A/N: So this chapter has my explanation of what happened at the end of series 8 - sound plausible to you? ;) And now, without further ado - on with the plot!


II. The Dimensional Tear

None of them ever quite understood how it worked out with the nano Red Dwarf. When it hadn't looked like Rimmer would get back in time with the antidote, they had followed him through the dimensional gate, only to find that the device on the other side had short-circuited – Rimmer, obviously just in the middle of crossing when it had happened, had been severely injured and unconscious, but it didn't matter, because this Red Dwarf was perfectly organised and a lot more friendly than theirs had been lately – mostly because, one, they had spent their time in the brig or on some suicide mission, and two, because Rimmer was captain.

Rimmer – their Rimmer, nano-Rimmer – had never run into his alter ego on his mission to save his ship, and Lister had to admit that it was probably better for him – two Rimmers in one room had never boded well, ever, no matter how many times they had tried. But this dimension's Rimmer, Captain A. J. Rimmer, was very different from what Lister had expected. He could be as much of a smeghead as their Rimmer, but he was a successful smeghead – and it had done him a world of good. He was easier to get along with, less bitter, less resentful, having achieved what he had always wanted – to become an officer. And yet, when he compared him to Ace, it was jarring. Ace had been… well, Ace, but the Captain was undeniably Rimmer. He was sadistically amused by their predicament, congratulating himself for avoiding this particular disaster, and for not being like his alter ego. Nevertheless, he was happy enough to help, if only to get rid of them. The Cat – their Cat – also couldn't wait to get back – he found his alter ego 'too strange'.

To their astonishment, the dimensional portal became functional again after a while, and when they returned, they found their Red Dwarf perfectly intact, but deserted, a couple of plips on the long, long, long range scanner indicating the ships in which the crew had escaped. Rimmer, newly on the mend and seriously pissed off at how things had transpired, declared he could not see anything, and they returned to their original purpose – getting back to earth, somehow. They eventually figured that Kryten's nanobots must have had their hand in the mysterious restoration (They never knew that a certain dimension jumping ship had dropped by with an exhausted occupant who never realised just in which dimension he was, who had found the decaying ship and had used the Wildfire's nanobots to restore it in the memory of the people he knew, even though none of them were in sight. It had been one of his bad days.).

After a while, the ships trailing them disappeared from the radar, and Kryten reckoned that they had found a planet and settled down, if only to appease his guilt chip. Still a few weeks later, Kristine Kochanski died when an airlock malfunctioned and she was blown into space too soon. They never found the body. Lister turned into a bit of a mess for a while, but there was always the Rimmer Experience to cheer him up – not that he would ever admit using it to anyone, least of all to nano-Rimmer, who was somehow the same and somehow so different from the Rimmer that had left them to become Ace. Not that the Cat and Kryten knew that – they still believed there was only one Ace, and that their Rimmer had died a tragic, unexpected death, which had stunned even the Cat into silence.

Lister had told nano-Rimmer, though – partly because he knew it annoyed him to no end to hear of his other self – a self that even he was forced to acknowledge as somehow more real than he was, despite his hologrammatic status, because nano-Rimmer had no memory of ever even attempting to fix the drive plate, or of dying. He had struggled to wrap his mind around the fact that they had been transported three million odd years into the future, and he found the changes in his bunkmate incomprehensible – not that he seemed to mind much, because somehow, they got along far better than they ever had, even with holo-Rimmer. Lister figured he had probably matured a bit, against his will – just a tiny, miniscule bit – and their prison experience had bonded them together, finding them on the same side more often than at odds, even though Lister could not resist winding Rimmer up a bit. It was what kept him sane, after all.

Still, they could share a joke, laugh with each other rather than about the other; what had always only been a shared smirk with holo-Rimmer blossoming into something more. And yet, there was no denying that this Rimmer lacked some of the growth that had occurred in holo-Rimmer. His desire to become an officer was still incredibly forceful, even though the prison sentence had dampened his hopes, and, somehow, not having had the experience of being a soft light hologram and not able to do anything caused Rimmer to whine more frequently than his alter ego had – at least after holo-Rimmer had stopped complaining about being dead.

Sometimes, lying in his bunk at night, Lister would wonder aloud what the other Rimmer, Ace, was doing. He always had to remind himself of the Ace bit. He'd known that Rimmer had been able to do it, smeg, he had wanted him to do it, giving him just the little push he had needed. And yet, he couldn't shake the nagging feeling of having pushed him to his death – real death – once he had gotten over his irrational bout of missing the smeghead. It was Rimmer, for smeg's sake – even as a hard light hologram, he was far too cowardly, too naïve to last long – wasn't he?

"Lister, you're doing it again," Rimmer, nano-Rimmer, murmured from the bottom bunk.

"Sorry. I'm jus' wonderin' if we ever run across Ace again."

"And if it is going to be him."

"Well, yeah."

"Frankly, after what you've told me about him, I don't want to meet him. That Ace sounds like a completely insufferable goit. I can't imagine why I would ever want to become him."

"Rimmer thought the same when he first met Ace. He still did it."

"Dying must have messed him up a lot."

"I don't know, Rimmer."

"As long as you don't expect me to wear that ridiculous wig."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Rimmer. Besides, Ace probably won't come back to this dimension anyway. It's not like he would expect to find a replacement here."

"Are you quite finished now, Lister?"

"Yeah. Night, smeghead."

"Good night, Lister."

...~oOo~...

"You know, I've always wondered why people insisted that Napoleon was small even after they had figured out that someone had confused the measurements. They even got small actors to play him."

"Is this important, Arnold?"

"They decided he had to be compensating for something. I don't know." Rimmer tapped his lips with his index finger, swivelling slightly in his chair and concentrating on the game before him. "Everybody always thought something was wrong with all the great leaders. Alexander the Great, Caesar… True, some of them got a lot of people killed, but still. How come you have to be nuts to be great?"

"I remember one dimension where Napoleon was a woman," the Wildfire's computer said. She was still not quite used to Arnold's aimless conversation – often on the strangest topics – but she indulged him where she could. Her database was extensive, and had been improved by hundreds of Aces who had had a hand for engineering. This one didn't, but he had surprised her and, she assumed, himself with quite good, if a bit clinical, flight skills – he had no room for improvisation, but an incredibly repertoire of all the famous flight manoeuvres of history, and the theoretical knowledge to carry them out – and a surprisingly solid understanding of his own hologrammatic status and requirements. He was also the only Rimmer who had ever, if only occasionally, reverted back to soft light, and had gone through the trouble of fixing the most essential of her systems with hologrammatic controls because a power loss probably terrified him more than a ship full of Simulants – though they both had no idea when that had happened.

He was soft light now, but then he didn't really need to touch anything to play a Risk campaign against the computer. She was grateful, because it took a lot of drain away from her energy reserves, which, though powered by solar radiation, were not unlimited. She knew he didn't enjoy not being able to touch anything, but the Wildfire was by now as close to a hologrammatic ship as they could get her, so it didn't matter much either way. She would never allow him to go into danger as soft light, though – the risk of damage to his lightbee and of alienating all the people he was trying to save was far too great, quite aside from the fact that he couldn't even do anything effective in this state.

Rimmer made a face. "I think I've been to that one. Not an experience I am particularly anxious to repeat."

"It's your move, Arn."

"I know! Don't rush me. This requires careful planning, you know."

They were drifting aimlessly in space, taking a much needed rest. Rimmer, this Rimmer, always took failure hard, and it would always be some time before he was entirely ready to be Ace again. The Wildfire had long ago learned that it was no use pushing him. If he needed some time to be Arnold, he needed some time to be Arnold. If he didn't get it, he only got reckless, and far too much like the original Ace than was good. The last failure had not even really been a failure, but more of a qualified success. Rimmer still blamed himself, and the Wildfire had the sinking feeling that it was getting worse. Ace got the success, but the failure was always Arnold.

He was past the 'I can't manage anything' phase by now, but still pensive and melancholy, which probably also explained why he had requested to be soft light, wearing a military style red tunic and no wig. Especially no wig.

"Lister always refused to play Risk. I suppose he found it boring."

"It is not the most thrilling game, Arnold."

Rimmer shrugged. "I suppose playing strip poker with a male cat with six nipples, an android running around naked most of the time anyway and a head of a computer was more exciting."

"You did not participate?"

"To be fair, Lister only tried it once. I think he was not quite prepared for how Cat looked under those fancy clothes. I was still a soft light hologram back then. I couldn't have participated even if they'd asked me to. Besides, I have seen Lister's body – never again."

"You could have entertained them with your impersonations." Rimmer had once re-enacted an entire Kinitawowi ceremony he had to suffer through as Ace for her – voices and all – even though the Wildfire had access to his memories. He had enjoyed the mockery, so she didn't feel it was necessary to remind him of that particular fact.

Now, he shook his head slowly. "No, I don't think they would have wanted spend more time with me, anyway – we were constantly at each other's throats in Starbug. It was a bit cramped – no offense. It's not like I have to share with Lister here."

"None taken, Arnie." The Wildfire was very aware that she was a strictly one-man-vessel. Even the occasional female company presented a bit of a problem. Not that Rimmer enjoyed the meaningless sex nearly as much as he thought he would – after all, what he had always wanted was a sex life, but somehow he had imagined that it would be with a woman who really cared about him and was not only trying to repay him for something he had done, or rather, Ace had done. Besides, some of the offers he had gotten had been downright disgusting. As time wore on, it had become easier and easier to say no.

Suddenly, a red alert light flashed up on the console. Rimmer looked up from the screen, alarmed. He had never seen that light flashing before. "Susan, what is this?"

The Wildfire's computer didn't remember when he had started calling her Susan, but she didn't complain. She'd never really had a name, and it felt nice.

"There's something going on in the next dimension. Hang on, I'll check it."

Rimmer nodded. The Wildfire didn't sound too worried, which was good. He had become quite good at reading her over the years – if there was something he needed to be concerned about, even if she tried to hide it from him, he could tell.

He still tore his glance away from their game and turned around in the pilot chair to face the window – and that was when he saw it. A gigantic swirly thing, right in the middle of space, the wrong colour entirely for a time hole, and not quite right for a dimension jump. Right in their path. He might suck at mathematics and astronavigation, but he had had enough experience to know that this was bad news. He took control of navigation, and fired up the thrusters, trying for an evasive action. "Susan, what is that thing?!"

The computer was silent for a long time, long enough for Rimmer to realise that, whatever he did, the thing was homing in on him. "You should switch to hard light, Arn."

"What is it?"

"It is a dimensional tear."

"A what?"

"A tear in dimensions, tearing dimensions apart. Hang on, we are being dragged in – hard light, Ace!"

"Right!"

He had only converted halfway when the tear crashed into them, and everything went black.