned at the thin woman in the doorway.
"You're not Geoffrey," she snapped.
"I'm Dave Lister," he said, as friendly as possible.
"Where's my package, then?"
Lister looked around, as if he might find a cardboard box to provide – of course it wasn't there. "Er, I don't have -"
"If you don't have it, then why are you here?" Lister opened his mouth, but before he could explain himself the woman cut in again. "It's all well and good if Geoffrey is too busy to deliver to his loyal customers himself, but really, now. What sort of useless delivery service is he using, that can't even be bothered to deliver!"
"I'm here about Arnold Rimmer!" Lister blurted.
The woman took a step back and reappraised him, looking him up and down with narrowed eyes. "What did you say your name was, again?" she finally asked, meeting his gaze for the first time.
"Dave Lister," he said, standing as tall as he could. She just about matched him in height, and seemed all the taller because of her pinched, narrow frame.
It was very odd seeing Mrs. Rimmer in person. She looked exactly the way he assumed she would, and somehow entirely different. He’d seen photographs of her, of course. They’d accurately displayed her sharpness, and the coiffed hair (a little greyer now, but not far different) but they hadn’t quite prepared him for how thin she was. She looked almost frail, and that certainly didn’t line up with any of the stories that Rimmer had shared over the years.
"Dave Lister," she repeated. "Ah. I thought that the name seemed familiar."
Lister nodded, smiling in a way that he desperately hoped looked genuine. "That's me," he said. "I was wonderin' if you had a minute to talk-"
"No."
"-about the JMC settlement." Lister finished weakly.
"No, I don't have anything to say to you," she continued, pinching her neatly painted lips together in a thin line. "I heard all about you from the twits at the Jupiter Mining Corporation."
“Look – can I come in for just a sec? I promise I’ll be out of here in no time.”
He thought that she’d say no, but she stepped back, away from the door, and gestured him inside. Her eyes never gained a single degree of warmth, and her lips pursed in irritation as he followed her silent invitation.
After he was inside she pushed the door shut, and strode over to a densely decorated little sitting room off to the side of the doorway. Lister followed, and sprawled into an overstuffed wingback, glancing curiously around the room. It was fastidiously tidy, with doilies and everything. “You knit those?” he asked, “I do some knitting, but nothing that fancy.” He got no answer, save for a disapproving tut.
He felt like about as much of a space bum as he ever had. In the past he’d kinda liked being a space bum. The space part wasn’t ideal, but the bum part suited him famously. Here, in the Rimmer sitting room, he felt like a ratty pair of unfamiliar boxers turning up in the middle of someone’s front lawn. And not in the fun way.
He wished that he’d been able to bring Kryten along. Kryten would seem much more at home here, amidst the doilies.
In some adherence to half remembered manners, he pulled off his hat and set it down on the table next to him. The table was scattered with magazines, all wildly out of date, which he fiddled with idly as he waited for Mrs. Rimmer to take a seat.
Above them sat a framed photograph, which showed three teenagers grinning at the camera, faces bright next to the comparatively dour looking parents. They all towered above their father, and he almost looked like he resented it, glaring out at the camera. It took Lister a few seconds to find young Arnold – he was off to the side, shoulder brushing the edge of the frame. His clothes barely stood out from the backdrop, the same beige as the wallpaper behind him.
“Well?” Mrs. Rimmer said, snapping him away from the photo. She stood by the window, towering over Lister as he sat. “What is it that you wanted to say?”
"Er, I was just hoping we could make a deal about the JMC settlement -"
"They said that you were trying to claim rights to Arnie's settlement. The people from JMC, I mean.” She scowled at him. “Trying to get it on account of being his bunkmate or some nonsense like that."
“I wasn’t looking for a settlement,” Lister said, hoping that his voice sounded just as friendly as he wasn’t feeling. “Got one of my own, actually. I just want to get a copy of his hologram disk–”
“Why? So you can convince yourself that he liked you?” Mrs. Rimmer scoffed. “He wrote about you, you know, when he was actually alive.” She glanced down at his feet, still in boots that stood out dramatically against the worn, but extremely clean, cream colored carpet. Her nose wrinkled. “I believe he made a particular note about your toenails.”
Lister looked down at his feet, and shifted from one to the other. “Ha, yeah,” he forced a laugh, “That sounds like Rimmer. Er, Arnold.”
“Go ahead and call him ‘Rimmer’,” she snapped. “It’s professional. That’s what I called him when he was at work.”
“Wouldn’t that get confusing, with your other sons and all?”
“Hmm?”
“Well you know,” Lister said, trying to conjure up their names, “Like Frank, or… er, Howard? Calling them all ‘Rimmer’?” he gestured to the framed family photograph.
“Why would I call Frank ‘Rimmer’?” She shifted her weight, lifted her chin, and glared out of the doorway. “Anyway, I heard that you were using a hologram of Arnold to satiate your need for human company.” She scowled. “Quite ghastly. My son would have hated being a hologram, simply wouldn’t have stood for it.”
“He did hate it, but it’s better than being dead, yeah?”
“Oh, I highly doubt that,” she sniffed. “Besides, he is dead. That wasn’t him – it was some computer’s recreation of him. My son is dead. It really was quite dreadful for me, to lose both a husband and son in such a short time.” She pulled a spotless handkerchief from her handbag, and dabbed at the corner of her eye. “Thankfully, I’ve been able to carry on.”
“I’m real happy to hear that,” Lister said, “but if you don’t think it’s him anyways, could you just ask for his files, and I can buy them off of you? I got a settlement too, y’know, but I’d rather have his files.”
She stepped over to the mantle and started to brush dust from picture frames and little ceramic flowers with her handkerchief. “No,” she said, not looking at Lister, “I simply couldn’t. It would be very, deeply disrespectful to his memory. And besides – I’ve already gotten the settlement money from JMC.”
Lister slumped, speechless.
“Had it for weeks,” she elaborated. “I applied for it just as soon as I got the news – never believed in dallying about.”
“Smeg, that’s fast,” Lister muttered.
He’d only just barely gotten the money himself, and he’d started working through the mountain of paperwork almost as soon as the first breath of stale Earth air filled his lungs. He wasn’t the most diligent guy in the world, it was true – but he’d tried, here. He cared. And Kryten’s portable printer extension had been a godsend, after his first batch of hand written forms had been rejected. Apparently the computer kept trying to interpret his handwriting as upside-down Arabic.
So yeah, maybe he hadn’t gotten his forms finished as early as humanly possible – but it was as early as Listerly possible. And contrary to what Rimmer might have said if he’d been standing there, when Lister applied himself, he was actually pretty efficient.
“Well yes,” Mrs. Rimmer said, even though Lister hadn’t really meant to say anything she could hear. “Why wait around? It doesn’t change the distasteful situation – and since the whole mishap was Arnie’s fault to begin with, I didn’t want them to have the time to solicit their way out of a payout.”
“Right. Yeah.” Lister shoved himself to his feet and started towards the door. He cursed himself for thinking this trip might be even slightly worthwhile. “Guess I’ll be off then.”
“Now hold on just a moment,” Mrs. Rimmer called after him. He considered ignoring her, and just leaving – but curiosity, if nothing else, made him turn around and consider the rigid woman. He crossed his arms and waited for her to continue. “Now, on the note of solicitors: I have something to say to you.”
She gave a measured, grand pause after this announcement, and it peeved Lister right off – so he pulled out a cigarette and casually lit up. “O-kay,” he said.
The lines of her scowl deepened, but she ignored the smoking and finally continued, “I was disturbed to hear the nature of your claims. It’s bad enough that you’d try to deprive his family of comfort after his death–“
Lister scoffed. “Comfort?”
She threw her hands up. “Yes, comfort! What else is a financial settlement, than comfort? And not only that, but you choose to do so in a way that the real Arnie would find utterly repugnant.”
“Oh yeah, you’re a smeggin’ window into the soul of Arnold Rimmer, for sure.”
“I’m his mother,” she declared, eyes cold, “And you were his disgusting bunkmate. I don’t know how you survived when better men like the captain and officers all died.” She rolled her eyes. “Cockroaches make do, I suppose.”
“Very nice.” Lister deadpanned, lighting up a second cigarette to burn concurrently with the first.
“I’m not sure why you set your sights on my son. Maybe it was just the good family name,” she gestured to the magazines that Lister had been poking at earlier – and following her gaze, he realized that each featured the name “Rimmer” somewhere on the cover. Never the lead story – but always there.
“Meet Captain Rimmer, the youngest captain in the Space Corp! Read more on page 23.”
“Top 12 fastest Demi-Light Speed Zippers of 2180! (based on solar circumnavigations piloted by J. de Guzman, F. Rimmer, and M. Rosembaum)”
“In memoriam: esteemed Io Polytechnic lecturer dies of complications from heart disease.”
“…but you don’t seem the kind to care about family, to me.” She added while he was looking down at the mags. “No – I think it’s just because he was there. Convenient. And our Arnie was always a very stupid, gullible, thoughtless, and rather gross child,” she sighed. “It’s really no wonder a man like you found it so easy to prey on him. We will be filing for an injunction. So please – leave us to cherish our memories of Arnie in peace.”
“You just called him ‘stupid’, ‘thoughtless’, and ‘gross’!”
“Yes, and those are only some of the memories that we will be cherishing! Now, dash along.”
It took Lister just a moment to decide what he was going to do, but the breath of hesitation was broken by the front door flying open.
“There’s a package outside, mum – were you waiting for a delivery?”
A tall man in his early forties stood in the doorway, looking first to his mother before his eyes found Lister. “Say,” he said, voice lilting with curiosity, “do you need an ashtray?”
“Nah, ‘m just heading out.” Lister said, pushing his way past. “Ta, though.”
The man – Howard or Frank or whatever the third one’s name was – lifted a hand in a confused farewell, before meeting eyes with his mother. Lister didn’t stay to hear what was said – something about flowers, maybe, but he was already shoving out of the doorway.
He was halfway down the next street when he realized that he’d taken off his hat in the house, and wasn’t wearing it now. He cursed to himself, and contemplated just buying himself a new one – after all, he had more money than he knew what to do with.
But no – that hat had been with him for 3 million years, and he wasn’t about to abandon it to the Rimmers.
He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, heaved a deep sigh, before turning around and making his way back up the street.
When he got to the house, Rimmer’s brother was kneeling down on the drive. A cardboard box beside him spewed bright tangles of fabric all over the pavement. It was only when he got closer that Lister saw what they were – flowers. A box full of oversaturated cloth flowers. Rimmer’s brother was pulling up the sickly marigolds – which Lister could now see were actually made of tatty, weathered fabric – and replacing them.
Even though he wasn’t trying to be quiet, it still made Lister jump when his foot hit a pebble that clattered noisily across the street pavement. Rimmer’s brother lifted his head, frowning, then pushed himself up to his feet. “Mr. Lester?” he asked.
“Lister.”
“Right, yes. Mr. Lister.” He considered him with a disapproving frown. It was uncanny how much he looked like Rimmer – though the features were a bit more refined, perhaps, and he had a thin mustache on his upper lip. The hair with just a touch of stylish disarray, instead of a short, frizzy wreck. The biggest different was the way that he carried himself – there was actual gravity to his posture, and not just a stiff imitation of it. “I’m Frank Rimmer,” he finally said. “Have we met before? You look more familiar than I was expecting.”
“Oh right, I crashed your wedding photo! Er, don’t worry about it. It wasn’t a big thing.”
Frank looked baffled, but seemed to decide not to question it, instead continuing, “What are you doing back here? You’ve really upset my mother, I’ll have you know.”
He gestured to the top of his head. “Forgot my hat.”
He made to walk past, but the other man jumped forward, stopping him. “Stay out here, I’ll have to fetch it for you.” He shook his head. “Do you make a habit of harassing little old ladies? She is really upset.”
Lister shrugged, then idly scratched the back of his neck. “Honestly? I don’t give a smeg.”
Frank bristled. “You have some nerve! Showing up here after what you tried to do. And she’s just lost her son!”
“Yeah,” Lister drawled, “I’m a real nervy guy, not wanting her son to be shut down forever. Pret-ty nervy, just checking to see if she’d consider opting out of that.”
“He is dead! That hologram isn’t the same person!” Frank shouted. “Hell, look at you. There’s no way the Arnold I know would have anything to do with a guy like you.”
“This about the ‘guy’ part of that?”
Frank rolled his eyes. “Honestly, that’s the only part of it that does make sense. Look, where did you leave your hat? I’ll fetch it and you can get out of here.”
“Table, next to some mags.”
Frank wasted no time. He snapped around and marched to the door. Lister watched after him, trying to puzzle out how someone so much like Rimmer could somehow be even more insufferable. He was less obviously obnoxious, but superficiality seeped from him – which was far worse, as Lister saw it. And Frank was much more likely to punch him out – never something that Lister liked in a person.
The box of new, glossy fabric flowers sat right at his feet, and he considered doing something with them. He didn’t know exactly what, yet. With the threat of an injunction already hanging over his head, it seemed ill advised.
But he really wanted to.
He was crouching down next to the box and holding his lighter below a frilly orange petal when a shout made him jump, sending the lighter flying into the pile of faded old marigolds. He snatched it up and shoved it into a jacket pocket.
“Lister!” A man was jogging down the street. The first thing that Lister registered were his trousers. They were hard to miss – a tangled plaid of bright orange and dull green, running down from the high waistline to the dramatically flared cuffs, making his skinny legs seem absolutely ludicrous in proportion. His plain brown polo-neck and knitted waistcoat did nothing to tone down the look – the trousers were just that unfathomably vivid.
As he got closer, Lister was able to make out a frazzled mess of curls and a certain, familiarly awkward gait – “What on Io are you doing on Io? Smeg, this is the last place I’d expect to find you!”
It couldn’t be.
Rimmer ran up, slammed into Lister in a hug that was just as angularly painful as it was baffling. “Rimmer?” he said, muffled by the man’s shoulder.
Rimmer pulled back, grinning wide – but he didn’t look quite right. His hair was much longer, for one, and his face was brighter, thinner – younger, it seemed. It took him a moment to realize the biggest change, but as soon as he did, it took him back a step: the “H” was gone from Rimmer’s forehead.
Rimmer seemed to note his confusion, straightening up. His wide smile pinched up just slightly, taking on a nervous flavor. “I’m back! And alive again!” he said.
“Er, wow.” Lister poked a finger at his smooth, unadorned forehead. “Brutal. But – what? How?”
Rimmer’s smile slipped further into the realms of anxiety, but valiantly tried to hold on. “You – you’re happy I’m back, right? You don’t want me to leave again?”
Lister shook his head. “Smeg no – just, how? I thought you were dead, man. Shut off.”
Rimmer stumbled, almost tripping, and Lister reached out and arm to steady him. “What?” Rimmer sputtered. “Why – why would you think that?” He crossed his arms. “Why the smeg – if you thought I’d die so bloody quickly, why did you want me to go? What kind of...“ He huffed, furrowing his brow. “I actually did very, very well, I’ll have you know!”
“What?” Lister asked again, just as uselessly.
“Yes! I was a truly inspiring figure, brimming over with nobleness and radiating charm and iron-balled bravery. I did several heroic feats!”
“What the smeg are you talking about, Rimmer? And why are you alive?”
Rimmer dropped the defensiveness. “Oh, that.” he laughed, so obviously fake that it actively drained levity from the conversation. “That would be confusing, wouldn’t it?” He cleared his throat. “Well, I got stuck for a little while. Years, actually. Several years. I’d landed the ship on that backwards Earth...” he trailed off. “You remember that place, right?”
Lister nodded, dully.
“And I stayed there long enough that the hard light un-upgraded itself, and you just can’t perform heroic feats as an incorporeal spattering of light, now can you?”
He paused, giving Lister a chance to agree. Lister was still trying to process words from about half the conversation before, so he just stood there, mouth open. “So the computer said I should wait there and see if I’d just come back to life eventually. And I did!” He grinned. “I was so terrified… erm, bravely terrified of blinking out of existence – no remains there or anything, you know – but it turns out that one pile of radiation fried carbon-y ash is pretty much like another!”
“What?” Lister said again.
“Something about the timeline trying to create a cohesive story, I didn’t really want to get bogged down in the details, myself, but anyway – living as a hologram surrounded by literally backwards people for five years really puts some things into perspective, you know. Or maybe it was living through disco in reverse. But anyway – I decided that I was pretty much done with that whole Ace nonsense.”
“What?”
“You save one helpless fair maiden, you’ve saved them all, am I right?”
“You’re Ace?”
“Well, okay – it wasn’t a fair maiden, but – wait. What? I’m Rimmer, I said I was done with being Ace.” He tried to smile, again. “I’m back.”
Lister shook his head. “Rimmer didn’t leave to be Ace.” He sighed as his confusion turned to resignation. “You’re in the wrong universe, man.”
Ace stepped away. “Oh.” he said, shoulders slumping. He kicked at the cardboard box of marigolds, sending a cloth flower fluttering to the cement. “Smeg.”
“Yeah.”
“This is a bit awkward.”
“Yeah.”
“I guess… I’ll be going, then.”
“’kay.”
Ace stepped down the driveway, eyes locked resolutely on the ground. Before he could reach the street, though, an idea started to form in Lister’s mind.
“Hold up!” he shouted, tripping over the box and knocking it over. Colorful flowers scattered everywhere, and he jumped over them as he jolted towards the street. “I need your help with something!”