It was the morning of the appointment, and Lister stood by the desk watching his friend rock back and forth on a chair, muttering things about Hammond organ music. He found it sad watching someone's mentality deteriorate before his eyes; it was as if Rimmer was slowly turning a child again and he was, indeed, losing his memory, experience, and life-skills in a matter of days.
Lister also considered it unbelievabley lucky that he had got the appointment so early on. Things only started to get really bad yesterday, and if Rimmer was left any longer... Well, he tried not to think about what might happen.
The psychologist was to see them at eight-thirty, which was in one hour's time. However, they were advised to come half-an-hour in advance in order for them to sign-in and avoid any complications. The two had already eaten breakfast; Lister had preserved something from the cafeteria the night before-hand in the fridge as he didn't want to be taking Rimmer anywhere before the trip to the medi-bay. In fifteen minutes, they would be catching the shuttle to Rimmer's fate. In fact, it's not that far a walk, but the second-technician was at risk of trying to climb up the walls and hurting himself if he sustained such physical activity for any longer than five minutes.
"I think it's time to put your jacket on, Rimmer," Lister addressed him as if he were a five-year-old.
"Okay." He replied, not looking up and continuing his rocking. David Lister walked over and picked up the brown jacket labelled 'second technician'. He slipped it on over Rimmer's shoulders, zipped it up, and proceeded to tying his shoelaces for him. This was a job as Rimmer refused to sit still, but after five minutes, they were in two perfect tight little bows.
For the remaining ten minutes, Lister lazed around and asked his friend questions like: "Are you sure you don't want another glass of water before we go?" and "You don't need the loo do you?". Rimmer, on the otherhand, gazed at the floor and hummed his favourite organ tunes, answering to none of the questions.
Eventually, the time came for them to leave, and Lister guided Rimmer out of the room, ordering him to stay where he was whilst he sorted a couple of things out.
"Lights." He said, and there was darkness.
"Door." He said, and there was security.
Lister then proceeded to explaining the plan to Rimmer, "Right - look at me - okay, we're going to go to the medi-bay now. We'll be taking the shuttle, but we'll also have to walk a short distance too, so try and resist the urge to sit on the ceiling because you will hurt yourself. Hollister and Todhunter know about you so you don't need to worry about that, and you won't be doing any work today; just resting up after the appointment."
"Okay." Rimmer replied with the exact same air as he did ten minutes ago.
The two walked the couple of corridors to the shuttle stop and sat down on a metal bar whilst they waited for their ride to show up. Lister looked around and noticed Petersen (who should've been in the cafeteria) chatting to someone at the other end of the station. He felt a pang as it occured to him he hadn't seen or spoken to any of his mates in ages because he was helping Rimmer. He wasn't, of course, going to tell them why he hadn't communicated with them for so long as they would make fun of him. They thought that anybody sad enough to help 'that weirdo' was worth being put in a mental institution themselves, or so they said.
To tell the truth, however, Lister played along with this at the time; he laughed at all the snide jokes about Arnold, he joined in making rude names behind his back, and he generally shared the dislike of the guy, not to mention all the times they had publicly humiliated Rimmer and left him to deal with the hurt on his own.
Lister was at the recieving end of another pang, which hit him harder than the previous one. He couldn't get his head round the simple fact that he had spent the time with his friends being hurtful towards Rimmer, and moreover (this made him feel really sick), he had enjoyed it. And now his room-mate was seated next to him, trapped in a world in which Lister couldn't access, waiting for a shuttle that would take him to get help.
Oh smeg. He felt bad.
He felt really bad.
It was after what felt like years of embarrassing and painful waiting that the shuttle finally arrived. Lister guided Rimmer onto it by dragging him by the arm, and had to sit ontop of him to make sure that he wouldn't get up. He did feel slightly awkward in front of everyone, but he dismissed the strange looks with an expression that clearly said: "I'm sat on top of someone. Get over it. It's normal."
Rimmer obviously thought that Lister was trying to play some game, so he kept continuously laughing and yelling: "Okay Listie! You're it now!"
Lister kept on sitting; pretending he didn't hear anything and that there was nothing wrong with his friend whatsoever. He did keep pretty cool about the situation, but just hoped and prayed that Kochanski wasn't on board right now watching him.
Ahh... Kochanski...
Lister had accidently leant onto the shoulder of the person next to him, and jumped up immediatley, apologising to him over and over again.
I really need to stop doing that, he thought.

...
"Name?"
"Howard Entwhistle."
"Okay, please take a seat in the right-hand corner. Don't eat the biscuits; they're for the people in the left-hand corner."
The man shuffled over to the seating area, clutching his hand as if it were very painful. Lister noticed that it was wrapped in bandages, and there was one bit where the bandages came away...
Ew. The sight was repulsive. Lister tried not to start wretching, and was thankfully rescued by the simple word: "Next!".
The woman at the desk had a voice that was hoarse, loud and anything but lady-like. And if looks could match the sheer horror of the voice, then the two went hand in hand together. It was also worth noting that she sprayed the computer in front of her with spit every time she spoke, which Lister made sure he was not in the firing line of when he went to sign Rimmer in.
"Name?" she croaked.
"Err..." Lister gestured behind him towards his friend. "Arnold Judas Rimmer."
The woman consulted the moniter, and laughed when the result came up.
"Okay," she said, "please take a seat in the left-hand corner. Help yourself to the biscuits."
The two sat down, this time in their own individual seats, and read some magazines whilst they waited for Rimmer's name to be called. Well, to say 'read', I really mean look at the pictures.
It was a JMC Weekly magazine, which sported a large photo of Captain Hollister on the front. Hmm... crew from Red Dwarf very rarely made it onto the front page of JMC Weekly. To the bottom right of Hollister, large-ish text read: "I think I'm going mad." Lister widened his eyes in surprise, and quickly flitted to the article inside. From what he could barely make out, this is what it said:
JMC mining vessel Red Dwarf is currently taking its third trip through Galactic Sector Five, and ships important materials to and from planets and moons. It currently ranks just #22345 on 'Kirk's best working ships to be on' list (you can find that in March's issue), and has had only ninety-eight catastrophes since it last undocked from the moon, Mimas. The captain of this obviously glamourous and well-kept vessel is that of Mr Frank Hollister, and we thought we'd zap on over there and have a chat.
On first arrival, we saw that everything was red, and the title 'Red Dwarf' was painted shoddily on the exterior. However, you should never 'judge a book by its cover' as they always say, so we entered with high hopes and happy spirits. On the interior, things were pretty much the same with the exception of lots of vending machines that appeared not to be working, but we pressed on to see what else we could find. It's worth mentioning that the crew seem fairly happy and they wear a beige uniform with funny ties and embroidered patches. This makes a change from the uniforms most of us JMC employees are used to; brightly coloured skin-tight suits with polished badges and reflections of Star Trek. Nonetheless, the 'Dwarfers' seem unphased by it, so it's probably a good idea to drop that now and move on to what we actually came for.
The interview with the Captain was most certainly a colourful one; he's a great guy to be around, especially when he's dishing all the dirt on what really goes on inside the fine establishment.
"It's pretty damn boring!" Hollister laughs, speaking to our onboard correspondent, Jamie Tarshnucker, "The guys in the Drive Room are alright, I mean. But, all-in-all, you get good pay for a job well done. All our crew are well catered for, even the ones in the secret criminal institution 'The Tank'. Oh - whoops! That ain't so secret now! (Laughs). However, getting onto more serious matters, I would like to point out that Red Dwarf might not be all marble and glass, but we do our job, and we totally kick-ass at it!"
We asked him whether working on Red Dwarf came with any 'mental drawbacks' -
"You kinda get a bit institutionalised and go stir-crazy. You don't know when the next stop off's gonna be, and even then, it'll only be for a couple of days or so." After a pause, he added: "Probably. (Laughs). Speaking of mental though, I think I've gone a bit mad me'self. 'Kept doing a load of crazy things, and my senior officer Frank Todhunter* took me to Dwarf's medi-bay with the impression that I was drunk! (Laughs). I felt like it too, but the doc kept me in a few days and told me that I wasn't drunk - no - but I had caught this sorta virus thing! He said that I probably caught it whilst intercepting a load of food packages from a delivery-ship. The lads on there weren't the usual bunch, 'from the Vort-void of Qvarne or something, and it's most likely I've picked up some sort of alien thing while I was on-board. Anyway, the doc then went onto telling me that it's probably been spread around the ship and before you know it - BHAM! - everybody's gonna come down with this virus! Although, no cases have been reported yet, I'm sure it'll only be a matter of days. It will be reassuring for my crew to know, however, that only certain people can come down with it so I'm guessin' loads are already immune. But apart from that, Red Dwarf is pretty good. Boring, but good."
We decided to tie the interview up there - well, after we'd finished our champagne! This leaves us with the conclusion of 'is the vessel that nobody's heard of really as good as it's scratched up to be?'. Do you wanna be part of a crew that's infected with an alien virus?
That's what I thought.
In next week's story, we'll be chatting to some arm-chair GELF's to see how they feel about the current state of Galactic affairs. Until, next time,
Jupiter Mining Corporation.
* Frank Todhunter - nominated for JMC prize: Most notorious hair-flick.
Lister replaced the magazine on its stand and leaned back into the seat slowly. After mulling over what he had just read for a few minutes, Lister decided that the affair was just one of those major coincidences and dismissed it. Besides, if anyone was to be immune, it had to be Rimmer.
Lister came to the appropriate conclusion of to smeg with that, and plentifully helped himself to the biscuits.