-1Red Dwarf Fanfic: Last Humans
Chapter 11: Light
Summary(flashback): Wherein Rimmer benefits from a Buerocratic screw-up, confronts Ace and meets a very accommodating Lister.
Warnings: Language, torture, sexual situations, apparent character death, violence
Beta: Roadstergal, Zekass, Rack
Chapter Rating: M(16+)
(ooo)
Chapter 11: Light
(ooo)
//Ship Serial No: Silo INDP556790
//Ship's Time: 18:10-06.04-002.343
//AI-List-Silo: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS ATTEMPT DETECTED
//-UNKNOWN-: -cd AJRIMMER023044H
//-UNKNOWN-: -edit ASSIGNMENT.TXT
//-UNKNOWN-:
//-UNKNOWN-: DECOY/COLONY 023467
//-UNKNOWN-: -swap DECOY INSURGENCYAGENT
//-UNKNOWN-: -exe HIDE
//AI-List-Silo: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS ATTEMPT LOCATED ON ADMINISTRATION LEVEL BATHROOM 015
//AI-List-Silo: SENDING INTERCEPT FIRETEAM
//AI-List-Silo:
//AI-List-Silo:
Around Rimmer, the deformed holograms started up a keening wail, scrabbling past each other to get away from the light. One shoved and scratched him, trying to get behind his back. He hissed and scooted out of the way.
Rimmer looked up, blinking. Two figures stood in the doorway. For a brief moment he thought he might be rescued.
Then his eyes adjusted and he recognized the matt-black body armor. Guards.
He didn't respond. He let them catch under his shoulders, yanking him to his feet.
"Looks like the number-crunchers changed their mind about you. You've been upgraded to Insurgency Agent," one guard breathed into his neck.
Rimmer didn't look at him. He didn't have anything to say.
They pulled him forward. Rimmer couldn't bring up the desire or the strength to move his legs so he let them drag him.
The route they took was vaguely familiar. Back through the overbuilt doors, back down the long stretches of metal hallways that were cleaner then Red Dwarf's and all the more ugly for it. A lift. Another series of hallways. Rimmer's thoughts took on the consistency of the ship's interior, featureless and empty.
At the end of it, they came to an area with a bit more life. The walls were a light grey and hung with old movie posters.
Rimmer tried to recall the movies. Lister had tormented him with so many of them, yet he hardly could remember a single one. Rimmer didn't like movies, as they reminded him too much of being a dead thing made out of light. Although, even as a hologram, he still had the same love of Russian constructivist film. All those hard edges and harsh exposures, very little humanity to remind him of what he'd lost.
The guards stopped. "What's this?" one barked.
Rimmer looked up.
Ace gaped at him, flanked by two simulant guards. "Rimmer…" He said.
Rimmer tensed. Son-of-a…
One of the simulants stepped forwards, a yellow slip in his hand. "I've got me orders to take this hologram to—"
"You sold me out!" Rimmer shrieked. "That pompous smug crap about saving the universe… all smeg!" He pulled against his guard's grip, straining to get at Ace and… and…
Ace glanced from him to his hologram guards and back. "I don't know what's going on. I didn't—"
"The smeg!" Rimmer thrashed against his restraints.
"Oi. That's enough." One of Rimmer's guards yanked him back. He fell to his knees. The other guard fished a crumpled yellow paper out of his pocket, waving it at the simulants. "We got orders to put this one—" Rimmer's guard nodded at Rimmer. "—into that room."
"Identical orders." The male simulant sneered. The female—for some reason she had twelve fingers—laughed.
"Then what do we do?" The hologram glanced at Rimmer. "Can't have both in the same—"
The male simulant shot Ace. Ace crumpled to the ground, clutching his neck.
"What are you doin'?" Rimmer's hologramatic guard shouted.
The female simulant brought up her gun and, in quick succession, shot both of Rimmer's guards. They fell, twitching, to the ground. Rimmer watched as they thrashed, digging at the ugly steel things lodged in their necks. Blood sluiced across the floor.
Rimmer looked from them to Ace. He'd gone still. Blood everywhere. Rimmer's knees buckled. He was caught by the female simulant.
"Problem solved. Two guards, one prisoner and one room," said the male simulant with a satisfied grin. He tapped out a code on his wrist com and the room opened.
Rimmer was shoved inside. The door closed behind him. He couldn't keep himself upright. He slid down the door till he was sitting—numb and feverish all at once. He didn't try the door's lock. He didn't want out.
"Arn?"
Rimmer blinked up. Lister stood above him, a towel around his waist.
Lister laughed. "Why you lookin' at me like that, mate?" He walked to the table, humming 'lunar city seven' and pulling off his towel to dry his hair.
Rimmer swallowed. Everything that had happened, and now he was eye-level with Lister's tackle. He leaned his head back against the door.
The heavy house arrest bracelet on Lister's hand clunked against his head as he tried to towel down his dreads. "Ouch!" He rubbed his temple, shaking the other, braceletted hand at Rimmer. "Can you believe this? Just for refusin' to give up me cat."
"Didn't you… didn't you get put in stasis for that?"
"Yeah, man. But the cat escaped into storage. It had kittens. Hollister still wants me to help him find them and I won't. So they put me on indefinite house arrest till they do." Lister grinned, rubbing his plaits dry with the towel. "Hey. How'd you forget that? That I was in stasis?"
Rimmer tried to summon up some spleen towards Lister. All he could manage was a feeble explanation. "It was a long time ago."
Lister snorted. "Yeah, right man. I got out last week." He turned to the sink, picking up his tooth brush and squeezing paste onto the bristles.
"You know where we are don't you?" Rimmer asked, pressing his fingers against the floor for a sense of solidness.
"Red Dwarf." Lister began brushing his teeth with the same overzealous strokes that made Rimmer's molars ache.
"No." Rimmer shook his head slowly. "We're on this Omega Silo ship thing. They're waging war against… I don't know what. They just killed Ace—horribly!—and…"
Lister pulled the toothbrush out of his mouth. "Very funny, Arn. Next you're gonna tell me that these Omegas are aliens or something." He started to brush again, then stopped. "Who's Ace?"
Rimmer ignored Lister's question. Nothing make sense. Where had Ace come from? Or Lister for that matter. Rimmer's stomach sank. "Were you captured?"
"Captured? Yeah, by Hollister." Lister spat out a mouthful of toothpaste and water. "This is getting silly, yeah?" He wiped his mouth with his towel. "There. All clean." Lister grinned and stepped over to Rimmer sheepishly.
Rimmer looked up at him. Lister's hands were behind his back. He was still grinning, but this time with a mischievous warmth.
Rimmer swallowed, his throat was dry and the swallow stuck halfway. He coughed. "Wha—"
Lister knelt and pressed his lips against Rimmer's.
Rimmer jerked back and stood up, stunned.
"What's with yeah, man? We've been at it for a week." Lister caught Rimmer's arm, slipping up close. Rimmer's chest constricted. "We've done it at least a dozen times, includin' the times in the Cap'n's washroom."
"Captain's washroom?" Rimmer jerked back, appalled. "What did the Captain think?"
"Never knew." Lister stepped up again, this time catching Rimmer tight around the waist.
"This is a trick." Rimmer closed his eyes.
Lister lipped his ear. "You opened up the door, mate. Can't close it now."
Rimmer froze. Lister mouth moved down his neck. When Lister met the edge of Rimmer's starched collar, he chuckled and slipped his fingers around Rimmer's tie, loosening it then opening the top button of Rimmer's uniform jacket. "Lets see that beautiful body, yeah? Where were you hidin' it?"
"In my clothes." Rimmer muttered.
Lister laughed. He continued to tease Rimmer's buttons open.
The constriction inside Rimmer's chest unraveled. He felt like he was in free-fall. Rimmer caught Lister around the waist and half carrying him to the bunk. Without thinking he yanked off his jacket, tearing the fabric at the seams, and pressed Lister down into the mattress.
He kissed Lister. A Lister that was open and pliant and giving, and not a bit real. Rimmer knew that. He knew. And he knew he shouldn't get suckered in. It was a trick.
Lister moaned, his hands catching Rimmer's face, pulling him closer as he ground his erection against Rimmer's hips.
A very good trick.
Rimmer threaded his hands between them, his whole body shaking as his fingers tried to find his pants zipper. After a few moments of frustrated groping, his efforts foiled by his body's uncontrollable shudder, Rimmer was gasping and near tears.
"Hey?" Lister leaned forward, catching the man's face. "What's wrong?"
Rimmer shook his head. He wiped his face, managing to scratch his cheeks in the process.
Lister caught Rimmer's hand and his face. "You're really upset, yeah?"
Rimmer coughed. Lister pounded on his back. "Look. If you're right, we'll figure a way out, yeah? You an' me, we'll escape. But we don't have teh deal with it right now." Lister winked, and the mischievous grin was back.
(ooo)
Rimmer stared at the blank metal panel behind Killcrazy's boots. The drop ship shudder along its electro-magnetic tether, sinking deeper and deeper under the surface of the ocean.
Hollister's transport—the BlueMidget—had some recyc and independent propulsion, but the drop ship was just a tin can on a string. A string that could be cut with one strong undersea storm: JMC protocol prohibited transporting convicts on a ship that could be hijacked from its programmed course.
Rimmer wiped his sweating palms on his uniform. The fear was oppressive. The stink of it, on everyone, was making him light-headed.
If they didn't get some action soon, he'd have to take a hit.
Rimmer glanced at Lister. There was still a ghost of a bruise on the man's cheek. Rimmer felt a twinge of guilt. He'd wanted to do it at the time. Wanted to punish Lister for being so indifferent. For pushing him away. For being all over her again. For killing his smegging camphor wood chest.
Behind his eyes he flashed through a thousand memories of Lister, of their last moments together before Red Dwarf was boarded by the same Thresher ship over and over again. Images of Lister, unbelieving, horrified, then resolute. They would fight. And him, cowering in every one, cowering away from reality, like he'd always had.
Rimmer closed his eyes, resting his forehead against the shaft of his gun. It wasn't voxel caliber. It was useless.
(ooo)
For a second night Rimmer didn't sleep. He lay with Lister against his side, the two of them squashed together on the one-man bunk.
Maybe the whole thing had been a dream. Rimmer pressed his nose into Lister's hair. The scouser smelled murky, almost. Earthy. It reminded him of something vague. A moment as a child away from his jostling older brothers, when he'd found a little hidey-hole in his family arboretum and made little rows of mud soldiers and then stamped them down. Over and over.
He closed his eyes. Lister squirmed, stirring up more of that fascinating earthy smell. Rimmer opened his eyes and looked down at him. Do holograms smell?
That must mean…? Rimmer laughed. It was all a dream. Every bit of it. The accident never happened, he never died. Lister never ended up in stasis for millions of years. All of it.
The door opened.
Two guards dressed in uniforms that could easily be mistaken for JMC entered.
The illusion would have been complete, except for the fact that they were completely unsurprised by seeing Lister and Rimmer sleeping in the same bed.
"Smeg," Rimmer whispered.
The guards looked at him meaningfully.
Rimmer began to sit up, pushing at Lister a bit more then necessary, hoping the scouse git would wake up. Lister turned on his back and snored. Rimmer shoved at him harder, half lifting his shoulder from the bed. But Lister merely slumped into the new position like an anesthetized cat.
One of the guards cleared his throat.
(ooo)
Corrugated pipes dangled from the ceiling, pinned in place by lengths of twine and clothes pins. Viscous black fluid dripped from one broken pipe seam, giving off a stink like burning cigarette filters. Rimmer gagged and tried to cover his nose with his uniform sleeve.
Someone caught him by the throat from behind. Rimmer flailed, tried to still the pounding in his ears, and squeezed out a word like a stepped-on squeak toy, "Hello?"
A voice, mutilated by bad audio feedback, hissed in his ear. "New meat." The arm around Rimmer's neck tightened as a hand snaked around Rimmer's waist and grabbed his balls.
"Nice."
"I have a token!" Rimmer brought up the shining plastic disk in a shaking hand.
The… thing behind him twisted, pulling Rimmer down and tightening its hold on the hologram's neck. "Nice." It hissed as it relieved Rimmer of his token and let him go.
Rimmer fell to the ground, coughing. He couldn't be choked to death, not really, but it still hurt like hell. "What the smeg do you think you're doing?" Rimmer snapped when he'd finally found his voice. He looked up, hands still clutching his throat.
The thing was a simulant. It looked almost identical to the stubby Brummy git that unhooked Rimmer from the AR suite during his despair-squid induced hallucination, a square face on a square body, with square fingers prodding at fizzing circuitry exposed by a tear down its temple and over one burnt out eye socket. It giggled.
"What are you going to do to me?" Rimmer felt like he'd swallowed an ice cube.
The simulant flicked the token up to its good eye. "Token says… upgrades." It giggled again, then caught Rimmer's neck in a vice grip and dragged him bodily through the mess of shorn metal paneling, live wires and smoking circuit boards.
The simulant slammed Rimmer down onto the salvaged remains of a dentist chair. A light above it blinked on and off haphazardly, bits of red and yellow curled plastic tubing dangled off it and into Rimmer's face.
"Wait? What are you doing?" Rimmer protested, trying to push out of the chair as the simulant grabbed his wrist. The grip was so tight Rimmer felt his fingers go numb. It buckled a restraint over Rimmer's pinned wrist and reached up to tug down a length of plastic tubing, tying his other arm down with it.
"What the token says, bulb." The simulant flicked it at Rimmer's chest. "The boss-bulbs want to use you as an Insurgency Agent." It picked up a psyscan and ran it over Rimmer – one of the old models with the dodgy hand-held I/O unit, upgraded by a series of glue-welded attachments that stuck out from the main body like post-modern window-boxes.
The scanner offered a low beep followed by a series of hex codes in bleeding green characters. The simulant grimaced at it. "Piece of shit." It hit the psyscan and ran the scanner over Rimmer again. Once more the scanner offered a beep and the same sequence of hex codes. The simulant spit at it, paused in thought and then hit its own head.
Rimmer sighed. "Look, can't we talk—"
The simulant picked up a length of greasy rag and shoved it in Rimmer's mouth. The taste alone nearly ran Rimmer to the edge of unconsciousness. He tried to work his tongue around the gag without letting any sludge slip down his throat.
The simulant scanned him again and threw the scanner down in disgust. "What piece of crap did they send me?" It glared at Rimmer like he was the simulant's family rottweiler and he'd just coughed up part of the simulant's mum, but, more importantly, all of the simulant's bullocks.
In the silence Rimmer managed to work the gag out of his mouth, then he set about trying to work out the taste. Rimmer spat, over and over, getting nowhere—watching as the simulant spasmed, its mouth gaped open and closed like one of Lister's robotic goldfish. Then Rimmer noticed a rhythmic chant emanating from its chest, a series of words – "one, zero, zero, one, one" – that Rimmer recognized from the time Kryten was forced to spot wield his groinal attachment to a leaky sewer pipe and fill in as the Starbug waste recyc system for an entire week. The simulant was swearing in binary.
"What's wrong?" Rimmer asked, the ice cube slowly growing into an iceberg.
"One-one-one-zero!" The simulant jerked out of its spasm and stared at Rimmer, its one eye glassy. "Your are dog-breath, metrics crap!"
Rimmer tried to parse. "Er, what?"
The simulant slammed a fist into the side of its face. "Your metrics are crap, dog-breath! They expect me to pull a miracle out of my stainless steel arse." The simulant slapped a wide button on the wall.
A robotic arm ending in a spike arced from the ceiling, slicing into Rimmer's chest at the solar-plexus. Rimmer opened his mouth to scream. Nothing came out.
"Fucking bureaucrats. Don't understand art." The simulant turned back, catching the spike impaling Rimmer, gave it a few solid yanks then punched a button. The arm bore down, and something wriggled deeper into Rimmer's chest, latching onto his light bee with a squelching sound.
Rimmer's eyes rolled back, he felt the blessed edge of consciousness with glowing, dreamy fingers.
"Ay, ay. No you don't."
Rimmer was wrenched back into awareness in a burst of electronic static. He writhed against the chair as his hologrammatic wound oozed thick, dark blood and tried to knit itself, futily, around the impaling spike.
"Now." The simulant pounded Rimmer's chest. Rimmer groaned. "Let's see if we can polish a turd." It gave the robotic arm a pat and turned to kneel by a box on the floor.
Rimmer couldn't keep the simulant in focus. Everything around him swum as his eyes watered.
The simulant rummaged in the box, humming to himself.
Rimmer's breath hissed through his clenched teeth. He wanted to faint, he wanted to.
The simulant cackled and stood, a half dozen LTs clenched to its chest. "A challenge." It skipped back to the table and tossed the LTs down on Rimmer's chest. It picked up one and pressed it against Rimmer's cheek, leering. "Hologrammatic upgrades." He danced back a bit, giving the LT a kiss, then, in one smooth arc, he smacked it into a slot on the robotic arm. "Psychological conditioning."
"Nn…" Rimmer gasped.
The simulant caught his jaw and leaned close, leering. "You should thank me, bulb. Today I'm your best friend." He spun on his heel and slammed his palm against the robotic arm.
Something jarred deep within Rimmer, shaking loose a flood of memories.
He'd been a private. How had he forgotten that? A private in the Space Core. Rimmer remembered basic training, killing himself just to be last in everything. He'd earned himself humiliating dressing-downs by his sergeant as he failed. The sergeant was the kind of man Rimmer had always feared and grudgingly respected, a working class bully with a thick neck and a short fuse. The man had started out screaming so hard he was spitting but by the end of four weeks his sergeant had stopped bothering, just passing a cold eye over Rimmer's continued failure.
Rimmer shook his head. "Is this real?" He gasped. "I was a failure." Rimmer felt a stab of anger. "Is that supposed to help me?"
The simulant laughed and slapped the robotic arm again. Servos whirred and relays clicked.
Rimmer was reminded of something else. That sergeant Rimmer'd been cleaning the latrines with a broken toothbrush, long past curfew and desperate to finish, when he'd heard someone screaming outside. He'd gotten off his knees and looked out the latrine vent. That sergeant was being chewed out by his superior officer, a Captain who was obviously drunk. The Captain finished and stared at the Sergeant for a long time. "God you're ugly." The man, a young, upper-class bastard, swayed. "Drop to your knees."
The sergeant did so.
Rimmer watched in increasing amusement and horror as the Captain forced that god-awful Sergeant to give him head.
The next day some small, secret happiness gave Rimmer an extra boost. He kept up with the pack. He hit his targets. He remembered his gun assembly drill. He rappelled without pissing his pants.
Rimmer tested the strength of his restraints. Maybe…
The simulant grinned. "Better." He yanked the LT out of the robotic arm and picked another one up from Rimmer's chest. "Now some Agnoid conditioning." He leaned his elbow into Rimmer's side, sending a wave of pain through Rimmer's chest. Rimmer's jaw clenched.
Without looking away from Rimmer's gaze, the simulant slipped the next LT in and punched the robotic arm control.
Something slithered up out of Rimmer's subconscious. There was nothing human about the thing that slid through his mind and skittered down dark pathways in his memory. He wanted to kill and keep on killing. It gave him pleasure, a pleasure that became a driving, relentless itch when it was not fed. He needed to kill. To feel his enemy's life flutter against his hand, like a trapped bird he would free.
Ways of moving, instinctive tactics, natural balance settled into Rimmer's twitching muscles and flexed along with his tendons. A certain low confidence slipped in as well; Rimmer knew he could handle anything because he didn't really care.
Rimmer caught the end of the tubing tying his hand down. He could feel that it wasn't hard light. Why had he assumed before that he couldn't break it?
The simulant poked Rimmer's wounded chest.
Rimmer convulsed and felt himself flutter towards unconsciousness again. Rimmer fought to stay aware. He needed to plan a way out; he couldn't let himself miss anything.
"What's next?"
"Just the standard spritzer. A vaccine." The simulant punctured a length of tubing running down the arm with a hypo. He depressed the plunger.
A stinging sensation radiated through Rimmer. It intensified till he felt sweat bead on his skin, then it tapered off to nothing.
Rimmer snapped the rubber tubing holding his arm and caught up one of the simulant's LTs. With a flick of his wrist he flung the LT and hit the button controlling the arm. The LT shattered and the robotic arm retracted with a sucking sound. Rimmer screamed, then, finally, blessed relief as his holoflesh fulfilled its healing subroutines and knit together.
The simulant stood. "Ingrate! Why'd you go and break my property?"
Rimmer pulled at the remaining restraint. It was some sort of hard-light re-enforced system. He couldn't break it. His forearm was stuck.
The simulant lunged for him. He managed to kick it in the head, sending it wind milling backwards, sparks flying from its injured eye.
"Son bitch of a. Free was I you going to." The simulant spat, then hammered its head with a broken length of iron piping. "I was going to free you!"
"No need, squire." Rimmer wrenched a thick metal sliver from the chair and fished in the hard light restraint for a release catch. It popped and he jumped off the table.
The simulant watched him then laughed till he was choking. "Ol' Pap'pers Ex'Tur'a said no one could red splat a metric black-liner like you. But I did." The simulant licked his lips. "I guess I can unload my exhaust filter all over his scrap heap over that one. Boss-bulbs wanted an Insurgency Agent. I gave them one." It looked Rimmer up and down. "You might make twenty years, though. That much patching? Prolly be insane after ten years. The vaccine won't help."
"What did it do to me?" Rimmer watching the simulant warily.
The simulant broke into a wide grin, "Gives you a bit more… job satisfaction." It took several jerking strides towards Rimmer. "Now you go to Quality Assurance." It grinned toothlessly, its eye giving off a flurry of sparks, and then it shoved Rimmer towards the door. "Good luck, bulb. I'm a walk in the park compared to them."
(ooo)
Rimmer limped towards his quarters. He held his right arm in his left. Skin had been burnt off the sole of his left foot and his right bicep. Both were sweating lymph as they healed. He remembered them applying electrodes to those spots, but after that… nothing.
His body had been upgraded. A man in a lab suit had attempted to explain it to him, and a class full of new inductees, with a lecture on "voxel simulations" and "haptic illusions." Rimmer had slumped in his chair, hiding behind his hand, as the other—captured and processed—holograms around him nodded in understanding. The theory behind it all was beyond him.
All he knew was, now, he was as human now as he would ever get dead. Voxel holograms shed voxels like a normal human shed cells—mucus, dead skin, blood, sweat, urine, lymph.
Now he needed the Omega Group to survive. They'd created the technology and they were the only suppliers. And he needed to replenish his voxel stores by at least a cup a day.
Rimmer idly repeated the tag line, "Omega Voxels. As close to living as dead can get."
One of his guards tapped in the security code on his room, opening the door. He slipped inside, turning to watch the door close, his spirits lifting despite it all. There was Lister. Granted it was some insane version of Lister that actually loved Rimmer in a way that Rimmer hadn't realized he wanted to be loved, but… Rimmer's shoulders slumped. He wasn't strong enough to resist.
"Arn?"
Rimmer turned. Lister stepped out of the shower, a towel around his waist.
Rimmer stared at his former bunkmate, a sickening feeling of deja vu sweeping over him.
Lister laughed. "Why you lookin' at me like that mate?" He walked to the table, humming 'lunar city seven' and pulling off his towel to dry his hair.
Rimmer caught the wall, feeling faint.
The heavy house arrest bracelet Lister had on his hand clunked against his head. "Ouch!" He rubbed his temple, shaking the other, braceletted hand at Rimmer. "Can you believe this? Just for refusin' to give up me cat."
"You." Rimmer swallowed. "You told me that yesterday."
Lister laughed, rubbing his plaits dry. "You're taking the piss, yeah?"
"You told me that your cat had kittens and you were put under house arrest indefinately until you agreed to help Hollister find them."
"Peterson told you, huh?" Lister turned to the sink, picking up his tooth brush and squeezing paste onto the bristles.
"No.You told me."
"Nah, mate. I didn't see you till just now."
"But you did."
"You must have dreamed it, yeah." Lister began to brush. The sound of it put Rimmer's teeth on edge.
"You don't remember yesterday, when we met? I told you about the Omegas." Rimmer limped over to the bunk.
Lister pulled the toothbrush out of his mouth. "What? Omegas? Isn't that a cricket team? What's wrong with your leg?"
"You're telling me you don't remember?" Rimmer rubbed his eyes. It didn't make sense. "Did you get a concussion?"
"Concussion?" Lister spat out a mouthful of toothpaste and water. "This is getting silly, yeah?" He wiped his mouth with his towel. "There. All clean." Lister grinned and stepped over to Rimmer sheepishly.
Rimmer looked up at him. Lister's hands were behind his back. He grinned mischievously.
Deja vu swept over Rimmer again. Lister'd done this before. Exactly this. "Sto—"
Lister leaned forward and pressed his lips against Rimmer's.
Rimmer jerked back. "Stop! I—"
"What's with yeah, man? We've been at it for a week." Lister caught Rimmer's arm, slipping up close till Rimmer could feel his breath on his chin. Lister nuzzled his jaw. "We've done it at least a dozen times, includin' the times in the Cap'n's washroom."
"Stop, please." Rimmer whined. He was too sore and tired to push the man away, and too confused. "You did this all yesterday!"
"Yeah." Lister grinned. "An' I'll do it today and tomorrow and the day after that." His hands roamed over Rimmer's body.
Rimmer caught Lister's upper arms, holding him away. Rimmer hissed as the motion tugged against his injured skin. "No. You don't understand. You did all this. Exactly this. Something's wrong."
"Nothin's wrong! Enjoy it while it lasts, yeah?" Lister tried to duck his head in for a kiss.
"You're not getting it, Lister." Rimmer's throat started to close off asit slowly dawned on him. "You've no memory of anything but Red Dwarf, do you?"
Lister looked at him strangely. "Why would I? I ain't been on shore leave since Titan."
"You don't remember yesterday. You won't remember today." Rimmer swallowed, trying to fill the yawning emptiness in his chest. "You won't remember me."
"Course I will." Lister chuckled. Then the smile dropped off his face, replaced by concern. "Hey. What's wrong?" He caught Rimmer's face. "You're really upset, yeah?"
