IX. The Wildfire
Lister had given up on the Cat and Kryten, both of whom had politely refused to share his company after the recent revelations. Instead, he busied himself by getting as much of the Wildfire on board Red Dwarf as he could gather up. He was sure he had missed some screws and the odd little bits on the rocky surface of the moon, but he soon had the entire ship, as far as he could tell, in the cargo bay.
It looked like a pile of junk.
Lister had no idea whatsoever how to even begin fixing it, so he began by setting up the rear cabin. The cabin had survived largely intact, as far as the living area was concerned, but the exterior hull had struck a leak and the drivepods were hanging off. Lister extracted and disconnected the interior cabin and used a cargo crane to manoeuvre it into one corner of the bay, where it looked like a tiny and very ugly log cabin, before he climbed into the ruined cockpit and continued his work on the mainframe. With a charger cable from Holly, he was able to circumvent the power shortage and boot up the computer hardware, getting started on reconnecting and replacing the damaged circuits. He had no idea if he put her together the right way. Holly's occasional comments weren't much help, and he might just as well have been turning the AI into a calculator or a bomb.
Just as he was about to connect a monitor and give it a go, Rimmer found him – well, it was Ace, really, back in uniform and wig. He stepped over to look at Lister's pile of cables, and Lister felt suddenly incredibly nervous, as if Ace was still someone he had to impress, not only the very same Arnold J. Rimmer with whom he had shared a bunk ever since arriving on Red Dwarf. He couldn't even be entirely sure which Rimmer it was at first glance, but the way he maintained his distance and the electronic buzz of simulated warmth from his hard light body, only obvious when he was peering over Lister's shoulder, told him all he needed to know.
"Any success, Skipper?" he asked, completely Ace.
Lister stared for a moment, startled, then placed his screwdriver on the ground. "Rimmer, man, I'm sorry about the others. I'll get it into their heads eventually, I swear. But it's jus' me now, an' I know ye're exhausted. You don't have t' do this. Jus' be you."
"'fraid I don't know what you are talking about, Skipper," Ace said, rocking back onto his heels in a gesture that was only a faint echo of Rimmer's. "Anything I can help you with?"
Now I've got ye, Lister thought. "Ye know, ye bein' hard light and nearly indestructible an' all, I could really use someone t' clear up some of the debris under the front window. I did'na really wan' t' touch it because of the glass – it might come down." Lister fully expected Rimmer to protest, to declare that he most certainly wouldn't go in there, then. Consequently, he was completely flummoxed when 'Ace' just nodded and climbed past him into the ruined pilot's chair. There, he wordlessly began to collect loose bits and pieces that weren't connected to what they should be anymore, tossing glass shards out of the shattered windscreen and passing the important looking bits back to Lister.
Lister was too stunned to think of a suitable reaction, so they ended up working silently side by side for a while, stillness only interrupted by the clattering of equipment, the soft ti-ling of the glass shards and the kablunk of Lister shifting larger pieces of circuitry around. Ti-ling, ti-ling, ti-ling-ling, kablunk, ti-ling, kablunk, kablunk, ti-ling, kablunk, kablunk. KABLUNK.
Lister had just finished closing up the casing of what he assumed was the computer's motherboard and main memory, which was now connected to a screen with only one crack and receiving power from Holly when he realised that the ti-lings had stopped. He peered around the backrest of the pilot's chair in the confined space and caught Ace with one hand gently closed around the control column, the other pinching the bridge of his nose. The consoles were mostly clear, some cables hanging off here and there, the odd missing button, but no more debris.
"You okay?"
Ace jumped a bit at hearing Lister's voice so close, then visibly shook himself out of it, straightening. "Perfectly, Skipper. Just getting a bit sentimental."
"I was talkin' to Rimmer, actually," Lister said, annoyed. It was almost like talking to a man possessed – like there where two people sitting before him, not one. But there was only one, wasn't there? Rimmer had become Ace, and even if the others did not believe him, he was determined to prove it, wasn't he?
"Everything tickety-boo, Listy." It was incredibly strange hearing Rimmer's voice in this get-up, like someone dropping out of a role in the middle of the play. Even without Rimmer's usual expression, the cheerfulness was so blatantly faked that Lister felt he needed to call him out on it.
"Ye're not, though, are ye? Ye never are when ye say that."
Rimmer, as always, ignored him. "How is it going?" he asked, his Ace voice sliding back.
"I was gonna try boot her up. She not connected to any systems yet, but maybe she's a bigger help than Holly."
Ace slid out of the pilot chair and joined him in front of the screen, taking in the amateurish work Lister had done. "The old girl won't like that you've disconnected her from the database, but let's give it a go."
"I thought the main memory was in there."
"That's only personality and recent logs."
"Oh."
"Don't worry, Skipper. You did a great job. Just start her up."
Lister flicked the power switch, feeling incredibly strange. The screen came to life, then stabilised on the flickering image of a fairly young and attractive woman. She had stunning eyes, a tasteful short hairstyle with a simple, but effective accessory sitting just above her right ear and wore just a hint of delicate make-up. If she had been a fruit, she would have been a mango – exotic, delicious, juicy and refreshing, but nothing too adventurous.
"Voice recognition should be working," Holly commented from somewhere, then disappeared mumbling into the ether.
"Right." Lister nervously rubbed his hands on his trousers, trying to get the grease off – as if he were in the presence of a real woman he wanted to impress. "Give me your registration, please."
"Wildfire, Dimension Ship 001," the computer said, devoid of emotion. "Personality disk booting." Suddenly, a whole string of grotesque expressions flittered across her face, then she seemed to register Lister's presence. "Oh. It's you."
Lister grinned his loveliest grin. "Hiya. Do you mind jus' checking the connections are workin'?"
"All working."
"Thanks, uh-"
"Oh, she doesn't have a name," Rimmer butted in from behind Lister in his normal voice. "Though she doesn't mind Susan."
Lister looked at him over his shoulder, was put off by the wig and looked back to the screen. "Susan? That's what you've been callin' 'er?"
"Yes. What wrong with that?"
"Oh, nothin'."
"It's not like 'Holly' is a perfectly sensible name for a computer, is it?"
"All right, quiet down. 's just she doesn't seem like a Susan, is all."
"I'll have you know she can be quite caring. She's not the brainless supermodel she looks." Rimmer raised a placating hand towards the screen. "No offense!"
"Arnold," Susan said, simply, her eyes rolling skywards for a moment. Then, she gasped, and Rimmer soundlessly collapsed. He crashed right into Lister and send them both tumbling out of the cockpit that was no longer attached to the rear. As they impacted, Lister found himself suddenly overlapping with the hologram, Rimmer having reverted to soft light. Lister blinked through the curls of Ace's wig at the back of his head and tried to see the lightbee which he could feel somewhere on his stomach. Lister closed his hand around it – and Rimmer phased out of existence.
"What the smeg?" Lister scrambled to his feet, clutching the lightbee. He didn't bother with brushing himself down, but he wiped his hand and then the lightbee on his trousers to get the grease off. Then, he climbed back into the cockpit. "Susan, what happened?"
"I have re-established Ace's hyperlink. It must have come as a bit of a shock."
"What hyperlink?"
"There is a mental connection between any hologrammatic Ace and the Wildfire. Didn't he tell you?"
"No." Lister looked down at the lightbee. He had a feeling that there were a whole bunch of things Rimmer had never told him. He never even knew if the stuff he'd told him about his childhood had been true or whether he had made half of it up. It sometimes just seemed too absurd – the traction machine? Hopping on Sundays? The Space Scouts trying to eat him? Did Rimmer really expect him to believe all that? But, and that was why Lister always kept his mouth shut, what if it was all true? Rimmer could be incredibly sensitive, and while Lister enjoyed winding him up to no end, he never really wanted to actually hurt him.
He had regretted what had happened after that psi-moon, and while he had never really apologised, all three of them had tried to integrate Rimmer, who had been more than a little traumatised even though he never admitted it, more into their activities afterwards – anything to show him that they had never really meant anything they had said.
Lister had been really sorry about that smeg with the mushrooms – he had even apologised then, because the things could really have harmed Rimmer physically. Still, he hardly was there to witness Rimmer's complete breakdown a day afterwards. He had been complete out of it after PD – for which Rimmer had never shown up – and more than a bit smegged off at him for that, and had passed out on his bunk, fully clothed. He had woken up to Rimmer shouting, and had promptly banged his head on the roof of his bunk, but his annoyance had disappeared when he found that Rimmer had collapsed in some kind of hysteric fit: Already in a hospital gown, his bunkmate had been kneeling on the floor, face hidden in his hands, rocking back and forth and sobbing. Lister had called the paramedics, and they had taken Rimmer away. Lister had been tired enough to pass out again on the table, waiting for him to get back. When Rimmer had, it had been early morning, and he had looked like death warmed up. The paramedic who wheeled him in clearly was glad to get rid of him. He had manoeuvred Rimmer, who could hardly stand on his own, not too gently onto his bunk and had left, with only a snappy 'Unfit for duty for a week. Leave him alone.' towards Lister. Lister had thought it incredibly insensitive of him to blame Lister (even though it had been his fault, and at least somebody had believed Rimmer for once), but he did as he was told. By his own definition, at least. He eventually was able to coax out of Rimmer that he had had his stomach pumped, again, and his whole blood exchanged, again, and had every psy-test run the medi-comp could get done, which eventually ended with him being declared drug-free but suffering from a complete mental and physical burn-out, which required a week of complete rest towards recovery. Rimmer didn't do rest well. He was the kind of person who always wished he were less stressed, but seemed to live on a steady level of anxiety because that was who he was. Seeing him so tired out was strange, particularly because he was too tired to even sulk or ignore Lister. He presumably spend the days hardly budging from his bunk while Lister was off at PD, and when Lister came back, exhausted, they would sometimes even manage some light conversation. That had been a first.
Lister wondered if Rimmer's lack of resentment towards the others' reaction was a sign that he wasn't well at all. He clearly wasn't perfect, but Lister had assumed that it was just the shock. But maybe the lightbee was more badly damaged than he claimed it was. Lister turned it over in his hand. The casing looked fine. A few chips and scrapes, a bit stained (now that it had been in Lister's palm), but intact. He looked back at the monitor. "What should I do?"
"Let him go and step back, I'll reboot his program."
"But I have disconnected you from most systems."
"The hologrammatic unit is installed on my motherboard."
"Really? Why's that?" Lister thought of the gigantic holo suite of Red Dwarf, and marvelled for a moment at the magnificence of the dimension ship.
"It was Arnie's idea." Somehow, her voice communicated that she meant this Arnold Rimmer, and none of his alter egos. "It allows his program to run even when there is little power or a fault in any other system. It's part of the Wildfire's heart."
"That was Rimmer's idea?" Lister said, then replayed the words in his head and was suddenly glad that Rimmer was not around to hear them. He had to be the one who believed in the smeghead, hadn't he? Lister placed the lightbee on the ground and tried to give Rimmer a bit of space in the cramped cockpit. The lightbee came to life, hovered into the air and Rimmer flashed back into existence with surprising speed. Lister had no time to wrap his head around the fact that the Wildfire had rebooted him as Rimmer, not Ace, since the hologram's first breath was something between a gasp and a sob, and he tumbled down into the pilot chair, hanging on for dear life.
"Rimmer, man, are you all right?"
"Just fine," Rimmer gasped out, pressing his hand against his midsection where Lister knew the lightbee was hovering, even though he couldn't see it anymore.
"I don't think I believe ye."
"When did you happen to become so insightful, Listy?"
"No offense, Rimmer, but people don't usually look like that when they are perfectly fine."
Rimmer let go of the chair and dropped his hand into his lap, trying for casual, but his face remained pale and drawn. "I just didn't think the Wildfire could support me, that's all. It's a bit of a shock."
"She was saying about a hyperlink…"
Rimmer looked at the screen, and Susan looked back at him, but neither of them commented. Eventually, the hologram glanced back at Lister. "Be careful where you stick your greasy fingers from now on. And don't even think about messing with the motherboard."
"Aye, aye, sir!" Lister replied with a mock salute, though it was only mildly mocking.
Rimmer shot him a weakened glare before pushing himself to his feet and making his way out of the Wildfire and out of the cargo bay.
