"Rim-meh?" Lister whispered into the dark bunkroom.
"Rim-meh!" He hissed, completely ruining the illusion that he actually cared whether Rimmer was asleep or not.
Second Technician Arnold Rimmer rolled over and wished that he could pull a pillow over his head. Or possibly over Lister's…
Ignore him. Just ignore him. He's got to shut up if you just ignore him.
"Rim-meh?"
Ignore him. Ignore him. Of all the people in all six smegging universes…
"ARGH OH MAH GOD! ARGH! IT'S EATIN' ME FACE!" Sounds of thumping and desperate crashing rained down from the top bunk.
"What? What is it? What!" Rimmer hit the floor running, his mind racing desperately through his memorised list of escape routes. He slipped on the floor in his bed socks (something which was surely impossible, given than he was a hologrammatic projection of his former self made entirely of light) and went down like a hammer smelted down into a thin metal bag and then filled with other, much bigger hammers.
The ruckus in the top bunk stopped abruptly.
"Do you ever just… think?"
There was the sound of a match scraping in the dark, a glow and then the reek of a cigarette. He could almost hear that stupid hamster grin.
"Lister?"
"Yeah?"
"You're a total bastard." Rimmer crawled back into bed and rolled over to go to sleep.
"I know." A long inhale, a gentle exhale and the room filled with yet more smoke, "Well?"
"Well WHAT?" Rimmer hissed. It was three in the morning. He had to get up at 0700 hours to begin his quarterly inspection. Lister knew that! He was such a smeg head!
"You know, do you ever wonder if it means anything?"
"If what means anything, you complete gimboid?" Rimmer snapped.
"Well, we're stuck here in space and there's no-one around. What if I really am the last human being alive?"
"Does it really matter?"
Whether he was one of millions or completely alone, Lister would always be the same. He was a slob now, he was a slob before and he was always going to be a slob. Even in a slob worshipping society built entirely by slobs, Lister would never achieve greatness, so what was the difference?
"It's a big burden!"
"A big burden? I'm dead and you don't hear me complaining. What are you on about?" Why him? Surely Rimmer could have kept one of the senior officers sane just as easily. They could have played with his civil war figures and discussed the battle at waterloo…
"If I'm the last human being I should, you know, do something."
"Like what? Win the record for most consecutive hours wearing one pair of underwear?"
"No, like a legacy."
"Lister, it's three in the morning."
"Yeah, I know. I could record some of my music for posterity…"
"If you even think about it, I'll get the scutters to jettison your guitar into space." Please no.
"Rimmer, I'm serious."
"So am I."
"Do you think anything could make a difference? Even if I invented the most amazing machine ever in the history of time, no-one would be around to see it."
Well, at least they agreed on something.
"You're right, it wouldn't mean a thing. Goodnight."
"So the human race just disappears. That's the end?"
The end.
It probably was. And all that was left was the last pathetic member of the human race, a dead man, a computer, a robot and a creature that evolved from cats.
If God existed, he certainly had a sense of humour.
But they had travelled through time, seen distant worlds… there had to be more to it than that. Aliens! There were definitely aliens. "You don't know that."
"It's three million years. Even my great-great-great-great… great-granddaughter's daughter would be dead by now."
"You wouldn't have a great-great-great-great… anything. You don't have any children."
As usual, Lister ignored him completely.
"But do you ever just wonder if there's any point, you know. To us being alive…?"
"I'm not alive. I was bought back here to this shadow of an existence just to keep you sane. Do you have any idea how that feels?"
Not very smegging nice is how. Imagine if someone else had been the last human being alive, he would have been left as nothing but a pile of white powder in a vacuum filled canister floating through space. At least if he was dead dead then he'd be able to rest in peace. As it was, his only useful function appeared to be mopping up the rabid drool that frothed over the side of Lister's bunk when he tried to think.
"You know what I mean." Lister huffed.
"No. I don't think there's a point. I think we're going to die in a blazing inferno and no-one will hear us scream. Now will you go to sleep?"
"Don't you care?"
Care? Rimmer had had enough. He was sick of being woken up, poked, poisoned and being generally annoyed every second of every smegging day.
"OF COURSE I CARE YOU COMPLETE GIT! MY WHOLE LIFE IS OVER I CAN NEVER DO ANYTHING OF VALUE EVER AGAIN. DONE. DUSTED. AT LEAST YOU HAVE SOME HOPE! I'M PUSHING UP THE SMEGGING DAISIES!" Rimmer fumed, his nostrils flaring and spittle flecking the underside of Lister's bunk.
Ah. Blessed silence. Maybe now he'd finally...
"Rim-meh?"
"WHAT!"
"How do you cope?"
"At the moment, very badly." That was it. He was moving room. He would get the scutters to move his things first thing in the morning.
"I mean… all this time, tormenting you has been keeping me sane. What's keeping you sane?"
Gerbil features almost sounded interested. He had long given up trying to figure out the inner workings of Lister's mind. It was probably filled with dirty underwear and pizza crusts.
"Plotting revenge mostly. I've settled on feeding you to one of those salivating mountain wrigglers we saw on Gamma Delphi Twelve; charming creatures."
"Rimmeh, they're sixty metres of mucus covered, gaping teeth."
"Like I said, charming creatures."
Ah, what a happy day that would be…
"How can you do that?"
"Do what?" That was it. He gave up. There was no stopping Lister once he got started. He had ordered Holly to superglue his lips shut once but the stupid computer wouldn't do it. He'd have it charged with insubordination once they got back to earth!
"Just turn off. Your whole life is completely over and you're never going to do anything important ever again!"
"Yes, I think we've covered that." Thanks. Very sensitive. Maybe later we can go out and hire maracas and dance on my grave.
"It's amazing. You just don't care at all, do you Rimmeh?"
Just because he didn't talk about his emotions randomly at three in the morning, didn't mean he was emotionless. "I told you, I do care. I just don't deal with things the way you do."
"Yeah, you deal with things by alphabetising the storage decks."
If he dumped him on a desert moon while Kryten was re-charging his head, no one would ever know.
"I told you, Lister. Inventory is very important!"
"But it's all so smegging pointless. We exist for nothing! No-one will ever see, no-one will ever know."
"But isn't that good?"
"How can that be good?"
"Even when I was in better-than-life my subconscious rebelled against me. Even when I was stuck in a game that was meant to recreate my greatest fantasy my existence was hell! I've spent so long trying to live up to expectations, trying to become like my brothers… isn't it good to be free of that? To know that no-one can ever judge you ever again?"
"Where did that come from?"
"You're the one who wouldn't shut up!"
"So you figure the best way to express your freedom is to alphabetise the storage decks?"
"Just because I'm free, Lister doesn't mean I don't have my standards."
"You're insane, you know that?"
"I'm going to make Captain one day."
"Who's going to make you Captain? Everybody's dead."
"See? You just mope around. Get out there and take your life back you slob! You have no-one to laugh if you fail so just do it."
"Now?"
"Now! Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life Lister, don't waste it."
"But it's three in the morning!"
"Four, actually. At least we know that you're the most annoying person alive. I don't know if I could cope knowing that there might, possibly be, somewhere in the depth and breadth of the universe, someone even more annoying than you."
"I'm also the sexiest person alive."
"Not as useful as it sounds."
"You never know, we might come across some kind of six breasted women from a planet where it's too hot to wear any clothes…"
Rimmer smiled and shook his head.
"Listy listy listy… you disgusting, illiterate, delusional son-of-a-hamster."
Ah, that felt better.
On second thought, maybe he was the perfect man for the job.