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“Well Listey,” Rimmer said, with all the excitement of one waiting to have a prostate exam, “seems like this is it.”
And this time, it seemed like it really was.
The ship had been hit by something; what that something was, it had been too quick to tell. One moment Red Dwarf is puttering along, and by the next blink of an eye, the walls were crumpled in in themselves, objects flying everywhere, panels and consoles exploding into fires and sparks that set off even more fire and sparks.
Kryten and Cat were missing in action, either dead or wishing they were. Holly was offline, because every single system on the battered Red Dwarf was slowly failing… Hologram Simulation Suite included.
It was odd, Rimmer mused, while Lister did his impression of a dying fish across from him. His first death had been so quick he’d barely managed to comprehend it.
Oh, sure. He'd seen it coming, but the second his soup-y despair had left his lips, he’d simply ceased to exist. All he’d felt was a flash of heat across his face; like he had stood too close to one of his mothers awful-smelling candles.
But this? It was like he could physically feel his light-bee shutting down; something must have stabbed through his projection in the onslaught of damage and destruction, because he wasn’t even sure the Hologram Suite would have been able to save him at this point. Energy was being sucked from his very being, his fingers slowly gaining a creeping numbness to them that was slithering its way up his wrist.
Lister wasn’t fairing much better. He was bloody and clammy and looking far too sweaty. His arm was definitely out of its socket, and his nose definitely shouldn’t have been at that angle.
Rimmer was, to be frank, completely and utterly surprised Lister's body hadn’t given up the ghost already, and he was rightly shocked when Lister somehow managed to speak .
“S’not really, though, is it?” Lister’s words were slurred, much more than normal, sounding like someone was pouring lager directly down his throat as he spoke. It took Rimmer a moment to remember that he’d spoken first.
“Lister, I can see your ribs, your lungs, and what’s left of your liver. If we weren’t both going to die, I’d have already recommended you get that looked at.”
“No, man, don’ be daft. That’s not what I’m talkin’ about.” Lister’s eyes were shining brightly- brighter than normal, that is. Not with tears or anything sappy like that, Rimmer’s mind whispered, the right bastard. It was just the glaze of the dying.
“Then what are you talking about? Some of us would like to die in silence.”
“Whenever we go to an alternate dimension or universe, or the future,” Lister argued, words slowly becoming more and more clumped together, “we’re always together. You ever though’ about tha’?”
“Yes, well, we’ve only been to a dozen universes or so, let’s not jump to-“
“But tha’s just it! How many people do you know that can say they’ll find each other in a single alternate timeline, much less a dozen ?”
Rimmer didn’t have an answer to that, it seemed. He racked his brain thoroughly and, still, couldn’t find an answer that both dented Lister's argument and didn’t somehow sound immensely romantic in nature.
“Think about it,” Lister repeated. He was smiling. Rimmer felt like his simulated-chest was going to explode. “It doesn’t matter that we’re dying here. Not really . Because somewhere out there, there’s another me, and another you, and we’re annoying the ever-loving smeg outta’ each other.”
Rimmer blinked, and found, for once, he couldn’t find anything to say.
He blinks again, and suddenly, inanely, he’s all of ten years old, hugging his revision table to his chest, curled up tight under his bed. He remembered that day, clear as a bell.
He remembered the acidic smell of the floor cleaner that was far too expensive for the results it reaped. In one room, his parents were screeching. In another, his brothers were roughhousing. The room was filled with the muffled yells of both parties; he’d say the walls were saturated with it, but his room had become infected with the utter gloom of the Rimmer household long before he’d been born.
The revisions table, the one he laminated all by himself, no parent or big-brother required, had sharp edges that pinched the insides of his arms. But he hadn’t minded.
There, in his small, small room, covered in times tables and hand-made figurines of men greater than he’d ever be, it was almost quiet. Under his small bed it was almost warm, too, and ten year old Arnie- not Rimmer yet, nor Arnold, still little old Arnie- had fallen asleep there, even with the lack of a pillow and blanket.
He felt that same half-calm feeling wash over him in that moment, and he slumped down, suddenly completely exhausted. It seemed that Arnold Rimmer’s body was hardwired to only relax under extreme duress.
The lightbee’s hardware seemed confused on what to do, so patches of him simply phased through the wall, while others stayed stubbornly solid. It was an odd sensation, and it meant he couldn’t exactly lay flat, but there was nothing to do about that.
Rimmer had also gone awfully still, he noticed, which is a strange thing to notice about yourself. But moving just seemed so tiring . Frankly, he wasn’t sure how he’d ever managed it before.
Lister wasn’t moving either. That’s why Lister was still smiling at him. It was just too much effort to stop, and Lister had always been a particularly lazy git. At least, that’s what part of Rimmer’s brain was twittering.
…Had it- had he always sounded like that? God, that was annoying. Maybe that’s why everyone hated him. He liked what the other half of his brain was saying better. That Lister didn’t want to stop. That Lister wanted to smile at him.
That was a nice thought, and sue him, Rimmer was delusional enough to believe it.
“-mm’r? Ye’ there?” Lister’s voice suddenly cracked through his thoughts.
He sounded worried, though it was starting to become difficult to tell. Rimmer’s hearing was beginning to go sideways; the previously blaring warning alarms had become nothing more than a dull buzz in the background.
“Yes I’m he-he-here , where else would I go-o-o ?” Rimmer snapped, the effect slightly belied by the glitch that made him stumble over his words. His tongue felt swollen, and his words seemed to congeal in the back of his throat before they stumbled out his lips.
His vision was beginning to go, too. Where Lister had been, there was instead a vaguely familiar blob of a man.
“‘ood,” Lister said, which was the last thing he expected to hear (the first being ‘hell’). Rimmer mustered up the energy to focus his sight again. Lister’s head hadn’t moved much, and his eyes were only open a little, just a sliver of soft brown under heavy eyelashes. Their usual sparkle was still there somewhere, but it was more like being able to spot the glimpse of a long-dead star from thousands of light years away.
The ship still continued to groan its death rattle, and the emergency sirens continued to beep faintly, and the edges of his vision was growing steadily more distorted, but for once in his god-forsaken life, Arnold J. Rimmer felt something he hoped was peace.
He’d never felt that before, so he wasn’t certain, but that was fine. It wouldn’t matter in a little while.
He didn’t smile, or anything saccharine like that. He didn’t want to risk any omnipotent beings witnessing his final moments of distressing vulnerability. Rimmer was still looking into Lister’s half-open eyes, though; that connection was more than enough.
Lister went completely still, limp, lips frozen into an eternal smug-git smirk. He looked cold.
Rimmer felt cold.
He felt cold, and tired, and maybe just a little bit scared.
And then, before he knew it, with a burst of sparks behind his eyes, he was nothing at all.
It may have been easier, he reflected, if his doppelgänger was older, or fatter, or perhaps a bit more visibly upper-class. Instead, the Lister slumped on the ground, trapped under some garbage with no means of escape, looked exactly like him.
It made sense, obviously, he looked the same in most alternate universes they found, but it was still freaky . Lister swore he could feel the twisted pile of metal pushing on his own legs, a deeply unsettling pressure pressing down on his knees.
He needed a cigarette. He couldn't smoke while in his space suit (unfortunately), but he had a feeling he’d need it soon.
They- as in himself and the others- weren’t even sure if they were even in their own dimension anymore (because clearly something has gone wrong when a direct copy of your ship appears next to you), and Lister never liked dimension hopping. Bad on the gut.
Before he could fully tackle the moral implications of patting down a cadaver when, by all technicalities, he was said cadaver, he heard the buzz of a severely pissed off wasp's nest.
Rimmer suddenly appeared from the wall behind him, walking through it like a ghost.
Or, perhaps more accurately, like a freak of nature.
The hologram managed to take one step before he noticed the Dead Lister. His eyes went so wide they looked like they’d pop out and roll across the floor, and his mouth opened wide to release a noise akin to a sheep getting the electric chair.
“Oh!” He exclaims. His nostrils flared wide, and Lister couldn’t help cracking a smile. “Just great! Another universe where we’re dead. No, no, let me guess, this Kryten got infected with space rust and went bizzaro and now we have to run for our smegging -“
Lister couldn’t help but sigh heavily through his nose. His exhale steamed up the visor’s screen.
He desperately wanted to punch Rimmer in the shoulder. Or the mouth. He wished he could just swing and decide in the moment, but he knew in reality his fist would sail straight through Rimmer’s projection. It wouldn’t be worth the brief satisfaction if he just turned around and had to gaze up at Rimmer’s stupid smug face.
“Mate, will you shut it? Kryten already found his and the Cat’s doubles- they were mashed up in one of the upper decks. Apparently the gravity field went nuts and…” Lister trailed off, but smacked his hands together for emphasis, grinding his palms in harsh circles like he was trying to mash a mosquito into paste.
Rimmer’s nostrils flared again. “One can only wonder what genius plan those two were trying to implement.”
Lister snorted, because Rimmer could be a complete arse most days, but he was a funny arse. For someone who complained about being dead, Rimmer didn’t mind speaking ill of them.
“Yeah, well, it is interesting, ain’t it?” Lister started, rolling his shoulders nonchalantly.
“What is?”
“Well, it seems the only body- lightbee- whatever, that’s not accounted for… is yours ,” he said nonchalantly, shoving his hand in his pockets.
Rimmer sputtered for a full ten seconds (Lister counted) before sputtering, “You-! I-! Are you implying that I killed them? Us? Whatever ?”
Lister sucked a breath through his teeth, looking at his corpse with an exaggerated fashion.
“Don’t know mate, its always the… actually, we can’t call you a quiet one, can we?” Lister grinned at him, and let out a belly laugh at the look on Rimmer’s face; a mix of a ‘sucked-a-lemon’ scrunch and ‘caught-the-wife-and-poolboy-copulating’ outrage.
He couldn’t seem to make up a retort to that, so Rimmer only spit out some halves of words before stomping his foot like a bull and walked back through the wall from whence he came. He made sure his hand, making a particularly rude gesture, disappeared last, however.
Lister couldn’t help but laugh again, but after a while he trailed off. The sound hadn’t been able to penetrate the dead space of the hall, and it just served to punctuate how dead everything really was.
So, all Lister was left with was… himself.
He scuffed his clunky space-suit boot on the floor, kicking up some debris.
Sure, Rimmer was an expert at riling him up, but now that he was gone, Lister had the strangest urge to call out and see if he’d come back. He felt off-kilter, standing there alone with only a corpse as company. Rimmer’s usual hysteria seemed comforting compared to this.
Luckily, Lister’s brain decided its morals on grave-robbing.
It was strange, leaning over his own torso. Through the visor’s yellowed tint, the only light provided was the remaining emergency lights that flickered weakly and his less-than-standard headlamp. It seemed to make the already uncanny-valley of the ship seem more alien, more unsettling, more-
Lister’s eyes caught on something glimmering in the dark, tucked against the opposite wall.
He wasn’t sure why, but he froze, waiting for some alien mutant to lunge; but nothing happened. Slowly, he raised his hands and leaned back up. Most likely, it was just a piece of glass, or a particular shiny piece of metal, but Lister wasn’t taking that chance.
With his luck, this dimension had killer plastic shards or some other bollocks.
He took a tentative step forwards, towards the glimmer and towards the exit, when his boot snagged on something; he managed his balance for half a second, but overcompensated and was sent crashing down into a pile of dust and metal and despair.
He groaned. He tried to run a hand over his face, and grimaced when his hand met the acrylic visor.
Ow, he thought helpfully. Ow, ow, ow.
He just laid there, pain radiating up his spine up into his skull. He didn't want to move until the entire ship fell apart due to decay, but his head was laying on some sort of lump. He turned his head and-
The glitter was next to him; but instead of some anglerfish-like creature, using light to trap prey, or some piece of glass or the like….
It was a light-bee. It looked quite unassuming, sitting there among the debris. It was clearly damaged. The little projector was almost broken in half, with only some broken and burnt out components stringing them together.
He pulled himself up onto his haunches, and gently picked the light-bee up. He cradled it like it was something precious, watching, contemplating, as the sharp little bits of metal and glass snagged on the material of his gloves.
He knows it technically could have been anyone’s light-bee; the universes were expansive, and therefore the possibilities were just as endless. It could have been anyone he was holding. It could have been some version of Holly, or Hollister, hell, it could have been Kochanski.
But somehow, he just knew it was Rimmer. It just felt obvious, like it was one of the basics of the multiverses: where you found a Lister, a Rimmer would follow, and vise-versa.
A few months ago, he would have been horribly sad that this Lister may have shared his last moments with Rimmer.
But now… it sounded nice. He told himself that it was because dying alone was the other option, but he had to admit. Rimmer was growing on him.
Growing like black mold grew on a wall, but growing nonetheless.
Lister stood up and glanced at the cadaver next to him.
In a split-second decision, he took his double’s hand, all cold and lifeless and stiff, and carefully placed the light-bee into the other Lister’s palm.
He stood up.
“Lister!” He jumped as Rimmer’s head poked through the wall. “Will you hurry up? Kryten says we can head back to Starbug.”
“Yeah, I’m coming, don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Lister teased. Rimmer only huffed before he disappeared again, and after one last glance at his doppelgänger, Lister followed after him.
Where a Rimmer goes, a Lister follows indeed.