A/N: Here you go, new chapter! Thanks for the favs and follows!

X. The Choice

Rimmer nudged the Wildfire to change him back to Ace as soon as he set foot outside the cargo hold. Not that he really wanted to be the smug smeghead just now, but he felt the other two members of the crew left him no choice. Maybe he could somehow wind back time, make sure they never found out – no. Wishful thinking had never gotten him anywhere, and often enough, hard work had failed him, as well. He hoped that Kryten's tact and the Cat's stupidity would prevent them from addressing him when he was Ace, though he could almost hear their mocking: Fake!

It felt good to be connected to Susan again, even though there was a slight, painful buzzing around the edges of the hyperlink, which either originated in his own failing programme or the Wildfire's damaged systems. The connection was a constant, a source of comfort he needed bitterly and would loath to give up when the other Rimmer took over, even though it would only be for a few dying moments. Perhaps he'd have days, because he was just that lucky that he would suffer as long as possible, but he was determined not to allow Holly to host him again. He would simply wait until the power of his lightbee ran out or the damage ate the circuitry from the inside, and then he would fade away into non-existence, where there would be neither guilt nor moral dilemma to haunt him anymore. It was just possible that the lack of the presence of the familiar AI would be the killing blow, anyway.

Rimmer ambled aimlessly through the corridors, but he still managed to meet the other Rimmer inside of five minutes since setting out from the cargo bay. Of course, nano-Rimmer was oblivious to the fact that he would have preferred not to talk to his alter ego just now, and fell into easy step beside him.

If Rimmer was honest, he didn't really want to look that other him into the eyes ever again, not after he had been so cruel to him. He could have kept his mouth shut, of course. Never mention the succession of Aces, just take the Wildfire, if he lived to see her fixed, and run, and never return. But he hadn't, because he didn't want it to be his fault that the line of Aces was cut off, no more now than when he had first become Ace for that very reason. And he hadn't, because he was selfish, and cowardly, and he wanted to die in his home dimension.

He also wanted to fall back into his old pattern and shout at his alter ego until he went away, but he remembered the last such exchange very well and he had a feeling that by now he deviated so much from the original template that he would lose the fight against nano-Rimmer, who had only been in existence for such a short time. To think that he was looking at 600 years, and this Rimmer was perhaps a year old? Two? It was probably fortunate that neither of them looked their age.

"Do you need to teach me anything to be Ace?" Rimmer suddenly asked, out of the blue, and the hologram almost gave in to the natural impulse of telling him that he really wasn't the person to ask. Perhaps it was the Wildfire at the back of his mind that stopped him.

"I do. And there are a few things you need to know – but Susan will bring you up to speed soon enough. In fact, you could go down and talk to her now, Lister has been getting her up and running."

Nano-Rimmer looked dubious. "Really."

"It's not perfect, but she will be able to tell you the basics. Fill you in on the mythology." Rimmer allowed himself a slight sneer. Eventually, his 'heir' would need to know about the disaster, but like everything his predecessors had done, it would not be a proper memory, just something skirting around the edges of a story and an experience – like a bad dream, but enough of a reference so he would remember people and places, and respond accordingly to those that remembered him. Not that there were any people left that remembered him, his Ace, because their dimensions had all been torn apart. A fine contribution he had made!

"Okay, fair enough." Nano-Rimmer stopped, and Rimmer knew he was about to say something else, but he just kept walking, quickening his pace, until he turned a corner and proceeded to lose himself on the diesel decks.

"Arnie."

Rimmer contemplated not responding to the Wildfire's soft call, but the thought of losing her again, soon and inevitably, was enough to let him overcome his reticence out of fear of being chided.

"I hear you," he responded mentally, sitting down in front of one of the ancient engines. They had a vaguely steampunk feeling about them, and he had always felt that his interest in them slotted in nicely between his passion for telegraph poles and his love for vintage cars.

"Oh, Arnie."

Of course she could hear his thoughts even when he was not talking to her – he was, after all, not a human being who was entirely alone with his thought anymore. He was a computer programme, and for a computer as sophisticated as the Wildfire, however crippled she might be right now, it was no great feat to read the algorithms running in his lightbee. "Why did you do it? Why did you reinitiate the link? It nearly destroyed you in the first place."

"Arnie, are you sure?"

A question, so simple, but with so many layers of meaning that Rimmer could scarcely wrap his head around it. Rimmer felt a knot rising up in his throat and he was absurdly glad that there was no one around to see him, and that he wasn't forced to actually speak. He was pretty sure that he made a terribly pathetic Ace right now. "Is there anything you could do?"

"I can keep you going. But it will never go away."

"Holly said he could erase my memory."

"So could I. Will it bring them back to life, Arnie?"

"No."

"Do you want to forget about the driveplate?"

Rimmer leant back until his head banged uncomfortably against the engine. He had given it much thought. Ever since he had Lister erase all memory of ever having had the false memory of Lise Yates and ended up knowing about it anyway. If such a tiny change had caused so much, he'd wondered what would happen if he erased Gazpacho Soup Day from his memory. He'd wondered what would happen if he no longer remembered the driveplate incident. He wondered who he would be if he erased the two single most important events of his whole life, or death, as it were, from his memory. Nano-Rimmer had shown him what he would be without the accident, without dying, and he wasn't entirely sure he liked it. But then, erasing his memory wasn't like making the event itself disappear. He would be stuck wondering how he had died, what had happened to the crew, and eventually Lister would fling it in his face, anyway. And maybe, just maybe, he was a touch masochistic.

He had not hesitated in the case of Lise Yates, because that had been a false memory in the first place. This was different.

"No," he answered, as if Susan didn't already know. He had been avoiding pain in the case of Lise, because he was never supposed to feel that way, and because he couldn't get over the fact that those were really Lister's memories. He didn't feel it would be fair to just erase the memories of his own screw-ups.

"It wasn't your fault, Arnie," the Wildfire whispered, sounding profoundly sad.

"It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been dimension jumping."

"No, Ace, I am not going to lead this discussion with you. I know you will never stop beating yourself up about it. I could erase it – but it would all have to go, because you wouldn't understand. You would always keep asking, wondering why you were back on Red Dwarf, why someone else took your place when you were still alive. You would think you'd failed. I don't want to do this to you, Arnie. But if you ask me to, I will."

"What do you mean, all of it?"

"The last ten years. Your time as Ace."

Rimmer was tempted to exclaim that he had failed. That however many lives he might have saved, he had brought it all crashing down inside of a few hours, with a dimensional tear following in his wake. He didn't, because that was not the object here. The object was that he had grown, just a tiny bit, and even he could see that, because ten years ago, he had somehow gathered the courage to become Ace, however often he liked to claim that he never really had a choice. He could have hidden in some corner of the multiverse and never emerged again, but he hadn't. And that, in and off itself, was something he never wanted to forget. "No."

"What, then?"

"Leave me. Take him, and leave me. I'd rather die."

The Wildfire didn't respond directly, but Rimmer could feel her projecting warmth and comfort and love directly into his lightbee, and all he wanted to do was curl up and weep. He could feel her grief, as well, and he couldn't quite believe it. He would have thought she would be glad to get rid of him, to have someone who might be easier to manage because he was less damaged in the first place – for nano-Rimmer, the driveplate had never really happened, the trauma of dying had never happened. He felt a strange sense of déjà vu, remembering the surreal circumstances of his 'burial' as he left to become Ace, and, just for a moment, Lister had made him believe that he would be missed. He had never been sure how much of it had been a lie, an act, to push him into his role as Ace, to trap him – but he was sure now that the Wildfire meant it. Because she had never, ever lied to him, and he didn't think that could be said for anyone else he had encountered in his 600 years of miserable existence.

"I'm sorry", he whispered out loud, and continued mentally, "but you'll like him. He's me, really."

"He is just as much an alternate version as any in any other dimension, Arnie. You are unique."

"He's coming down to see you."

"I know."

Rimmer nodded, then remembered that the Wildfire couldn't see it, but didn't bother to verbalise his response after that – she was in his thoughts. He had to admit he felt better since his connection with the ship had been reinitiated. Holly had given him a bit of a power burst before, but it was nothing like the constant support he received from the Wildfire. He believed her when she said that she could keep him going but he was frankly too terrified to risk it. He was a coward during the best of times, and he didn't dare enter a situation as Ace when he knew that he really only was running from a terminal corruption of his data. If something like the crash happened again, or he was cut off from the Wildfire by some other means, which had happened before, there was no telling how quickly he would succumb, and it would probably be before he could resolve the situation, let alone find a replacement. Sometimes he wondered whether that urge was really driven by his own guilt, or whether the Wildfire was messing with his head, but he never allowed that thought to take hold. If he hadn't decided to trust her, he would have gone mad a long time ago, and so far she had done nothing to betray his trust – contrary to some other people he knew.

"He is here," Susan suddenly announced, startling Rimmer out of his musings. He pushed himself to his feet laboriously.

"Well?"

"Oh, Arnie. He isn't you."

Rimmer had enough. "Don't. Don't you dare tell me that I am a better Ace than he is, because I don't want to hear it. I'm dying; the least you can do is to show me a bit of respect by not starting to lie to me now!"
She retreated to the back of his mind, a glimmer of comfort and sadness, and Rimmer set off, trying to pace off the turmoil of emotions scorching through his lightbee.