Author's note: I do not own Red Dwarf. I also never did what Arnold Rimmer did in his exam either and do not think it's the way to go but hay. This is fiction. Anything can happen.
"Those attending the engineering exam, please head to c deck."
The monotone announcement came loud and clear as the ship's computer called all exam participants to enter the room for the examination. His low voice rang threw the corridors and threw the tanoy systems in the various cabins as the hour of 2 pm ship time drew ever nearer.
On his bed, Arnold Rimmer was growing increasingly pail and tense, as he stared fixedly at the clock on the wall of his shared cabin. 1:56. On his lap rested a pile of white lined papers, each adorned with questions about the engineering exam, and every one of them notoriously difficult, written in a formal language, interspersed with complicated words that Rimmer couldn't even hope to understand.
On the wall, he had plastered more exam papers, so that while he was trying to sleep, he could read them, and hope in some vein way that these facts and figures would be committed to memory. They weren't of course.
The paper was covered in crosses and alterations as if Rimmer had indeed scored out every single answer he had written in the margins. Now time had run out, and he had no more time to do any more preparation. This was the proverbial "it." There was no more revision time allowed. Perhaps this time, he would prevail. Perhaps this time, he would pass this exam, for the 12th time. Anything was possible after all.
Rimmer heard a creaking of bed springs, and a face peered down at him from the lofty height of the top bunk. Dave Lister had a smug smile plastered across his features and it was a smile that Rimmer liked not one bit. That was not to say that he was overly fond of Lister's face when it wore its normal expression. Lister had one of those faces that Rimmer wanted to hit, with a brick. Thus far, he hadn't had the opportunity. But Rimmer was sorely tempted. He had bunked with Dave Lister for two years now, and counting, long enough to know in his heart that he hated this Skouse moron with every bone in his body. Lister was just so annoying, so arrogant, so full of himself and so infernally convinced that he was the best guitar player in the universe. He wasn't of course. No. David Lister didn't come anywhere near the rank of top guitar player. He hadn't even reached the rank of worst guitar player, because as yet, nobody in a position to alter and change the rankings had survived a musical number by Lister. However, Lister's ability to disregard these facts made him believe that he was, in all senses of the word, a musical genius.
"Seriously Rimmer," the ugly face hanging above Rimmer was saying now, "good luck. I mean I really hope you do well."
Rimmer crossed the room, glancing back at the clock in a manner that he hoped looked casual and untroubled. He noted grimly that the time was now 1:58. He would have to scramble if he was going to make it on time. He thought about how important it was to reply to Lister's half arsed attempt at cheering him on and decided that it was not worth a response. So he strode out of the room without another word, not dignifying his bunk mate with even a backward glance. He had no time for Lister today. He had no time for anything.
The corridor of c deck was crammed with anxiously waiting students, all of them with varying degrees of fright and concern on their faces. Most of these faces were pail and some were even wearing petrified expressions. As Arnold Rimmer took his place among them, he tried to force a look of unconcern onto his own face, knowing that he deceived no one. Rimmer had taken this exam eleven times already and had not yet passed. Many of his teachers and lecturers wondered why he bothered, surmising that there was no point what so ever in continuing with this fruitless task. But Rimmer was, as they say, "only human," and his stubbornness knew no bounds. He refused to give up, even though his overall grades and marks had not improved. If anything, they had actually gotten increasingly worse. For most, resits on exams were allowed, to ensure their improvement on the topic that they were resitting, but in Rimmers' case, eleven exams on the same topic was doing him no good at all.
So yes, if you haven't already guessed, passing the engineering exam this time around, was going to be a tall order. And that is putting it mildly.
Those who saw Rimmer arriving in the exam room a minute or so later, turned to snigger at him as he passed. He ignored them, holding his head up high as he marched boldly, and some would think confidently, over to the seat that had been reserved for him. He hated their snide laughter though he knew why they were acting this way. His constant defeats in exams were legendary among those of the Red Dwarf and they knew how hopeless he was at engineering. Why else was he a second technition? The lowest rank on board the ship. They were well within their rights to laugh to of course because at this moment in time, Arnold Rimmer was a sight. And not a nice one either.
Every inch of skin on Rimmer's arms was covered in inky blue lines. These, if you dared to get closer, represented numbers, figures and words that was aimed at helping him in his exam. Rimmer, an underachiever in the art of revision, had scribbled every answer to the previous year's paper onto his arms, so that there was no chance in forgetting them. However, Rimmer had committed the fairly stupid crime, of not realising that the paper would contain different questions this time around. He had done this eleven times now to and was surprised every time when the questions appeared to change from one year to the next. It just never occurred to him that the writers of exam papers liked to keep things less than simple. It helped when trying to educate morons after all.
The hall was arranged in a typical exam fashion, row upon row of desks, each adorned with a sheet of paper and a pencil. It was all arranged with uniform precision, a display of organisation that Arnold Rimmer never failed to feel increasingly jealous of.
Taking a seat behind one of these tiny desks, he waited patiently while the overly smiley lady dished out all of the exam papers. Her smile spoke reassurance to some and condescension to others. Rimmer was in the latter category. He wished people wouldn't smile overconfidently at him when he was in his worried mood. It made him think that he really did have something to worry about. He accepted the papers with a curt nod, and she strode off, her high heels clacking on the tiled floor of the exam room.
Rimmer bent studiously over his paper, and began to write. In thirty seconds, he had completed the top of the paper. He had filled in his name, his class number, the topic he was studying and of course the date. Now came for the hard part, actually answering the questions.
Question one was a nightmare from the start. Glancing down at it, then at the blue and untidy lines of writing on his arms, he searched for the answer, finding none. Cursing words that I'm afraid I cannot repeat here for the reason that they may offend, Rimmer looked around furtively to see whether anyone in the near bye seats had heard. They apparently hadn't. Why were these papers always so complicated? Why did they have to introduce new questions every time, therefore making it impossible for guys like him to successfully complete the papers?
Rimmer slammed down his pencil in a violent tantrum and immersed himself in the futile task of trying to gleam answers from his fello participants.
It was no good, his class mates were keeping their answers hidden very well, well enough to earn gold stars Rimmer thought truculently. He would never earn a gold star in anything.
Rimmer had never earned a reward of any kind, and knew it. His father had constantly reminded him of such things, proclaiming loudly that he wished his youngest son had achieved the high standards that his three brothers had. Well it was all very good for them but Rimmer had to admit that things were hard for him. He had never been much good at maths and struggled with even the most basic calculations. He had barely scraped passes in his subjects at primary school and knew nothing of engineering. He just wanted to better himself, to get out from beneath the bolder that was the lowest rank on board the starship Red Dwarf. This, was a bolder that was proving increasingly hard to shift and Rimmer was growing ever more despondent. His three brothers, John, Frank and Howard, had all achieved the required qualifications and were now at the academy, learning the ins and outs of life as a commander. And he was stuck here, fixing food dispensers for a shoddy sum of money per month, money that was hardly sufficient to get him out of this pit of unsatisfactory work.
But oh god did Rimmer want to leave. He was tired of the same old same old humdrum of normal Red Dwarf technition life. He wanted to be somewhere higher, better, maybe with a decent shot at hitting the big time. But of course, if he couldn't pass this exam, he would never reach that goal.
Oh sod it he thought. He may as well just scribble down some crap and hope that it was good enough.
And so he did.
It took a long time to complete the test paper, and by the end of two hours, when the time had finally run out, Arnold Rimmer looked up from his work, and thought that that was the best these people were ever going to get.
Standing up slowly, he stretched and, leaving his paper where it was, wandered back to his cabin in a deep depression. A weight had settled in his stomach. He had failed, again. He was sure of it. Nobody could just guess their way out of this one. It would take them all of half an hour to mark the test papers, as most of it was done by Holly their computer these days. So Rimmer would only have to agonise over the uncertainty for a half hour or so longer.
Lister was gone when he returned to their shared cabin. He closed the door behind him, glad that Lister wasn't there to try and force him to be anything other than moodily contemplative. Rimmer had no use for such things.
He slumped on his bed with his head in his hands, thinking of his brothers, the three brain boxes who had made it where he hadn't. Their father had always been proud of them, and the childish, selfish nerve centre of Arnold Rimmer's heart, wondered why. Why was he not as high up in rank as they were? What did they have? Was it their luck? Or was it something else? Rimmer thought and assumed that they must just be cleverer than him. After all, he was no less hard working, no less career driven, no less determined to succeed in something. So why did it all go wrong? Why was he so damn unlucky.
Rimmer didn't know how long he had been sitting in this depression riddled state but he knew what pulled him out of it.
"Mr Rimmer?"
Rimmer looked up, startled to hear the monotone voice of Holly, the ship's computer, drifting threw to him from who knew where, as nobody on board really knew where the solid form of Holly's main terminals lay.
"What is it Holly?" he asked in a flat and controlled voice. "What is it now?"
Rimmer attempted to make his voice sound uncaring, as if he wasn't focused exclusively on the contemplations of his impending failure. But he knew that Holly could read him like an open boo. Such was the intellect of an ai computer. Holly knew exactly what Rimmer was thinking.
It was impossible for Holly to sound anything other than board, even when he was delivering bad news of epic proportion and scale. Good news was also delivered in the same way, flat and unamused.
But he tried his best to convey emotion as he replied, "you'll want to make your way down to c deck."
"Why?" Rimmer demanded, uninterested and knowing what was coming. He had failed and he was going to be kicked out, again.
"They want to issue you with a certificate of achievement," Holly told him flatly, "you finally passed."
The run down to c deck was a blur to Arnold as he raced through the heaving corridors of Red Dwarf. In truth, Rimmer felt like dancing as he made his way down to the deck below. Those who passed him shot Rimmer puzzled looks, but Rimmer barely noticed. His mind was crammed with strange emotions that were unidentifiable at first. But Rimmer slowly began to become aware of them as feelings of pride and happiness.
He had achieved something, at last. For once he had achieved something, and not just any something. He had finally passed the engineering exam, for the 12th time. All that revision, all those hours spent leafing through endless textbooks and the solution had been simple, bare face and lie your way through the exams and hope to God that you passed. Why hadn't he thought of this before? He could have passed ages ago. But no matter. He had still passed and that was all that mattered to him.
"Who knew," Rimmer said to himself as he bounced into the exam hall, "who knew that 12th time lucky could even be a thing. Haha dad, you'll be singing a different tune now, won't you."