"He was in love with me," Lister said to himself. "He loved me. I'm such a selfish goit! All those years and then I come out and I'm so confident, and he's suffered for so long- smeg me!"
Lister struck the console in frustration and forwound the next few years. It was a lot of Rimmer and Holly living in what was basically retirement, telling stories. They were happy, for a while.
The Cats were advancing quickly. It had been slow going for a long time, but now with the knowledge Holly and Rimmer were able to provide, the civilisation started to grow. It started to look more like Rome, with the High Priest ruling over it.
Then of course, trouble hit. The descendants of Chakan, who thought of the donut as the sacred symbol of Cloister, had been in power for too long. The disciples of Jim, a small cult-like group, began to rise up and gain followers.
There had been many wars before. But this- this was destruction, and chaos, and murder, the like of which had never been seen by either the cats, or Rimmer and Holly.
The two factions clashed in what was known at the time as the Holy War, but which was known later as the First Holy War.
Many more followed. Rimmer and Holly were safe, for most of it, protected as gods by both factions, and escaping up to the upper decks when the noise and smell and sound got too much.
The Hold was stained red for a while. There were thirty-two Holy Wars in quick succession - at least for Rimmer and Holly - in reality they spanned perhaps a hundred thousand years. One lasted for half a millenium, some lasted only a few years (though the aftermath was always gruelling).
Rimmer still couldn't touch. With constant new advancements in Cat technology, they were looking into a Hard Light body for him. They were going to, as well, they were so close, but then of course it went wrong.
One day, as Rimmer and Holly were in their house, the scutters playing on the floor, the soldiers came. Using holo-whips that wrapped around his arms and burned, they captured Rimmer and brought him before the then-emperor.
"Rimmer!" He boomed. "You are accused of false speaking against the gods. Cloister is the only true god. You are a fiend, enemy of Cloister, and you will be punished for leading him and the good Cat people astray."
He was put in a holo-cage. No specified time limit, but as long as they could hold him. Holly tried to fight back, impossible to contain as he was, but the technology was too good.
And the scutters were chained next to him.
Almost a thousand years.
Rimmer, the man who had become more emotionally open, kind and warm-hearted after all his time with the Cats and Holly, became a sullen man, jeered at as they walked past, hated by all.
It wasn't surprising, that upon his escape, he killed four Cats. Three guards, and the then-emperor.
A maid helped him.
He let her go. Holly had been talking to her, convincing her to help him. Rimmer crept away, stole two holo-whips and killed the guard that had spat on him whenever it was his duty, then went after the emperor who paraded him around as a freak, and laughed with all the people he invited into the palace.
Two guards, and then the sleeping emperor.
He ran away to the upper decks, scutters close behind. He knew the Cats knew about the upper decks. With their technology, of course they did. But they also knew about the radiation. They couldn't get out the hold. One slip of a grate and the Hold would be flooded also. It wasn't worth the risk.
So Rimmer escaped.
He and Holly and the scutters spent long enough in the upper decks that the dispensing machines started talking again. Hesitantly, dustily, but it was still progress. Even Talkie Toaster started to mumble to himself.
He picked up the habit of visiting Lister again, spending hours, days and sometimes weeks outside the stasis chamber.
He just couldn't keep his own promises, as Holly reminded him constantly, but couldn't bring himself to care.
Then Holly started to malfunction. Rimmer had been getting cleans more and more regularly, as his memory circuits wore down and the excess information drove his T-Count up. It was only a matter of time before Holly couldn't keep up either.
At first it was small things. Stuttering, flickering screens, faulty holograms. Incorrect information, though Rimmer thought little of that, because it wasn't like Holly was reliable at the best of times.
Then major glitches started happening. He was jerking and stuttering, he couldn't perform any function - Rimmer didn't know what to do. He couldn't touch anything, even if he did know the solution to the problem, and the scutters were just about useless as this point.
So he went to the cats. Because Holly couldn't transfer him, he walked all the way down and phased through the wall into the Hold. He stepped a few meters into the bustling street market he had ended up in, when the Cats noticed, and shied away.
Soldiers came running out, pointing spears.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" Rimmer called. "Stop, I mean you no harm."
"Tell that to the people you killed when last you were here," one of the guards spat.
"Hah!" He scoffed. "Those people locked me in a cage for centuries. They tortured and humiliated me. They deserved it."
"You were only in that cage for speaking false against the great Cloister."
"You had no proof!" Rimmer shouted. "I am the ancient one. I am the one who has lived for thousands and thousands of years! I am the one who knew him, and you think I am speaking false!?"
There was an an uneasy silence.
"Look," Rimmer tried. "Just take me to your emperor, and I'll explain why I'm here."
"Emperor?" The guard smirked. "You truly have been away too long. We no longer serve emperors. We haven't for hundreds of years. I'm taking you to the Council."
Finding no other choice, Rimmer walked along with them, frog-marched through the streets until they reached a large room, probably once used for storing the stone the Dwarf mined, but now was painted white and full of seats on which many cats were sitting.
"Rimmer?"
"Is it true?"
"It's he, isn't it?"
The whispers followed him as he entered. The cat on the biggest chair at the back stood, banging her hammer against the wood.
"Rimmer, once a god, now fallen. Why are you here?"
Rimmer clenched his teeth. "An introduction would be nice."
She laughed, and the sound filled the cavern. "I am Maven, High Lady of the Court, the most superior rank in the kingdom. Now answer."
"I am here to ask for your help." He said.
"Ask?" Maven said. "Or beg."
Rimmer stiffened his backbone. "If necessary."
Whispers broke out again. Proud fallen god Rimmer, who lived alone with only his servant for thousands of years, now willing to beg?
"What do you require?"
"Holly is malfunctioning, and I don't know enough to fix him."
Maven gritted her teeth. "By Holly, I assume you mean Haley. Your constant blasphemy is astounding."
"Yes, Haley," Rimmer said impatiently. "Please, I need your help. I need him. He's important."
Maven nodded, and stood up. "I will aid you then. Guards."
With a flow of silk cape and the click of boots she marched forwards, guards flanking her. Another set of guards surrounded Rimmer and marched him alongside her with spears that shocked him when they passed through his body.
They stopped at a large computer console. "Ahh," Maven said, clicking a few keys so that Holly's face came up onscreen, glitching and mumbling. "He is very old, no? This is typical of our computer systems also, though they aren't nearly so bad."
"Can you fix him?" Rimmer asked.
"I can. And I can't."
"What's that supposed to mean."
Maven tilted her head. "He has survived this long, it is amazing, surely... But for him to last another span of time this long. You need to clear him. Put all his memories of the time he's been active into a storage unit with a small link so he can access a few, but not all of them. The important ones, at least."
"Can you do that?" Rimmer asked, relieved.
"I can," Maven answered. "That doesn't mean I will."
"Please," Rimmer said immediately. "Please. He looked after...Cloister and I for so many years. He didn't turn in Frankenstein who birthed your race. He's the one who will receive Cloister when-, if he returns."
Maven seemed to think for a moment, then nodded. "Alright." She turned to the court members who had followed them. "Summon the best engineers in the land. We shall save our Lord Haley, for the glory of Cloister!"
"For the Glory of Cloister!" All assembled Cats shouted.
It took them only a week, all the best technicians, engineers and computer programmers in the land, to put together a system inside a room where they could store Holly's memories.
"We can do yours too, you know," Maven said to him. "All the time you've been without Cloister can be put here. You wouldn't need to clean so often, either."
Rimmer startled. "How do you know that?"
Maven smiled, all teeth. "There are many things, that many people don't know about me. One of which is that I'm far better at computers than anyone realises. So, yes or no?"
He went for yes. The cleans were getting tedious, and honestly he didn't want to remember the miserable years he had spent onboard.
Holly came back online with a smile on his face, and Rimmer woke up after the transfer feeling more invigorated than he had in a long time.
"Thanks dudes," Holly said to the cats when he woke. "You really saved my bottom there."
The two were about to leave to return to the upper decks, away from the cats, when Maven turned to Rimmer.
"You are hated among the cats still," she said.
"Well thank you for that encouraging information," Rimmer replied, almost in a good mood.
The corners of her lips twitched upwards. "I just wanted to give you this."
She held out a set of gloves.
"Well, thanks," he said snakily. "I'll just take these, shall I."
Maven looked annoyed. "It's hard light. We can make holograms hard, able to touch. But this is all I can get for you. Getting you a hard light light bee would be too much to ask the people who despise you."
Doubtfully, Rimmer reached out and took it. His hands connected and he picked them up. In amazement, he slid them onto his hands and reached out to Maven, touching her hands and pushing slightly so that she took a step back.
He felt like crying. He hadn't been able to affect his environment for so long. This was just what he needed.
"How can I repay you?"
"By not returning while I'm in power," she said. "You are just another wrench in the works and I need everything to work well while my plans are in motion."
Rimmer nodded and turned to Holly to go, slightly scared of this woman.
"Oh, one more thing," she added. "You can only do small things. Exert too much force and they'll phase through whatever you're trying to do. Every time they do, they'll be able to exert less force the next time you use them. Just be careful."
Rimmer disappeared as he was transferred to the upper decks.
Over the next few weeks he went a bit insane, picking things up, holding on to them for hours, throwing and pushing things, endlessly ordering coffees and teas from the dispensing machines just for the joy of pressing the rusty buttons.
Lister wasn't surprised. If he had been deprived of touch for so long, he'd be doing a lot worse.
And so entered a time of relative peace for all involved.
Rimmer returned to the stasis chamber, feeling hope rather than despair for the first time in far too long, and spoke aimlessly to Lister about the things that were happening.
Maven had begun a new era of prosperity for the Cat people. When she died at the age of two hundred due to an augmented lifespan, every entity on the ship watched her funeral. All screens were playing it live, and the only person who was oblivious, was Lister.
Rimmer and Holly attended, hiding right at the back, nearly invisible. They were sad, but they did not cry. There was no point, they had lost far more important people before.
Maven's era, and her empire - though it was not called that, she was too clever to allow the past dark ages to filter into her reign - was the longest lasting in Cat history. Twenty-seven thousand glorious years.
The Cats evolved. Whereas before they had to work hard to keep the empire going, now they were prospering they could lapse back into their instincts, and act like a true cat.
Self-care and grooming, long naps, mirrors everywhere. Some left and went out into the universe, searching for other life. Some returned with fantastical stories and curiosities, others settled down with their families on planets and moons and started new colonies. Many stayed aboard the Dwarf.
Everyone was happy.
Rimmer spent most of this time in the holographic simulation suite, going through his memories. Lister, mostly. He played snippets of his memories over and over again. Lister singing as he pushed the cart, Lister mocking him, Lister lying in bed taking pointless quizzes.
He ran out of memories eventually, and moved to his externally stored memory, and watched videos of Frankenstein and her kittens, and their kittens as they played and tumbled.
Then he watched them again and again, then went up to the stasis pod, and told Lister about them, since he never got to see them.
But, as all things end, so did this. Maven's empire had been a centrist one - not believing in either the popadom or the donut, and instead adopting the philosophy that it did not matter what Cloister's symbol was, they must simply worship him as he is.
It was easily received by the Cats at the time, tired as they were from the constant Holy Wars. But over time, they began to forget about the pain and misery, and factions wanting to reinstate the donut or the popadom started popping up again.
Maven's empire dissolved, back into the feudal system it had been in for so long, villages trading amongst themselves, disturbed by the political and religious unrest.
The unrest eventually descended into war again, broken up by periods of uneasy peace, that dissolved into conflict again.
It was as Rimmer and Holly were celebrating their two millionth year together, that the Cats grew tired of war once again, and peace was instated, this time ruled over by seven governments in each district of the ship.
Rimmer and Holly got blind drunk again. Only one million years to go, they cheered. Two-thirds of the way there.
Lister stopped. He realised he'd been sitting in front of the computer for almost a day. Watching the events unfolding. He was tired, and hungry and dehydrated, but couldn't stop.
He shouldn't stop.
If Rimmer had survived three million years, he could survive a day or two.
His parched throat told him otherwise.
He reluctantly put down the headset and walked outside. There was a dispensing machine outside. He ordered a plain ham sandwich and two litres of cool water, and returned to the console.
"All of my family are dead," Rimmer said to Holly in the aftermath of the party.
Holly nodded, offering no comfort, for it wouldn't help.
"I hated all of them," he continued. "I feel bad... But-, not cause I miss them. I don't miss any of them. I'm glad I never have to see them again. Does that make me a terrible person?"
"How your family treated you as a child," Holly told him sagely, "is not your fault. It will never be your fault."
Rimmer nodded, knowing that Holly knew about the times he almost died because his parents wouldn't give him sustenance unless he answered questions on astrophysics. The times his father hit him and his mother screamed. All his brothers becoming successful while he withered away.
"The only thing I regret," he said. "Is that I wasn't able to make my father proud. I died because of my own mistakes, and that means I was a disappointment up to my death."
"Only to him," Holly said firmly. "In the time I've known you, you haven't been a better friend."
Rimmer smiled, eyes full of tears, and leaned forwards so his forehead rested against Holly's computer screen. "Thank you."
Lister paused it. He had to take a moment.
He hadn't considered it, but now thinking about it, it made so much sense. Of course Rimmer and Holly would form a bond, being together for so much time. It would be crazy if they didn't.
But then that raised an interesting point. Rimmer obviously remembered at least some of the three million years, but Holly didn't. They had bonded for such a long time... Didn't it hurt Rimmer just to look at the friend who had forgotten about him?
He was definitely going to talk to Rimmer after this.
But first he had to finish the memories. He owed it to Rimmer, he owed it to himself. He didn't feel any different. It felt like seconds to him. But seeing himself trapped for so long in stasis while the Cats rose and fell, and the ship slowly came apart...
It was disjointing to say the least.
Which raised another interesting question. Three million years. Okay, the Cats fixed and repaired the bits of the ship they could get to, but how did all the stuff in the radiation-flooded decks look exactly the same? It should have fallen apart in the first few hundred, let alone a million.
He had to see.
The Cats knew the ship by now. They could fly out, look around the outside. They found out it was called the Red Dwarf. It was a monumentous discovery, when it first came out, around the time Maven's empire was in power.
Or maybe it was earlier. It could have been thousands of years later. With all that time on their hands, time was irrelevant.
The Cat empire had been named the Red Dwarf Empire for a long time. Then Maven came into power - or maybe she lost power - and it fell into war, or perhaps peace. It didn't matter.
But soon after celebrating two million years trapped on the ship, the Cats were renamed the Red Dwarf Empire once again. By this time they had the ability to cure most all diseases and ailments, travel light years in seconds and even turn back time.
They could have released Lister quite easily, if they wished. They could have cleared the radiation in the blink of an eye.
And Rimmer begged, of how he begged them to do it, to clear the radiation so that his misery could end. He told them their god would return, that they'd be blessed, that he'd do anything.
They didn't believe him.
To them he was the devil, a liar.
He told them that if they did it, Cloister would return and they'd be led into a new age of peace and prosperity.
Still they refused.
The upper decks were treated as holy ground by now. No-one had ever set foot in them. It was the land gods treaded and Cats would never step foot there. It wasn't natural, they told Rimmer, to clear the radiation. It would come in it's own time.
Rimmer told all this to Lister.
Then, one day, when Holly and Rimmer were sitting on the bridge, their base where they'd stayed for all this time, someone else appeared.
They were wearing a heavy suit, clearly keeping them safe.
Rimmer sat and talked to the Cat, Chakan Jr the third thousand. Three thousand generations at least since Chakan the First, the priest who had greeted Rimmer and Holly when they came out of their sleep.
Chakan Jr the Third Thousand was also a priest. She was the direct descendant of Chakan, and had a burning curiosity of the upper decks. She used the tenuous link to the gods to establish herself the leader of a religious group determined to see them, so that she could come.
It was short, it wasn't even noteworthy to Rimmer and Holly's age-old minds.
Until Chakan the Third Thousand's suit came back. No-one had visited them since she left, once again firmly in the belief that no Cat should step on Holy Ground, not since Chakan the Third Thousand had been killed by a falling panel from the Hold's roof, obviously a sign from the gods.
It was Chakan the Third Thousand's granddaughter, Maven Chakan (by that time Maven's era of prosperity was only remembered in ancient history books. Maven Chakan was the eldest child of Chakan the Third Thousand's eldest child, and her mother was the descendant of Maven herself, or so she claimed), who arrived, beseeching of the gods help.
They came, lacking anything else to do, and having felt the ship shudder and groan suddenly for the last few days.
"We're calling it an Orange Hole," Maven Chakan said. "We're utilising all the power we can to keep from being sucked in. We'd melt going within a hundred kilometres of it, but the eddies of the spiral have caught us."
Rimmer didn't look afraid. "So this is it," he whispered.
"Well," Holly said. "The Program tried it's best. Looks like Lister won't come out of stasis after all."
Maven Chakan looked horrified. "What! No! You're gods! You can help us, you can stop this. You have to!"
Rimmer shook his head. "We may have been gods to you, once. All that we are now is very, very old."
"I haven't piloted a ship in... ah too long," Holly added. "I don't think I even remember how."
"Our best scholars have been working on this since we got stuck," Maven Chakan said desperately. "You are our last hope."
"Well," Rimmer said. "Time to grow up. Hope won't get you through this."
Face growing angry, Maven Chakan threw herself at Rimmer with a ferocity that belied her diminutive frame. He and Holly disappeared up to the bridge before she got to him.
They figured out to aim for the centre eventually. Rimmer and Holly watched from the bridge. Disappointed and relieved both. Disappointed it didn't end, and relieved that there was still a chance.
Maven Chakan stirred the Cat people into a frenzy, hating Rimmer for giving up. The hate lasted until the day they all left, and beyond.
"Their desperation to hold onto religion despite all the time they've existed never ceases to amaze me," Rimmer said.
"They are quite stuck in their beliefs," Holly agreed, watching on the screen a live feed from the Hold of Cats worshipping a statue of his own head, as the god Haley.
They went back to sleep. Holly had gathered enough power to send them both to sleep, and they did, waking to find only two hundred thousand years remaining, and only a quarter of the Cat population left in the Hold.
Holly went down alone to talk to them. Rimmer had tried, but they'd brought out holo-whips and torture devices, so he'd quickly ran away.
They told Holly that they had found a nice little planet a few years back, populated by humanoids that had also evolved from a cat species, and believing it to be the homeland Fuchal, many had disembarked.
But some remained, adamant that the Red Dwarf would take them to the true Fuchal if they stayed.
Neither Holly nor Rimmer had the heart to tell them they were three million years in the wrong direction to Lister's dream location for his farm.
With such a tiny population now, it became easy to stay unified and peaceful. After a few generations, Holly would travel down regularly to chat with them. After a few more, they started warming up to the idea of Lister's return.
With only a very few thousand years to the radiation being cleared, they offered Holly a device which could very literally restore things to the way they had been, set to whatever time was desired.
A robot controlled by Holly came down to take it, something Rimmer had built before his hard light glove had fallen apart from age.
Holly requested a new one. The Cats reluctantly agreed.
Now with the power to restore the ship to as it had been, Rimmer became frantic, running up and down the halls to restore dilapidated chairs, tables, bunk rooms and computers.
He left anything sentient, and the piles of dust which had sat there for almost three million years.
The Cats fought one last war, less than a century before Lister was due to wake up. All the remaining Cats left, after some prompting from Rimmer. He couldn't bare having Cats around when Lister returned. The scouser wouldn't realise what they had done. He'd try to be friends.
They all left. All except a crippled woman, a man who tried to eat his own feet, their young kitten, and one old priest, all left to die less than ten years before Lister came out of stasis. Not that Rimmer knew about them, of course.
But he wouldn't use the time-reversal machine on anything sentient. Not even Talkie Toaster. He couldn't take away life, not after being alive for so long.
Rimmer went on a crusade, wiping the memories of the dispensing machines, the scutters, the domestic chore robots, the sentient appliances, anything that could think, apart from himself and Holly, and uploaded it to the room in which he and Holly's memories of the first part of their time was stored.
He set about creating fake records. The Cats operated entirely on their own the whole time, with no stimulus from anywhere or anything on the ship. Every appliance, robot, computer, dispensing machine and hologram was inactive for the whole time.
He fixed and replaced every dispensing machine, robot and appliance so it would look like no time had passed for Lister. All that time as a maintenance man onboard the Dwarf was good for something after all.
He wiped all the cameras in the ship under the pretence of a total shutdown. All systems inactive except the ones clearing the radiation, and the ones keeping the ship going.
Only a few months before Lister was scheduled to wake, he wiped Holly and stored the memories as well. As far as the computer knew, he was only just coming back online after three million years.
The last thing he did was store his own memories, leaving only a small connection. He was aware he'd existed for that amount of time, but rarely felt any emotion towards it, and for all intents and purposes, acted like he'd just stepped out of the stasis chamber along with Lister.
He only had to wait a week for the stasis chamber to open.
