CHAPTER TWO
In the following days, Rimmer started to emerge. Lister still couldn't make heads or tails of the program, and Holly wasn't much better, and Cat and Kryten still wouldn't talk to the hologram, but he would still sit in the kitchen every so often and quietly eat a bowl of holographic or non-holographic food, depending on whether he was hard or soft light at the time.
Although Lister had promised himself a week earlier that he would talk to the man; decoding the program, learning about Cat culture and an asteroid field the Dwarf encountered kept him too busy for this.
Three days after they were clear of the field, he cracked it.
The program that had been running was designed to keep Lister safe in stasis until the crisis was averted. The crisis in this case was the radiation leak. It sealed off the Hold to keep the supplies and the quarry (they had no stone at the moment, because the ship was returning from dropping off the last batch when it happened) safe, and started running analysis of the situation.
It was supposed to judge the situation and act accordingly, first priority to protect the remaining crew. And because the crew had been killed instantly, that only left Lister, trapped in time in the stasis chamber. It ran thousands of simulations at once, analysing the best way to keep him safe and sane to get him back to Earth.
It came to the conclusion that Rimmer was the best way to keep him from jumping out an airlock, so took emergency action with the power granted to it in this situation, deactivating the present hologram, George McIntyre, and activating Rimmer's personality disc from it's last backup (which had been moments before the radiation swept the deck).
But, as with all things, there was a mistake. Because despite Lister not existing in time, and time not existing for him, he still existed. So Rimmer was activated as soon as Lister became the last human.
Lister looked up from his pad, horrified. That meant Rimmer had been existing as a hologram for over three million years. There should be tons and tons of data for his memories of all that time. So where was it?
An alarm sounded suddenly. Lister jumped out of bed, Rimmer was in the doorway, looking frazzled.
"There's a... a thing. Come quickly, it's headed for us."
He darted away. Lister put down his pad and followed him to the bridge.
On the screens was a big...portal? It was orange and swirling, sucking in all the debris around it like a...an...
"Orange hole?" The Cat asked. "Like a black hole, but orange?"
Rimmer looked pale.
"Listen, man," Lister said, feeling sorry for him. "You can go hide if you want, I've never seen one before either."
The hologram looked over. "I have seen one before. A long time ago. A very long time ago."
The entire ship jolted.
"Sirs, we're being pulled in," Kryten told them, pressing controls frantically. "The temperatures at the core read well over a thousand- no, ten thousand, a hundred thousand- I think the thermometer has broken sirs, we're going to melt if we go any closer."
"Reverse thrusts, fire up all engines," Lister ordered, taking a seat and flicking switches.
"No," Rimmer said.
"No, what do you mean 'no'?" Cat asked incredulously. "Would you rather be melted by an orange hole?"
"No, listen," Rimmer said. "I know we haven't been on speaking terms recently, but this is important. I've seen one of these before. Don't go away from it, go towards it."
"Are you crazy?"
"Just do it, trust me."
Lister was hesitant to trust a hologram he now suspected had been active for over a million years, but the reverse thrusters weren't powerful enough, and they were being sucked in, carried around in a spiral like water down a plug.
But he was beginning to have little choice.
He powered forward thrusters. "Where should I aim?"
Rimmer seemed relieved. "Right in the middle. At that little black dot at the center."
"Oh I'm gonna regret this," Lister muttered, shooting the Dwarf forward at maximum speed so they were no longer carried by the spiral.
They jerked forward, expecting the searing temperatures to get to them. Instead, it remained the same, even as they disappeared into the center with a small squelch, popping out into clear space, the black hole closing behind them.
"What the hell was that?" Lister asked, to himself, but also in general to the room.
"An orange hole," Rimmer parroted Cat's words. "So powerful it pulls anything in, despite the power of the thrusters. If you try to fly away you get caught in the spiral motion and are burned by the heat. But there is an eye. The black hole is cool, a column of clear space you have to fly straight down, without getting caught in the convections around. It spits you out a few million miles away in the direction you're travelling. Actually very efficient travel."
"How the hell do you know this, goalpost-head?" Cat asked, the first time he'd spoken to him since Rimmer had burned the books.
Rimmer's relaxed poise immediately stiffened up. "I...learnt it as a child. Very rare occurrence. Most people don't even know about it. Caused by a very old sun inside a black hole. Well, it's getting late, I should be going."
He all but ran out of the room.
"It's two o'clock," Cat said, confused. "Oh well. Rat-hair, help me get this ship running. Some of the external systems were damaged in the heat before we got through the hole. Not too bad. Maybe two hours of work."
Lister sighed, and got to work using the robots to remelt the hull into it's proper condition, sealing the holes and cleaning the soot off. Cat knocked off ten minutes after starting to take a nap, and Lister was too tired to argue.
Two hours later he returned to his bunk. He found Rimmer holding the small pad with the decoded program on.
"Rimmer-"
"I don't know what you're playing with," the hologram said shakily, standing up whitely with the pad clutched in his grip. "But why were you inside the hologram simulation suite? My holographic simulation suite, and messing with my memories?"
Oh. He knew.
"There were some, irregularities with the memory banks," he lied swiftly. "I was just checking if yours were okay."
Rimmer gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Don't lie. I know when you're lying. You're looking for traces of the Cat empire. You want to know what happened during the radiation leak."
"Okay, fine, I do," the scouser admitted. "I want to know why there are memories missing. I want to know why you hate the Cats. I want to know why the order of events has been messed with. I want to know why you want to cover this up."
A tired look crossed Rimmer's face. He typed a few things into the pad and handed it over. "Here. Directions. To where I keep the data. The CCTV footage, my memories, Holly's memories. It's all externally stored. Holly can't access it, I only have a mild link to it. Just, if you want it."
He shoved the pad into Lister's hands and marched away.
Lister was still, in shock, but most of all tired. He tucked the pad under his pillow and went to bed, resolving to wrap their entire thing up the following day.
—
Rimmer's bed was empty, unmade when he woke up. He hadn't slept in it, again.
He pulled out the pad with the directions on it and bit his lip. He could go now, or he could ignore it and pretend it never happened. He quickly ruled that out. He wanted to know about the Cats, and he wanted to know for sure about Rimmer. He had suspicions, but he wanted to be sure.
On the way down to the unsuspecting, normal room hidden away in a sealed corner of the Hold, he grabbed a coffee from a dispensing machine. He didn't feel like curry.
The door to the room down near the Hold he had been directed to was grey, like the walls, so normal that it began to stand out. With trepidation, he opened it.
A rush of air entered. It seemed to have been a vacuum inside. Which wasn't surprising. It would preserve the circuitry, and Rimmer didn't need to breathe to go inside.
It was huge, lined with monitors and flashing lights on the dashboards. There were shelves and shelves of trays covered in circuits on one side, and a solid wall of wires dipping in and out of the machinery on the other. In the centre was the main computer, a large screen attached.
Lister walked towards it.
He tapped a few keys. On the screen an options menu opened, with 'Holly', 'Rimmer', 'Scutters', 'Dispensing machines and other appliances', 'Ship records' and a smaller file called 'Memories'. He selected 'Rimmer'. Another options menu opened up. Either 'view', or 'download'. He clicked view.
There was a short pause. Then at the top it read 'Select time period'. At a lack of what to do Lister just started at the beginning.
The very first memory he watched was a rush of pain and screaming as the radiation wiped out the crew. Lister flinched. He didn't think it would start that bad. Shaken, he kept watching.
"What?" Rimmer said, waking up for the first time as a hologram.
"Hello Arnold," Holly said, appearing on the screen in the bridge. "I'm sorry to say you're dead."
Rimmer paused, then scoffed. "Hah, hah, no, I'm not dead. I'm not, am I? You're joking? I'm dead?" He shook his head. "No, I can't be, I'm here."
"You're a hologram, Arnold. Here, look."
Rimmer stood up shakily and went towards the screen. Holly disappeared, replacing the screen with a mirror. Rimmer went pale as he saw his own reflection, stumbling back, phasing through the desk he tried to put his hands on.
He sat down heavily on the floor, shell-shocked.
"You see that little white pile of dust there," Holly said, reappearing. "That's you."
"But- what about George? George McIntyre? He's the only hologram. You can only support one," Rimmer replied, on the verge of passing out.
"George is deactivated, Arnold," the computer told him. "You're the only hologram on the ship. You're the one that's needed."
"I'm- I'm needed? Needed for what?"
"Lister is still alive."
The new hologram looked relieved. "I'm not alone? We can get back home?"
"Well..." Holly looked mildly regretful.
"Well? Well what?" He said, retaining some of his characteristic smeggyness.
"The entire ship is flooded with radiation."
"What!" Rimmer pressed his sleeve over his mouth, as if that would work.
Holly looked annoyed. "It doesn't affect you, silly. But if we let Lister out of suspended animation, he'll be turned to dust. The radiation must be gone before he's let out. It's the prerogative of the Program."
"Well, how long will that take?"
"Three million years."
"Three-" Rimmer's face dropped. "No, I'm not waiting that long. Just shut me off, and restart me when I'm needed."
"I can't."
"What do you mean, you can't?"
"I mean, it is impossible for me to do so."
"Says who?"
"Says the program."
"Smeg the Program!"
"Arnold," Holly said. "I know you're upset, but the Program is given impossibly high security clearance in a situation like this. I can't even touch it. You're stuck, my friend. Well, at least I've got company. Want to play some chess?"
"Holly..." Rimmer said warningly. Then a thought occurred to him. "The cat! Is it okay?"
"What cat?"
"Lister's cat! The one he smuggled in from Mimas."
"Oh. That cat. Safely sealed in the Hold."
Rimmer looked relieved. "Okay. That's good. I guess I should look after it?"
Holly shrugged - as much as a disembodied head can shrug -, "If you want, Arn."
"Okay. Transfer me to the Hold."
Holly nodded, and Rimmer disappeared.
Lister sat back in his chair. So Rimmer knew about Frankenstein the entire time. Huh. And he was going to look after her. That was going to be hard, without a hard light body.
Lister kept watching. The first few days of memory mostly consisted of Rimmer ordering milk and food from the dispensing machines and getting the scutters and other robots to hand it to the cat.
Then on the fourth day, Frankenstein gave birth. Rimmer was looking around frantically - he couldn't find her when he woke up - and when he did, the sight of blood and fluid made him gag and turn away.
But when he was finished retching in his mouth, and turned back, Lister could see his eyes melting under the adorable kittens. A litter of seven, tiny little sausage-shaped, bald, blind, utterly adorable kittens. Huh. He thought cats only had one baby. Evidently not.
Rimmer sniffed and wiped away tears.
"They're very cute," Holly said, appearing on a screen by Rimmer's side.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah they are."
He ended up naming the eldest one Jim and the next oldest Bexley. He knew that's what Lister would have wanted. After that were Kristine, Peter, Gillian, Susan, and the youngest, tiniest one, Lister.
Lister - the human Lister - smiled to himself. At least he knew Rimmer cared. But, he thought, looking at the kitten, the cat version of himself was very small and weak. He didn't look strong enough.
He was right. Less than a week and half later, despite Rimmer, Holly and Frankenstein's best efforts, the cat Lister died. With sadness, they decided to put the tiny body in a box and eject it into space. There was nothing else they could do.
"Won't somebody find it?" Rimmer asked.
"We're in deep space. I can't stop the ship, or turn it around."
"Why's that?"
"Lister is the highest ranking person on this ship," Holly answered. "The Program dictates only he, as the last human, can change the course of the ship. I'm sorry Arnold. By the time the radiation has cleared, we'll be three million years away from home."
Lister frowned. He'd never thought about that. He fast-forwarded the video a bit. Rimmer, Holly, the scutters and Frankenstein raised the kittens to the point of maturity. Then Rimmer raised the rather good point of procreating again.
He wanted to keep the cat line going, but if they bred among themselves the kittens would be mutated. So, Rimmer and the skutters went up to the lab and synthesised fake cat genes so that there would be another generation of cats.
Lister forwound the awkward part of actually getting the cats pregnant, but suffice it to say, over the period of the next five years, Frankenstein had two more litters of kittens. Kristine, Susan and Gillian each had two to four litters over their lifetime, and eventually the line was so spread out that Rimmer and Holly just let them alone.
The Hold was full of cats in a very short period of time. They roamed away and settled down in different areas of the capacious Hold. But Frankenstein, Bexley and Jim stayed with Rimmer in their own section of the Hold.
After fifty years Rimmer was starting to malfunction. Holly said it was his T-count. From then on, every five to a hundred years Rimmer went to the hologram simulation suite and underwent a deep clean to ensure he was functioning properly.
This also included a routine clean that rid him of any madness, paranoia, depression or any other mental problems as much as possible.
As the years went on, they became much closer together.
When Frankenstein died, Rimmer dictated to Holly his memories of her life, and he recorded them in the ship's logs, a file he called simply 'Memories'.
Over the next few hundred years, Rimmer talked to the cats every day, and they meowed back, imitating him. Soon, sooner than they would have thought, the descendants of Frankenstein, through Jim and Bexley, were imitating his voice too well to be ignored.
He spoke to Holly about it.
"They're speaking to me," Rimmer said. "Just yesterday, Alonzo Jr. said 'hello' to me. It was uncanny. He doesn't quite have most the consonants, but it's close."
"I agree," Holly said. "They're definitely evolving."
"What should I do? Jemimah is starting to walk on her hind legs."
Holly thought about it for a minute. "I think you should allow them. You're starting to need deep cleans more and more regularly. Maybe if you had fellows other than me who were capable of some sort of cognitive thought, it would help."
Rimmer nodded, looking tired. "I suppose."
There was a long silence.
"What's wrong?" The computer asked eventually.
Rimmer groaned. "You'll laugh."
"I won't."
"You will."
"Listen, Arn, I'm going to be stuck on this ship for a three million years as well. Pretty miserable existence if the only other being hates me."
"...I miss Lister," he said eventually, hanging his head.
Holly nodded. "I see."
There was another long silence.
"You can see him, if you want."
Rimmer's head shot up. "I can, really?"
"He won't know you're there," Holly said. "He won't see you or hear you. He's locked in time."
Rimmer looked conflicted. "I could see him, but I won't be able to speak to him for three million years?"
"That's the gist of it, yeah."
"Then I won't," Rimmer decided. "If I do, I'd go crazy, with that knowledge."
It only took fifteen years for him to give in and visit the scouser in his stasis pod on the radiation-flooded deck. And it nearly broke him. Seeing that cocky smirk on his face as he twiddled his fingers endlessly at the retreating Todhunter who was no longer there.
He went back the next day, and the next and the next, for an entire week. At the end of it, he made decision. He was not going back. Seeing that smug grin was just a reminder of what he'd lost.
With steel in his spine he instructed Holly to place holographic barriers at every door and wall surrounding the stasis pod for a hundred meters in every direction. If he ever tried to fight through, in a bad mood or at an exceptionally high T-count, he would have to eventually realise what he'd done was to protect himself, and give up.
And so led another two thousand, long, long years. A few times, Rimmer returned to the radiation-flooded decks and wandered the corridors. The dispensing machines at first complained to him about the lack of people to talk to, but over time they grew so desperate they just did everything they could to engage him in conversation.
Rimmer accepted, most of the time. Having more people to talk to drastically lessened his T-count. Sometimes he would talk for days on end with machine after machine, and fall asleep against the wall.
"Have you been back to your room?" Dispensing Machine 43 asked one day.
"No," Rimmer answered tiredly. "It'll remind me too much of the old days."
"Have you been getting any sleep?"
He bit down a yawn. "Enough."
Obviously not approving, Dispensing Machine 43 continued talking. "I heard that Talkie Toaster hasn't spoken in a hundred years."
"That smeghead? I'll believe it when I see it."
"For the first thousand and a half years he wouldn't shut up," she told him. "The dispensing machines in the corridor just ignored him. He started talking to himself, going insane. Then one day he just...stopped. Occasionally he would start chatting again, but he always stopped.
"The corridor dispensing machines tried talking to him again. No-one likes him, but they didn't want him to go mad. He just laughed at them. He talked less and less. Now they're saying he hasn't spoken for a hundred years."
"Well, what do you want me to do about it?" He asked dejectedly. "I'm not much better off myself."
"You could talk to him?"
"He wouldn't talk back."
"Do you know that?"
Rimmer didn't reply. At a loss, and not wanting to squander her time, Dispensing Machine 43 started talking again. "Is it true about the cats..."
Lister was horrified. Two thousand years had turned Rimmer into a quiet, shaken man, the dispensing machines more emotionally in tune, and Talkie Toaster who couldn't shut up into a silent, mad shell.
What would three million years do?
Rimmer visited the bunk room. Talkie Toaster only laughed, then fell silent. The room was immaculate, just the condition it had been left in. Holly vacuum-sealed it so it would keep it's condition.
The cats kept growing. With every generation they would imitate the hologram more and more, and grew used to feeling the tingle as he stroked them gently. Then one day, clear as crystal, one of the young cats said 'Lister'.
Rimmer sat back, shocked, and the cat darted away, scared. All the stories Rimmer had been telling them, mostly to amuse himself, had been rubbing off. The cats were learning.
He only stayed another thousand years before Holly found a temporary solution.
During this time, they slowly learned to talk. It was scary at first, when the cats stood comfily on their hind legs from the time they were born, and easily babbled like a baby, speaking simple words.
Their toes grew longer, began to be able to grip slightly.
That scared Rimmer into action. For all the talk he and Holly had had about another intelligent lifeform to talk to, it was weird seeing the cats becoming so human.
They spent two months behind a computer, trying to think of a solution, however temporary. They found it.
When Rimmer returned, the cat-like animals, only just recognisable as a feline, and not human enough to be called so, greeted him by name.
"Arnold!"
"Rimmer!"
"Rimmer! Rimmer!"
Unable to speak any more than that, the man in question settled them with hushes and hand movements.
"I'l be back," he said. "I'm just going away. I'll be back."
Knowing he had taught the cats to read - or at least recognise basic letters and pronunciations - a few years back, he called to Holly. They set up a screen in the Hold, a video feed of Rimmer waving, and then switching to videos of him playing with a black cat - Frankenstein - and doing chores, checking his hair, changing clothes holographically.
Underneath was the caption 'Rimmer and Frankenstein'.
"That's me," he said to the cats. "And there, that's Frankenstein, the first cat. I'll be back, I promise."
"Rimmer! Rimmer! No! No!" They called, but Rimmer walked away.
Holly had found a way to suspend their actions for two hundred thousand years. They would come back, and they wouldn't be able to use it again for a long time, but it was a temporary solution.
Rimmer walked to the holographic simulation suite. But before he went there, he visited Lister again. All the shields were down, because Holly needed all the power he could get for suspending them. The man was still smirking, still waving.
It was odd, watching himself like that, Lister thought. You'd think his hand would get tired, but no, there he was, waving, as he had for the last three thousand years.
"Ready?" Holly asked.
Rimmer nodded.
Holly closed his eyes in concentration. A flash of light. Rimmer disappeared and his light bee fell to the ground with a clink. Holly faded from his screen a second later.
According to ship's records, they were under for four hundred thousand, five hundred and seventy three years.
—
The first thing Rimmer did when out of the sleep, was go to Lister. He was still smirking, still waving. Holly transferred him back to the holographic simulation suite as soon as he realised.
"You know it'll just make you depressed, Arn," Holly told him sternly. "Why do you keep going back?"
"I can't help it," Rimmer replied, frustrated. "Masochism, I suppose. I mean, while he was alive I could press down the fact I liked him because he was such a git. Is such a git. He'll get out. Eventually."
"You like him?"
Rimmer pursed his lips. "Well, I hate him for leaving me. I hate him for being in stasis while I have to go the long way round. I hate him because he's the reason I have to be here for three million years. I hate him because he always takes the easy route, and now he's taken the easy route again."
"You're in love with him."
The hologram turned away abruptly. "I'm not doing this now, Hol. Just transfer me to the Hold. It's time to see what the Cats have been up to."
Holly was clearly unsatisfied, but did so anyway.
Lister paused the video. He just had to sit back for a moment.
Did...Rimmer...just admit he was in love with him? And then not follow through with it. Then again, he wasn't even half a million years into the memories. There was plenty of time for the crush to turn into hatred.
Plus, as far as he could gather, Rimmer remembered only scant bits, if anything, from the three million years. If it took him over two thousand years and another four hundred thousand in sleep to admit it, Lister would be lucky to even broach the topic.
Rimmer appeared in the Hold. Holly projected himself onto a screen by him. The man had to stop for a moment. The cats had evolved into the equivalent of early humans. Neanderthals, maybe. Possibly a bit earlier.
They were wearing clothes, anyhow.
Cats were carrying things around, walking in clumps around houses made of hanging cloth, cat-beds dotted around the place, like the ones the scutters had made for Frankenstein and her babies.
When they appeared, all activity stopped.
"Rimmer?" One asked quietly.
"That's...me?" The man said, taken aback at the civilisation.
The Cats started babbling in a foreign language. Occasionally a few words were similar. 'Fish', 'bed', 'sleep' and 'Rimmer' were the most notorious.
The crowd surged forward, trying to touch Rimmer. He just phased through them of course, and they fell on their faces.
"Stop!" Came a voice.
They looked up. There was a Cat, wearing a donut on his sash, and a donut on top of a staff in his right hand.
"Is it true? You are Rimmer?" He said. "And you are Haley?"
"Holly," he said. "My name is Holly, not Haley."
"Silence!" The cat shouted. "You will not insult the name of Haley, Cloister's loyal servant with your slanderous lies!"
"I'm sorry, Cloister?" Rimmer asked.
The Cat suddenly fell to his knees. "Oh great Rimmer! Friend of Cloister the Idiot, father of our people who guarded Frankenstein the Holy Mother!"
"Cloister? Do you mean, Lister?"
"Silence!" The cat got to his feet again. "Follow."
Rimmer and Holly exchanged looks and followed wordlessly. The cat led him to a gleaming White House. A proper house, not just sheets hung up with string.
"No offence, sir," Rimmer said carefully. "But you seem awfully more advanced than the grunting lot out there."
"I am a priest," the cat said. "I am of high born. Only we can even speak properly, for I am descended from Bexley, first born of the Holy Mother."
"Ah," Rimmer said. "Now, listen, you seem to have built up a nice little civilisation. Could you possibly give us a little room somewhere, or even a little corner, and we'll just y'know, relax. Go into retirement. Tell a few stories now and then."
The Cat frowned. "I find this acceptable, Lord Rimmer, Lord Haley. I am High Priest Chakan. Come to me if you need anything."
Compared to Rimmer and Holly, Chakan led a short life. In what seemed like no time at all, they were saying goodbye to his grandchildren, and their grandchildren as they joined 'Cloister' and Frankenstein in Cat heaven.
The Cats kept evolving. They built more permanent villages, and all over the enormous Hold, sections were springing up. Urged by the glory of Rimmer and Holly's return, they started to forget the old Cat language they had spoken when the two had arrived, and instead learned English, the language of the gods.
Twenty-three separate major Cat empires had risen and fallen by the time Holly and Rimmer reached a million years together. They celebrated by getting extremely drunk.
"I'm in love with Lister!" Rimmer had blurted after a few holographic drinks. "I never admitted it. I haven't admitted it. But I am. I want him."
"I met a computer once," Holly said. "She was lovely. The most beautiful diodes you've ever seen. But she was just a simple chess machine. Everyone said I was too good for her. And I lost her."
"I don' wanna lose Lister," Rimmer slurred. "I love him. I love his stupid rat face, and his stupid rat hair. Maybe it's just the loneliness. I can't touch. Or wank-"
He started giggling violently.
"I can't wank," Holly said thoughtfully. "I've never thought of that before. Should I add a program so that I can? Nah that'd be stupid right? Right?"
"If I had the power to wank," Rimmer said. "I'd wank right now."
"Wha' about Lister?"
"Hmmm? Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, I'm in loooove with him."
Holly pulled his head back, confused. "I thought you already told me that?"
"Maybe?" He hiccuped. "Maybe not. D'y'know what would fix this?"
"A wank!" They answered in unison.
Long after Holly had passed out and the Cats were asleep, Rimmer headed up to the decks. None of the vending machines talked to him. One made a low puff and another was creaking violently, but none of them spoke.
He went to the stasis pod. Lister was there. Smirking. Waving.
Rimmer slid down the side of the pod and leant his head back onto the glass with a thud. "I wish you were here. I never told you."
He laughed, bitterly. "I always hid behind- behind being a smeghead, and hating your habits- which I do! If you could start showering regularly, and stop eating your toenails, I'd be eternally grateful-"
He paused, mulling over what to say. In the background Lister was still smirking, still waving.
"You'll think it's only been a few moments," he said eventually. "I've travelled interstellar. A few moments, then you get out and they tell you it's been months. Years. I was worried I'd never get those years back, when I was younger. That they'd been wasted.
"I've certainly got a surplus now though, haven't I."
A tear tracked it's way down his hologrammatic cheek.
"People think it's not hard. Three million years, nothing, I'd pay to live that long. Hah! I'd pay to end it. Regular cleans to stop my T-count rising. It hasn't risen high in years. Tens, hundreds even. Holly keeps getting me to get cleans anyway. He says a low T-count may be due to depression.
"Perhaps he's right. Shame I can't touch anything. Or I'd throw myself off a building. Shame the Program is still running. 'Cause I still have to look after you when you come out.
"You smelly, disgusting git."
The tears started to come more freely.
"I love you."
For a few minutes, Rimmer just sat and sobbed. Then, as if rousing himself from a dream, he got up, shaking his head to get rid of the tears, and marched towards the door.
He cast one glance back. Lister was waving. But now it just seemed mocking.
The door closed with finality. This was the last time, definitely. Rimmer was not going to visit again.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time he'd broken that promise.
