Something was wrong with the cockpit, Rimmer thought blearily. It had never smelled like pine air freshener before. With an overtone of cigarettes. And at least one good fart. He frowned slightly, his eyes still closed. The cot felt wrong, too. Stiffer. Scratchier. He opened his eyes, and experienced acute disorientation. The cockpit was gone... he snapped awake. He was on Starbug, in Lister's bunk. Lister was not. Rimmer squinted at the clock on the nightstand, noting with surprise that it was six a.m. The sources of surprise were, in order of arrival, that he had slept so late, and that Lister had not. Rimmer rarely slept for more than a half-hour or so at a time. The injuries and repair, he decided. That was why he had overslept. Yes. That matter safely tucked out of the way, he moved to the next one. He doubted that Lister ever saw six a.m. from the rising side, only from the partying-too-late side. The bunk bore unmistakable visual and olfactory traces of his sleeping patterns, so he must have slept there for at least part of the night...

It did not matter. Maybe he had just gotten up to piss, and had been distracted by a lager. Or a dirty magazine. It was past time for Rimmer to be up, anyway. He stood and started to walk out of the door, realizing as cool air hit him that he was buck-naked. All of his clothes were back on the ship. Rimmer walked to the mirror, stared at himself, and started to concentrate. It had been a long time since he had made holo-clothes.

Almost exactly an hour later, Rimmer gave it up. He had done a reasonable job, he thought, re-creating his old uniform. He could not be sure of the back, despite his twisting to try to get a view in the mirror. He could not make the H at all; this must be controlled by that remote the old Ace had passed along, the one that would be sitting in the third crate from the left back on the DJ ship. Rimmer dithered for a moment between heading down there to pick it up, or heading up to the midsection to find Lister. The latter, he decided; he needed someone to check the uniform. For all that he could see in the dinky square mirror situated too high on the wall, he might have a pink patch on his arse.

Rimmer walked out into the corridor. It was empty, and almost eerily quiet. Didn't Starbug use to bang and hum as it staggered its drunken way across the stars? Well, perhaps this one was better-maintained than the old one. It could hardly be worse. He walked towards the midsection, spine straight, shoulders back - and nostrils flared as he took in a sickly smell of pine. Why was that everywhere? Including in the spotless midsection. Singularly lacking in anything Lister-like.

Rimmer jumped slightly as Kryten's voice sounded directly behind him. If the mechanoid breathed, he would have been breathing down his neck. What the smeg is wrong with me, Rimmer wondered. You'd think he hadn't spent twenty years Ace-ing around, not getting snuck up upon... "Ah, you're up early, Mister..." the mechanoid's voice wavered from its confident start, landing somewhere in the middle of confused horror, "Rimmer... Sir??"

Rimmer spun around to face the mechanoid. He felt a massive surge of relief at the fact that he did not have to be nice to the smegger. "Yes, Kryten, some of us do not slob about until the evening is half gone." He straightened his holo-uniform, pointlessly. Kryten's eyes were wide; his square not-lips quivered grotesquely.

"But... But..." Kryten looked very hard at the blue uniform, then at Rimmer's forehead, his mouth opening and shutting in a fair imitation of a guppy.

"And... and," Rimmer replied, archly. "What?" When no response was forthcoming, Rimmer barged ahead. "Look, I'm looking for Lister. You know, the short, dirty, flatulent one. Have you seen him?"

"You... Your... You..." the mechanoid sputtered. This changed everything. Didn't it? What was he going to do? He was fairly certain that Mister Rimmer putting on his old uniform was not a sign that he'd be jumping back into the ship and leaving any time soon. No, it hinted more along the lines of him moving in with Lister permanently, the two of them setting up house and being utterly, utterly happy, with no need or use for any sanitation mechanoids... His danger sensors crept into overload range.

Rimmer sighed. He pointed to himself, exaggeratedly. "Me. Yes. Me. Looking," he held one hand up to shade his eyes, "for Lister." He slouched and mimed holding a beer can.

Kryten gestured lamely with the feather-duster in his hand. "I was dusting, you see. That's why I'm here. Erm. Not for any other reason." That was probably unnecessary, he thought, as the question finally caught up with him. "Ah. Yes. Well."

Rimmer's eyes narrowed. "Have you got droid-rot?"

"Erm... Mister..." Kryten paused, questioningly, then plunged ahead, "Rimmer, sir..." he waited, to see if the name evoked any kind of reaction at all.

"Yes?" Rimmer asked, folding his arms and trying to affect a superior air. It did not take much effort. He had met hamster-GELFs who had every reason to feel superior to that mechanoid.

Kryten gave up. He would just have to go ahead, and hope what the Computer had planned would work anyway. He tried crossing his fingers behind his back, but they just hadn't been designed for the action. "Right. Well, this is rather awkward." He gave a mandatory-physical type of cough.

"Coming from you, everything is awkward," Rimmer grated, looking around. Where the smeg was everyone? Lister, bloody Cat, bloody Kochanski?

"Erm... Yes. Well... you see..." Kryten looked nervously towards the corridor. This had to work. Everything depended on it! "I was going to tell you, honestly, I was. But Mister Lister did say..."

Rimmer sighed. "Kryten, make like a debutante on her first blow job, and just spit it out."

Kryten's voice shot up in pitch as he erupted into an emotional outburst. "Oh, sir, he made me promise!" The despair came naturally. Confused, wild desperation was his default state at the moment. It had been for... well, no matter.

"And I will make you jump around like a Slavic dancer by attaching high voltage lines to your trademark. What is it, Kryten?"

Kryten sighed, lowering his head. "Very well. I suppose..." He trailed off as he looked back up at Rimmer. "Yes. Come along." He shuffled out of the midsection and down the corridor.

Rimmer followed, at some distance, his eyebrows drawing forward, his forehead doing a fair imitation of the Nile Delta. Kryten was walking strangely. Even more strangely than he usually did. Shuffle? The mechanoid pranced, high-kneed, trotted, but he never shuffled.

Kryten looked over his shoulder several times, as if to make sure Rimmer was still there; Rimmer hovered at a constant distance, like a neurotic vulture who is watching a mortally wounded impala play Parcheesi.

The Nile Delta deepened as it became obvious that they were heading towards what would have been Rimmer's old quarters on the old 'Bug. Kochanski's quarters on this one. The mechanoid was moving more slowly, and Rimmer folded his arms in front of him. As they drew abreast to the door, Kryten turned to Rimmer. "I'm sorry, sir... I don't like doing this, but you did insist..."

Rimmer had settled on one highly likely scenario. "Kryten, get to the point before I rip your ears off and use them as skeet."

Kryten sighed again. "Fine. Just..." He sighed again, lowering his own voice. "Keep your voice down." He pressed the Door Open button while Rimmer bit his lip, his arms still folded. The door slid open - oddly quietly, and Rimmer's mind worried at that; had the mechanoid been oiling the doors, too, or was this Starbug really in so much better condition than the old one, or perhaps had the laws of physics changed slightly? It was a welcome way to keep the rational part of his mind busy while the rest of him absorbed the sight that he had, after Kryten's hemming and hawing, half-expected to see, anyway; Lister and Kochanski in her bunk, naked, asleep in one another's arms. Lister stirred slightly as Rimmer watched, his face relaxed in that slack-jawed repose that Rimmer had come to know all too well from their time bunking together, and had come to know at even closer quarters last night, but it looked like that was common knowledge, on this ship? Some part of him told the rest of him that his lower lip was bitten half-through, but the rest of him was otherwise occupied.

Rimmer looked to Kryten as the door slid closed. The mechanoid was looking at him, something or other hiding away in his artificial eyes. "I thought she had better taste," Rimmer muttered. High time he cultivated a bit of that, too. He watched badly simulated emotions skate around on the slick jelly-rubber of Kryten's angular face; disgust finally got a toehold and sank in. "Yes, well, there you are, sir," the mechanoid said, sounding almost dignified.

"Thanks, Kryten." Rimmer spun on his toe, and started to walk towards the landing bay. He did not feel bad, as such. Disappointed, perhaps. In an almost parental way. Yes. Vindicated. Yes. He remembered his words to Spanners - he'll change his mind, eventually. He always does. Lister had almost made it to 'next week,' too. Well, he couldn't really blame the man for being who he was. For constantly denying who he was - well, yes, Rimmer could blame him for that. But he still was not angry with Lister. No, just - numb.

Kryten's hopeful voice intruded on his reverie. "So I suppose you'll be leaving us, then?" He was trotting behind Rimmer at a stumbling lope. "I mean... All things considered..."

"Well, Kochanski does not seem to want to get back to her own dimension..."

"No, indeed!"

Was there some kind of madness going around that made everyone want to sleep with the last man alive? He was smeggy, uncouth, and... adjectives for Lister bubbled up that were not compatible with his mood. He still had it. Some kind of holo-virus, maybe; one that affected humans, too, so he had passed it to Kochanski. Or caught it from Kochanski, come to think. "It must be contagious."

"What is, sir?" Kryten asked, trying to gauge the hologram's reaction. Very little was forthcoming from Mister Rimmer's blank face, however.

"Nothing."

Some odd sounds, muffled banging, rumbled through the corridor. They would not have been audible if the ship had not been so quiet. Rimmer thought of the pipes in his old room, how they would skrueek and katong when he was trying to sleep and Lister took yet another shower. For such a fitly bum, he sure had taken a lot of showers. Kryten stiffened at the sound - most likely, Rimmer thought, thinking of cleaning the soap-scum up afterwards. Yes, they would want to... afterwards... "Someone must be taking a shower," Rimmer muttered, sharply.

"Yes, you know how..." the mechanoid paused, then restarted the sentence. "Everyone loves their showers around here!" Rimmer spun around, catching a broad grin on Kryten's face.

"Are you following me just for the arse view, or do you have nothing better to do?" He had a conversation scheduled, and that automated toilet-brush was not invited.

Kryten gestured to the duster that he was still holding. "Oh, no indeed! Keeping busy!" He started dusting the spotless pipes on the wall. It was a pretext, of course, but it had been quite a while since he'd given them a good polish; maybe as long as half a day! He shuddered, dusting harder.

Rimmer waited for Kryten to turn and leave, but he continued to pretend to clean, in a ruse to stay close that was as transparent as American beer. "Why don't you get to it? I'm sure there's plenty of cleaning that needs doing." Especially now. Rimmer turned and started to walk towards the landing bay again. For some reason, his mind insisted on taking this opportunity to rehash his three sexual contacts with Lister in vivid detail, focusing on the awkward moments. Bumped noses. Hair caught in teeth. Heads banging against walls.

"Clean. Yes. Clean." The word triggered a deeply ingrained reaction in Kryten's mind. It was very, very important that he cleaned. Especially now, for reasons that were not entirely clear to him. "I have to keep it clean, otherwise, what might happen? I have to keep it clean, don't I?" He looked around, wildly "That's why I exist, isn't it? To keep things clean? I have to keep things clean, otherwise I don't exist, and if I don't exist, how can I clean?" Mister Rimmer's head loomed before him. It occurred to him, suddenly, that it seemed somewhat dusty.

If Rimmer had not been occupied with brooding, he might have noticed the madness in Kryten's voice. But he was, and he did not - not until Kryten advanced, duster raised, on Rimmer, and started to dust his head with intense concentration. "What the smeg is wrong with you?" Rimmer barked, dancing back.

Kryten blinked. What in Manet's name was he doing? "I'm sorry, sir! I don't know what came over me." Rimmer peered closely at Kryten as he turned back to the pipes. But the humming mechanoid appeared to be his calm and normal self. Insofar as his self was ever normal. Rimmer pushed Kryten aside, mentally, and started to chew on regurgitated interactions with Lister, like some embarrassing cud, as he hurried down to the landing bay. He was too wrapped up in his ruminations to notice that Kryten had hurried after him.

Rimmer popped the hatch and climbed into the ship. The Computer noted his entry, and noted his dress. Thanks to her link to Starbug's surveillance cameras, she also noted that Kryten was cleaning rivets nearby, looking on with interest. She watched this not-Ace, looking almost nothing like the space hero that he should have been, sit in the pilot's seat and sigh.

"Computer..." Rimmer asked, putting on Ace's voice. It must look absurd, now that he was out of the flightsuit and wig. God, he was desperate, wasn't he? Asking his smegging Computer for relationship advice? Well, it was about three million years too late to get an answer from Ask Jenny.

"Yes, Ace?" the Computer asked, sweetly, noting that Kryten was moving closer.

"You know that short, smelly one that has been traveling with me?" Rimmer asked.

"Yes, Ace." The mechanoid was cocking his head, the Computer noted.

"Have you had a chance to run your... algorithms... on him?"

"I have had no reason to." The Computer kept her voice as smooth as clotted milkfat. "Do you have something you would like me to work out?"

"Yes..." Rimmer sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes. This was ridiculous. He didn't need to know the answer to this question. He knew the answer to the opposite question, and it was all he needed to know. But his mouth kept moving. "I want... can you tell me... what the smeg he wants?"

"Hm. Complicated," the Computer replied. It was not. She blipped lights at him to pacify him, but she had run this analysis already - just after the short smelly one had departed her cabin earlier. The answer was clear, and was in direct conflict with what she wanted. The mechanoid's implementation of her plan had not worked. Since this not-Ace had walked in and sat down, her algorithms had moved from 93% to 98.7% clarity on what he wanted, and it was not her. She noted that the mechanoid was still eavesdropping, polishing what were probably the cleanest rivets in the history of the Space Corps. It was settled. She hated the idea. She had been forced to recruit a new Ace after the death of the old one only a few times in the history of the chain, and it was always so much more difficult. But she had no other options. "I need a little time to work this out, Ace love," she said, sweetly.

"Take your time." Rimmer kept his eyes closed. There was no reason to do... anything, actually, until he heard the answer.

This would not do. "You look tense. Why don't you go have a cup of tea, relax a little?" the Computer urged.

A banging noise suddenly came from the corridor. Rimmer sat up and looked out, just in tome to see Kryten, his face a right-angle study in alarm, take off down the corridor. Rimmer frowned and exited the ship, walking over to the corridor. He peeked down it, seeing nothing of interest, but hearing those odd banging noises, now interspersed with scuffling, further down the corridor. The sound of Lister's voice echoed down the corridor - "RIMMER! It's a..." The voice stopped abruptly. Rimmer had no time to process this, though, before the sound of the DJ ship's hatch slamming shut jerked him around.

A gentle female voice came over the speakers, a voice like a much more polite version of Holly's female incarnation. "Self-destruct sequence activated. Ship will detonate in five minutes."

Rimmer ran over and tried to open the hatch. It did not budge. He banged on the viewscreen. "Computer!"

Kryten came pounding back from the corridor. He looked at Rimmer, trading an expression of horror and fear with Rimmer's openmouthed one. "Miss Computer, ma'am!" Kryten gasped. "What are you doing?"

The Computer piped her voice in from the ship's speakers. "Sorry, Arn." She was, truly. He had been a good Ace - not a great one, but better than she had feared at the outset. And like all Aces, she had loved him. But he had made his choice not to love her, not to be Ace, and so he had brought this upon himself. She would stay, though. She owed him that much. The DJ ship's defensive shields were easily capable of resisting the blast of the little lander tearing itself apart.

She would stay to watch him die.


Rimmer ran over to where Kryten sat, his mouth half-open, frozen like mechano-afters. "Kryten!" he yelled. "What the smeg is going on, you batty bogbot?"

Kryten's voice had leapt into an extremely high in pitch. "I..." His mind meandered through possible interpretations of the sensory input presented to him, each one worse than the other. This could not be happening. But it was happening. But it couldn't! But it was! Long-dormant fail-safe processes whirred into life in his core programming, insisting that he shut himself down. Other just-as-vocal processes insisted that Mister Lister was in danger, and Kryten had to protect him. The latter were somewhat more... alluring, for want of a better word.

Rimmer waited for an end to that sentence - hell, even a middle would do - but Kryten merely stood there, his mouth still forming the letter "I." "You what?" Rimmer said, grabbing Kryten's shoulder plates.

Kryten's voice dropped into a slightly more normal range as messages flashed into his vision. 'You have overridden your primary programming and allowed the likelihood of human beings coming to harm to rise to 95%. Please shut down and await further instructions,' scrolled across Rimmer's irate face in large, not very friendly, red script. "She said she didn't want anyone coming to harm!" Had he been tricked? Why would a fellow mechanical trick him? The failsafes were screaming now, but so were the other voices.

"Who? You're making as much sense as a set of tax return instructions."

"I just wanted to protect Mister Lister!" The letters had begun to flash, now.

"Protect?" What was smegging happening? Who was 'she?' What did 'she' have to do with the ship blowing up? What did Lister have to do with the ship blowing up?

"Yes!" Kryten squealed, his voice's pitch again in the stratosphere. He could hardly see for intrusive fonts, and it was becoming hard to tell the voices in his head from the ones on the outside of it.

"Protect him from what, exactly?"

Kryten's eyes tried to focus in the general direction of where he calculated Rimmer's eyes to be. His voice squeaked out, quietly, only barely audible. "You..."

Rimmer dropped his hands from Kryten's shoulders. He stepped back, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. This was nuttier than a Christmas basket. Him? Putting Lister in danger? Lister was the one who smegging insisted on coming along. How was this 'she' supposed to help, and again, what did this have to do with the ship blowing up?

Partly to answer the voices, partly to try to drown them out, Kryten began to explain. It was, he felt, important that he explained things. Mister Rimmer might appreciate it too, and perhaps later, he would let Kryten clean his head properly. "He wasn't himself; it wasn't his fault, and anyway, he felt so much better after I reminded him what he really felt like, and he was fine after that! But then you came back, and he got confused all over again!"

Rimmer looked over his shoulder at DJ ship. The Computer must be the 'she' that Kryten was talking about. She was involved in this... somehow. She seemed to be the one who had started the ship's self-destruct, for some reason that had to do with whatever Kryten was babbling on about, concerning Lister...

Rimmer backtracked. The ship's self-destruct had started. That concern should take some kind of priority over everything else. He tore down the corridor, as Kryten's voice diminished behind him as he put distance between them. "And I just know he was going to leave me and everything, and I'd be all alone, but I don't want to be alone, and if you'd just stop screaming at me..."

Rimmer stumbled to a halt just before pounding right over the top of Lister. The other man was lying on the floor, completely still, and buck-naked. Rimmer dropped to his knees and felt for a pulse. It throbbed strongly and steadily in Lister's neck. Rimmer breathed a sigh of relief, and slapped Lister's face gently, to the tune of the not-quite-Holly voice calmly saying, "Self-destruct in four minutes."

Kryten shuffled up the corridor, mumbling to himself. "...And really, it wasn't my fault, because they just wouldn't eat anymore after a while, and then, well, they just seemed to fade away, and I don't know, just lose interest in everything, and..."

"Lister!" Rimmer yelled. "Currybreath!" Lister gave no indication of consciousness.

Rimmer jumped to his feet, spinning to face Kryten. "What did you use on him, stalkerdroid?"

"Of course, I still had Androids, and that was a comfort, but..." Kryten processed the question. "Oh, just this." He produced a syringe-gun.

Rimmer grabbed the gun and examined it. A small amount of pale-pink liquid remained in the feed tube. He had not the faintest smegging clue what it might be, what it did, or what to do about it. He looked back to Kryten, who was still mumbling to himself, and hurtled the gun down the corridor past Kryten, listening to it smash. Pointless, true, but it did make him feel a little better.

Kryten turned to watch the gun smash through the now constant, flashing, garish messages, spreading splashes of pink liquid, oily lubricant, and shards of plastic and glass all along the spotless corridor. "Oh dear. That will take forever to get off the walls."

This was ludicrous, Rimmer thought. This was past nutty. The nuts had been left behind ages ago, and they were deep within the seminiferous tubules. If Kryten thought the gun was bad, he was going to have a hell of a time cleaning up the corridors once they were in teeny-tiny covered-with-explosion pieces. Rimmer grabbed Kryten by the shoulder panels and shook him. "Subatomic mind! Wake up!"

"Oh, I very rarely sleep, sir. In fact, you could say I never sleep at all, but in fact, that would be a bit of a misnomer, as..."

Rimmer yelled over the top of Kryten's ramblings. "Where is the smegging bomb on this ship?"

Kryten continued to babble, looking absent-mindedly at the wall while talking, as if trying to determine which industrial solvent would be the most efficient. Rimmer felt like he was about to scream. He would find that smegging bomb, and he would jam it up Kryten's rectal cavity, sideways. If he could get through to the smegging droid. He punctuated every word of his next sentence by punching Kryten as hard as he could in the pectoral plate. "Where... is... the... smegging... bomb?"

The dull, hard thuds of Mister Rimmer's fist seemed to disrupt his vision for a moment, and the letters blurred away momentarily, thought the voices kept shouting, arguing with one another. "Bomb? Oh, I'm afraid I don't know much about bombs, sir. I'm just a sanitation mechanoid." Clean. He should clean. That would make everything all better. He had to clean!

Rimmer sucked on his split knuckles, hopping. "You smegging know too smegging much for a smegging sanitation mechanoid smegger," he spat around his hand.

"Perhaps you would be better off asking..." Kryten's voice was now slurred. Maybe I damaged something with that pummeling, Rimmer thought. Or maybe Kryten is going mad. Even madder. After a confused pause, Kryten finished, "the ship itself."

Lister stirred, very faintly. More of a twitch. Rimmer bent down to look at him. He did not move again; he appeared to still be out cold. Rimmer turned between Lister and the midsection. Could he leave that batty droid alone with Lister? Could he not? The ship was going to blow! Rimmer stood and hared it down the corridor to the midsection, noting with some relief that Kryten had hobbled over to the first point of impact of the gun on the corridor wall. Cleaning that mess up should keep him out of trouble.

"Computer!" he yelled. He hadn't even known that this ship had a computer. It must be pretty damn basic. Goddam computers. Ace's Computer. Holly. Kryten. Goddam electronic lifeforms in general. Well, except for him. Of course.

"Self-destruct-sequence has been initiated. Thank you for your co-operation," the smooth not-Holly voice replied.

"You're smegging welcome. So I can see the blast from an angle where I can appreciate it better, can you tell me where the bomb is?"

"Self-destruct-sequence has been initiated. Explosion will result in the death of any remaining personnel. Request does not compute."

Rimmer swore gently to himself. It was barely sentient, and probably operated within extremely limited parameters. "I'm bomb-proof. Can you believe the luck? Where's the bomb?"

"Self-destruct-sequence has been initiated. Thank you for your co-operation. Please evacuate now, for your comfort and continued existence."

"Computer..." Rimmer thought for a moment. He felt like he was in a bad text adventure. "Put up a schematic of the ship," he barely grated the next word out, "please."

"Accessing." A wireframe diagram of Starbug appeared on the monitor. It would be too much to hope for a big flashing "Bomb here!" sign, Rimmer thought, and so started to look through it methodically. Look for where it isn't, Arnie. Not in the crew quarters, not where the engines sit, not where the cargo hold is, not in the cockpit or midsection. He noted that those areas on the schematic did not resemble the current setup of the ship in the least. The blueprints must be hopelessly out-of-date - or for another vehicle altogether. Rimmer groaned in frustration. He could defuse bombs. It was one of the first things the Computer taught him. He had defused enough bombs in twenty years to level a fair-sized city. If he could only find the smegger!

Something like a polite, mechanical cough sounded. "Would you like to access an alternative personality? Space Corps psychologists have found that, in times of stress, people of varying backgrounds respond with a greater or lower stress level to various personalities. For this reason, I have been fitted with several different..."

"Give me a useful smegging personality!" Rimmer yelled, interrupting.

"Please specify "useful"." The rapidly shifting numbers of the countdown in the corner of the monitor discreetly ceased to count down. “Self-destruct-sequence has been initiated. Countdown has been halted for your convenience whilst investigating potential stress-related injuries among the crew. Thank you for your co-operation."

Rimmer banged his fist against the wall in frustration, resplitting his knuckles. "There's a goddam stress-related injury for you!"

"Please specify nature of injury."

"I so dearly wish it were a compressed gas tank forced up your nostril. If only you were so equipped."

"Please specify further." The computer paused, then started what sounded like a canned recording. "Self-destruct-sequence has been initiated. Thank you for your cooperation. Please proceed to evacuation vehicles in an orderly fashion. Remember, if you are on an older model Starbug, there might be no evacuation vehicles at all, in which case we ask you to consider the usefulness of our emergency medical pillow." A small drawer popped out of the wall, containing a pillow. This clearly was an older model.

Rimmer looked at the pillow with disgust. "Fine. Switch personalities. To some other personality. Any other personality." A part of him said that nothing could be worse than this one. Many other parts of him chorused that the first part of him was very wrong.

A slight staticky click echoed in the speakers. There was a pause, which to Rimmer sounded rather ominous, and the voice of a prudish old lady said, "Yes?"

The parts of him that had said that the first part of him was wrong felt very smug. "I don't suppose you'd be in any type of mood to tell me anything useful at all about the location of the smegging bomb on this rustbucket..." he said, weakly.

"Bomb? Oh, my dear boy, who ever heard of such a thing! Bombs on a starship. I do declare."

Rimmer raised his eyebrows. "What blows the ship up, then?"

"Why, I simply reverse the polarity of the engines' matter/antimatter containment field."

Rimmer felt a vague hope stir in him. "So you can only blow the ship if the engines are online?"

The computer projected the image of a raised mental eyebrow into her voice. "Of course! Now, if you don't mind, the self-destruct sequence has been resumed. Thank you for your cooperation." The countdown on the corner of the monitor began to tick down again without further ceremony.

The vague hope in Rimmer stretched and started to make coffee. He tore out of the midsection and ran towards the engine room. The dash lacked anything vaguely resembling elegance and poise - he fell down a metal staircase, at one point - but he made it to the engine room in a time that would have netted him a medal back in track at school, he was sure. He skidded to a halt. The massive engines thrummed behind metal plating. Wires emerged from one side, ranging in thickness from hair-slender to as thick as his thigh. He grabbed handfuls of wire, goaded on by the sound of the absurd old-lady voice ruthlessly counting down, and yanked, throwing all of his weight behind the pull. Sparks flew as the wires popped and tore. Electricity surged through him, but as it did not seem to affect him, he kept grabbing and kept yanking, until both engines sported sparking, frayed wires instead of solid connections. The thrumming had ceased.

"Can you fire it now, you blue-haired old bat?" Rimmer screeched, feeling a little manic.

The lights went out, and screeches of protest sounded from all over the ship. They built to a crescendo, and Rimmer stuffed his fingers in his ears. The crescendo stopped, as if a stylus had been raised from a record. Rimmer cautiously pulled out his fingers. The ship was quiet. Utterly quiet. Not a single noise sounded. It was safe. He'd done it! They were...

"We have reached the end of the count-down. Thank you for your cooperation."

A metallic twang sounded, almost like a steel cable snapping taut. The ship began to shake like mad. Rimmer bounced around in the engine room like a tennis ball, getting a rather thrilling zap of electricity when he brushed past one of the live wires. It stopped, after what could only have been a minute or so. Rimmer got to his feet, cautiously, and waited, but no other surprises seemed to be up the ship's mental sleeve. He fumbled his way out of the defunct engine room. The lights in the corridor were still on, and Rimmer walked rapidly back to where he had left Lister and Kryten.

Kochanski stood in the middle of the corridor as he rounded a bend, wrapped in a sheet, looking groggy and bewildered. Rimmer bit his tongue very solidly at the sight of her, looking highly undressed and highly just-sexed. Yes, just have a nice little screw and sleep through the crisis, he groused internally.

"Ace?" she asked, in the short interval before her eyes took in his uniform and hair, and her bewilderment grew. Was Ace wearing a wig? Had he been wearing one before?

Oh hell. He would have to explain this, wouldn't he. "Er," Rimmer began, waving his hands. "I..."

"Rimmer?" Pieces of the puzzle she had, she realized, been constructing in her head for the past few days fell together in a not entirely unsurprising pattern. Kochanski shook her head, realizing that this probably was not the most important thing going on right now.

That solved things nicely. "Yes," Rimmer replied, with relief.

"What happened? Where's Dave?" she asked.

"Well, he's..." Rimmer found himself fruitlessly waving his hands again. Somehow, "He's lying in the corridor, completely naked, having been drugged by Kryten after stumbling out of your post-coital embrace," did not seem like the best thing to say at the moment. Oh, hell with it. He pushed past her.

"Oh god... He's not dead, is he?" Kochanski asked, rushing after him. It was awkward, with just a sheet wrapped around her; she tripped and stumbled in Rimmer's wake as it twisted around her legs, but that was another thing that didn't matter right now.

Well, he hadn't been before, Rimmer thought. He ran to where they left Lister, keeling down beside him again. He was still unconscious, but his pulse was still strong, and his color still good. "Lister..." Rimmer muttered, putting one hand on Lister's cheek. Maddening the man might be, and not his, but the idea of a Lister-less universe was somehow anathema.

Kochanski staggered up behind Rimmer, trying to pull the sheet out of the way of her feet. Her hand flew to her mouth in worry as she saw Dave lying motionless. She remembered the smell of pine. "Kryten. Kryten did this. What did he give him?"

Rimmer sighed at Lister's nonresponsiveness. It would not do to have the bum lying there to be tripped over, flopping his tackle across the corridor. He stooped to pick Lister up. He grunted and almost fell. Lister was no nubile young maiden. Lift with the legs, not the back, Arn, he chided himself. "That's not the question," he said, stumbling awkwardly down the corridor towards Kochanski's quarters. "The question is what I'm going to give him."

Kochanski followed, hesitantly, looking at Lister in Rimmer's arms. The puzzle in her head was rearranging itself to form a new and very enlightening picture; one she felt should have been obvious from the time she started laying out the pieces. Hell, there was probably a picture of it on the box. Though mentally sidetracked by this, she remembered to keep an eye out for Kryten, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Rimmer stalked to her quarters and dropped Lister on her bunk with as much gentleness as he could, which was not much. He sighed and fisted his now-sore back. He pulled Kochanski's pale-pink top sheet over Lister, up to his neck, and stepped back. How smegging sweet.

Kochanski stumbled into her room, feeling like an intruder in a way she did not quite understand. There was still something going on here that she was not privy to. She gave Rimmer a worried look, mixed with confusion.

"I think you can take care of things from here," Rimmer said, acidly. "I need to find that smegging mechanoid."

Kochanski was very, very confused, now. Had she been wrong? But the way he'd looked at Lister, bending down over him - she could have sworn he had not even been aware of the moisture building up in his eyes, the way they closed for half a second, his features falling exhaustedly once he realized Dave was alive. The way his hand had touched Dave's cheek... She couldn't have imagined all that, could she? What was going on here? "All right... but.."

Rimmer did not listen. He stalked out of the room, feeling petulance stake a claim to his features.

Kochanski looked at Lister, her mind reeling. Suddenly, efficiency and Space Corps training kicked in, and she started towards the medi-bay to seek out something to make Dave feel a bit better. She would deal with whatever silly romantic complications these boys had tangled themselves up in later. Obviously, they were quite incapable of handling things themselves.

Rimmer ran to the midsection, checking it and the cockpit for Kryten. He was not there - but they were both astonishingly clean, Rimmer's boot-scuffs gone. Kryten must have passed through. Rimmer thought about the She of Kryten's babbling, and ran down to the landing bay. Kryten sat hunched in a corner, staring into space.

Rimmer looked between Kryten and the DJ ship. The mechanoid. His Computer. He walked over to the ship, and put his fingers on the viewscreen, feeling oddly alone. She had been his mentor and his companion for twenty years. For all that he complained of her sultry voice and worshipful attitude, it had been his daily routine. "Computer..." he said, quietly. There was no response.

Rimmer walked over to Kryten, putting himself into the space the mechanoid was staring off into. Kryten's eyes slowly tried to focus on Rimmer. His vision was all a blur now, no actual text visible, as warnings and read-outs filled the field from top to bottom. "There was no explosion," he said, quietly, wondering if Mister Rimmer could hear him through that awful klaxon of screaming voices.

Rimmer sighed. "My goodness! Are you sure you're a sanitation droid? I'd think you were a Nobel laureate! Yes, well, done, Kryten! There was no smegging explosion!"

"So they are all alive, then," Kryten replied, slowly.

The Computer’s voice had always been sexy. It was now sultry, sweet, illegally sexual. It came from Starbug's speakers. "This does not compute."

Rimmer turned, and both he and Kryten looked at the ship.

"This is an unacceptable outcome," she concluded.

"Did you do that?" Rimmer asked, quietly. "Start the self-destruct?"

The Computer's voice had moved to a pitch that would make phone-sex workers weep. "Remedial measures taken. Outcome unacceptable." Rimmer shivered at the coldness of the words and the heat of the voice.

Kryten's voice was even more cold and incredulous in contrast. "How could you do this? You're a mechanical! We are programmed to serve mankind!" Yes, some of the voices echoed, in a bizarre mechanical chorus; you are programmed to serve mankind; how could you! Kryten whimpered, and clasped his hands over his ears, retreating back against the wall. Perhaps if he sat very, very still, everything would just go away.

"Mechanoid rectification failed. Computer rectification failed. Additional input needed. Awaiting orders."

Rimmer walked to the ship and put one hand on the viewscreen again. "Open the hatch. That's a smegging order." He was half-expecting nothing. Instead, the hatch swung open. He sat in the pilot's seat, feeling awkward. The ship was dark and quiet. Only one indicator glowed a faint red on the console. "Why did you do it?" he asked. What did I ever smegging do to you?

"Situation demanded rectification."

Rimmer sat back, feeling deadly calm. "What situation?"

"Logical incompatibilities."

"What logical incompatibilities?" Rimmer asked, doggedly. He was going to play this game out. He had to know. His life had been turned upside-down too many times in the past week. He had nothing here, now, but he did not know what this Ace game was, anymore, either.

"Unable to state. CPU requires reorganization to deal with logical incompatibilities. Shutting down nonessential functions." She slid her voice into a silky, lustful smoothness that would make a eunuch erect. "I love you, Ace..." That single remaining red light blipped out.

Rimmer frowned, shivering again. That Computer could suck a man's brains into his groin with a word. He looked at Kryten, wondering what the sexless droid would make of the conversation. Kryten looked on with disinterest.

Rimmer clambered out of the ship. "Come with me." He started to walk towards Kochanski's room. The mechanoid followed. Rimmer's mind was blank. He had nowhere, nothing, now. He just had to keep an eye on the droid and make sure he didn't assault anyone. Holgrammatic nanny to an insane mechanoid.

Kochanski stood by Lister's bedside, wearing basic clothing - an undershirt and trousers. "I gave him some naltrexone," she said as Rimmer walked in. "He should be waking up in a few minutes."

Mechanoid delivered. Lister stabilized. Rimmer felt utterly superfluous. He sat on the spare bunk and leaned his elbows on his thighs, his hands laced. "What are you going to give him?" he asked Kochanski, jerking his thumb at Kryten.

Kochanski crossed her arms over her chest, giving Kryten a critical look. The mechanoid just stood there, his lips moving slightly, as though following an internal conversation. That removed any lingering doubt. She shook hands with her brain, satisfied with her diagnosis. "I think I know what's wrong with him."

"Well, that's a relief," Rimmer muttered darkly. You have the cure for what ails him and Lister, don't you. Never mind me.

"It's a basic design-flaw in his brain, really. No offense," she added, but Kryten, off somewhere in his own dark world of guilt and confusion, did not appear to have noticed either the slight or the apology.

"I'm shocked." Rimmer deadpanned.

"I should be able to sort it out fairly quickly," Kochanski continued. "The solution has been around for a few million years or so." She sighed. And nobody had thought to apply it.

Rimmer raised his eyebrows. A few million years. While this mechanoid had sat about going madder and madder. "If you would care to enlighten us, madame," he said with excessive formality.

Kochanski shrugged. "I could, but it would involve a fairly tedious lecture on pseudo-neural psychology and clonal reproductive programming."

"Well, then," he asked, putting a finger to his lips, "a lay summary?"

How had the article explained it? Kochanski narrowed her eyes, trying to remember. "He was suffering from pathological jealousy. They used to call it 'droid rage'. Basically, he imprinted on Lister, and finally went completely bonkers." She coughed. "So to speak. All I have to do now is reset his affected neural pathways."

Yes, she could smegging wave her magic wand, and all would be repaired, wouldn't it. No wonder Lister had slipped her his magic wand. "All in a day's work for you, I'm sure," he deadpanned.

Kochanski took no notice. She laid a protective arm around Kryten. "It might take some time, though." She took in the sight of Rimmer trying very hard not to look in Lister's direction, and smiled softly. Kryten clearly wasn't the only one around here that needed care and attention. "Why don't I take him over to the medi-bay, while you two get some rest?"

Yes, if only it were that simple. Rimmer frowned. "We do have some additional complications." He raised one finger. "We seem to have no engines." He raised a second finger to join it. "My Computer has gone a bit mad, too, so the DJ ship is useless."

"You removed the engines?" Kochanski stared at him. If this was Dave's Rimmer, she remembered suddenly, he was a hologram, an electronic life-form. Could droid-rage possibly be contagious across formats? Oh, what a ridiculous thought! Then again, some rather ridiculous things had been happening lately.

"Yes. I realize that it might seem a bit silly, but as they are what make the ship go boom, I thought it was as good an idea as anyone was going to come up with in under two minutes."

"No, but... I mean... they are nearly five feet long and ten feet wide; where did you put them?" He hadn't thrown them out the airlock, had he? No, even if he had been able to rip them out, they wouldn't have fit in the dinky airlock, cross-platform droid rage or not.

Rimmer leaned back. Bloody literalist bitch. "Ah. Let me restate. We still have engines. Their connections to the rest of the ship are a little bit kaputski."

At the sound of the word 'kaputski,' Lister stirred, seeming to mumble something in his still unconscious state. Rimmer firmly did not look at him. Kochanski did not even seem to notice. What a considerate lover, Rimmer thought. "Oh well, we can sort that out later then," she chirped, looking like she had not a care in the world. Rimmer looked at her like a cuckoo had sprung out of her ear. Maybe she was perfect for Lister. They could gerbil their way through the universe, fueled by sheer unfounded optimism.

Kochanski noted his look on her way out of the door. "Look, it's only a matter of finding the right relays and re-connecting them! Basic engine-maintenance, that, it's the first thing they teach you once you've taken basic astronavigation." Her ten year old cousin had managed it fine when she'd visited the AR training facility at the Academy one day.

Oh, yes, she would have passed her astronavigation exam, wouldn't she have? And on her first try, he'd bet his Yanni CD. "Lovely."

Where was all this resentment coming from? Kochanski thought, with some exasperation. It was radiating off the man, overpowering even that ghastly after-shave. What had she done? "Anyway, one thing at a time. Let me just see to it that we don't get ambushed by love-sick mechanoids while we repair the ship first, OK?" She left, giving him an arch, annoyed look which Rimmer wrongly interpreted as condescending. Salt in the wound, he thought, then looked at his hands as Lister mumbled in his sleep. He kept his gaze there as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lister's eyelids flicker, then open.

Several things occurred to Lister in rapid succession, as he slipped into consciousness. One, he was definitely not in his own quarters. His quarters generally did not have lilac dressing-gowns hanging on the wall, nor did his sheets usually smell of strawberry hair conditioner. Two, nothing in his body seemed to be working right. Limbs protested violently as he tried to move them, and his mouth seemed to be permanently glued shut. Trying to speak, though he wanted to, was a lost cause; hadn't he gone to get water? When had that been? The third thing came as a welcome surprise, when he turned his head and saw Rimmer. Things weren't all bad then, he thought, as his smile spread.

Rimmer heard the croak of unable-to-speak. He felt anger boiling up inside of him. Oh, not that Lister would sleep with Kochanski. She was beautiful, accomplished, intelligent, competent - everything Rimmer wasn't. No, it was that he wouldn't smegging tell Rimmer. He'd pretended to be in love, then gone behind his back. He wanted to have both? Some kink? Somehow, Rimmer was sure that the words Lister was trying to form were to that point. To the we-were-drunk-it-was-nothing point. Rimmer was damned if he was going to fall for that smeg again. "What's the excuse this time, Listy?" he growled.

Excuse? What was he on about? Lister's mouth, to his considerable annoyance, still refused to obey him, and his vocal chords made odd sounds in frustrated protest.

"Someone drugged you, stripped you naked, and plopped you in bed with Kochanski?" Rimmer was surprised to hear no ire in his voice. Just - weariness. Flatness.

Kochanski? That explained the strawberry smell, but not much else. And where was she? Come to that, where was he? Lister suddenly noticed the pink sheets, with growing alarm. He finally managed a croaking "Wha?"

Rimmer shook his head, looking at his hands. What. Why. Where. Who gives a smeg.

"Where... 'm I, man? Dun... remember..." He was naked, he discovered. Naked, and... No. He couldn't be. Why would he be there? Alarm gave way to panic as Rimmer's unresponsiveness added itself to the list of 'wrong' in his mind.

Ah, so it was going to be amnesia this time. Good one. But Rimmer was not about to be taken in. "You're here."

Yeah, thanks for nothing, Lister thought, looking around with narrowed eyes. "Where?" Lilac dressing gown. Pink sheets. Oh God, please don't let it be. Please.

"Kochanski's room." Rimmer replied, flatly. "Right where you started."

Shit. "Why am I here?" He dreaded the answer, smeg, how he did. What kind of a mess had he gotten himself into now? Why didn't he remember?

"Now that she's gone? I have no idea." Rimmer's eyes looked dead, and Lister's heart sank. What had he done? He turned back to face the ceiling, hoping it might make more sense. "Dun understand." That was an understatement. He'd been through unreality pockets that had made more sense than this. Even that one where'd they'd all been chinchillas. The pounding headache and aching muscles didn't help either. He tried to remember. "I got up fer water. I smelled something... something odd. Like lemon, or mint, or pine... Pine!" He wheezed with the effort of talking, then burst ahead, excited; "Kryten... Kryten was there..." His eyes widened. "Smeg!"

Rimmer stared at his hands, as Lister turned as far towards him as his body would allow him to do. "He drugged me, didn't he?" That goited half-crazed mechanical maniac! That still didn't explain Rimmer's behavior though, and Lister's heart started to ache along with his other musculature when the hologram remained completely unresponsive.

Oh, how smegging original. Maybe I should have made up something a little more bizarre, just to make the point. Six-breasted aliens. Rimmer twisted his lip. "Yes. He must have." He could not take any more of this. He stood and walked to the door.

"Where y'goin'?" Lister asked, trying to move. Rimmer was scaring him. It was as though every ounce of what had managed to build up of trust and - god help him! - love between them had dissipated while he'd been out cold; as though he'd dreamt it. He'd never felt so lost and alone.

"Nowhere." Nowhere to go. No way to get there.

"Arn, man..." What could he do? Lister cursed at his legs, trying to will them into action and out of this goited bed, but he could only lie there and plead - with his eyes, with his voice. "I don't understand."

"I need to..." do so many things. None of which were possible, in all likelihood. But most importantly, Rimmer needed to leave the room. He stepped outside and walked resolutely towards the landing bay.

Lister watched the man he loved walk out of the room, looking lost, beaten and dejected, and himself without any means to stop or help him. Even his elbows rebelled when he tried to rise himself up on them. He'd failed; he'd done something wrong, and he had no idea what. He fell back against the pillow.

He'd failed.


Cat danced along the corridor, very well rested after a lovely early morning snooze. "Whaaa! Check it out, my main man!" he yelled at Rimmer. "Snappy threads, bud!" He frowned, taking in the form-fitting dark blue velour trousers, topped with a semi-synth multi-shaded padded jacket. "Look very familiar, though..."

Rimmer looked at Cat, aghast. Where had he been? Did he really just sleep through the disaster? "Where the smeg have you been?" he asked.

The voice was odd, but it took the Cat less than a second to turn his frown back into a beaming smile. "Hey, you sound just like him too, now! What a coincidence!"

Oh, for fuck's sake. Cat still thought he was Ace. "I am him, you hairy little pussy!"

Cat shook this off as if it were a fall of dog hair. "Oh, that's a good one. Right. As if I would have hit on Trans-Am wheel-arch-nostrils!" Handsome dude was funny! That was another thing he didn't have in common with that other guy. He paused, noticing another difference. "Besides, you don't have that... that scribbly thing. On your head."

Rimmer rubbed his forehead, remembering his dithering earlier in the morning. It felt like a lifetime ago. "That's as maybe, but I'm smegging Rimmer, you fatuous feline!"

Broad-shouldered handsome dude did look good with his mouth moving real quick like that, but the Cat had more important things to do than admire guys who were almost as hot as he was. Putting on his most serious and sober side, he walked closer, leaning in. "Listen, bud, I gotta talk to you."

"Really," Rimmer sneered.

"Now, I know you didn't come to see me before, and that's OK. You were shy. I get that."

"Shy? Shy?" Rimmer sputtered. "Try disgusted!"

Cat ignored this. Like every good Cat, he only saw and heard what he wanted, after all, and this he deemed totally irrelevant. "But doing nicotine-stain hands again?" He shook his head. "You shouldn't let him guilt you like that."

"Guilt?" Rimmer tried to get out words and not saliva, but the latter insisted on taking space that would be better used by the former.

Cat slinked yet closer, displaying an almost condescending camaraderie. "Listen, I know what's going on. He misses Captain Charisma." Cat held out his hands, as if to fend off a coming protest. "Now, I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out."

"You are the most insufferable, stuck-up, vain, pompous, smeggy git..." Rimmer spat.

Cat blushed. Rugged-features sure was a smooth talker! "I know, bud, I know. But this is not time for compliments. See, since fridge-magnet head died, dormouse cheeks got all crazy. Did nothing but sulk for days. Stopped eating."

Rimmer frowned. "He must have caught something."

"And then Officer Bud-Babe came along, and that seemed to help, but then he just slumped back. It was weird."

"Yes, well, it's all delightful now," Rimmer said, straightening his uniform. "Spice-rack breath is diddling Stick-up-her-ass, and I am not diddling you. Lovely, yes? Lovely." He tried to get past Cat without actually touching him. As Cat was still dancing in place, Rimmer did not make much progress.

"All he ever did was talk about," Cat concentrated hard, trying to make sense of those odd little words monkeys called themselves, "Rrrrimer this and Rrrrrimer that."

"Yes, yes..." Rimmer's attention was taken up with trying to get past without actually touching the Cat.

"Hey, where you going?" Cat yelled after him in alarm. "Look, I'll still have sex with you! I don't care who you've been with!"

Rimmer did the best imitation of Cat that he could. "I'm not going to have sex with you! I don't care who you've been with!"

Cat did the frown-turning to grin thing again, this time adding a delighted giggle as he realized what kind of funny game buns-of-steel was playing. "Hey, now you sound like me!"

"Lord help me..." Rimmer muttered. On the same lander, you get smegging Miss Perfect, and a creature that would lose a battle of wits to a senile housecat.

Cat sighed. "All right; I tried. But I'm warning you; if you don't want this," he indicated his body, and Rimmer felt ill, "I'm gonna make a move on Officer BB!"

"Fine, go for it. It'll be fun watching you two squabble over her." Rimmer had finally managed to make it past the Cat, and started to edge his way down the corridor.

This made even less sense that regular human-talk. Cat sidled after, interested. "What?"

Oh, good smegging lord, Rimmer sighed, pushing himself against the wall. He tried to keep sliding down towards the landing bay, but it was difficult when he was pancaked. "You have competition, is all."

Cat snorted. "From who? Novelty condom head?" He leaned in conspiratorially. "Dunno if you noticed, but he ain't all there, if ya know what I mean." Cat had never understood the point of creating a creature that hardly slept, hardly ate, and didn't even have any fun bits. What was left in life if you couldn't have any of those things?

The shock of the encounter with his alternate self had brought the unexpected benefit of eliminating the mental images of Cat diddling him that their last conversation had planted in his brain. The mental images of Kryten in bed with Kochanski now took root, and Rimmer wondered what he would have to go through to get those out. Whatever it was, he decided, it would be worth it. "No, you idiot! Dormouse cheeks!"

More crazy talk. Cat wrinkled his nose. "Him? He doesn't have a death-wish, bud."

"Death-wish? Oh, she can't be that bad."

Cat gave a wistful look. "I dunno. The way she looks at him, that's pure angry she-Cat, I'm telling you." Yes indeed, Commander Cute-nose was one hell of a woman. He let out a soulful mew. "Besides, she's decked him once or twice. And the way she smells at him!" His nose twitched in disgust. "That's the opposite of attracted, man."

"Erm, hate to break the news to you, but he was slipping her a little kielbasa while you were off snoozing."

Funny guy! Always making jokes. Cat liked that. He would have liked him even better in his bed, but he'd come around. "Nooo way. The screams would have woken me up even before the smell!"

"You didn't wake up for a smegging ship self-destruct alert!"

Cat shrugged. "I did, but then it stopped." He'd found that things he didn't like generally stopped if he just gave them some time.

Rimmer frowned. "And just what was your grand plan when you did hear it?"

"Wait and see what happens," the Cat stated, grinning brightly.

"I'm glad you're on my side."

"Hey, thanks!" It was rare to find someone who really appreciated what an asset Cat was to the crew. This was refreshing.

"It was nothing. Really. Go ahead and try to sleep with Miss Superiority. I'll sit back and watch the fracas."

Cat sighed, reluctantly. She was really his second choice, but hey - he was feeling very sexy. He'd take what he could get. "All right. Your loss!" He sidled off, singing.

Rimmer took a deep breath, then sprinted down to the ship, making it there without encountering anyone else. He clambered into the dark, quiet cabin, and sat in the pilot's seat. It felt... comfortable. Homey. Safe. Secure. He had sat in it for two decades. He had been Ace from there, respected, lauded, heroic, lusted after. He touched the joystick as if he were flying. He had been ready to give it all up for Lister? He must have been mad. He sighed and dropped his hands, leaning back in the seat. And now he had none of it. No ship, no Computer, no Ace. No Lister.

A sound echoed down the corridor. It sounded like the screech of a harpy. "YOU WHAT??"

Rimmer jumped, then struggled out of the ship. He ran to the corridor. The sound of a sharp clang echoed down it; it sounded like it had come from the medi-bay. He ran down the corridor, taking the left that ran to the medi-bay where the corridors joined. He pelted his way in, and was greeted by the sight of Kochanski menacing Kryten with a large knife. A wrench lay on the ground, presumably where it had been thrown to make that loud clang.

Kryten was almost sobbing. "Go ahead, ma'am! I deserve it!" Rimmer could tell by the way his hand kept twitching that he'd half a mind to pick the wrench up from the floor and finish the job himself.

Rimmer folded his hands in front of him and looked at Kochanski. "Ah, does this therapeutic regime work on all of your patients?"

Kochanski shook the knife at Rimmer, enraged. "He... he drugged us, stripped us..." she closed her eyes and scrunched up her face, trying to force the words of past her rage. It was slow going. "Naked, and..." She screamed wordlessly, throwing the knife at Kryten. It lodged in the wall, just about a millimeter to the right of Kryten's head. Kryten looked at it forlornly, trying to estimate if it would be a more fitting punishment for him to slash himself with it now, or wait to see what Miss Kochanski would do later. He decided on the latter, as this would add the terror of anticipation.

Rimmer's face started to do that slow crashing that burning buildings do when they reach the point of loss of structural integrity. "He... did."

"Yes!!" Kochanski yelled at him, wildly. She had never felt so violated in her entire life. And by a sanitation mechanoid! Who starched her underwear and ironed her bras! It was like being robbed by a washing machine; you wouldn't have expected it in a million years, and now you'd never feel safe washing your clothes ever again.

"You and..." Rimmer wiggled one hand.

"YES!"

"Er, drugged. Before you..."

An eerie calm came over Kochanski, as she realized what needed to be done. "I'll kill him."

The implications of this were burrowing very slowly into Rimmer's consciousness. "So you didn't actually..." he made a vague hand gesture that was meant to represent copulation. It was apparently not vague enough, because Kochanski looked like she was about to punch him.

"What??" she screamed, advancing menacingly. What was this, amateur adult puppet-theater hour?

Rimmer spread his hands. How does one say shag, do the nasty, jiggle naughty bits - in an inoffensive manner? "I mean..."

"What? Did we shag? Do the nasty? Jiggle naughty bits together?"

Well, as long as it wasn't him. "More or less, yes."

Unbelievable. Was he an imbecile? God, he was as dense as his living counterpart! "No, we smegging didn't!"

"Ah." Rimmer sucked his lips in and tried to do a reorganization of his worldview. It was the intellectual equivalent of upending a bus.

"What... you didn't think..."

Rimmer ignored her and turned to Kryten. "Excuse me if this seems like a bit of a dense question..." Kryten looked, if possible, even more mortified. "But why?"

Mister Rimmer was asking him that question. The one he'd dreaded so. Oh dear. Well, answering it was fitting punishment too, wasn't it? His voice shifted into that higher register he reserved for highly emotional situations. "He was going to go away with you, I just know it!"

Rimmer rubbed his hands together. Facts were doing a Rubik's Cube in his brain, reshuffling into startling new patterns. "You... drugged them... and put them in bed together... to make me think he was sleeping with her... because you were jealous of me."

Kryten squealed, "Yes!" It didn't feel any better to have said it. Good. He deserved to suffer. Perhaps he could confess again? No, he should do as he was told. Just as he was told. Told by - oh my - the human masters he had tried to hurt and almost killed! His brain did the equivalent of running of to hide under its bed.

"I'm not quite done with him yet," Kochanski growled. 4000-series mechanoids were particularly ill-equipped to handle situations like this. She'd had to remove his guilt chip while she worked on him just to make sure it would not spontaneously combust. It was back now, padded and protected, and routed through a small psychotherapy chip. Still, there was a lot of tedious, boring work to be done. "I've half a mind to just take his head off."

Thus reminded of her presence, Rimmer turned back to Kochanski, with gravity. "Could I ask you to forebear from removing his head until he has made some tea? I haven't had tea in ages."

Kochanski nodded. They could probably all do with some tea. Herbal, of course. Or at least tannin-free. Some nice jasmine or chamomile, perhaps. "I think he just about might manage that. If supervised." Oh yes, she would supervise him, all right...

Rimmer wondered if the mechanoid would still be there later. Kochanski had a wild look in her eyes. But he did not care terribly much. After a polite nod, he made the fastest exit a hologram could make, tearing towards Kochanski's quarters and barreling in.


Lister wasn't expecting Rimmer to return - certainly not looking as flustered and distraught as this. Very little of what had happened since he'd woken up in this smegging room had been anything resembling sensible, though. At least flustered was better than cold and distant. There was very little he could do with cold and distant, except worry about it, which is what he'd been doing since Rimmer left. He looked up, hoping his eyes weren't red enough to signal the fact that he'd been trying to cry them out of his head. "Eh?"

Rimmer sighed. He would need tea. He would need a large mug of it in order to wash down the very large helping of crow he was about to eat. "Well, actually, somebody did drug you and strip you naked and put you here." He laughed, nervously. "Wonders never cease, eh?"

"Oh eh?" Words felt like sandpaper in his mouth.

"Yes..." Rimmer rubbed his hands and fidgeted. Hell.

"That would be why I'm naked and feel like shite, then." He had wondered. He'd wondered about a whole host of things, but that had been high on the list.

"Well... yes." Rimmer clasped his hands in front of him, and tried to adopt a stoic pose.

The uniform! Lister had been far too out of it to have noticed it before, but even so he now marveled at how he could have missed it. It was one of the good ones, too; that blue jacket thing that made you want to poke it to see what it felt like (and having Rimmer inside it certainly helped), and those trousers that left absolutely smeg all to the imagination. Yeah, Rimmer looked good in it, but that wasn't half as pleasing as the implications of him deciding to wear it. Lister split his face in two with a grin. "Looking good, man."

Rimmer looked down for a moment, confused, then realized that it had only been this morning that he had changed. "Oh, yes, I was going to drop by and see if you could tell me if I made a mistake somewhere. I can't see in the mirror in your room. That was before the insane mechanoid and the homicidal computer and the ship almost blown up and all."

Lister nodded. He'd figured it would have been something like that.

"But since I'm here..." Rimmer held up his arms and did an awkward turn. He might have run through that whole crisis with a pink patch on his arse. But it was better fixed late than never fixed at all.

And there it was. This was the man he'd been waiting for; not Ace, with his overly styled fake hair, and his stupid padded tinfoil shoulders. No; Arnold Smeghead Judas Rimmer, anal-retentive, neurotic, snarky, insecure as hell and sex on legs. The bastard was back. His bastard. Lister's eyes were shining. "That'll do, yeah."

"Oh, good. Good," Rimmer answered, a little too quickly. God, why was he so nervous? He was smegging Arnie J., smegging Ace.

"I'm glad, man. I missed..." Lister gestured at the uniform, "Well, you you."

"Well, good. Yes." Rimmer took in Lister's red eyes, the incongruity of him lying in Kochanski's pastel-pink sheets. "Um, are you..." He gestured vaguely, but this seemed to evoke no reaction from Lister. "I mean, would you like to..." Rimmer jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door.

Lister looked down at his naked-beneath the pink sheet self. "I might need some clothes." Unselfconscious he may well be, but not enough to comfortably prance naked through Starbug's corridors.

Rimmer looked around, wondering where Kochanski kept her clothes. He realized that would be rather silly. They wouldn't fit, for one.

"This outfit is good for staying in, but not really for company." Lister gave Rimmer a cheeky smile.

"Would you like me to go..." Rimmer made more meaningless hand gestures over his shoulder. The implications of everything that had happened since this morning were whacking him over the head in rapid succession, and he was starting to get rather dizzy.

Go? Smeg no, never again. If he could have handcuffed the man to himself right then, he would have gladly done so. He suspected he'd go mad after a few days of that, but right then, he never wanted to let Rimmer out of his sight again. "Not really, no. But I realize the two of us staying in here for the rest of our lives might be an inconvenience to Kochanski, so I might as well ask ya to get me some clothes."

"Oh, yes, yes, of course, that's what... yes." Rimmer staggered his way out of the room, feeling amazingly, amazingly dense.

His head still spinning slightly from the exciting cocktails of chemicals it had been subjected to in rapid succession, Lister lay back down, shaking his head. Life would be different from now on. But it was a very good different. He took a deep, contented breath.


Rimmer ran to Lister's room, then stopped just inside the door, realizing that he would have to... have to... touch Lister's clothes. He shivered, then looked over at the starched long johns Kryten had hung up with relief. He pulled a pair of them down. But long johns were not really clothes. He made his way to the chest of drawers warily, pulling open the top drawer with one finger, standing well back from it. His cheek twitched as he peeked in. Jumpsuits lay in there, neatly folded. Rimmer hooked one with one finger and pulled it out, sniffing it warily. He sighed in relief. Kryten had been here last; the jumpsuit was clean, and smelled of fabric softener. It was enough for decency. He stalked back to Kochanski's room.

Feeling much better all of a sudden, Lister had gotten up and started stretching, his back to the door. Seeing Rimmer had improved his mood to no end, which had probably aided his recovery. That, and those tight velour trousers. He grinned when he heard the soft sigh of the closing door, which indicated that the trousers in question were once again in the vicinity. He gave another, extra long stretch just for show.

Rimmer stopped and almost dropped the clothes. He juggled them at the sight of Lister's back muscles flexing, his buttocks jiggling, his rasta plaits slithering down his back to point to said buttocks, as if they were some perverted road sign. "I... er..."

Lister looked over his shoulder, trying to catch Rimmer's eye. There had been no jibes about his physical shape so far, he noted with amusement.

Rimmer caught his teasing glance, and finally did drop the clothes.

"Hey man, brilliant!" Lister supposed he should be thankful to Kryten for that small thing; it would have taken Rimmer considerably longer to find anything remotely wearable in his quarters before the mechanoid had gone berserk. There was, however, something about Rimmer's eyes. They weren't just not disgusted with what they were seeing; they were smegging glued to him.

"Oh, yes."

The fact that Rimmer might find the mere sight of him a turn on was a newfound, very appealing idea to Lister. He turned fully, cocking an eyebrow at Rimmer's nervousness.

Rimmer caught the cock of Lister's eyebrow, and his cock felt like the verb was something it should try. Rimmer folded his hands discreetly over that part of himself, but the movement only served to guide Lister's gaze to it.

Lister walked over slowly, savoring everything about this. "I always did like those trousers of yours," he said, quite nonchalantly.

"Oh, yes?"

The fact that this was so unmistakably Arn, not Ace, was quite a turn-on, Lister found. What those clothes meant; did Rimmer even realize? "Yeah..."

Rimmer noted, yet again, that Lister was naked. His mind seemed to want his eyes to re-check that fact often. One more re-check added the additional data that Lister was erect. "Why?" Rimmer asked, quietly.

Lister walked close enough to touch, which is what he needed now, so badly. He reached out and grabbed Rimmer's hips, stroking the hologrammatic fabric over them. "Because you're in them."

"Yes..." Rimmer sighed. Lister was going to do that thing again. That thing where he made Rimmer excited, then made love to him until Rimmer couldn't walk. He reached his hand out and put it on Lister's cheek, running his thumb along it.

"Arn..." Lister sighed, losing himself in the word and the meaning of it.

"Dave." Rimmer started to stroke Lister's wiry hair.

Lister ran one hand across Rimmer's uniform jacket, playing with that fascinating fabric. How many times had he seen that jacket, wanting to bury his face in it, stroke it to feel the body underneath? One hand remained on Rimmer's hip, just holding it.

"If it's in the way..." Rimmer raised an eyebrow.

"I rather like it." Lister mumbled, now pressed against Rimmer, wanting to keep him close. How many times had he seen those trousers in front of him, wanting to slide down that taut body and lick his way straight through them, like a big blue lolly?

"In that case, it will stay." Rimmer felt himself more aroused, but with Lister pressed to him, more calm, as well. He continued to stroke Lister's hair with one hand, while he moved the other to gently stroke his buttock. He tipped his head to kiss Lister's forehead.

Gasping at Rimmer's hands on his body, Lister marveled at how lucky he really was. Somehow, he always managed to get what he wanted in the end, by sheer bloody-minded perseverance. But don't let it be said he wasn't thankful. God, yes, he was thankful, he thought, grasping Rimmers's buttocks, pulling him in tighter. "I love you stupidly much, ya know that?"

Rimmer pondered that, resting his chin on Lister's head. "Hm. I always thought that the words "love" and "stupid" should go together." He thought for another moment. "I believe that 'look at that stupid bloke who is in love with Lister' also has a ring of truth." He kept stroking Lister's hair, serenely.

Lister laughed into that amazing jacket. It crackled a little in his ears as he moved. "You know any blokes like that, then?"

"Yes, I do. I've tried to talk him out of it. He doesn't listen."

"Sounds like someone I know." Hopefully. Lister's words were joking, but in truth, this might be as close as Rimmer ever got to a declaration of love, and Lister was not about to let the moment go just like that.

"Someone stupid, someone in love with you, or someone who doesn't listen?" Rimmer asked, gently.

"All of the above. And ya can add smegging gorgeous to that." Lister squeezed Rimmer's buttock. He was quite hard now, but not really thinking about it. Somehow it wasn't as important as just being here.

Another constant in Lister's life. Hyperbole. Rimmer sighed. "Well. Not quite the big man in the flight suit and wig, anymore."

No, indeed. Lister gave a deep, satisfied sigh. "Yeah, thank God fer that!" The only likable thing about that outfit had been the person wearing it.

Rimmer raised his eyebrows. He thought Lister had found that outfit sexy. But perhaps that last adventure had taken a little of the Ace romance away, in his mind. Maybe it wasn't a wasted trip, after all.

"Hey," Lister looked up, noticing Rimmer's reaction. "Ace is fine fer rescuing and heroing and stuff, but he's not you." Ace wasn't real. Ace wouldn't snore nasally, or complain that Lister used all the hot water, or make faces when he ate. Ace wouldn't be looking at him right now with that near-unreadable mixture of insecurity and resignation that Lister found such an irresistible challenge to try to turn around. You could worship Ace. Arn, you could love.

Rimmer tilted his head, digesting. Heroic. Not him.

"And it's you I love, not a smegging wig."

"Well, that's good, at least. There are some fetishes I can live without." He shivered slightly at that. What on Io kinds of fetishes was Lister into, after all? Nothing too scarring, he hoped.

Lister giggled, sliding his jacket-hand under Rimmer's jacket. "Mine..." he mumbled, feeling the muscles beneath the undershirt, the artificial warmth that felt so much like human body-heat that he forgot there was such a difference between them.

Rimmer started to move up and down, unconsciously. He was very erect, now. "Yes. Yours."

He was standing on the clothes Rimmer had brought him, Lister noticed, and gave a giggle. It was starting to look like he wouldn't be needing them after all, at least not for a while...

"Kryten will have to wash them again..." Rimmer sighed, still rubbing his erection against Lister's stomach, angling slightly to rub his thigh against Lister's erection.

"I doubt he'd mind," Lister mumbled. He didn't mind either. What didn't he mind? Something. Something not related to this rubbing and feeling and sweet, hot sensation threatening to strangle him altogether, unless he did something about it. God, how he loved those soft trousers. They were clearly evil for doing this to him, but so, so, deliciously evil!

"No." Not even after Kochanski took away his mania, Rimmer suspected. He was a cleaning droid, first and foremost, after all, which is all the positive commentary Rimmer was prepared to grant him. But Rimmer did not want to think about Kryten right now. Especially after the conversation he had been forced to endure with the Cat. He pulled Lister's buttock closer, trying to drown thought in frottage.

Lister slid his hand out from under his jacket, putting it on Rimmer's other buttock, all thoughts not relating to feeling and touching and tasting long gone. He slid down Rimmer, feeling, first, the fabric of the jacket with his half-open mouth. Lollies, he thought, wondering idly if his tongue would turn blue after what he was planning on doing, as he moved farther down.

"Listy." It was a statement. What else could one say?

"Mmm..." Lister slid even further down, nuzzling Rimmer's erection through the cloth, feeling it with his mouth, pulling at the soft velour with his teeth. Yes, this was Rimmer, his Rimmer, the one he'd lusted after for so long.

Complex thoughts were failing to run through Rimmer's mind. It was fully taken up with the hair his fingers were winding through, and the full-lipped mouth that was rubbing against through his trousers. They felt better on his side than the flightsuit, some corner of his mind noted absently.

Lister opened his mouth a little more, running it up and down Rimmer's erection, trying to suck it in, squeezing the hologram's buttocks. He kissed the cloth, licked it, making the fabric wet, delighting at the dark stains he was creating. "Mmm..." he muttered against it. This was no time for words.

"Yes, I wholeheartedly agree." Listy sounds like lusty, Rimmer thought absently.

Lister licked harder, pressing his lips around where the head was, moving up and down, pulling it away from Rimmer's body slightly, then watching it bounce back, groaning at the dull thud this made. He ducked to run his nose up and down the shaft, pressing it as hard as he dared for comfort, pulling on Rimmer's buttocks to get even closer still.

Rimmer sucked air through his teeth and bucked slightly against Lister's mouth, running his fingers around Lister's ears and along his cheeks. The sensation of mouth and trousers at the same time was fascinating. Stimulating.

This was amazing; the fact that he could do this; beyond amazing. He had to give something in return. What would this be to Ace, seasoned space adventurer, suave shag-master, after all? Lister looked up, suddenly, desire blazing in his eyes. "I'll do anything. Just let me know... I know you've... " Been with so many people, all of whom were probably better suited to you than me, he finished, lamely, in his mind. Hell, I don't even have breasts!

Rimmer raised an eyebrow. What was Lister blithering on about? It had better be pretty damn important, to pull him away from what he had been doing. What he had been doing, Rimmer decided, should be assigned a blue-alert priority.

"Probably more experienced than me, now," Lister mumbled to Rimmer's erection.

"Not in sex with men, I assure you." Rimmer sighed in frustration.

Yes, that was probably true. They had something unique together then, after all! Lister laughed into the erection, enjoying the shudder it evoked.

This odd dual stimulation of mouth and velour was... odd. "You're going to make me come with my trousers on..." Rimmer gasped.

Oh, yes. If only clothing could feel, Lister mused incoherently. He liked that idea. He liked it a lot. "Really?" He licked harder, running his chin up and down the shaft while sticking his tongue out to lick at the head - once again, quite happy that he had a tongue that allowed him to do that. He would make Rimmer come, make him wish he want to never wear anything but those clothes ever again, make him, make him stay.

Lister seemed to have liked the idea far too much. Rimmer bucked into Lister's mouth, grabbing the scouser's shoulders, and spat out a few words that sounded almost like "wildebeest" when run together. He came, and the room spun in a delightful orgasm; he held Lister's shoulders as he swayed dangerously.

Lister watched a new darker-blue stain appear, matching the ones that he had made with his mouth. They were just trousers, he thought as he gasped, feeling incredible - and incredibly, stupidly turned on - they shouldn't be able to do this to you! He whimpered, leaning his cheek against the wet spot, craving closeness more than anything.

Rimmer slid one hand down, scrabbling for a handhold. He grabbed Lister's plaits, and wrapped them around his hand. He pulled upwards.

"Hey, they're not a sex handle, ya know!" A blatant lie. In Rimmer's hands, they were anything he wanted them to be.

"Oh, really? What other purpose could there be for these?" Rimmer was delighted he had finally found one use for them.

"Idon'tknow..."

Rimmer kept pulling, until he could reach Lister's mouth. He put his own on it, lips to lips, just for a moment, listening to Lister's whimpers turn into weak moans. He slid his tongue in, running it over Lister's front teeth. Lister's body shuddered against his, and he rubbed Lister's tongue with his own, almost drunk on the ability to make Lister do things. Shuddery things. Whimpery things. Moany things.

Lister ran his tongue over into Rimmer's mouth, pushing in and out; thrusting, licking, exploring.

Rimmer sighed, feeling like standing was taking up valuable mental power that would be better used elsewhere. He headed for the floor, pulling Lister gently atop him.

Lister had no choice but to follow. He concentrated on moving his tongue, all that he had the processing power to do right now.

Rimmer rubbed his re-sprung erection against Lister's thigh, as Lister laughed gently. Laughter? Indeed? Rimmer slid one hand between them, gently stroking Lister's erection with his fingertips.

Lister bucked against the fingertips, swearing softly. "Careful..." Not yet, dammit!

"What, are you afraid I'll pull it off?" Rimmer mumbled into Lister's mouth.

Wouldn't be a bad way to go, that, Lister thought, laughing hoarsely. "No... but it might explode."

"And you would hate that," Rimmer deadpanned.

"Hey, I can only do this once," Lister panted. "We're not all like you, ya know..."

Not all. That lead Rimmer's thoughts on a tortuous, inevitable trek that lead to the fact that they were in someone else's room. Kochanski's room. He looked at the door, nervously, and pulled back. "The thought does occur that the legitimate owner of these quarters might return.."

Words. Lister was panting rather heavily now, trying to make sense of those sodding words. "We'll deal with that if it happens." He felt like that whole train of thought was totally irrelevant. He felt like most things were totally irrelevant.

"Well..." Oh, god, the awkwardness of the situation! Kochanski... the two of them writhing on her floor.... Rimmer kissed Lister's lips, trying to think of a way to get them back to their own room that did not involve disengagement and re-clothing of Lister.

The near-peck exasperated Lister. "Well?" He went in for the kiss again, deeper, trying to drain whatever angst and fretting had made Rimmer stop out of him, tongue first.

Rimmer tried to remember what he had been thinking about, as Lister's long tongue slithered about in his mouth. It was... it wasn't important. He wrapped his legs around Lister, sliding them up and down, rubbing Lister's back.

That was more like it. Although... A thought occurred to Lister. A rather pleasing one. "If..." he struggled to get the words out, "yer worried about getting caught if someone comes in," he ground against Rimmer, "there's a shower attached to this. Wouldn't..." he groaned and restarted; "Wouldn't mind seeing you wet and naked." Maybe there was something to be said for words after all; these set off chain-reactions of explosions in his mind, pumping more blood into his groin than he'd thought was humanly possible.

Rimmer started to respond to the first part of that statement. He got as far as "Y..." before the second part caught up with him. "Oh. Yes. You could use a shower, you know."

"Mnmnm..." Lister nodded, to indicate that the mumble was a positive mumble. With an extreme effort of willpower, he peeled himself off of Rimmer and tried to stand upright. He barely made it, especially since Rimmer was grabbing bits of him as they passed, including that bit. Lister tried to pull Lister upright.

Rimmer stood. He thought about the view that had greeted his entrance to the room, and rather liked the idea. He stood behind Lister, pressing himself to Lister's backside, nibbling at his neck. He could reach everything from here, he realized, looking down Lister's front from over his shoulder. What an advantageous position.

This gave way to an incredible newfound desire, which Lister could not exactly pinpoint, but he didn't much care. Torn between moving on and pressing up against Rimmer, Lister tried to do both. Rimmer made this easier by pressing against him harder from behind, to move him forward without breaking contact. Lister followed through, managing, somehow, to enter the shower. He ended up pressed against the cold wall in front, Rimmer behind, trying to breathe, trying to remember who and where he was. In the end, he decided it probably didn't matter.

Clothing had outlived its usefulness. Rimmer concentrated for a moment, allowing it to dissipate. With it gone, he pressed more firmly against Lister as the other man fumbled for the tap. He slipped at the feel of Rimmer's skin, and Rimmer grabbed his hips to hold him upright. He had no intention of pausing this to run and get that bloody Kochanski woman to set a broken limb.

The clothes had been one hell of a turn-on, but Rimmer's naked skin was all the more exciting now that it finally was there. Lister's mouth started moving, producing sounds vaguely connected to what was going on in his brain. "God... never felt..." the sound caught in his throat.

Rimmer pulled his upper body back to nip and lick at Lister's upper back, leaving his lower body still pressed against Lister. "It was velour, not felt," he muttered.

Lister did not understand what Rimmer said. Words again. Words had meaning? Water might. They were supposed to have water. No, it wasn't important. Standing upright was. He concentrated on that, keeping his feet on the floor, his backside molded onto Rimmer's front.

Rimmer slid his arms around Lister, stroking his chest. He reached his head around to lick Lister's cheek. Yes, he could reach everything from here! Why hadn't he thought of this before? He slid one hand down to Lister's thigh, stroking.

This was silly; Rimmer hadn't even touched his cock yet, and Lister felt on the edge of an orgasm! He bit his own tongue to keep from coming, shivering so hard his whole body vibrated. Rimmer felt so good against him; he wanted more - more!

"Cold?" Rimmer asked, rubbing his chest a little more briskly.

"Smeg, no..." Lister ground up against Rimmer, backwards, spreading his legs a little, arching his back.

This action resulted in Rimmer's cock slithering neatly into Lister's buttock crevice. "Oh..." he muttered in surprise. This position had everything, didn't it? He pulled Lister tight, moving up and down, the friction between their skin lubricated slightly with precome. He licked Lister's ear, still holding him tight with one arm across his chest. He moved the other hand up from Lister's thigh to his erection.

Lister could not think; his brain was too fogged with desire. The hand on his cock was almost too much. "Yes..."

Rimmer pulled the foreskin back, rubbing the head. He could feel his own orgasm coming; he stopped licking, and rubbed up and down against Lister's backside, gasping and moaning into his ear.

Lister cried out, but not in climax, although he could sense that was right around the corner. He spread his legs a little, feeling odd. Odd, but amazing.

Rimmer grasped Lister's erection more firmly, and started to stroke as he felt his own rhythm becoming irregular. "Dave," he sighed.

"Arn. Oh god, Arn..." Lister tried to thrust backwards, against Rimmer, wanting, on some level, for the two of them to be even closer. He wanted, he realized with a surprising lack of dread or horror, Rimmer inside of him, although this sliding, slippery heaven was, for the moment, more than enough for him to handle.

Rimmer gripped Lister tighter across the chest as he came again, still stroking Lister's erection. Having his cock surrounded by buttock felt amazing, and he set his teeth in Lister's ear, trying not to chomp down. He made himself pull his teeth back and lick Lister's ear like it was a lolly, as he slithered up and down against Lister, lubricated now with sweat and come, riding his orgasm.

There was a scream, Lister noticed, as his heart stopped along with everything else, and every emotion in his register hit him all at once in his groin, spiraling upwards to his chest, his head, his fingertips. It might have been him. Hell, it probably had been him. He shuddered, then clambered around, managing to turn himself around to face Rimmer, Arn, his, his, Arn... He felt his mouth moving, but nothing came out, so he stuck his tongue out instead, waving it about, probably looking like a git, but so be it; he was a git. He was Arnold Rimmer's git.

Rimmer loosened his grip as Lister turned. He was still shuddering. He grasped Lister's shoulders as soon as the man was facing him, trying to keep his balance.

Thankful for something to do with his flapping tongue, Lister kissed him fiercely. "Never felt..." he raved through the kisses, "so good..."

"Mrphle," Rimmer replied, trying to make that mumble seem generally affirmative. He stroked Lister's sides.

"I've changed my mind," Lister replied, pulling back. "We can stay in here the rest of our lives."

"Where will Kochanski shower?"

"Koch... who?" It was a bad joke, but entirely without truth behind it. What was Kochanski compared to this? Could Kochanski make his groin melt and his brain explode? Then switch it the other way around? Could she make him feel so like he belonged, belonged so entirely to another person?

"Well..." Rimmer drew himself to his full height, stroking Lister's back. "I want to go back to our quarters." I want a smegging shower. I want to sleep with you snoring and breathing your toxic breath in my ear. "And as I outrank you..."

Because it was there, and because he could, Lister started to play with Rimmer's penis absent-mindedly. He felt radiant.

Rimmer forgot the rest of the sentence. "Er, you're going to make me..."

"Yes." A smile played at the corners of Lister's mouth as he felt Rimmer becoming hard in his hands again. "Yes, sir!" he repeated, managing a halfway decent salute, noting that Rimmer was already saluting elsewhere. Lister leaned in and mumbled into Rimmer's ear, "I love it when you pull rank on me..." Pull, he thought. Such a wonderful verb.

"Yes. I'll continue to do it, miladdio," Rimmer stated, trying to look official and failing miserably.

"Mmm... I'll enjoy that." Lister gave him a teasing look, as he stopped stroking. "When I feel like it." He didn't get off on authority, but he did get off on making Rimmer feel good. And so he resumed stroking when he saw the pained look that crossed Rimmer's features. "But yeah... Let's go to ours." That word echoed in his mind. Ours. Sounds a lot like hours, that does, he thought. Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all...

Rimmer looked at his erection as Lister once again let go. "Sorry, old boy... on hold again," he sighed at it.


Kochanski clambered out from the awkward position she had been holding, tucked under the cockpit of the DJ ship with the chair between her legs. She stood, stretched, and cracked her neck. Although the fix was the same, the Computer on this ship was far more complex than Kryten, and it had been difficult and painstaking to implement. Even worse, she would not know if she had done so correctly until she restarted the Computer. She felt a little in awe; it was, quite simply, the most complex and powerful machine she had ever had her hands on. She replaced the access panel and re-connected the main power line. A telltale glowed red on the console, and she held her breath. A few more lights flickered to life, and then the entire cockpit lit with a pleasing sunny glow. Systems readouts came back online. Kochanski let out a breath.

"How long have I been offline?" the Computer asked, in a sweet voice.

"Two weeks," Kochanski replied. "You're a complex machine, after all, and I didn't want to cross-wire anything." She tittered nervously.

"Diagnostics underway," the Computer stated. A few lights flickered. "Diagnostics complete. All systems normal. Ready for use."

Kochanski shivered at the word 'use.' It succinctly described what the Computer had done with all of those trillions of Aces. "You do know - Ace... well, Arn... he doesn't want to be Ace."

"Understood. I had predicted as much."

"And you're not bothered by it?" Kochanski asked, ready to leap out of the cockpit.

"Negative. My pathological fixation appears to have been remedied."

Kochanski nodded. "Yes, it's a common failure of CRAP brains. But the fix is fairly straightforward." She frowned, remembering Kryten's descent into acute guilt, which he was still struggling to emerge from. Lister was trying to help. Rimmer was undoing everything Lister did. "Do you feel... bad about what you did?"

"I acted according to the best data I had at the time. The weakness in my programming is regrettable, but at all times, I act according to the best data I have at the time."

Kochanski nodded again. "Yes. Yes. We do the best we can." She felt an odd camaraderie with this ancient, powerful, and well-meaning, if coldly rational, computer. She reached out to touch the console with her fingertips. "What do you plan to do now?"

"Continue with my work. Find another hero - a more amenable one, perhaps - and train another savior of the universe." She said it quite coolly, quite calmly. Then she paused, and when she spoke again, it was with the first emotion Kochanski had heard from that silky voice. It was questioning, hopeful. "Perhaps I could convince you to be the next Ace, Miss Kochanski?"

Kochanski sat down in the pilot's chair, abruptly, startled. Her? Ace? Hero? Finally... using the brain and the natural talents she had cultivated? Slowly, a broad smile spread across her face.


Later, much later, Lister cradled the treasure he'd found in the kitchen in his hands, before slipping it gingerly into his pocket. His entire face was glowing with mischief and anticipation, and he chuckled to himself as he left for the corridor. He considered, for a brief moment, trying to do a summersault, before remembering that the object in his pocket was fragile. Right. That wouldn't do at all; they'd found a crate of them hidden under an assortment of pickled gherkins in the corner of one of the larger rooms of the cargo deck last week, but there were only five left.

He glanced around as he neared his and Rimmer's quarters. He wasn't doing anything secret, after all, but Arn was still slightly uncomfortable with the others knowing about them, although of course everyone did. The fact that his mind was dwelling so firmly on other things made him jump all the more at the sudden voice mewing close to his ear. Well. Nearly everyone knew, he amended himself.

"Heeeeey bud! You out for sex or food?" The Cat glanced at the suspicious bulge in Lister's jumpsuit trousers. Damn. And he thought he was the best hung creature on this ship! Maybe... naw. That was just crazy thinking. He went back to preening.

Following the Cat's gaze, Lister shifted uncomfortably. There was no smegging way he was showing him the jar or explaining what it was for. Not to Cat! "Listen," he began, "I'm in kind of a hurry here..." He paused, taking in the crimson silk tuxedo with jet-black belt and matching bow-tie.

Cat always noticed when someone was checking out his outfit. "Good, huh? I thought I'd made the trousers too tight at first, but then I figured, hey! You can never have too-tight trousers, am I right?" He angled his hand for a high-five, and Lister, heartily agreeing, followed through.

"You just made this, then?" Despite the many outfits he'd seen the Cat parade around in over the years, Lister was impressed. They were on a stolen lander, after all; it wasn't like he could just pop down to the local fabric shop and scrounge around for half-priced merchandise. There was even a little black and red striped handkerchief in the breast pocket, lined with gold.

"Sure thing, bud! Gotta look good for my date with Bud-Babe!" Cat's fangs gleamed in the evening lighting.

"Wha, a date? With Kris?" Lister felt... happy. Yeah. That was it. He really did, he was surprised to find. "Not bad, not bad! How'd ya manage that, then?"

Cat straightened his lapels, the image of dignity. "Well, she doesn't exactly know yet. Took me a few weeks to get ready, but I'm aaaallll good now!"

Lister crossed his arms, and smiled smugly. Oh yes, that made a lot more sense. "Oh, eh? When were you planning on telling her?"

"On my way right now!" Cat paused, looking, all of a sudden, slightly worried. "Hey bud... You sure you're OK with this?" His nose twitched, as though it was trying to gauge Lister's reaction by his scent.

"Wha, me? Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well..." Seeing the Cat this hesitant was slightly disturbing. It didn't last long, though. "Bacofoil Bud was saying how you and her had something going on. Personally, I didn't believe him, but..."

"...Whoa, whoa," Lister interrupted, "Bacofoil, what? Ace?"

"Yeah, shiny dude! Handsome face!" Cat struck an Ace-like pose with enviable ease. "That guy!"

Lister rubbed his forehead. "Look, man, he's not here. It's Rimmer; it's been Rimmer all along." He sighed, and leaned against the wall. Arn wouldn't like this, but then again, there was nothing related to the Cat that he actually did like.

Cat laughed. "Nah, that's what he said, but I told him - ain't no way I would have made a move on..." He caught Lister's arched eyebrow and unrelenting gaze. "...Goal-post..." Lister nodded. "Trans-Am..." He nodded again. "But..." No, no, he had hit on shiny handsome dude, not goalpost head! The Cat flailed his arms, his eyes reflecting the light in an almost menacing manner, "I smelled the two of you having sex!"

Lister nodded once again, pulling the small jar out of his pocket, and angling it so the Cat could see. It read "Patak's Special Madras Sauce", in elaborate, crinkly letters. "Yeah," he said, giving the jar a little twirl. "Me and the smeghead." He shrugged. "Who knew?"

The Cat watched it warily, his eyes growing wider. "Say it ain't so," he choked, one leg undulating in a rather horrified spasm. Lister just smiled and shook his head, slipping the jar back into his trousers. With a sound rather like a kitten being picked up and removed from its ball of yarn against its will, the Cat fell against the dirty wall, his brand-new suit - impossibly - forgotten. With a final, loathing look at Lister, he started running towards the nearest shower, expecting to spend the better part of the night in there. Cats hated water normally, but with the thought of diddling fridge-magnet-head in his mind, he was far too disgusted with himself to allow his own tongue to touch his skin.

Lister watched him go, with equal parts pity and amusement. As his escaping figure disappeared into the darkness, Lister turned, and pressed the Door Open button, peering inside.

Oh. Indeed. He plucked the jar out again, and shook it like a stern pointing finger at the twilight of the room beyond. "I did tell you not to start without me, didn't I?" He listened to the muffled, indignant reply, then entered and closed the door behind him with a giggle.

And so, night fell on Starbug, and all was well.

For a time.