Written for the Writers Anonymous One-Word Prompt Challenge
"This is your fault." The nasally accusing voice of Arnold J. Rimmer said to his companion after their captors had left.
"Can you move your leg out of my face?" Lister said as he tried to pull himself into a sitting position which was rather hard while he was tied up and Rimmer was mostly on top of him. They both shifted trying to get themselves untangled from the ropes and one another.
They'd been tied up and dumped in a heap into the prison they were currently calling home. A lovely hut made from what looked like a flexible bamboo and vines, at least lovely in comparison to some of the other prisons they'd been held.
"Can't you turn yourself to soft light and tell Kryten that I'm trapped in here."
Immediately Rimmer's binds fell over Lister. The now softlight hologram stood up and brushed himself off. His uniform shifted from red to blue suggesting that he was once again hardlight. Without asking he bend back down, untying Lister.
Lister pulled himself into a sitting position on the floor of the hut that he was trapped in. Of all the places that he could be trapped it had to be on a GELF planet that was run by his wife with a name that he could not pronounce. Once again he was trapped with Rimmer of all people. To be fair he didn't have many people that he could be trapped with since Rimmer was the closeting thing to being human that he knew.
It had been a surprise to run into the GELF he'd been forced to marry, after all it had been hundreds of years since he'd seen her last if you included stasis time. Here she was causing him more pain and suffering. Her father was even still around, he rules over a different sector of space to his daughter since she'd left home. How long did GELFs even live for? Or had she gone into stasis like himself?
He'd honestly been expecting to be separated by Rimmer, and he had no idea why she was holding them together.
"I cannot believe that your wifey is still alive. You should not have asked Ech-ech-ech-ech-ech-ech-ech-ech for a divorce since you just managed to anger her even more," Rimmer lectured him instead of escaping for help.
It was one of the only GELF names that Rimmer remembered and could pronounce, just for the sake of annoying Lister and after today if they managed to escape and survive, she'd be back to teasing material.
"I get it, Rimmer, can you please stop reminding me that she is still alive. I know she is the bane of my existence, just as much if not more then you," Lister stood up and leaned up against the wall to find himself falling through the floor.
"Ah Listy seems that even our cell has traps in it," Rimmer gleefully said from the top of the hole Lister had fallen into. "Well it seems like you are in a bit of a pickle. I'll just leave you here shale I? Toodle Pipski," he sung before walking to the edge of the hut in soft light mode only to find himself flung back from the wall and falling into the hole that Lister was already in.
"What the smeg was that?" Rimmer asked getting his projection out of Lister's body. He was shaking his hands like they were in pain and trying to work out where to stand so he wasn't standing through Lister's body and failing due to how small the hole he and Lister were stuck in.
"Can you move so I can revert myself back to hardlight?" Rimmer requested. He touched the edge of the hole only to move his hands away quickly. Shaking it even more. "What the smeg, how does a hut that looks like it is made of twigs hurt a hologram like that?"
"What's wrong, they have holowhip tech built into the walls?" Lister teased knowing that there were only specific technology that could hurt a hologram and a holo whip was one of them.
Rimmer grumbled to himself. "You trying to be a hologram and getting zapped by whatever that was. I feel like my hands have been pushed and held against an oven hot plate for over an hour."
Lister took a good look at Rimmer's hands they seemed to be just fine. No signs of burns or sparking.
"What do we do now?" Rimmer asked looking above them. "I cannot touch the walls, and you couldn't climb up them to save your own life."
"And you were just going to leave me here. Someone obviously forgot that our lives are interconnected."
Rimmer paled at the reminder, it was something that he liked to pretend didn't exist that if Lister died his projection would stop working.
"I didn't forget," Rimmer said with a squeak that suggested otherwise. "I was looking for Kryten to help You asked me to get him remember."
Lister didn't even reply, but the fact was that Rimmer would have got Kryten even if he'd run to save his own hide, just that wouldn't be the reason for him leaving in the first place.
Lister touched the wall, he was not affected by the field like Rimmer was. Taking advantage of his movement being entirely out of his projection, Rimmer turned back to hard light making the hollow even more squished which resulted in Rimmer yelping as he was pushed against the wall and pushing Lister right up against the wall.
"That bloody wall still affects me even when I'm hard light." Rimmer glared at the wall.
"I think I have a way out of here. You boost me up, and then I'll climb out and pull you up." Lister suggested already working out how he'd get them both out. It was a case of finding something above that could be loop around Rimmer's light bee so he could be pulled up while in soft light mode.
"So you can leave me behind. I don't think so, squire. You will boost me up first."
"Alright but you're not going to like it," Lister agreed. It would be a laugh when Rimmer touched the wall and ended up giving up in defeat.
The hologram tried to climb the wall without any success. Cursing as he was hit with pain each time he tied to use the wall to give himself leverage.
Rimmer was in too much pain to reprimand Lister for laughing at him. "Whole place is booby-trapped," Rimmer mumbled to himself after the pain had faded. "How are we supposed to get away from your wifey and her family if we can't even get out of this cell? You aren't as young as you used to be."
It was true neither of them were as young as they used to be. Thirty years in deep space this year, today in fact. That was why they'd come down to the planet to celebrate. The scum of the universe Dave Lister and hologram Arnold Rimmer had survived for thirty years on their own. Sure they'd picked up new people along the way, Cat and Kryten, for example, well not exactly people, but companions all the same. But others had left them, him in particular. Kochanski, the Rimmer brought back by Holly and Kryten's nanobots and the rest of the nanobot recreated crew, Holly and other mechanical life forms and genetically engineered life forms over the years. He missed some more than others, but at the end of the day he enjoyed it the most when it was him, Rimmer, Kryten, and Cat. Not that he'd tell Rimmer that, the smeghead would get an enlarged head.
"We'll get out of this mess, we always do," Lister said trying to put the hologram at ease.
"But one day we won't." Rimmer insisted. Ever since the kidney thing Rimmer had been more obsessed with his eventual passing. That had a long recovery period, and even now he wasn't able to drink as much as he used to for fear of organ rejection despite the fact the organs had been his own, to begin with.
"If Kryten has his way I'll never die," Lister laughed. "And when I do pass it will be when I'm old, grey, and with a beautiful woman at my side. Best way to go man."
"Is that woman going to be Kochanski or imaginary? Or maybe your wifey."
"Probably an imaginary version of Kochanski when I'm that age, or maybe it will be that chair that you use to practice dates with."
That managed to get a small smile from Rimme before he got them back at the discussion at hand. "Alright I'll boost you up, but you have to promise that you'll get me out."
"Yeah yeah," Lister brushed him off alright trying to climb up Rimmer's body to get himself out as quick as possible. Once out he to hold his chest to gather his breath. He'd really been doing too much lounging about and not enough exercise. That was harder than it should have been or what his bodies way of telling him that he was getting old.
He could hear Rimmer complaining from the hole that Lister was leaving him in there on purpose. Lister took a few more moments to catch his breath before he got up and found the rope they'd been tied up with originally and through it down to get Rimmer out. It took a few goes for Rimmer to get the rope loop lined up just right with his lightbee to be pulled up.
Rimmer looked at him for several moments his brows pulled together. "Are you okay?"
"Just dandy," Lister waved him off still trying to catch his breath. Let's not fall in any more holes or traps and get out of here."
"Sound like a plan," Rimmer agreed. Prattling on about one of the historical war heroes he worshiped and how they'd got themselves out of different sticky situations.
Rimmer wasn't game to touch anything since the walls were dangerous to him. Lister kept feeling around everything finding a push lever that covered them in a net that was made out of the vines that grew on the planetoid they occupied.
"Did you ever wonder why so many planets, moons asteroids, and planetoids are occupied with planet life even though there are no signs of any humans?" Rimmer asked.
It was a question that had been asked many times before when they were board. Despite being captured by GELFs, they were both bored. This scenario had played out so many times in the past that it didn't even truly register to them anymore.
"Maybe there really are aliens," Rimmer said though not with the same enthusiasm he had when they'd both been younger.
"Maybe," Lister shrugged himself out of the next to find the next trap. Neither of them blinked when a spear came flying out the wall and missed Rimmer by inches. "I've seen so much smeg by now that maybe aliens do exist."
"True. Who would ever believe that we killed our future selves or that you're are your own dad?" Rimmer replied. "I wish that I was around when you were born. That is one of my regrets that I left and as a result, I missed a major milestone of your life. The begging of your life but I'm going to make sure I don't miss the end of your life."
"What, you going to kill me yourself?" Lister asked it had to be asked.
"No, though you do tempt me sometimes when your snoring keeps me away, or you leave your toenail clippings in my bed. I'm going to be there holding your hand, sorry no beautiful woman for you, you are stuck with me."
"You're what?" Lister stopped trying to find exists or traps, stared the hologram down.
"Someone needs someone when they die of old age. Your kids are in other dimensions or and or time. And I doubt that you want your wifey there holding your hand. Kryten will be too distraught, so it will be me."
"You've already got my death planned out don't you?" Lister asked.
"Yes, you're going to die well into your hundreds of old age despite the fact that you drink and smoke too much while rubbing it in that I died in my early thirties. In a few more years I will have been dead just as long as I have been alive."
Ah, so Rimmer liked to forget that he was actually well past that as well with all his gallivanting around the universe as Ace and his six hundred years as a prisoner and any other time incident that had put them out of sync with one another.
"I've already been in deep space longer then I have been alive. I was in my mid-twenties when we got trapped. Now, look at me." Lister laughed.
Rimmer smiled which Lister knew that an insult was coming. "And look at you, you haven't aged a bit."
"Too right I haven't," Lister agreed despite knowing that was false and that Rimmer was insisting that he was old already from his drinking, smoking and junk food eating youth.
Lister tried the door and blinked as it opened. Either the darn thing was not locked, to begin with or he had unlocked it when he had touched something else.
"Do you think the door being open is a trap," Rimmer asked standing just behind Lister looking out of it wearily.
"I'd be more concerned if the holo thing that is going around the rest of this death trap is also going across the door," Lister replied pushed his holographic friend into the door. Rimmer tripped and stumbled going through the door and not hitting a barrier or setting off any other traps.
"What did you do that for?" Rimmer shouted.
Lister shrugged. "Let's get out of here before the wifey traps us again."
Rimmer didn't have to be asked twice he was back on the death trap they called Blue Midget already firing up the engines before Lister had made it through the door. He looked out the portal as they lifted off seeing his angry wife and her family running in their direction.
Only he could get trapped in a marriage with the most obsessive GELF in the universe and the most neurotic hologram as his only human companion.
"If Kryten asks our trip went smoothly," Lister begged. He also didn't want to end up with Kryten babysitting him all the time because things happened to go wrong when he and Rimmer went out on their own.
Rimmer agreed after all it was his fault they were trapped in the first place even if they hologram tried to place the blame on him.