Chapter Three
Many hours passed before Rimmer managed to sweep together enough of his dignity and pride to return to his quarters. That spat with Lister had shaken him more than he cared to admit. But that fight was only the tip of the iceberg.
After the argument, Rimmer had caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrored lift on his way to his preferred brooding spot on the upper deck, and he'd nearly jumped out of his skin. He'd avoided mirrors up until then, preferring not to think about what had happened to him. Out of sight, out of mind. As long as he didn't look down, he was as solid and living as the next man...which happened to be Lister.
Seeing his reflection had been a jolt of harsh reality his nervous psyche was not ready to absorb. He really was a ghost. His normally florid features were drained of color, his technician's jumpsuit was washed out and translucent. Most damning of all, his high forehead was branded with a huge metallic H, a permanent and inescapable symbol of his non-living status.
Rimmer had long held a prejudice against the dead. His family had drilled it into him at a young age—the dead were not to be trusted. Outside the Space Corps, only the mega-rich had the ability to fund a hologrammatic afterlife, and once the hologram-simulation companies had drained their fortunes away, it was left to the government to continue paying for their holographic existence. Leeches, his mother had called them. Sucking good tax money away from the living who were forced to pay to keep those rich Deadies online. They'd already had their shot at life. It was time they passed on and let the living live.
He'd been present at a Hologram Rights march when he was a boy, back on Io. He'd sat on his oldest brother's shoulders while his other brothers shouted and sneered. Young Rimmer had even thrown a rock at one of the holograms, a rock that had passed right through her shoulder. Dirty Deadies, he'd shouted. Filthy Ghosts!
And now, he was one of them. A dirty Deadie, sponging off the resources of the Space Corps so he could enjoy a mere half-life, as miserable and useless as the life he'd lost so irresponsibly 3 million years ago.
If he had any principles at all, he'd go down to the holo-simulation suite and end it right now. He'd recite to Holly from the Anti-Hologram League's manifesto and demand to be switched off.
But he wouldn't. Because he couldn't. He'd told the truth when he said he didn't want to be nothing. The thought terrified him more than anything else. Despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, he'd always believed he was meant for greater things, that he could really achieve something worthwhile if only given the right chances, the proper breaks. And even now, after all the disappointments, all the pains, all the infuriating humiliations he'd been forced to suffer in his thirty-one years of failure, he'd rather keep the shameful half-life the ship provided than surrender to his family's ideals. So, he swallowed his anger and his pride, fought to calm his swirling anxieties, and shuffled back to his quarters...and Lister. Rimmer despised the man, but at least he was company. And in his fragile state, the last thing Rimmer wanted was to be alone with his thoughts.
Even before he reached the door, he was met by a forceful blast of bass thumps and electric shrills perpetrated by Lister's favorite band, Rastabilly Skank. The sound waves were so powerful, they actually made Rimmer's image ripple as he moved closer to the source of the noise.
Lister stood balanced on the edge of Rimmer's bunk, reaching up to pull the posters and photographs down from his own. An unzipped duffel bag sprawled open on the metallic table in the center of the room, piled high with worn, food-stained T-shirts and colorful shorts in a variety of garish prints. Two empty bottles of Glen Fujiyama Japanese Whiskey rattled on the floor beside a third that was still an inch or two full.
A thrill of indignation buzzed through the hologram and he straightened, his face setting itself into a familiar expression of righteous superiority.
"LISTER!" he shouted, his voice swallowed up in the air-warping din. "LISTER, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"
Deaf to the hologram's shouts, Lister rolled the pile of posters together into a thick cylinder, secured them with a rubber band, and slapped them down on the pile of possessions on the table, where they shook and vibrated in sympathy with the music.
"LISTER!" Rimmer shouted again, then scowled and snapped, "OFF!"
The din stopped, leaving a roaring silence in its wake. Rimmer breathed a sigh of relief as the tension provoked by the electronic howls and screeches drained from his neck, shoulders, and abdomen. Lister spun to face him with a drunken glare.
"What are you doin' here?" he growled.
"Strangely enough, I assumed sharing the same living space for the past two years might have clued you in to the fact that these are my quarters," Rimmer retorted archly, striding past him and lying possessively on his bunk. "It's well past lights out, Lister. Stow your crap away and get some sleep."
"Come off it. Holograms don't sleep."
"This one does," Rimmer snapped, rolling onto his side. "And I plan to be up early tomorrow, so if you'll have the courtesy to turn out the lights..."
Lister stared at the hologram's pale, transparent back for a long moment, then shivered and forced the overstuffed bag closed. Slinging it over his shoulder he said, "I can't take this, man."
Rimmer groaned out a tired sigh. "Can't take what?"
"You!" Lister exclaimed. "Lyin' there, in a dead man's bunk, like this is normal. It's creepy, OK? I mean, look at yourself! Your image doesn't even touch the bed!"
Rimmer sat up and swung his legs over the side of his bunk. "This is my bunk. It's been my bunk since before you signed on to Red Dwarf."
Lister shook his head. "Look, man, I'm not gonna argue with you. Maybe Holly did bring you back to keep me sane. But he can't force me to share my room with a computer generated ghost. It's not right."
"Will you stop calling me that!" Rimmer snapped, his translucent face flushing an angry red. "I am not a ghost! The pamphlet on holographic resurrection clearly states that hologram or not, I am still Arnold Rimmer. I still have the same ambitions, the same personality—"
"All the more reason to scarper outta Dodge." Lister scowled.
Rimmer stood. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Come on, Rimmer, don't start that act," Lister said.
"What act?" Rimmer insisted.
"Rimmer—!" Lister started, then sighed, bringing a hand to his forehead. "Look, don't take this the wrong way, man. But this…" He gestured to their shared quarters. "It's not gonna work. It was one thing when the crew was alive an' this was jus' a five year thing, but they're gone now. There's plenty of space for us to spread out. An' as long as Holly keeps your program runnin', I would like to spread as much space between you an' me as humanly possible."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean," Lister snapped. "You drive me mental, man. Jus' looking at those weasely little eyes, your ferrety face…" He took a moment to calm himself, then tried again. "You and I? We don't get on. We never have."
"So?" Rimmer said. "My brothers and I never got on, but—"
"Why am I not surprised," Lister said, and shook his head, too frustrated to worry about sparing the hologram's feelings any longer.
"Listen, Rimmer. I know it's wrong to speak ill of the dead an' everythin', but I want you to hear me, OK? I don't like you. In fact, I actively dislike you. You're a mean, stiff-necked, petty-minded, bureaucratic microbe, too blinded by ambition to see that you don't matter. Not to this ship, not to anyone. You're so obsessed with rank an' position, you've got no human feeling, an' no pity for anyone but yourself.
"Face it, Rimmer," he said, "you were a stone-cold stiff long before you died. An' I wouldn't willingly share my quarters with you if we were the last two people in the universe—which we probably are."
"Oh?" Rimmer sputtered, his nostrils flaring with outrage. "Oh? And what about you, Lister? You're not exactly Mr. Pleasant, you know, Mr. Easy To Live With. What about all the smeg I've had to put up with these past two years?"
"Like what?" Lister challenged.
"You snore," Rimmer said. "All night, every night. It's like sleeping under an adenoidal pig with a sinus infection. And that's just for starters. There are consequences to living on an all-curry diet, Lister. Consequences even the strongest lavatory disinfectant can't always handle. More than once I've walked into a wall of your stench and had to flee to the public toilets on A-Deck before being physically sick. You don't bathe, the closest you come to brushing your teeth is picking out shreds of desiccated meat with your greasy fingers. Your slobbiness is legendary—if there were cockroaches in space, they would have nested in your bunk long ago. You chew your toenails, you stuff your ears with noise pollution, you drink, you smoke, you keep company with brain-dead boozers whose collective IQ would make a fuzzy peach seem sharp. And let's not even start on the practical jokes."
"If I pull pranks, it's only because you're such an insufferable smeghead, all the time!" Lister protested. "You've got a personality like sandpaper; you jus' wear me down, an' wear me down until I have to fight back jus' to keep from murderin' somethin'!"
"Playing the kazoo with your buttocks?" Rimmer said pointedly. "That's a skill you perform for your own amusement, Lister. And what about that time you got us put on KP duty because you rigged the vending machine outside the medi-bay to squirt chili sauce at anyone who ordered a black coffee? You can't pin that one on me, even if, as your shift leader, I did have to take responsibility for your puerile behavior when Todhunter complained to the Captain.
"You're selfish, Lister, that's what it comes down to. You're an infant in a man's body; a childish, inconsiderate, directionless beer guzzler, and you have the personal hygiene of a banana slug with a head cold. It's no wonder that navigation officer you're so hung up on won't give you the time of day. She could tell from one glance what I've had to endure for two long years: that sharing quarters with you isn't just unpleasant, Lister. It's disgusting."
Lister bristled. "Well, if I'm so disgustin', what are we arguin' for? You should be glad I'm movin' out."
"You're forgetting, Lister. These are assigned quarters," Rimmer protested. "You can't just hop from room to room willy-nilly."
"What's to stop me?" Lister retorted. "Hasn't it penetrated that regulation-bound brain of yours yet? The crew's dead. The Captain's dead. They've been dead for millennia. Aside from you and the Skutters, I'm the only animate thing on this ship."
"But—"
"I'm goin', Rimmer," Lister stated. "An' if I see you again, it'll be three million years too soon."
Lister grabbed his Rastabilly Skank disk from the player and his guitar from the corner and marched out of the room, leaving Rimmer floundering to dredge up a suitable parting shot. Lister was already out of sight by the time Rimmer yelled after him, "Right! Go on, slob up some other section of this ship. I'm better off on my own, anyway!"
There was no response. Just the hollow whirrs and clicks of the ventilation system operating out of sight behind the smooth, silver walls.
He was alone.
Alone with his failure. Again.
One thing. One thing—that was all Holly has asked of him. Keep Lister sober and sane. Now, Lister was drunk as a skunk and moving as far away from him as humanly possible. The selfish git had walked out on him, denying him his chance to prove he could do something right for once, and all because the squid-haired little bigot didn't want to share his room with a dead man.
Dead. It was such an ugly, final sort of word. Yet, here he was. Dead. A mind without a body, haunting the silver halls...
For the first time, the isolation of the empty corridors touched Rimmer's soul. His holographic skin prickled with fear. Backing slowly into his quarters, he turned to face a stark and cheerless space. Without Lister's clutter to lend color and life to the room, there was little left to show Rimmer lived there at all. Just his framed swimming certificates on the wall, a few clipped newspaper headlines, and one of his old revision timetables tacked up beside his bed, three million years out of date.
"Just as well he left on his own, the festering little gimboid," he said, but his voice sounded strained. "I've always wanted my own quarters. Anyway, he'll be back. If Lister's anything, he's a people person. He needs company, thrives on it. Not like me. Me, I can take it or leave it. 'Cause I'm a loner. A tough, independent type. I don't need anything from anyone, least of all the irritating presence of that repulsive intestinal parasite of a man, David Lister."
He stalked from one end of the room to the other, his posture straight but his chest feeling heavy and tight. The silence of dead space stuffed his ears, his mind, making it hard to think. "I don't need him," he said, his breathing quickening along with his pace. "I don't need anyone. I'm better off on my own. Alone. Oh God…"
He looked around frantically, hyperventilating madly and caught in the grip of a rapidly accelerating panic attack. "Oh God, this is it, isn't it? This is Hell! I'm dead, I've got nothing, no one… No, no, no, stop this, calm down. But—"
Rimmer stopped short and bit the knuckles of his fist, swaying slightly as his eyes flicked from one corner of the room to the other, on the alert for glowing eyes and demonic laughter.
"What if Lister was right? What if I don't exist? If none of this exists… Oh God, oh God, I can't breathe, I can't—"
Rimmer's eyes rolled up in his head and he keeled over, his holographic body falling straight through the table to hover less than a centimeter above the floor.
"Pathetic," a snide voice scorned. "And you wonder why every roommate we've ever been assigned has ditched us?"
Rimmer opened his eyes slowly, and blearily hoisted himself to his knees. Polished black boots gleamed just under his nose. Rimmer's eyes traveled up past the man's perfectly pressed trousers, bright belt buckle, and straight tie to his face, and he scrambled at once to his feet.
"You…you look like me! What is this?" he demanded. "What's going on?"
"Mind as soft as cottage cheese." The man with his face peered scornfully down his nose at him, nostrils flared with disgust. "You're a useless wreck of a man, aren't you, Rimmer?"
"Don't be so hard on him," another voice spoke up. Rimmer spun, only to see another copy of himself sitting on the small settee by the door. "He's dead. He's been through a lot."
"You always make excuses for this necrotic pustule," the first copy said. "He doesn't deserve your pity."
Rimmer turned from one copy to the other, completely bewildered. "Who are you?" he said. "How did you get here?"
"Isn't it obvious?" a third copy said, unfurling himself from Rimmer's bunk. "We're you. Each of us represents some aspect of your personality."
"Are you real?" Rimmer asked.
"Only to you," the third copy said. "You had a breakdown, Arnold. Your mind couldn't cope with all that's happened. Your death, the isolation… Lister ditching you was the last straw."
"Are you're saying I'm crazy?" Rimmer said.
"As a bedbug." The third copy grinned.
"No, he's not crazy," the second copy said sympathetically. "Just a little out of sorts, is all. All he needs is some time to come to terms with his situation."
"'A little out of sorts,'" the first copy scoffed, his expression bitter. "Don't make me laugh. Your sanity's snapped like a frayed rubber band, my lad."
"And we're the result," a new voice added. Rimmer looked toward the sink, his eyes widening in alarm as more and more copies of himself emerged from every crevice and corner of the room. Each wore a different expression; some miserable, some cruel, some sardonic and mocking.
"Well, this is interesting," Rimmer commented, and fled from the rapidly filling room like a gazelle from a prairie fire.
To Be Continued…
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