Leaving the body in the stasis pod was an appealing option, but that would just breed its own type of waiting. Rimmer felt an urge for some kind of finality. His lips twisted. Take the body to the village. That's what he'd do. He'd give them their sodding Sleeper, tell them he was now a Pushing Up Daisieser, and they could smegging well bury him.

Rimmer stood, feeling eerily calm. Perhaps some part of him had seen those vitals and knew all along, had spent however many years curled up in a corner of his psyche with a bottle coming to terms with it, and was now ready. The procedure to open the pod was ludicrously easy; the only complication was a deliberate safety. He lifted the dull red cover of the safety and flipped it. After that, just two buttons pushed simultaneously, and the lid of the stasis pod slid back. Far too quickly. Rimmer found himself face-to-bloody-and-cold-face with Lister's body, blood no longer trickling from his forehead, his chest still. The hole in his chest was bigger than he remembered, observed the part of Rimmer that was not gibbering and jumping up and down in his mind. He reached out and touched Lister's neck, as if to assure himself that the computer had not simply misread the vitals. No blood ran under that rapidly cooling skin, and the feeling of dead was so eerie that Rimmer jumped backwards. He stood in the middle of the room, grateful for the pod's high sides, as he could no longer see Lister from that vantage.

The chunk of meat that used to be Lister, that is.

It was a pity, in some ways, that he could not, as he could not see the hole in Lister's chest rapidly fill in and disappear, the gash in his forehead fade to nothing, or the bloodstains vanish from his grotty clothes.


Darkness. Darkness for ever and ever and ever, and nothing; cold endless nothing...

Then light. And then there were memories; faint, wooly memories of shaking hulls and smoke and sharp smells, and pain. Lister gave a deep, gushing, wheezing breath, loud and painful to hear, like trying to suck in a hurricane. There was no room for thought yet. His entire world consisted of air, far too little air; air that needed to be in his lungs.

Rimmer froze at the sound that came from the pod, his jaw working. His eyebrows tried to leap off of his head and huddle in a corner.

Lister breathed twice more, until his body was sufficiently satisfied that yes, it was, in fact, being supplied with oxygen. He blinked with unseeing eyes. Slowly, the world came into focus, sending signals to his befuddled brain as it gradually got used to working again. There. Oxygen: check. Neurons firing: Check. Sensory input being received: Check. Put it all together...

Through a mouth opening wider and wider, a primal, desperate wail escaped, rising in pitch and intensity, until it filled the narrow metal space, echoing from the walls, ending in frightened, choking noises, as Lister's thought processes began to set in, and he began to wish they hadn't.

Rimmer jumped away from the pod, landing on some long-unused lab equipment. He fell on his bum, smashing some of it. He stared at the pod, wide-eyed. What the smeg was that noise?

Pure reflex made Lister sit up in one rapid motion. He shivered, taking in the environment around him. It looked familiar, yet not; metal walls, panels, wires, but the positions they were in and what they looked like... He blinked. The smell, too, the smell was all wrong. And there was something odd about the light. It felt wrong - it just all felt wrong. He felt like he'd been sent through a garbage compacter and straightened out again in under a second.

No. This was... this was some hallucination brought on by being too close to some of those clones smoking that weed they loved. Rimmer scrabbled backwards, hitting the pod wall. He pointed at Lister with an unsteady finger, as if putting his finger in his field of vision would dispel anything less real than it. "Wh... h..."

Lister had no sense of place, no sense of self. There was only a vague, blurry sense of who he was floating around his mind in a cloud of displaced ideas and memories. Causality seemed to have stopped working; he hadn't been here a moment ago, had he? He was crying, he realized suddenly; holding onto himself as though he was afraid he might lose his body, too.

The finger point had not had the intended effect. Rimmer got to his feet, pressing himself against the pod wall, wishing that he did not have a light bee. He wanted to turn to soft light and just fall through it.

As his head jerked around this way and that, looking for some point of reference, Lister's eyes caught Rimmer. He'd never been so glad to see the hologram in his life. Finally, here was a something known; something safe! Shaking like a leaf, he managed a weak, almost inaudible "Rimmer...?"

"Wh... h..." Rimmer's voice was not working properly. This was an even worse dream than the one earlier. Hallucinations. It had to be. No, his light bee was malfunctioning. Or maybe, after all this time, he was finally bonkers. Hell. Hell! He slid across the wall to the pod door, his fight-or-flight responses calling in a loud chorus for the latter.

Yes, yes, it was Rimmer! For reasons as fuzzy as his clouded memories, this made Lister feel at home on a very basic level. In a louder, warmer voice, he asked, "Rimmer?" Finally, he knew he wasn't insane; Rimmer was there. Whatever had happened, they'd work it out together. Part of him that was not entirely awake yet insisted that Rimmer might actually be more of a hindrance than a help, but at the moment, staying conscious and sitting upright were taking far too much of Lister's attention.

Rimmer stumbled back through the door. "G... get the smeg away from me!" He tripped over some green, leafy thing, and fell into the soft undergrowth, scrabbling backwards.

Lister's teeth were chattering. Memory was returning, mercilessly. "They... We... I..." An explosion. Their future selves. Something must have happened, he thought, returning to the here and now. The time-drive? Rimmer would know; he should ask... but the hologram wasn't there. "Rimmer?" The hologram had been his only link to sanity. Now he was totally lost. He felt his body spasm; he wanted to throw up. He had to get out of here. If only his limbs would obey him! Shit. What the hell was this place? He was all alone, and probably going completely mad, by the looks of it. Seeing Rimmer, not seeing Rimmer... Lister's chest hurt. Quite a lot of him hurt, in fact. His forehead, his arms, his legs, his gut. It was like being majorly hung-over without the slight comfort that at least you'd had a good time the night before.

Lister grabbed the sides of the pod, and rested for a moment. Smeg, what was wrong with him? Just grabbing the smegging pod and getting out shouldn't be so hard! With a massive heave, he got himself over the side, falling to the floor with an unpleasant oomph. Landing on his ass meant no bones were probably broken, but it was no more comfortable for that reassuring thought. Sore, scared, hurting, he crawled towards that too-bright opening that was the only way out of wherever it was he'd ended up. His jumpsuit caught on the metal rivets of the floor, hindering his progress, and his hands hurt from the effort. Had he drunk himself into this mess? It wasn't impossible. He'd drunk his way to Mimas, after all. Maybe he'd drunk himself back there, three million years into the past. That would certainly explain the state of him.

Rimmer pushed backwards through the undergrowth until he backed up against a tree. He stood there, braced against it, staring at the pod with eyes like saucers, as if daring it to spit anything else out at him. It obliged. The Lister-looking thing stumbled out of the pod, as if its legs were not functioning properly. It fell, crying out in pain. Rimmer grabbed the tree with both hands, looking at this... thing that should not exist.

Something - a step, perhaps? - sharp and metallic, scraped across Lister's stomach as he slithered out of the narrow space and into... sunlight? Smells, sights and sounds bombarded him, making his intestines flop about inside him in confusion and disorientation. He crawled a few feet further, just enough to get him away from that sharp whatever, and lay still. He had no more energy left in him. Alone. He was smegging alone, god knows where, and he going mental. Lovely. Giving up, he started sobbing very quietly, breathing in too-clean air and healthy soil. It wasn't helping. He couldn't even raise his head.

Rimmer's jaw worked. "What..." he squeaked. The Lister-thing made no reaction, merely sobbed quietly, looking so much like Lister... Rimmer yelled, loudly, "What the smegging fuck is going on?" His voice was almost a wail at the end.

A voice. Rimmer's voice. So he was here after all? Then why had the smegger left him? Irritation and anger giving him extra reserves, Lister raised himself up on one arm. Looking up, squinting, he could just about see a very familiar face glaring at him like he was about to be attacked. "Where 'm I..." he asked, weakly. "We was... We was..."

He was, Rimmer's brain gibbered. He should not be is. "You were smegging dead!" Rimmer shrieked. "Dead as a c... c..." He couldn't finish.

The extra reserves gave out, and Lister fell down again, hurting his jaw. He swore, getting dirt into his mouth and nose, making him swear and spit again. "Whurey t'n 'bout?" he asked the ground, trying not to repeat the process.

This couldn't be a hallucination. It was too solid, too enduring, too smegging lifelike. Maybe he was going nuts. No. He would not allow that. Something was here, something that looked like Lister, and he was smegging damned if it was going to make him think he was crazy! Rimmer pushed himself away from the tree, walking towards Lister. "What did you do?"

It's not bloody hard, Lister told himself; just lift your head and move your eyes. It took some doing, but he got there in the end. "D... Do?"

Rimmer leaned down, grabbing Lister's collar, and hauled him up with a manic strength. "What did you do?" Tears of anger were starting to seep out of his eyes. How dare this... whatever-it-was take Lister's shape? Lie where Lister had lain? The thing shook along with Rimmer's unsteady hands.

Lister yelped in pain and surprise, his tortured body echoing his earlier swear-words in protest. Rimmer had gone mad. Rimmer, not him. This gave him some relief for about half a second, before he realized the consequences this implied. Shit. He tried to breathe. He could not struggle, could not speak. Helpless in a crazed Rimmer's arms. His prospects were not good.

Sodding thing... "What did you grotting well do, you useless smegging pile of dormouse droppings?"

Lister started coughing pathetically. Yes, pathetic was the word. I wish I knew, Rimmer, he thought, as his brain swished back and forth in its fluid-filled basin. On the whole, it felt there had been rather enough of that now.

Same face. Same facial expressions. Same braids. Same smell. "Stop it!" he yelled in the thing's face.

In a desperate attempt at self-preservation, his brain forced out one word. "Wha?"

"Gaaaah!" Rimmer spat. The same fecking scouser voice.

More words. They were all he had, and he needed them, dammit! "Rimmer... man... hurting... me..."

"I can't hurt a smegging dead man, can I?" Rimmer shrieked. "Who are you?"

"Don't..." Lister's eyes were wet. He didn't know what to do to stop this, and it hurt! And Rimmer was looking at him like he didn't know him, but with such anger! Nothing made any kind of sense anymore. Lister wanted to go home; fall asleep and then wake up from this nightmare. "Don't... under... under.."

"Stop playing with me!" Rimmer yelled, in his face. It was no good. This thing was unrepentant. Fine. It could have its fun. He dropped the thing, spun on his toe, and started to stride away.

Dropping hard to the ground for the second time in rather rapid succession, Lister squealed in pain, and panicked. Rimmer trying to kill him was bad, but being left alone in this place was no good either. As loud as his protesting lungs would let him, Lister yelled, "Arnold Judas Rimmer!"

Rimmer stopped like he had been shot. The first two. They were his name, too, the parts he hadn't thought of in... How did this sodding thing know? He spun back around, his hands shaking.

"What... What the smeg..." Lister asked, more quietly, more out of necessity than anything else. He sat up, feeling at his throat. He seemed to be OK. Which, he added mentally, noting the contortions performed by the hologram's facial features, was more than he could say for Rimmer. As the crazed, fretting man seemed to do little else but stare at him, Lister finally had time to come to terms with the fact that he was clearly in some sort of... nature. That odd brightness was warm, pleasant sunlight. His skin soaked it up like a rain-starved desert soaked up water. Sunlight. That was quite good, actually.

"You're... you were..." Rimmer was babbling. His world was cracking at the seams, ready to fall apart. "Dead."

There was a... calming influence about this place. Sitting on the ground, every inch of his body aching, Lister nonetheless started feeling strangely at peace, like he belonged. He turned his attention back to Rimmer, seeing him as though for the first time, starting at his boots and moving his gaze up his body very, very slowly. Same tight blue trousers. Same ridiculous jacket. Same stubbornly neat hairstyle, trying to control curls that were never meant to be kept in captivity. And yet, something was different. He studied that too-familiar face, grasping for what it might be. "I don't think I am anymore."

"Dead men don't walk!" Rimmer spat.

Despite his weakness, Lister raised an eyebrow. "Right." He paused for breath, annoyed that he had to. "And that's just a novelty tattoo on... on yer fore.. head. Eh?"

Lister's face looked at him, all chirpy, just like his sodding clones'. His sodding clones. It all fell into place with a crash that dwarfed the 2065 fall of the Euro. She had brought the prank to him, and he had fallen for it. So one of the smeggers had decided to one-up her, in that way they did. Some smegger who looked a lot like their sodding Sleeper. Who had hidden and watched the Watcher type the code to enter the pod. Who had found the Watcher's real name in the logs somewhere. Just the type of blasted thing those goits would think was really funny. Rimmer's voice fell out like three hundred years and change had been stuffed into it. "Stop it."

So much for trying to find the difference, Lister thought. There it was, right there, that ancient voice. Lister stopped and stared.

Rimmer slid to a seated position, reality washing over him, sweeping away all of his energy, leaving only an icily calm deadness. "I can't take... pranks."

"What happened..." Lister asked, in a still voice. Whatever had happened to Rimmer, it clearly had not been as pleasant as this place - this planet - felt.

"I don't smegging know!" Rimmer squeaked. "If you don't know what you are, how can I?"

"But... eh?" Lister squinted into the too-bright sunlight. "It's me, Lister. Dave."

"Dave is dead."

"Yeah, you keep saying. But I'm not, am I?" Lister resisted the urge to look for an 'H' on his forehead. He'd know if he was dead, wouldn't he?

"You're not Dave," Rimmer growled. "You're one of... them."

Lister shook his head, shuffling into a seated position. There had to be something seriously wrong with Rimmer. He glanced back in the direction he had crawled from. A pod. They must have crashed here - wherever here was; he'd been knocked unconscious, and something had happened to Rimmer. He watched the hologram, his expression as unreadable as ever, but with things lurking under the surface that chilled Lister to the bone. Oh yes. Something bad.

Anger was brewing in Rimmer. It was just like Lister. The crap he had found funny. "Bastards!" Rimmer spat.

Lister gave a deep, deeeep, here-we-go-again sigh. "I'm one of who, Rimmer?"

"Smegging pranking goited bastards! It's not funny!" Rimmer staggered to his feet. "It's not. Not fair." His nose was itching. He rubbed it with the back of his hand, and a smear of mucus came away.

Crying, now? Rimmer never showed emotions other than fear or delight in other people's misfortune. "What the smegging hell are ye on about, man?"

Rimmer turned to the tree he had been leaning against before, and started to pound on it with his fist. That, at least, felt better. "Ask the smegging Chosen Ones," he spat at the tree. "You smegging clones..."

Whatever it is, Lister thought, it isn't the tree's fault. He exhaled deeply, flopping down on his back. Space-crazy. The man had gone off his rocker completely. In fact, he was off the rocker and airborne, flying off into the bushes somewhere. Chosen Ones. What the smeg? And clones... Lister frowned. His clones? "Eh?"

"Lister's dead. No reason for you," Rimmer told the tree.

Lister stood up again, feeling quite dizzy. So they were on this again, now. "Rimmer, fer smeg's sake, I'm not bloody dead!"

"That's not.. possible," Rimmer told the tree. It rustled slightly, not replying. "They killed Lister. Lister. Cat. Kryten."

"Neither is me waking up here after getting shot by those twonks on Starbug, but there it is, man." Lister paused as the rest of Rimmer's words penetrated. "They what?"

Rimmer forced himself to see the scene. Cat, lying on the floor. Kryten, smoking and sparking. Lister, with a hole a professional body piercer would envy. "All of you. Dead," he told the tree. It chose that moment to rustle its branches again in a breeze he didn't feel, brushing its leaves over his face. He batted them away with a shuddering sigh. He was in no mood to be soothed by a sodding tree.

"Stop talking to that fecking tree!" Lister yelled. The tree's branches waved, making a gesture that reminded him oddly of someone turning up his nose. If this place wasn't so comfortable, he'd be weirded out by that, he decided.

Rimmer jumped slightly and turned, meeting that special glare Lister reserved for Rimmer being particularly obstinate. Arms crossed over chest, legs spread his legs out in front of him. He'd had it up to here with the swutting dead man, starkers or not.

Rimmer frowned. That was a very familiar gesture. The clones used it all the time, mostly for misbehaving children. Oh, so this clone thought there was something wrong with him not playing along? An anger of a different and much more comfortable sort raised its head, and he embraced it, staring levelly at the clone.

Time to get up, Lister thought, pulling his legs towards himself and mulling the prospect over. He needed to brace himself for this. He leaned his head onto his knees. "Rimmer, yer crazy. Ye've gone space-crazy."

Rimmer sneered. He was onto the bugger. "You'd like to make me believe that. You love pranks, don't you smeggers?"

"No, actually I'd rather prefer it if ya started making some kind of goited sense!" Lister sighed into his knees. Fat chance. This was Rimmer.

Rimmer turned away. "Go back to your village... with your smegging pranks and liquor and naked women..."

"Wha?" He's crazy, Lister's common sense insisted, but other parts of his organ of reason (and his organ of unreason) sat up and started paying close attention.

"You've had your fun," Rimmer grated.

"Well, not really, but it looks like I might..." A fierce internal argument had erupted among Lister's organs. Common sense was trying hard to prevail, but it had three million years of celibacy to fight against. It was tough going.

Rimmer started to walk away, tiredly. Back to his hut. To scream a little bit. Maybe figure out a way to exterminate the whole sodding race. No, just pick up and move. Nothing was keeping him here anymore, after all, so why not relocate somewhere farther away from those twonks?

Lister yelled after him. "Oh, come on, man! Give us a break!"

Rimmer's lip twisted. Oh, the clone hadn't quite expected to get lost, now, had he? Rimmer pointed back towards the village. "Over there. Just stay away from my smegging hut."

"Yeah, thanks. I'll get right on that after I get used to me own muscles!" Lister spat back, swearing under his breath. His hut? How long had Rimmer been there? That ancient voice sounded in his mind, but he tried not to think about it. He'd deal with one thing at a time, beginning with how the goited hell he was going to get up without the full control of his legs.

Rimmer looked back. The clone did seem to have some trouble getting to his feet. Maybe he had sprained something when he clambered out of the stasis pod. Served him bloody well right. If only he had broken his stupid thick head. Rimmer strode over, grabbed him, and hauled him to his feet. "For fuck's sake, stop it!" he groused, feeling like he was raising a petulant and obstinate child to its feet.

Lister oofed. "Thanks man. Ye can let go now, I think I can just manage," he choked out. He wasn't sure, but he was damn well going to. Right now he trusted Rimmer even less than usual.

Rimmer let him go with a glare. Stupid smegging twonks. Wanting his help after a prank that was breathtakingly tasteless, even by their standards.

Lister tried out his balance. He remained standing, but only just. "Thanks, smeghead," he said, sprinkling sarcasm over the words like confectionary sugar on a doughnut.

Ah, so they did remember what it really meant. Passed on the real pronunciation in secret, just to dig out for a really good jape. "God, you are mean bastards, all you lot." Rimmer shook his head, biting his lip. It might feel good to punch this twit, he thought.

Rimmer was still sounding about as sane as a substitute teacher after an afternoon with a class of sixth-formers the last day of classes before summer hols. Lister looked around, scratching his head. "You said there was a village, yeah?"

"You know bloody well where it is," Rimmer snapped. He pointed one finger in its direction. It described a shivering arc. "Go.. fecking..."

"We need to let Kryte..." Lister bit his lip. Dead, Rimmer had said. Him and Cat both. But Lister wasn't dead, was he? Still, Lister had a very bad feeling about this, very bad indeed. Krytes would never have let Rimmer get into this kind of a state. "Right. Yeah. Wish I knew how to run a diagnostic on yer bee. I'm just a chicken soup repairman."

No doubt at all remained in Rimmer's mind that he would feel a whole lot better if he punched this clone. "Bastards!" he spat, then turned and ran. He must have dug all of the way through the records on that pod, and found the auto-download of the crew's complement. Scattering out little details to show off what a marvelous prankster he was.

Lister looked after him, and gave a very deep sigh. Never a dull moment with Arnold Rimmer, was there? He hobbled after the hologram.

Rimmer was making lousy progress. He could not see very well, for some reason; everything was blurry, and he kept falling and running into trees. "Rimmer!" he heard, from behind him. His legs became entangled in a vine, and he fell flat on his face. He sat up and tried to untangle himself, rubbing his sore nose.

"You need help, man! Something must have messed up yer systems!" Lister panted. His legs still weren't working as well as they should, and he'd never been much of an outdoorsman. "I just want to help ye!" He finally caught up with Rimmer, tangled in undergrowth, his face a nostrilene study in please-fecking-stop-it.

Any boundary of respectable pranking was long gone. Weren't you supposed to stop when the other person was wise to you? Or was this some kind of initiation ritual, with an endpoint too esoteric for Rimmer to understand? "Why are you doing this?" he asked, his voice small. "Joke over."

"It's not a joke, man." Joke, hell; seeing Rimmer like this was not funny.

"I don't know what you did with Lister's body..." Somehow, this didn't seem important. Just a dead husk. One that would rot away all too quickly. Nothing of Lister left in the body except for the form, and at least some of the smegging clones had that preserved already, didn't they?

"I don't know what yer talking about, but I'm not pulling any smegging prank. I am Lister." Rimmer's words were downright eerie. His body? The way he'd said it - it was as though he'd seen it for himself.

"Can't be." Rimmer tried to make his voice authoritative, but it choked pathetically.

"Me. Dave." Lister pointed to himself, which should have been unnecessary, but the way this conversation was going, it apparently paid to spoon-feed information. "'S me, man. Don't ya remember me?"

"Of course I smegging remember... Lister!" Rimmer snapped. These vines were not letting his feet go without a struggle. They didn't hurt, though, thank whatever deity those clones refused to believe in; they just held him there, firmly.

"Yeah, that's the ticket!" Lister grinned. Maybe the damage wasn't that severe. Heck, maybe Rimmer was just suffering from some kind of shock. He tried to slap the hologram's back, but Rimmer jerked away, shaking. "Dave Lister, yeah?" Rimmer's lip curled "You know me."

"Of course I smegging know... Lister," Rimmer growled. "I put him in that pod..." Rimmer pointed back, towards the pod. Maybe if he explained this slowly and carefully, the clone would finally grok that the joke was smegging over. It looked back in the direction Rimmer pointed. "...and put him into stasis." Rimmer's lip quivered. This was not going to be easy. But if it finally penetrated that jackarse's thick skull, he would do it.

"Oh, eh." What could you say? No wonder Rimmer had thought he was dead; those pods malfunctioned all the time. And this was one they'd snagged off another ship; the vitals readings were probably completely off kilter. Didn't explain why he'd put him in there in the first place, though.

"Too fecking late. The readouts... I never noticed them before."

"So I was in stasis, then. Figures, that."

"Flatline," Rimmer growled. "Stasis isn't flatline."

"No, it's not. Look," Lister said, exasperated, "I'm not dead." He poked his arm. "See? Real." What would it take to convince the man; nude summersaults?

Of course he was grotting well real. "That's because I fecking cloned you buggers off!" Rimmer shouted. "With a targeted randomizer. Made you and the fish and the sodding furry woodland creatures and," he waved his arms at the Lister-generated flora, "the smegging goited trees. Thought you would build a society and fix him up. But he's dead."

"Rimmer, there's only one of me," Lister sighed, tired. Rimmer was flashing back to that time he'd been marooned on a planet with his own clones, no doubt. Whatever was wrong with his bee must be making it worse.

Rimmer pointed in the direction of the village again. "There's hundreds of you smeggers!"

Fine. If he wasn't giving up, Lister would humor him. Maybe, if he managed to calm him down enough, Rimmer would let him get at the bee. "Yeah, yeah, sure there is."

Ah, he had gotten the clone to admit it. Maybe that meant the prank was finally over. Rimmer felt icily calm again. "Yes, of course. You got lost, didn't you. Thought you could just rodent your way back."

"Lost? Nah, man, you put me in stasis, you said."

Rimmer rolled his eyes to the heavens. Smegging damn it, how long was this going to go on?

"Look, just let me have a look at yer bee. Maybe I can suss out what the problem is." Lister held out his hand, hoping that sheer persistence would pay off.

Beyond a prank. Getting into... violation. "I am not letting one of you... fecking bums put your hand on my bee," Rimmer said, holding onto that icy calm. "Look. You got lost. Fine. This way." He got to his feet, kicking away the rest of the vines, and started to stride purposefully towards the nearby edge of the small woods. His vision was clear.

Oh, sod this for a bag of crisps! Yeah, Rimmer was hard to deal with, but it had never been like this! Visions of years alone in this smeg-forsaken place with just a nutty hologram for company prodded Lister's mind. He was almost crying in desperation. "What the hell, man!"

"This. Way." Rimmer noted that the clone was following. Good. He'd be so grateful to get back home and hit the booze and the sex that he'd stop smegging bothering Rimmer.

"Look, yer sick. I dunno what happened, but maybe we crashed, and ya got bumped or something."

Rimmer ignored the clone's words, walking towards the village as fast as he could without running.

Lister struggled to keep up. He had no idea where they were headed, and he strongly suspected Rimmer didn't either. He had to stop this, before Rimmer killed them both through sheer stubborn confusion. When he could get the breath for it, he called out, "I swear, I won't hurt ya or anything, just give me that bee!"

That must be another facet of the prank. If he could get his hands on the Watcher's bee, he'd become a Chosen One, or get a lifetime's supply of that stinking leaf, or bonk the three best-looking women and two best-looking men in the village, simultaneously. Rimmer shook his head and kept walking, as the clone groaned behind him. He paid it no heed.

Rimmer reached the edge of the trees, pointing down at the village. "Down there. Join your... brainless brethren."

Lister squinted. There did seem to be something down there. How had Rimmer known? If he'd been here long, why hadn't he woken Lister sooner? "Yeah, fine, there's a GELF village. So what?"

"Stop it." Rimmer's voice was dead. He turned away, walking towards his hut. "Just leave me the smeg alone. That wasn't... fecking... funny."

"Rimmer, there is no way in smegging hell you are going to make me believe there's a... " People were running out of the village towards Lister. They didn't look particularly furry, or fat, or ugly. Actual people, he realized with astonishment. Humans. "...tribe of..." Oh smeg. Lister stood perfectly still as villagers flocked towards him, all different, but each one looking like a long-lost cousin, or brother, or sister, or aunt. "R... Rimmer..." he said, nervously. "Rimmer man, I take it all back, I believe ya, just get me the smeg out of here!" What the hell was going on?

The villagers were calling something that sounded like 'sleeper', over and over again. A lean, long-haired woman - her hair, unlike many of the others, unbraided - ran ahead of the others, calling back, "Sleeper! The Sleeper has awakened!"

She passed a young boy of about sixteen napping in the mid-day sun, waking him with her cries. Throwing his braids behind his back, he looked up, alert. "What?" When she didn't stop, the boy rushed to his feet and followed her, giggling in anticipation of whatever was about to happen. With this much of a ruckus, it would have to be something spectacular.

It was hard, especially given the workout his body had just been subjected to, but Lister tried to whisper and shout at the same time. "Riiiimmmeeeerrrrr...." There was no reply - and at any rate, there was very little the hologram could possibly do, as the first villager had already reached Lister and was standing in front of him, shining as much as the bright sun.

"Blessed Sleeper," she beamed, taking a garland of what looked like dried leaves from around her neck and holding it out as an offering, "you have returned! Our purpose is fulfilled!" Lister sniffed at the leaves, cautiously. Oh. Interesting...

Rimmer turned as he neared his hut, and watched the proceedings from a very solid distance away. Oh, this was rich. That clone had not told the others about his little prank, and they honestly did think he was the Sleeper. They'd get a shock later. Or maybe they'd just have a huge party and not give a swut. The latter was more likely.

As it always did, commotion and excitement spread like the viruses this planet didn't have through the population, and soon a horde of villagers were making their way towards the strangely clothed man who surely must be the blessed Sleeper. "The Sleeper?" a young woman, still wet from the swim she had interrupted to see the commotion, yelled as she ran, "Is it true?"

Her primary lover, a sandy-skinned, broadly-grinning man, quite common in both looks and stature, caught her in an embrace. "Yes, Lena!" he beamed, "It is truly him!" They laughed and kissed as they called to their friends and family, urging them forwards. The Sleeper! The Sleeper was here!

The swimmer (an apprenticed Chosen One) paused in her excitement as something occurred to her. "Where is The Watcher? We must tell him!"

"I think he's over there," her lover said as they neared the figure whose name they did not know was Lister, panting. Already in the distance, Rimmer walked away rapidly. They could have their smegging party without him.

"Erm... Hiya." Lister glanced with confusion at the eager villagers surrounding him.

"Sleeper!" someone cried. It was impossible to tell who it was through this sea of bodies. Bodies that one and all, in some way or another, looked like him. Clones, he thought. What on Earth had Rimmer done?

Lister started as an older man, his thick beard already white, grabbed his shoulders. "Sleeper! We welcome you," he announced, to the cheering and whooping of the rest of the crowd. There was something oddly infectious about their smiles, and Lister soon found himself laughing and cheering along, despite an ever-growing sense of what the smeg infusing him.

"Where did the Watcher go?" The question came from the woman who first approached him. She was staring off in the general direction Rimmer had gone off in. The Watcher? Was that their name for Rimmer? Hell, Lister thought, for the umpteeth time, how long had he been here?

The Watcher was haring it towards his hut. He pounded inside, collapsing on his bed, making a strange half-wheeze half-whine. Lister was dead. He was... hell, he was free, now. Free to get away from these smegging villagers he only called into existence to heal up Lister, anyway. He could travel. He could see the rest of this planet. He could work out some way to get that pod mobile again and find another planet. He closed his eyes and made an odd squeaking noise into the straw mattress.

"Look, youse guys look real friendly and all..." Lister said, hesitantly, as several of the better-looking younger people put several of those dried-leaf necklaces around his neck, "but really, I should be..." He was cut short by a woman about his height (they were all about his height, save for a few of the women), who planted an enthusiastic kiss straight on his not-all-too-protesting lips. Well. He supposed he could stay for a little bit.


It was, Lister told himself, rather like waking up in the middle of the night with an intense craving for something, flip-flopping your way into the kitchen for a snack, knowing that all you had in the fridge was a brown head of lettuce and last night's half-eaten kebab, only to be presented with three naked women covered in liquor, ready to feed you an impressive array of exotic fruits, drinks and cigarettes. He shook his head politely to the naked brunette to his left, who was carrying a bowl overflowing with ripe, sweet, purple fruit, pausing only to lick whatever concoction she'd been bathing herself in off the inside of her wrist. His head swam just from the smell of it; the taste branded itself onto his tongue rather pleasantly. She thrilled chirpily, and slinked off to offer her bounty to someone else. Lister watched her go, somewhat bemused by himself. She was gorgeous enough, but so was everyone else around here. They seemed to breed for sexual attractiveness, which, when he thought about it, made a whole lot of sense, really.

He turned to the woman that had been standing next to her; a golden-skinned beauty with long, dark brown rasta plaits eerily like his own. Her dark green eyes sparkled with some private joke as she dangled a cluster of what looked like pink grapes, but smelled like honey, in front of his face. Lister, fascinated with the way her breasts seemed to sway in such perfect synchrony above that practically-not-there pleated grass skirt, decided to show off with a move that had the girls running after him begging for a quickie 'round the back when he did it in pubs back on Earth. Sticking his tongue out slowly, he jiggled one of the orbs free of the rest, and, with practiced ease, rolled it into his open mouth where he crushed it meaningfully between his teeth. This did not, however, have entirely the intended effect. For one, the woman's eyes didn't widen in lusty surprise, nor did her lips quiver when he finally swallowed the pulp down slowly. Instead, she winked, and promptly extended her own, long, rosy-pink muscular organ, easily a match to his own, and repeated the trick perfectly. Lister felt his other pink muscular organ swell in appreciation.

"You really are like us," golden-skin asserted happily. "You do look very common."

"Er," said Lister, uncertain to which degree this was a compliment or not. "s'pose I am."

"I am Lena. I offer myself freely." She did that thing with her breasts again, and Lister swallowed.

"Do you, now?"

She nodded. "Yes." With a hand that looked like a smaller version of his own, Lena plucked one of the fresh leaves interwoven with the dried in the garland he wore, and chewed it thoughtfully. This would explain the green-stained teeth he'd seen on some of the older folks, Lister thought. He hoped this lady didn't make a habit of chewing rather than smoking; it would be a shame to mar that face with imperfection. "And you and the Watcher," she continued, having spat out a gooey glob of mashed chlorophyll, "do you share?"

"Share?" We used to share a bunk, Lister thought. Not anymore though. Why was that, come to think of it? He tore a dried leaf off for himself, and rolled it as they'd shown him, lighting it with one of the torches that were stuck everywhere, and inhaled deeply. It wasn't like a cigarette at all, but smoking that leaf made him stop missing them. The taste was sweet and tangy, with a hint of pine. It reminded him a little bit of Christmas, and how long it was since they'd celebrated that properly? It made you do that, this weed - think. Remember. Made you relax, too.

Lena smiled, and leaned in closer, inhaling the smoke from his roll. "Yes. Do you keep to yourself, or do you share?"

Lister snorted, getting the implication, finally. People had been asking him variations of it all night, all with the same come-hither in their eyes. Made sense now, didn't it? "Nah," he grinned with all his teeth, "we're not like that, me and him."

"Not like what?" Lena reached for the roll, and he handed it to her, urging her to sit. As she nodded curtly, they both did, crossing their legs on the warm, feet-flattened dirt of the village commons.

"Not," Lister tasted the word, "lovers."

"Oh," Lena said, simply, as though this was just as natural an explanation as any. And it was, so why did Lister feel the need to elaborate?

"We're just..." Friends? No, not by a long shot. Mates? Chums? Some other reasonably ambiguous form of masculine bond? Teammates? Well, yes, but... he gave up, shrugging.

"He loves you, though," Lena said matter-of-factly, handing him back the roll.

Lister failed to take it. He must have failed in his hearing too, he thought, shaking his head vigorously, until it almost hurt.

Lena laughed. "What?"

"Loves me? You saying he loves me? Why the smeg..." It was too absurd, but she must have gotten the idea from somewhere. Lister didn't even want to think about it, but those goited leaves were making him think about it.

"He has been watching over you since the beginning. He is the Watcher. He seeded us. We come from you," she pointed at him, as though patiently explaining something to an obstinate child, "but he seeded us and gave us our purpose." She smiled, blowing an expert smoke-ring. "And he loves you."

Stupid swutting leaf, making him dwell on this, making his mind go to all sorts of places he really hoped he had forgotten. Drunken revelations on planet-leave, Selby rubbing his face in it; seeing red... it had not been his proudest moment. "He doesn't love me," Lister grumbled. "He hates my guts. Listen," he hastened, as Lena squinted at him, not understanding, "you don't know what he was like. He has no soul. No soul at all, man. I dunno what he's been doing 'round here, but back where we came from, he was a right smeghead."

Lena's eyes widened along with her smile. "You know his true name!"

With a sigh, Lister grabbed the roll back from her. This was getting them nowhere, and all this drink and smoke was making him right horny. Naked women everywhere, throwing themselves at him - even now, as he was chatting to Lena, clearly in the middle of something. Half of them had turned to ask her when he'd declined, come to that. He took a long, final pull on the roll, and threw it away, hoping it didn't hit anyone in the unmentionables. There were half a dozen people copulating around them, so the risk was rather substantial. There was no cry of pain, and he relaxed, leaning closer towards Lena's offered lips. Her tongue was sticking out the way girls said his did, when he got too excited. That was weird, but he was too relaxed by the leaf-smoke to care. Still, as the tip of her tongue touched his teeth, there was... something.

The tongue-tip disappeared as Lena drew back. "What?" she said again, impatient this time. What indeed, Lister thought. Here he was, no sex for several ice-ages, and when it was finally offered by the bucketload, he was turning it down.

"Gotta..." he mumbled, getting to his feet, "gotta get..." Too much. The bloody swutting leaf was making him think too much. He swatted at his head as he almost fell backwards, tripping over an undulating couple. "Sorry," he snapped, before three or four pairs of hands grabbed a hold of him, and tried to drag him over into a dancing, singing, sweaty group of what must surely be teens. It took him at least an hour to get anywhere near the edge of the party, by which time he was utterly, utterly exhausted.


Rimmer lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Trying not to think was leaving him too tense to sleep. It was of paramount importance that he not do so, however, and so he focused intently on not thinking, in the hopes that he would soon be tired enough to fall asleep anyway. He could not breathe. At least he knew he would be spared the presence of any of the villagers chanting at him tonight. From the sounds of the village below, they were having one hell of a bender. It was only natural, after all, to celebrate the return of who they all thought was the Sleeper...

Mental slap. Don't think.

Lister sniffed at the leaves in the opening with a shudder. No more of that for him tonight. The sodding stuff was everywhere. He was far too drunk to manage a proper whisper, but he tried nonetheless. The result sounded something like a wheezing hamster. "Rimmeeeerrr..." Heating no reply, he tiptoed in.

Rimmer shivered. Smegging hell, the heartless blighter was back again. What could he possibly do to get the goit to just smegging leave him alone? "It was... funny." His voice was as flat as Carol McCauley's chest. "Really. Very. Ha ha."

Rimmer still didn't seem to be making any sense. Maybe he'd gotten too wasted, Lister worried. No, he was just barely nicely drunk. Didn't even have trouble walking. As if to demonstrate, he sauntered over to the bed and knelt down next to it. "Hey, man. Feeling better?"

Better? How could he feel better when the smegger wouldn't leave him alone? "Don't you have any heart?" Rimmer was disgusted to hear tears in his voice. But, really, what did it matter? Everyone was gone, his parents, his brothers, his superiors, sodding Lister, Cat and Kryten. The clones were scant enough reason for decorum; they did not care for it, and he did not care for them. "I smegging... miss him."

Well, he clearly wasn't better. If anything, this was worse. "Wha?" Lister asked, worried. Rimmer didn't cry. He whined and pitied himself, but mostly he just snarked. Lister didn't know what to do with tears. "Who?" Kryten?" Certainly not Cat!

"Your fecking goddam Sleeper." Rimmer felt strangely petulant. "He was my Lister before he was your Sleeper." Some goddam myth. They had no right to him.

"Oh? They was calling me that. Saying how you brought me here years and years ago. Good of ye, that." None of them had been able to agree on exactly what had happened, though; every story he'd been told had been more elaborate than the previous one.

Any point at which this jape could potentially have been funny was so far gone you'd need a team of Sherpas to find it. What was wrong with this jerkoff? Was he going to have to die in some unnecessarily nasty way at Rimmer's hands to understand that? Rimmer shook his head, feeling tears spilling out.

He couldn't deal with the tears, dammit! "Oh, eh..." he said, softly, wishing that stupid weed would help him now that he really needed to think. "Don... Don cry..."

"Look," Rimmer took a deep breath. He would explain it just once more, very clearly. If that did not work, he would take the chair and threaten to set about the clone with it until he Got It. They were pacifists - he shouldn't put up much resistance.

"What? What is it?"

"I just don't think it's funny, OK?"

"What's not funny?" It felt like the set-up for the punch-line of a joke, but Rimmer had just said it wasn't funny. Lister's head was beginning to hurt.

"Your joke. Pretending to be him. Laugh for you, maybe." Brainless git.

"Him who?"

"Sleeper. He's just a story to you, I know. But he's a smegging person to me."

Lister scratched his head. "They was calling me that," he said again. And Rimmer had been the Watcher to them. The Sleeper and the Watcher?

Now was the time to shake the chair around and bellow, maybe whack the faux Lister with a few times. But Rimmer felt enervated. He sighed and turned to the wall.

Yeah, turn away, Lister thought, that'll help communication. Do wonders for me understanding what the smeg is going on, that will. Not that talking to Rimmer wasn't always like talking to a wall. Like this one; all dull brownish grey and boring, unspeaking, littered with... Lister's mental gears made a rather disturbing noise as they ground against one another. A section of the wall was covered in tiny, copperplate marks, all exactly aligned and the same size. His eyes widened. There had to be. Oh god... hundreds. And knowing Rimmer, knowing how his mind worked, those wouldn't be days... "Smegging hell..." he said, quietly. "Were you here... You've been here, all this time?"

"Of course." The voice sounded like it was coming from a bad synthesizer.

"Watching me? They call you the Watcher, ya know." The Watcher and the Sleeper. Stasis. Hundreds of smegging years, just waiting.

"I know."

"'Cause you was watching me," Lister said, as though repeating the fact would make it easier to understand.

"I was watching Lister." Some acid had seeped into his voice.

"Yeah, man," Lister said, patiently, "me."

Rimmer shook his head. "Lister's dead. He's not sleeping. I saw the readings."

"Well, I'm not sleeping, but I'm not dead either." He could damn well use some sleep, though.

"No. Because you're not smegging him, you arsehole."

They'd been over that, and it was getting old. Thankfully, selectively ignoring Rimmer was something Lister had become very good at over the years. "Nifty place you have here," he said, pretending that they had an amicable little conversation going. "Bit squalid, but it beats Starbug any day."

Rimmer sat up in bed abruptly. He felt glacial. "How did you..." Lister met his gaze, looking straight into his eyes calmly. Ship's complement, Rimmer thought, desperately. How he got the names. But no, those would be labeled Red Dwarf. It was a nicked pod, so Starbug was not written anywhere on it. Rimmer cast about desperately for something in that pod, anything, that said Starbug, and drew a perfect blank. "I never told any of you goits..." he gasped.

"Told what?"

"That name."

Knowing that he wouldn't have been so relaxed if it hadn't been for the interesting comestibles he'd just ingested, Lister gave a mellow, happy smile. "What, man? What is it?"

Rimmer frowned. "Not possible."

Lister scratched his head again, yawning as he watched Rimmer stare. "You all right again, then?"

Someone had whisked away the box and put another one in its place, after Rimmer had spent so much time trying to fit the pieces together into the picture on the previous one. "I... Not possible. You were dead!"

"You keep saying."

"It's true. I saw the readings!"

"Yeah?"

"Yes. Dead as rap."

Lister cast about the room lazily, knocking the bed curiously, poking at the sheet. Rimmer shifted to the foot of the bed, watching the movements and mannerisms that were somehow subtly different from anything the clones did. His movements were utterly, inexplicably, unarguably Lister. Finally, he looked up and smiled. A smile of which the others Rimmer had seen throughout the decades and centuries were only pale copies. "I'm not dead. You gonna believe me now?"

Rimmer leaned forward, grabbing Lister's jacket, and pulled it away from Lister's torso. He yanked at the jumpsuit and long johns underneath. He paid no attention to Lister's startled, "Whoa, eh, eh!" or his attempts to fend Rimmer's hands away. He stuck his hand underneath the long johns, feeling over the spot on Lister's chest where a gaping hole had been. He had seen it. Felt the raw edges when he carried Lister to the pod. But as he patted all over that general area, he could not feel so much as a scab or a scar. Gone, like it had never happened. "I don't understand," Rimmer sighed.

Lister gasped and hiccoughed as his chest was patted. He was in the sort of mellow state of intoxication where any touch, much less one as intimate and intense as this one, tickled his libido. And the words "libido" and "Rimmer" were not ones he particularly wanted to be connected in his mind, thank you very much. "What are you doing, man?" He tore a flick of his overalls from Rimmer's unresisting hand, and shuddered, mentally shouting at his thoughts to shut up.

"I saw you. Your chest was half blasted away." Rimmer shook his head and pulled his hands back. "After I destroyed the time-drive."

Deciding that the jacket was better off than on anyway, Lister slid it off his shoulders, adjusting his jumpsuit and long johns. He should feel more shaken than he did, he thought. The leaves again? He'd licked quite a few alcoholic girls, too. He frankly never wanted to go back to glasses again. Only way to drink! "Sounds bad."

"After!" Rimmer sighed. The paradox had not resolved after he had destroyed their destiny line, and their future selves were gone. What could explain this? "I thought everything would go back to... before our other selves if I destroyed the time drive. It didn't. I had to abandon ship. Starbug was about to come apart." He felt a desperate need to explain himself.

Though miracle-workers when it came to food and drink, the villagers clearly hadn't quite mastered the art of air-conditioning, Lister realized. No wonder most of them ran around naked; the hut was hot as hell. Or maybe it was just an oven because Rimmer had built this himself, he thought, taking off the top of his jumpsuit and tying it around his waist. He didn't feel the heat, or he'd be half-naked too. "So," Lister said, wondering why the thought of Rimmer's state of clothing was occupying his mind more than this rather important fact, "I died?"

"Yes."

Lister frowned. "But that's impossible!"

Rimmer leaned back, putting his right elbow in his left hand, touching his right forefinger to his lips. A solid day's worth of sarcasm dripped out of his voice. "Really. Why didn't I think of that? Why," he raised his eyebrows in mock shock, "yes, it is impossible!"

So that was what he'd been going on about. No wonder Lister had thought him space-crazy. Rimmer had probably felt crazy, too. Still, no harm done, yeah? "Oh, well. I'm alive now, yeah? That's all that matters." He curled his lips into a smile.

All that matters. Rimmer sneered. Modesty suits you, Listy, he thought. "You're alive - and we're stuck in smegging free-love hippieville."

You would think that, wouldn't you, Lister thought, grinning. No sense of fun, you have. "Yeah, stuck in a paradise with women running around without their kit on! Have you seen them?"

Rimmer twisted his lip even farther. Now that he knew this was Lister, he had to admit surprise that the man had returned so soon. He must have been done very quickly. He gave Lister a look of disgust. "Yes, I have."

"Aw, smeg, who am I kidding!" Lister chuckled. "Ye've been here fer too long and a half. Done most of them, I expect." He gave Rimmer a knowing grin. The hologram might not exactly be Casanova, but he wasn't a eunuch in this lifetime. And how could you avoid those girls? They were on you like flies if they wanted you, which most of them seemed to. And Lister knew that, while obviously charming and handsome and a legendary sex-god, he wasn't always to every girl's tastes. They did seem to love difference, and what was more different from them than Rimmer? Something about that logic prodded the back of his leaf-aided thoughts, but he prodded back, annoyed. Whatever it was, he wasn't ready to be fully conscious of it yet. He didn't know what it was, but he knew that much.

Was he truly implying that Rimmer would have rutted his way through the years with those hussies? "Perish the thought."

"Wha? You don't go in for that, eh?" Lister asked, in a reasonably laddish tone of voice, not knowing exactly what he was implying, and slightly worried about that.

Rimmer waved his hand around. "They have sex with everyone!"

"Yeah, I know - it's brilliant!" Lister enthused. "And they're my clones, ya say?"

Rimmer shook his head and crossed his arms. "Yes, can't you tell? Goits."

"Smegging hell..." Lister said, as the full realization of this hit him. The whole time he'd been there, he'd never seen an unhappy face. No, strike that, there had been a couple, but they'd been deep in conversation with at least one other person, who was trying to cheer them up. Everyone was included in the party; the old folks were encouraged to drink and make as big fools of themselves as the young ones, and everyone had shared what there was of food and drink, and of that there was plenty! These folks made dishes that would make your palate curl up and whimper in ecstasy, and drinks that could numb you from a mile away. They drank and they smoked, and they feasted, but they never got violent or surly. There were no drunken fights; only slow, happy, lazy lovemaking. This, all this, had come from him. "I'm proud of 'em."

Rimmer flopped back onto the bed. For feck's sake. Did he actually think, at some point in the distant past, that having Lister back would be any better? The man was of a one with all of those villagers, after all.

"Ya did good, Arn, me man," Lister beamed. "Ya did real good." Good for Rimmer, too; he'd finally gotten something right. You could probably ship these people in to any major conflict area, and in a week or so, there'd be peace. A race of peaceful, loving souls, raised by Rimmer? Give the man a medal.

Rimmer covered his eyes with his hand. It was just the smegging cherry on top that Lister wished to bestow his blessing for this non-stop open-air hippie folk festival Rimmer had inadvertently created. "Kill me..." he groaned.

Lister laughed wildly. "Hell, no; I'd kiss ya if I didn't think ye'd deck me for it." Where had that come from? Well, he was happy, wasn't he?

"There's a pack of women with no kit on out there who would just love that," Rimmer said through his hand, pointedly.

Yes, there was, wasn't there? And Lister had left - no - fled the scene. Running away from naked women offering their bodies to him to go hang out with his smeghead bunkmate? "Yeah... they... er... I gathered." No, he didn't. He didn't want to wrap his head around what this was about. If it made sense, it couldn't be any sort of good kind of sense.

"And you're done already?" Rimmer asked, acidly.

Lister gave an awkward shrug. "You know..." he trailed off as he realized that Rimmer did not know. Why should he - Lister didn't! "I s'pose I'm... tired... and that." He was wide awake.

Rimmer removed his hand and raised his eyebrow. "Then go to sleep. They," he jerked a thumb in the direction of the village, "all snore too, you know. They won't mind a bit."

That was worth another grin and a laugh. Really, for all his dense incomprehensibility, he could be as transparent, sometimes, as that fiery liquor they'd been bathing those girls in. "And how would you know, eh?"

"I can hear them from up here," Rimmer groused. He could. When the wind was right, a faint night-time chorus of liquid snorts and wheezes would drift into the hut. At least it was bearable from this distance.

"Aaaawww, come oooon... you've done a few of 'em. Admit it! Dead keen on you, they are."

Rimmer frowned. One day ago. One smegging day ago, and he could have truthfully and proudly declared to Lister, with scorn in his voice, that he had not so much as put a finger on any one of those tarts. He considered lying, but the time for lying believably came and went as he dithered. "I... one."

"Eh?"

Rimmer felt a need to defend himself. "I was drunk. She looked..." he snapped his mouth shut with a click.

"One?" Lister was incredulous. "One...." he frowned. "Just one? One every year?"

"Just one?"

"Week?"

"One! One too many."

An unfamiliar sense of protectiveness surged through Lister. "What, they not good enough for ya?"

Of course they weren't smegging good enough for Arnie J.! "No ambition! No... sense of decency!"

Lister sniggered.

"What?" Rimmer asked, testily.

"Wha, in bed?"

Rimmer sighed. "That's all you think about, isn't it."

Really, really warm in here, Lister thought as he absent-mindedly started shrugging out of the top of his long johns. "Nah." He tied the top around his waist, over the jumpsuit. He had no idea why he hadn't thought to do this while he was down there, where the interesting people were.

"Shocked," Rimmer drawled.

Maybe it was Rimmer, Lister thought, lying there in enough cloth to a family of pygmies warm in a blizzard. "Smeg, it's hot in here! How can you stand it with all them clothes on?"

Rimmer looked down at his kit. "They're just light."

"Righ'." Lister was dubious. It seemed incredible that anyone could stand this heat and not even notice it. "Wish I could be dressed in light. This outfit is fit fer space, not the tropics."

"Take it off, burn it, run around naked. They won't care."

Lister smiled and shook his head. "Not my style, guy."

"It's their style, ergo it must be yours."

"We're not all the same. We don't talk the same, for one."

"They learned to talk from me, you twonk!" He paused, shuddering. "I definitely did not teach them fashion." They found his completely appropriate modesty hilarious.

Lister could easily envision the sort of language lessons Rimmer would give. At least he could point to his forehead as a reminder not to drop that particular consonant. "That explains it, then." He claimed to be completely accent-less, but in reality, he sounded more Ionian than a cartful of mining-worms. Lister had wondered why the villagers had sounded so nasal. The no-clothes thing though? Lister mulled it over. "No, I'm not one fer running around naked. Raised in Liverpool, me. Not much call fer that there."

"You'd get quite a few butch boyfriends if you run around starkers in Liverpool, I would think," Rimmer sneered.

Lister chuckled. "And what'd I want boyfriends for, eh?" Rimmer was all too fond of making completely ridiculous 'gay' jokes and insults, to the point where Lister had often wondered if there hadn't been trying to compensate for something. As though anyone cared, in this day and age! Well. As though anyone had cared three million years ago, to be precise. Had everyone been as repressed as him 'round Jupiter way?

Rimmer nodded outside. "They don't seem to care." Over the centuries, he realized, with a certain amount of shock, he had grown somewhat inured to it. He turned onto his side, facing Lister. Perhaps shocking him with it would get Rimmer back in the proper mindset. "I saw two blokes getting it on in the middle of the village once... in public..."

Much as he personally preferred privacy, Lister didn't see what was so wrong about that. He fully understood why Rimmer objected, though, so he did his best to annoy him by not reacting at all. Oh, Rimmer's expression was priceless! Such a stupid hang-up to have; as though sex between two men was any different from sex between any other two or three or whatever people. Who cared? Come to think of it, the voices in his head insisted, there had been times... in the clubs on Red Dwarf, on planet leave in some seedy dive - he'd meet some guy's eye, and... "Ach, well, I won't say I've never..." His eye now met Rimmer's, and he swallowed. Smeg! He was being too honest, too honest by far! Rimmer didn't need to know any of that. "Erm, never mind."

Rimmer raised an eyebrow. "Well, yes, they are your clones." He turned back on his back, staring at the ceiling. Human civilization and sanity were officially gone from the universe.

Lister nodded, nervously, trying not to look at Rimmer. The git was making sense, that was the worst of it. They were his clones. Stood to reason that they would be like him in every way. And so what if he found the odd man attractive; he'd just thought Rimmer silly for fretting about that, hadn't he? "Don' all look like me, though," he mumbled, hopefully, wondering why he cared.

"They like it that way."

"Least not the women." None of the girls Lister had seen had looked anything like him at all, except for the hair, and in some cases, the tongue. Ah. Wrong line of thinking, there; he was getting himself excited.

"Thank god for that." Rimmer shrugged, thinking of one woman who looked far too much like him.

"Right, with you having shagged one and all." Lister laughed, nervously. It had been a woman, hadn't it? Oh, please, god, let it have been a woman. No, hang on, why was that so important? Lister glanced over at Rimmer, but he was just staring fixedly at the ceiling.

After a few minutes of this, one of the most factually accurate things Rimmer had said in centuries passed his lips. "I don't understand any of this." He closed his eyes.

Lister made a non-committal motion that wasn't quite a shrug. "What's to understand? We're here."

Rimmer did not open his eyes. He felt very, very tired; physically, yes, but emotionally, as well. "Yes. I'm stuck here with you and your sodding duplicates."

His head was really heavy, Lister decided. Too heavy to be balancing on top of his neck like that. He grasped the edge of the bed, folding his arms over one another, leaning his head on top of them. It was nice that. Really nice. The thought of shuffling down to the village again now, stumbling his way, stepping over gyrating couples and threesomes was looking less and less appealing. Oh, what could it hurt? He should just ask. "Eh, man. D'ye mind... I don't much fancy sleeping down there tonight."

"Why on Earth not? They don't bite... unless it gets you off," Rimmer snapped.

You have been watching them close, haven't you, Lister thought, raising an eyebrow. "I don't want to know. But they're... too..." his voice was uncomfortable. "Like me. 'S eerie." Too like him, and too good at making him think, with leaves and drink and singing about love, and making him all relaxed and mellow.

"Now imagine three hundred sodding years with them."

Lister raised his head and looked at Rimmer fully. "Yeah." For Rimmer? It must have been hell. But he'd done it. He'd went through years - centuries - of hell... for Lister. "You've... I can't..." He smiled. What could you say? "Thank you." Silly; like it was a birthday card, or a coupon for half-price off baked beans.

"Yes, out of my copious options..." Did Lister really think he would have done this if he had been able to think of a single alternate option?

Lister gave a crooked smile. "Yeah. Well. Anyway, would ya mind me sleeping here tonight?"

Rimmer frowned. Well, wasn't that why he had wanted Lister back, after all? Company, to keep him from going smegging insane? Not that Lister was off to a very good start. "The floor is dirt. But have at it."

"I'll take what you've got!" Lister said, so relieved that he didn't catch the double meaning of his words. He watched Rimmer's other eyebrow slowly rise to meet the first. "Erm... So to..." It was an effort to make his voice appear natural, so it must not be convincingly so. He hadn't meant for it to come out like that! What was wrong with him? He usually thrived on innuendo, but of his own volition. Not through some kind of weird Freudian slips. "So, erm, sleeping, yeah."

Rimmer shuffled himself around so he was lying in a halfway good sleeping position. He crossed his hands surreptitiously over his groin. All of this talk of sex and the naked tarts outside had given him the beginnings of an erection, and he was damned if he was going to explain that one to Lister. "I don't have any blankets. Enjoy."

Blankets were the last thing on Lister's mind right now. He lay down on floor, curling up. "Don' mind." The hut grew quiet. It was a nice, friendly sort of quiet, though; one he hadn't felt since back on Red Dwarf, when they'd had one of those rare nights where the fights had been almost friendly, and they'd said good night to one another, quite amicably, laying there in the darkness. Lister shifted, thoughts swirling in his head. "Hey..."

Rimmer sighed. Despite his exhaustion, he was finding it difficult to fall asleep. "What?"

"What ya said... about missing me. Was that true, and all? 'Cause the villagers..." Lister laughed, nervously.

"Those clones of yours will drive the sanest of men to the brink," Rimmer snapped. Missing Lister. He has said he did, hadn't he, to that sodding clone he had sex with? Of all the clones to sleep with in a drunken moment of stupidity, he had to choose the one who looked the most like Lister, so sex was now entangled with that face, in his mind. His ill-timed erection was not going away.

"They say you love me."

"They're smegging nutters." Rimmer said, quickly.

"Right, right." As am I, Lister thought. It was nuts, bringing this up. It couldn't be just the weed; maybe he'd been the one whose brain had gotten messed up in the crash?

"They tell stories, and get drunk, and build them up, and up..."

"Just... we didn't bunk back on Starbug, and I... well..." Lister looked up towards the bed, "I missed you, man." He missed all of this; the jibing, the jokes; even the flat-out insults. He missed, he realized, just being around Rimmer out of choice; not just because they were in the same cockpit out of necessity.

Rimmer had a sudden uncomfortable thought, and shifted on his bed. "Hell. They probably think you came back up here to have sex with me."

Yes, they would. After all, that's what Lister would have assumed. He laughed quietly. "So what?"

"You'll never hear the end of it." And neither will I.

No, they probably wouldn't, but it was funny that, right? Lister kept laughing. "Ah, they're all over me with stories anyway."

"They'll make up sodding hymns about it. Sing them to you outside of your hut at night."

"Me and you shagging wouldn't be the worst of it." His own words surprised Lister, but they were, he knew, the truth. After all, Rimmer wasn't bad-looking. If he could just shut up for a hour or so, they could have great time... No, hang on, what was he thinking now? He twisted his tongue around in his mouth, trying to see if there were any residue from those leaves still in there; the way they were messing with his mind, he sure thought so.

"What would be the worst of it, then?" Selby had once drunkenly joked about Lister being a bit more than matey with his poncy bunkmate, and Lister had beat him until he got a night in the medi-bay, and Lister got docked a month's pay. Rimmer had heard about it sixth-hand, of course, but he didn't doubt a word. Rimmer had truly screwed up his post-death commission; Lister had gone quite mad.

"Loads of things. I mean, it's not like I'd never..." He trailed off, and listened to the noises of the small woodland creatures, his teeth clamping down hard on his tongue. If only there was something similar he could do to his brain. The larger creatures in the hut were completely silent. "Well, just, there are worse things," he concluded, lamely.

Either mad, or had consumed a bit too much of that weed. "Are you really sure you should sleep here tonight?"

Lister looked up at the bed, Rimmer's silhouette in the dim moonlight. Don't think. Just... don't think. "Unless you don't want me to..." The figure shrugged. Lister giggled, despite himself. "Oh, man. Those songs'd be something."

"They've made the like for other... blokes... who got a little too much into each other." Rimmer shook his head. "Obscene. Rather... detailed." He wrinkled his nose.

Lister giggled. "Oh, eh, what kind of details?"

"They offer... certain practical tips. In the smegging song!" It was like a joke that a five-year-old would find funny. "One verse was devoted to common household substances that can be used for lubricant." Rimmer had never been in the least bit curious about the mechanisms of sex between two men, but now, he had become a reluctant expert - in the theory, at least - thanks to those sodding songs.

"Yeah, they did seem to have a lot of oils." Several of them had tried to pour them on him, and some of them had quite happily poured them on one another.

"Multi-purpose. Cooking, scenting, and fucking. They keep trying to give me some."

It was too funny; Lister could not help it. He giggled again, this time with a snort, clutching at his sides. Laughter was liberating after all this tension.

Rimmer sniffed at the implication. "Offerings," he clarified.

"They're just being friendly," Lister said, through his laughter. "So what, you got some of them oils, then?"

"No, I told them to smeg off with them! I don't cook, and I smell just fine, thank you!"

"Hah, yeah, you would. And ya just bonked the one lady." He emphasized the word carefully, wondering if Rimmer would notice.

That statement brought Rimmer back to thoughts of the lady in question - if that word were not demonstrably a misnomer - which brought him back to her eerie resemblance to Lister, which, combined with the discussion of lubricants, made him very annoyed that he still had a raging hard-on. He listened to Lister shift on the floor. Yes, that's all he knew of her. Who she looked like. "I don't even know her name. Doesn't mean anything to them. Come in, how are you, sex, leave."

"Wha, did she not tell you?" For whatever reason, Rimmer seemed upset by this. Perhaps he had liked her, or him, as they case might well be. There was just something in Rimmer's oddly quiet voice that invited comfort. "Eh, now... I'm sure she would've told you if ye'd asked."

"Oh, so it's my fault."

"No, no," Lister said, plaintively. Why did the smegger have to misunderstand every single word he said? "Just, y'know, she probably just liked ya so much."

Rimmer tried to parse that sentence, and drew a blank. "What?"

"Couldn't..." Lister paused, looking at that familiar face, that familiar body, as something finally allowed itself to click. "Help herself." He shifted on the floor again, the floodgates of feeling now irrevocably open, and sighed. Aw hell. He was in deep smeg indeed.

Rimmer snorted. "I admit that I often like to believe otherwise, but I have never really had a problem with women throwing themselves at me." It tended to be in the other direction, no matter how witty he made his comments about the decline of the quality of Hammond organ music in the early 22nd century, and his theories as to why this could be linked to variations in the trading value of wheat on the European commodities market.

"But she came to you, did she?" Lister asked, quietly. "Must have done so fer a reason." The thing was, he was fairly sure now he knew what that reason would be. He felt it, too.

"She wanted to know aaaaall about the sodding Sleeper. You."

Lister shook his head. "They're crazy about that stuff. Me and you."

"It's a cutsie little romantic tale to lull their kiddies to sleep with." And the adults, as well, who were on a comparable mental level to the kiddies.

"They think we're gonna live together now, ya know. Adopt kids, raise 'em. They were going on and on about it."

Rimmer almost choked. His voice soared into high-pitched incredulity. "Adopt sodding kids?"

He was right to scoff, Lister thought. The two of them? What a laugh, yeah? "Yeah. I like kids, me."

He would. "Good. You should marry one of those bare-breasted birds and have a litter." Rimmer paused. "Wait, they don't marry." He yet to see a single ceremony that could be vaguely construed as a wedding. Even the smegging GELFs married!

"They don't, eh?" Lister had seen family groups of many different sizes, or at least what seemed very much like it.

"Free smegging love, I told you."

That didn't sound quite right. Lister frowned. "Saw quite a few couples keepin' just to themselves. And triads and that."

"Oh, keeping it to themselves for the one evening you were there? That's self-control!" Rimmer flopped around into what might have been a more comfortable position, but wasn't.

Struck by a sudden thought, Lister raised himself onto his elbow, facing Rimmer. "Look, they're part of me, man. Ya think I would cheat?"

Rimmer frowned. Of course not. Lister had been head-over-heels for smegging Kochanski far past the time she had even had a thought for him. Smegging ludicrous. But there was a distinction to be made. "It's not cheating. It's just having sex with everyone. They don't lie about it, from what I can tell."

That was one way of looking at it, of course. Lister had given up on resisting thought, and so he thought about this, long and hard. Hard, indeed. Finally allowed to run free and unrestricted, the what he now knew to be Rimmer-induced tingling down his spine had complete access to his conscious mind, and basked in newfound attention. Yes, hard. Had he ever been this hard?

Rimmer sighed. "Look, why don't you go find one of those nice birds and get a start on bundle of babies, since you can't get this topic off of your mind." He looked down at Lister's below-waist mind.

Lister looked up and met Rimmer's eyes. Could he see the erection, underneath the jumpsuit and long johns tied off at his waist? Impossible. But maybe... The idea of Rimmer looking at his cock didn't exactly help matters. He swallowed. "I..." Words failed to come to mind. "Don't want... that."

"You just said you wanted it!"

"Yeah, kids and that... some day. Not smegging right now." Right now, he was shocked to find, he wanted to stick his tongue so far down Rimmer's throat he'd beg for mercy, then maybe get down on his knees in front of him...

"That's good, because I could not sleep with you boinking some tart on my floor," Rimmer grumbled.

Sex - woman? Woman-sex? Floor... Sex on the floor? There were too many words and not enough doing, Lister felt. "Wh... Y..." He fretted and bit his lip. What a fine mess he'd gotten himself into here, eh?

Rimmer closed his eyes, determined to end the conversation and smegging sleep.

Lister looked towards the bed. Stupid erection. Stupid weed for making him realize why he had it. Stupid Rimmer for being attractive. Stupid him for not barging over there and licking every inch of the bastard's body. He banged his head against the dirt floor, gritting his teeth.

"Lister!" Rimmer said, exasperated. "Are you sodding mad?"

"Yeah..." Lister mumbled. "What?" He looked, and saw Rimmer waving from Lister's head to the floor. "Oh. Just... couldn't sleep." He tried not to look at his erection. It got excited when people paid attention to it.

"And you were hoping to knock yourself unconscious? Brilliant..."

Lister sighed. "Sorry if I woke ya." Sorry I'm a horny, cowardly idiot. Sorry you're a smeghead. Sorry, sorry, sorry...

"I can't sleep." Not with you gabbing and putting strange thoughts in my head, Rimmer added silently. He stood up and walked to the chair. "You take the sodding bed."

"Yeah?" Lister asked, surprised. He sat up. Don't ask questions, he thought; not of him, not of yourself. Just do this. He looked at his clothes, dirty from the floor. "I should, er..." he stood and started taking his jumpsuit off of his legs, stepping out of his boots, ending up in just his long johns, the lower half of which was clean. The top, however, was badly soiled from the dirt floor. He looked at them. "Smeg..." Not that it mattered all that much, in this heat, he thought, stepping out of them. He might well have slept naked if it hadn't been for Rimmer being in the same room, staring so oddly at him like that; he wasn't sure he'd be entirely... A grim realization struck him as he suddenly realized why Rimmer was staring. He wasn't wearing anything underneath. Nicely subtle, Dave. Good one. Real charmer you are. What's next, waving your bits in his face? He turned, quickly, trying to pretend he hadn't noticed, but his delay had been too long for that to seem even remotely credible.

With all of the talk of naked women and sex, Rimmer was not in the least bit surprised to see that Lister had an erection. He had probably worn out the birds and come by before he was quite done. "Would you like me to leave while you take care of that?" he snapped, standing.

"Don' be..."

Lister tried to interject, but Rimmer was muttering to himself. "Not even one smegging day re-alive, and..." Slightly offended, Lister raised his voice over Rimmer's mumbling, "I wouldn't..."

"Oh, yes, you would," Rimmer snapped. Lister would beat off whenever the mood struck him, including at 2am on the morning of one of Rimmer's exams, and he would not be quiet about it.

Lister blushed, grateful for the dim light. He grabbed the flimsy sheet off of the bed, folding it around himself as he clambered into bed. "I wouldn't, OK?" There was such a thing as privacy, to him. Privacy, and common courtesy. Waiting to jack off until you were alone was a matter of principle to him, and if he got the urge late at night with Rimmer in the room, he'd force himself to fall asleep and forget about it. That worked like a charm; when he woke up again, he was always completely sated. No use telling that to Rimmer, though; he'd clearly made up his mind Lister was a pervert. "You sure this is OK? Me..." he indicated the bed.

Rimmer sighed. "You don't want to sleep with the smegging horny villagers. You couldn't sleep on the floor. What now?" He sounded petulant. But hell, he felt smegging petulant. All of his waiting and worry, and now it was just like having another one of those clones. Why did he think Lister would have changed anything about this situation? All that Lister had done so far that the clones didn't were two things he had never done before; he had made Rimmer distinctly edgy and distinctly erect.

"I'm fine... Just so long as yer fine..."

"Delightful, Listy."

The bed, spartan though it was, did look inviting, and Lister nodded, uncertainly. He put his head down where a pillow really out to be, but wasn't, and watched Rimmer sit back down in that stiff-backed chair with his fingers steepled, and winced. "Are you gonna sit there all night?" It couldn't possibly be comfortable.

What do you smegging care? Rimmer thought. Just go to sleep already! "Perhaps."

Lister rolled his eyes. "In that thing? Ye'll ruin yer back."

Rimmer stood. "Look, if I'm making you nervous, I'll just take a short walk."

Annoyed that he should have to apologize for a friendly comment, Lister flopped back onto the mattress. "I'm just lookin' out for ya. Can't a man look out fer his mates now? Don't leave just fer that." Could they never just have a normal conversation?

When had Lister ever cared about his smegging back? "Yes, Listy, and you've been dead for a good long while. You really need a good night's sleep."

Lister sighed. He really was very tired. Not to mention horny. Great. He was on a world overflowing with topless, beautiful women, and he chose to salute the flag of Arnold Judas Rimmer instead. Good one, Listy, he snarled at himself.

"Snore away, Listy. I'll be out of listening range." Rimmer sidled out of the hut, almost tripping over the bottle of scented oil that had been pointedly placed there.

"Not... gonna..." Lister muttered, as his consciousness slowly slipped away into a snore.


Rimmer walked down the hill in a dignified manner until he heard the snore. He ran. He needed some place to be smegging alone, to sort through what had happened that day and try to bloody well get a grip on himself. The village and its surroundings were out. The pod was tempting, and he ran into the little forest, but stopped abruptly halfway in. No, he was not going to sit in the pod with the bloodstained stasis pod and the cloning equipment. He looked up, and saw that one of the nearby trees was perfect for climbing, with large, well-spaced branches. That would do. He clambered up until he came across two solid branches that V-ed away from each other in the horizontal direction. He sat between them, hooking one knee over each branch. He settled back, leaning his head against the trunk and closing his eyes. "Swut." Crazy, senseless, utterly nutters day. The clones' lunacy was contagious. He had actually come to think, over the centuries, that something magnificent and cathartic would happen if Lister were to awaken. No, he had simply gotten his old bunkmate back, as irritating as ever.

The tree started to move, as if in a wind that must have built up in the previously still night rather abruptly. Rimmer looked around nervously, concerned for the integrity of perch. But the branches that formed said perch were sturdy and still. Rimmer leaned back; the tree had oddly warm and soft bark of a pleasing, light brown color, and it was quite soothing to lie against. As were the smaller branches, blown by that oddly quiet wind, that moved over his torso, almost in a caress. Rimmer shifted. This was not helping his inexplicable horniness, at all. But now, at least, he had the privacy to do something about it. He opened his trousers, spat into his hand, and started to stroke.

The branches under his legs seemed to undulate, and Rimmer stopped stroking himself, grabbing the branches with both hands "What the smeg..."

Of course the branches were not moving. It must have been his mind. Rimmer let go and leaned back, closing his eyes and sighing. A wind he did not feel made a matching sigh in the tree. The branches that had rubbed against him shifted slightly. It made Rimmer feel queasy, but not enough so to overcome how ragingly horny that conversation with Lister had left him. He grabbed the trunk with one hand, his queasiness not helped by the oddly un-bark-like bark. It seemed almost to move under his hand - but no, that was more tricks of his mind. Rimmer settled back against it again; it certainly felt good on that score. He moved his hand to his mouth, licking it, finding the gentle movement of the tree in the wind rather soothing, now. He stroked himself, slowly, whining nasally, as the leaves rustled in concert. Some of them brushed over his face, and he sighed, still stroking. The trunk resisted his pushing against it, almost as if it were pushing back. He rubbed against it with his back as he stroked, his buttocks fitting into a slight wedge in the trunk. What an oddly conveniently shaped tree this was, he thought absently. The branches under his legs were warming as he settled into a rhythm. He pulled air in through his cavernous nostrils and out through his mouth as he reached his other hand down to stroke his balls.

The branches under his legs seemed to sway slightly, moving towards and away from one another. Rimmer was too caught up in his activities at that point to notice all that much, however, and he simply rode it, spitting on his hand again and stroking harder. His wiggling was driving his buttocks farther into the wedge, almost as if the tree were squeezing them. Rimmer had giggle at that idea, then gasped as he wiggled in farther, his buttocks receiving a solid squeeze. He moaned, loudly. His frantic movements had dislodged some smaller branches, and they came to rest on his shoulders, pressing down. Rimmer leaned into them as he pumped harder. He had never understood nature freaks until now. He opened his mouth, panting, and as the branches on his shoulders moved with his movements and scraped his cheeks, he came, rubbing against the trunk, semen spurting sluggishly over his hand. He used it as lube to stroke out the tremors. "God..." Nature was wonderful!

The tree shuddered, the branches on his shoulders flying away. Slightly further down, unbeknownst to Rimmer, sap flowed leisurely from a solid branch which seemed otherwise unharmed.

Rimmer opened his eyes as he slowly stopped his hand motions. He blew out a breath and looked around. The tree rustled its leaves as innocently as a tree could. Well, it was a bit late to be furtive, Rimmer thought, but he did not hear anything that sounded like one of the villagers running around in the undergrowth or giggling. He fastened his trousers, looking disconsolately at the dark stain on them. He slipped to the ground.

He had been tired before, but he was now utterly exhausted. He could not sleep in the pod, though, which left only... please, he thought desperately, let Lister be asleep. He tiptoed back across the grounds towards his hut, listening for snoring. He heard it - somewhat more quiet than he remembered, but it was Lister's unmistakable phlegm rearrangement. He tiptoed in.

"Srkkk..." Lister mumbled. "...Mmer..." He was clearly asleep, flopping about, pressing hard against the mattress and panting. "Mssd 'y..." he moaned.

Rimmer shuffled to the middle of the room and collapsed on the dirt floor. He was exhausted enough to sleep though that. He was exhausted enough to sleep through a nuclear explosion.

The bed moved slightly as Lister snored and moaned. Rimmer would probably have to wash that smegging sheet in the morning, but he just didn't care. He closed his eyes and started to drift off. Lister's sleep-muffled voice rang out loudly enough to drag him back. "God, Arn, yes..." His moans increased in volume, as well.

Rimmer sighed and stuck his fingers in his ears. The moans only got louder. Rimmer pulled himself up onto his elbows, and bellowed, "For smeg's sake, would you stop snoring!"

Lister jerked into half-wakefulness, painfully, painfully hard. "Whu?" Was it morning already? No, too dark.

Rimmer dropped back onto the ground with a long-suffering sigh, closing his eyes again, as Lister mumbled, "Don... stop..." in his half-sleep.

"No, you never smegging stop," Rimmer grumbled.

Just about managing to grab his cock before drifting back into oblivion, Lister started stroking himself as he snored. The snores turned into plaintive moans as his unconscious mind registered that he was getting close, oh so close!

Rimmer sighed. He turned onto his stomach and put his fingers in his ears, determined not to make this a vicious cycle. He was not going to go climb a smegging tree again.

Lister whimpered and bit his lip. "A...rn..." he choked as he bucked and came, quite violently. He drifted off into a deeper sleep. "Loveu..." He snored.

Rimmer put his face into the dirt, falling asleep to the lullaby that the villagers had supplied for the past several centuries.