He would live forever.
Rimmer pondered that in the darkness of the ship's night, the weight of it washing over him and forcing him down into the bed.
Forever.
Eons and eons stretched before him, and still he would live. Never growing older, but forever aging in his mind. Who would he outlive, if it could be called living?
Well, Lister and the Cat were obvious. The thought of Cat's demise barely bothered him, but something about losing Lister, about no longer seeing that excessively happy, ridiculous chipmunk face, of spending nights alone in his bunkroom and days without sniping banter, something about that bothered him, and it annoyed him that it did. A small, strange tinge of melancholy colored that moment, weighing almost as heavy in the air as the thought of living forever, and for a moment he felt almost afraid.
Forever. Cat and Lister gone. How long would it be just him and Kryten? How long until one of the two of them had a mechanical malfunction that couldn't be repaired? Would he be the last one on the ship, forever alone, piloting a crumbling rust-bucket as the equipment and his sanity decayed, falling piece by piece into disrepair and dust as the centuries dragged past?
He jumped at an imagined noise, eyes darting fearfully back and forth as nostrils flared with every panted breath. So lonely already…. So insufficient, this failing ship. So quiet already, when the banter and the life-threatening danger were absent…. Silently passing each other in the off hours, fetching tea, reading a mag, generally trying to ignore each other when they'd had more than their fill of the disparate personalities…. But then-no Lister, no Cat, maybe no Kryten-how impossibly, maddeningly, frighteningly silent it would be.
He curled up into a ball, clutching his covers to his chest like a lifeline, burying his face in his pillow to prevent a scream or a cry.
Forever, forever, forever….
When he had been alive, he'd been rather fond of the idea of living forever.