Rimmer was not yet used to corporeality. Between the novelty of not being able to simply walk through obstacles and the shaking from whatever passed for hologrammatic adrenaline turning sour in his system, it took far longer than it should have for him to stumble his way down to the greasy bowels of Starbug, where the escape pod lurked. He fumbled with the keys that he had lifted from the cockpit, dropping them twice, but finally managed to work the correct one into the slot and open the door. His simulated blood was pounding in his head as he stumbled into the pod and squeezed into the cramped pilot's seat, grimacing at the dust and filth that covered the interior. He awkwardly turned to close the door behind him, his back making strange popping noises as he hauled the creaking metal slab shut. He took a deep breath and pressed the big red button - or, more accurately, pressed the big, formerly red, now gritty brownish, button. The pod shook like a palsied Golden Retriever as it launched from Starbug. As the green ship receded in the distance, Rimmer finally began to calm down.

He might be safe now.


Bastard!

Lister paced back and forth in the sleeping quarters, unable to sit still. Occasionally, he would kick the wall, crack his knuckles, or slam his fist into his palm repeatedly. He shook, not just with anger, but with impotence; there was absolutely nothing he could do.

Smegging bastard!

Rimmer was gone. Just out of the blue he had up and left; leaving no note, no clue, no nothing. He’d just gone. For three smegging days now they’d been tracking his escape-pod; Red Dwarf’s vapor-trail getting further and further away as they searched for the world’s most charismatic man. It gutted Lister to have to take this pointless detour, but it was he who had insisted they do so. They couldn’t leave a man behind – that was just the way it was. Not even a goit-headed gimboid like Arnold Judas Rimmer.

Lister sighed, and slumped down in the flimsy plastic folding chair, feeling it creak ominously beneath him. That did nothing to improve his mood. Nothing on this ship seemed to work right; everything was stuck together with gaffer tape and chewing gum, always just on the verge of breaking down. Supplies were low; morale was low, and getting lower by the minute. And Rimmer, being Rimmer, chose this as a good time to run.

Well, that just figured, didn’t it?

Bastard.

His sulking-session was thankfully interrupted by Kryten’s polite knock on the side of the open door. A moment longer, and he’d have smashed something, probably hurting himself in the process. “What is it, Krytes?”

“We’ve located what we believe to be Mr. Rimmer’s pod, Sir. The instruments aren’t clear, but Mr. Cat insists he can smell it.”

“About bloody time,” Lister grunted, jumping out of his seat and rubbing his hands together. “Why aren’t the instruments clear?” he asked, as he followed Kryten into the cockpit.

“The weather conditions on the planet on which it has landed are appalling. We’ve no chance of landing any time soon. In fact, we could be here for days.”

Lister groaned, and started dragging his feet. Days! As if they hadn’t wasted enough time already.

Indicating the console normally manned by Rimmer, Kryten explained, “I believe we have established contact with the pod. If you’d care to contact Mr. Rimmer, you may use this interface.”

Lister made a face. “Text only?”

“I’m afraid so, Sir.”

Lister sighed, accepting the inevitable. “All right, then, Krytes, let’s see what the smeghead’s been up to.” With inexperienced fingers, he clumsily began typing out a message…


The tattty little computer console in the pod beeped, and then glowed to sickly green life.  Rimmer sighed and banged his head against the forward edge of the console a few times as letters from a transmission glowed on its screen.  A transmission from Starbug.  

The ponderously typed and heavily misspelled messages could only be from that art-college-educated space-bum. Lister had followed him. This would not do.

>oi! smeghed!1

>Smeg off, Listy.

>ye, right! doU've ny idEa how longit tooks to get her+

>About as long as it's going to take for you to get back, I would say. So get started, squire.

>yere a barrl o laffs, arent ya? whaon earth got into U man?

>Have to go, Listy. I'll miss your morning flatulence terribly, of course.

>go? wherere u gonna go there' noting butice n rocks fr miles1 stop messin abot n tell me what the SMEG is goingon!

>I can't tell you. But it's worth my hide, and probably yours, too.

>whatre U sayin Have u pissed somen off?Rewe bein chased by roge simulants agan?

>I don't consider the day complete unless I've pissed someone off, Listy.

>s the sanest ting ve herd u say yet

>But that's not the issue. All I know is that you need to get moving.

>i dun getthis if we'r in trouble by stayi ng here the y the HELLr u hangin around?

>I DON'T KNOW! I'm just doing what you... what I have to.

>rimmer ure not makin ny sense. Look, R u hurt? is that new litbee not workin right

>I'm fine, Listy, and that's all I know. And that's more than you ever needed to know.

>den wassa prblem? ook, just staytight, n well come get u... hm... soon. K?

>You can't land. You're losing Red Dwarf.

>cnt land now; wethers crazy. but we'l get ya outta there

>Lister, for smeg's sake, trust me on this one.

>were not leavin Uthere, n were not sMegging well sMEgging off, right? now what isit ur not tellin me?

>You'll be sorry, that's all I can say.

>whaever, rimmer I'm not in a mood f ur crazy mindgames.

>And I was never in the mood for yours, Listy.

>?

>Never mind.

>dun gimme tha! what ru on about?

>Toodle pips.

>dun toodle Pips ME, u analretentive goit! ve justspent thre days off our chartd corse chasinafter u frettin my mind off wonderin whathe SMeG wus goingN! I din knw if u wre alive R ded man!

>Here's a hint, Listy - I'm dead. Have been for years.

>u KNOW WHATI MEAN1! n now ur givin me all this cryptik nonsnesse. well Im jussnot havin it!


Rimmer cut the connection with a groan. That stupid smegging bastard. Couldn't be bothered to obey a direct order from a superior officer, could he? Rimmer looked with distaste at the filth on his fingers from typing on the smeggy pod computer. He switched to soft-light, let the dirt settle, and switched back to hard-light. He looked through the cloudy plexi viewscreen at the raging storm outside, and pondered.

He knew that, from an independent perspective, he was making little to no sense, and that Lister had some justification for his frustration. He was Rimmer, though, so he didn't dwell on that. Instead, he dwelled on the fact that the grotty bastard was not going to simply do as he was asked to - and very reasonably and politely asked to, at that. The smegger was going to wait out the storm and land. Rimmer simply had to accept that. But if he understood nothing else in this crazy situation, he understood that Lister must absolutely, positively not find him. And that lead him to one thought that he had been doing his best to avoid thinking about. But the cramped quarters in the pod did not give him the room for evasion that he usually liked.

He could not let Starbug find him. Since Starbug would be tracking the pod's homing beacon, he'd just have to abandon the pod.

This meant a trip through the delightful weather the planet had thrown at him to welcome his arrival. Rimmer squinted anxiously through the viewscreen. Rain and sleet fell in sheets, beating a dull tom-tom beat on the metal hull of the pod. Sheet lightning flashed almost nonstop in the sulky, low-lying clouds. Bolts licked down from the clouds to touch the ground, the claps of thunder almost immediate. No, fried hologram was not on his menu; he could not stay out on the surface.

However, on the plummeting descent to the planet's surface, he had not been sufficiently distracted by shrieking like a newly-minted eunuch not to notice a rather large formation of rocks off to what was currently his left. He should strike out for that. It might offer some shelter.

It had smegging better well offer shelter, he thought as he cracked the pod's door and was lashed in the face by freezing rain. He considered switching to soft-light, but that would just leave his light-bee more exposed. He mentally prepared himself for the run, took a deep breath, and sat back in the seat and closed the pod door behind him. There had to be another option.

An hour's worth of unproductive brainstorming later, he once again pulled open the pod door. This time he scrunched his face, took a deep breath, and sprinted like a horny gorilla was on his heels. The rain and sleet lashed at his eyes, making it difficult to see, and he stumbled over the rocky and uneven terrain. The air crackled with electricity, and local buildups played havoc with his hologram. Light snapped painfully at his borders from energy discharge, and a hard snap switched him temporarily from hard light to soft and back again. But up ahead, he could see the large pile of rocks he had seen from the air, blurry from the freezing rain sticking to his lashes. He ran even faster as lightning struck the ground with a deafening crack not very far at all to his right. He took it as a sign that his simulated body did not have a heart, as it failed to leap out of his throat and take off on its own. He stumbled gratefully into the shelter of a large overhang, falling to the ground. He lay there for a few minutes, catching his hologrammatic breath, as simulated sweat trickled icily down his back.

The overhang was large enough to shelter him from the worst of the storm, and once his panic had subsided to a background level, he started to feel along the formation, searching for a deeper fissure or cave in which to better ride out the storm - and the stupid smegging rescue attempt.

Two thoughts occurred to him in rapid succession. The first had to do with the location of the pod's laser pistol, which was back at the pod. The second had to do with the probability of him braving the storm again to go back and get it, which was zero. He swore silently, and continued his search, walking clockwise pressed against the rock under the overhang.


Lister banged his fist on the console in frustration, and yelled something incoherent. Kryten, who had wandered off to do the dishes, came running back in, a look of horror on his face.

“Sir! What’s the matter? Is Mr. Rimmer hurt?”

“Not yet.” Lister pulled his gloves on tighter, and started off towards the cargo bay.

“Sir?” Kryten shuffled after him, radiating confusion. “Sir, where are you going?”

“I’m going down there.” Lister strode resolutely towards a particular stack of crates, and looked around for the crowbar he knew was nearby.

“Down there?” Kryten looked perplexed. “But…” Then, as realization struck, he ran towards Lister, gripping the human’s arms in a tight lock.

“Kryten, let go, man!"

“I’m sorry, Sir, but what you are planning is not only pointless, it is suicidal and stupid. I cannot allow a human being to come to harm!”

Lister, struggling in the mechanoid’s grip, tried to move closer to the crowbar. “I know what I’m doing, Krytes!”

“I’m sorry, I cannot allow it!"

As they moved backwards and forwards in a parody of a mambo, the Cat sauntered in, wearing his brand new mauve suede-leather ensemble with matching boots and fedora. “Heeey! What are you guys doing? Playing find the forked stick?” He picked up the crowbar, and held it up over his head, triumphantly. “I win!”

Realizing the absurdity of the situation, Lister stopped struggling, and sagged to the floor. “We gotta get him out of there,” he sighed, dejectedly. “Something is very wrong, I can feel it.”

The Cat gave him an odd look. “Wrong? What could be better than life without Captain Charisma?” His grin stiffened when he noticed where they were standing, and his eyes flicked from the crowbar to Lister to the crate, and back again. “Hang on,” he said, “was he trying to do what I think he was trying to do?”

“Indeed, Sir,” Kryten said, in somber tones.

“Are you crazy?” The Cat hissed at Lister, and moved slightly away from the human. “You wanna get killed?”

“Why is everyone freaking out about this? It’s just a flight-suit. People use them all the time.”

“Stupid, dead people use them, Sir.” Kryten moved towards the crate protectively. “And they were diving under normal conditions. The storms on that planet are class turquoise on the Helgeland scale. You’d never make it.”

Lister made a face, not wanting to admit the mechanoid was right. “What do you suggest we do then?”

“I suggest, Sir, that we try calling Mr. Rimmer again.”

“I already tried that; he’s not responding.” Lister took his hat off, and started turning it round and round in his hands.

“Oh,” the mechanoid replied smugly, “I didn’t mean on the console…”


Rimmer sat in a depression in the rock, feeling a depression of his own. Part of him said that he should find a better shelter than this, but the rest of him beat that part of him very soundly and told it to smeg off. The electrical storm had not been good to his lightbee; the edges of himself still flickered and crackled, and he sat with his head between his legs, feeling the same vague nausea that Lister's orange moonboots used to elicit. He would just have to count on the weather to keep him hidden. He decided the situation could not possibly be worse. He was quickly proven wrong as Lister's voice sounded in his head.

"Is this thing on?"
"Hello?"
"Rimmer?"

Rimmer leapt to his feet with an unmanly squeak, banging his head against a chunk of rock. He swore, grabbed his head, and looked around wildly for the source of the voice. "What the smegging fuck?" he gasped.

"This is amazin' - I can hear ya!"

Rimmer, unable to find any source for the voice, looked heavenwards. "Not only have I suddenly gone schizoid, but my subconscious sounds like Lister. I'm in hell."

"I'm not yer subconscious, you gimboid; it's me!"

Rimmer could not help looking around. "I feel so much better. What the fuck is going on?"

"We hacked into yer light-bee. Kryten says there's an override module if the computer is down and can't communicate with ya."

Rimmer sighed and crossed his arms. His hologram crackled ominously. "I just can't get away from you, can I?"

Lister laughed. "Too right, man."

Rimmer groaned and sat back down on the rough ground.

"Now where the smeg are ya?"

"Listy, just go," Rimmer grated.

"No."

Rimmer pinched the bridge of his nose between two long fingers. "Why the smeg won't you just go?" he asked, surprised at how exhausted his voice sounded.

"That's not what I do, Rimmer. You know that. I won't leave you behind."

"I have no idea why not," Rimmer grumbled.

Lister snorted. "You really hate yerself, don't ya? You might be a smeghead, Rimmer, but yer one of the team. And I won't abandon you. Simple as that."

Rimmer sighed and leaned his head back against the wall. "You're going to keep piping your damned chipper smegging voice into my head until I tell you why I left, won't you."

"Hang on a bit..." Lister's voice sounded quieter, almost uncertain. Rimmer heard what sounded like muffled voices buzzing in his head. That tears it, he decided. If Lister pipes through hold music, I'm going to go insane.
"Right, I asked the Cat and Kryters to leave. It's just you and me now. What's wrong, Rimmer?"

Rimmer decided just to tell the smegger. Let him figure it out. "You told me to leave."

"What?"

"Remember when we were going lightspeed on Red Dwarf, and saw future echoes?"

"Yeah? Wait..."

"Well, we came close to a singularity the night I left. Something small and very, very dense. Neutron star, black hole, one of your scones. Something like that." Lister snorted. "We just barely brushed the gravity well, but it must have altered time enough for me to see a future echo. I saw... you."

"What did I say?"

"You looked winded. You said, 'I know you can't see me, but I know you saw me at this point back in the past, so I'm saying this in the present for you to hear in the past.'” Rimmer paused; that sounded a little off. “Well, something like that. Then you said it was worth your hide and mine to bugger off of the ship to the escape pod. I thought it was a stupid prank of yours. Then I saw me..." Rimmer stammered to a halt and closed his eyes.

"You saw yerself?"

"I was on the ground; my shirt was ripped; I looked desperate. I said, 'Trust him, Rimsy.' And then I told me not to tell you that you told me to do what you told me to do... er..."

Lister sounded as confused as Rimmer felt. That served him right, Rimmer thought. "So hang on, hang on... The future me told you, that you'd told him... No... Wait... " Lister's sigh hissed in Rimmer's brain.

Rimmer twisted his mouth. "Erm, shall I take it from the top?" he asked, trying to line it all up.

"No, wait... There's something not right about that, yeah?"

Lord save us from Captain Obvious. "Really?" Rimmer asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"How would the future me know you'd see me, unless he knew we'd have this conversation? Which means we were supposed to have this conversation, yeah?"

Rimmer raised his head and looked around the cave, making sure nobody was there to see the utterly abashed look that swept over his face. "Oh. I... hadn't thought of that."

"Um... What does this mean?"

Rimmer sighed. "I lost track of this about three incarnations ago." Something else was beginning to bother him. Greatly. "How the smegging hell did you get me in on this?"

"Look, man, seems to me whatever's going to happen is going happen anyway. That's what it was like with those first echoes we saw too, yeah? We can't change anything, so why worry about it? As soon as the storm clears, we're coming down to get ya."

Rimmer was unconvinced. "But how do I know that now is the time to come back? Maybe I'm supposed to come back at some time other than the time you're trying to make me to..." He stopped, tried to restart, and stopped again. "Oh, to hell with it."

"Stop trying to make sense of it, Rimmer, it'll just give ye a headache. God knows it's given me one."

Rimmer covered his eyes with his palm and put his head back against the rock wall. "What in hell is going on, Listy?"

"Beats me, man," Lister answered, helpfully. "Where are you, anyway? The pod was signaling that it had been vacated."

"In a rather nice little cave somewhere nearby." Rimmer lowered his hand and looked around the tight rock confines. "Sparsely furnished, but the neighbors are quiet." Lister laughed, then stopped.

"So wait - you went out in that storm? What about yer light bee? Are you all right?" Lister's voice sounded concerned. Rimmer grated his teeth at the thought of the absurdly sympathetic look that would be crossing his face. He looked down at his unstable projection. "Not doing so well... And that was before I started hearing your voice in my head."

Lister's voice sounded uncertain, now, as well as concerned. "Eh? Are you hurt? Or... I dunno... Malfunctioning? Or something..." his voice trailed off, embarrassed.

"Listy..." Rimmer grumbled, irately, "just come pick me up." He twisted his face in annoyance. "Unless you come back and tell yourself not to."

"We're coming, but it'll be a few days... Are you going to manage?

"Well, from the looks of things, I suppose I end up managing, don't I?"

"Oh, right. Right. This is all too weird for me."

"There's one very big favor you can do for me, Listy," Rimmer said, with sincerity. He paused, and snapped, "Get your smegging voice out of my head!"

Lister snorted again, giving Rimmer a magnificent mental picture of his nostrils and the contents therein, and laughed. "Ye say that now... Just wait 'til you've spent a few days in solitude. But whatever you want, man. "

"I can reflect on my past sins, and repent. Joining JMC, for starters."

There was an odd note in Lister's voice as he replied, "Yeah... We all have our regrets, eh?"

"What are you going on about?" Rimmer asked.

"Kryten said you could contact us by giving a mental command or something. You'll probably figure it out. You'll have time for it, anyway."

"Just keep yourself from crashing on the way down, miladdo." Rimmer snapped out the parting shot, but then rested his head on his knees, exhausted, and let himself drift. The last thing he heard was Lister's quiet voice saying, "See ya later, smeghead..."