Day 9, Part 8
Jim and Bexley had grown out of all the clothes that the Cat had in the storage box. Everyone was surprised when the Cat offered to make new suits, but Lister pointed out that it was useless, no suit would last them more than two hours. He instead dressed them in some of his own clothes, which entirely swamped their small bodies. Even though the boys were built solid like Lister, their bone structures were still too small to hold up any of Lister's trousers, so he let them run around in his boxers and London Jets t-shirts. Jim and Bexley were proud of their namesake—they had memorized all of his stats and wore the merchandised shirts as proudly as if they had belonged to Jim Bexley Speed himself. They even knew that he wore an aquamarine tie with a lemon diagonal stripe when he was interviewed by Mark Matheson after Megabowl 102. They now called Jim Bexley Speed their hero as well.
"After you of course, dad," Bexley had said sincerely, and Lister had to turn away from him to dab at the corners of his eyes with his shirt front.
After eating curries, listening to Rasta Billy Skank, and watching Zero-G football, Jim and Bexley's favorite pastimes were chasing each other down the ship's corridors playing a version of tag. They also had a game that they simply called "looking," in which they would do just that. They liked to explore the ship and look at all the different rooms. They particularly liked exploring in the many sleeping quarters of the ship and rummaging through the personal possessions of the deceased crewmembers of Red Dwarf.
Lister did a double-take when the twins had raced past him down the corridor outside their sleeping quarters. He and Rimmer had exchanged deeply perturbed glances and Lister craned his head around the corner that his sons had just raced around.
Lister stepped back into the threshold of their quarters and stood beside Rimmer, leaning heavily against the wall.
"I don't think the kids are alright," said Lister, jabbing his thumb behind him. "Do mine eyes deceive me, or did I just see me firstborn son dash past me wearing red pumps with a bra over his head?"
"That you did, Listy," said Rimmer disconcertedly. "But what about Bexley? Where on Io did he get those swim fins and that ridiculous sun hat?"
"I think the better question is how he learned to make balloon animals out of condoms," said Lister, biting his lip. "I swear they didn't learn that from me. D'you think we should be worried?"
"Worried?" said Rimmer dumbly. " For what?"
"Don't give me that," said Lister hotly, his hands on his hips. "You know damn well what I'm talking about—the dress-up and all."
"Don't tell me that you never played dress-up when you were younger, Lister," said Rimmer. "Everybody does."
Lister shook his head. "No—I didn't."
"Oh, right," said Rimmer doubtfully. "Don't tell me you never dug through your mother's drawers one rainy day when you were looking for some lighthearted entertainment?"
"No," said Lister. "I didn't have a mum, remember?"
"Your grandmother, then," said Rimmer in a flourish.
"Nah," said Lister, disgusted. "What sort of perverted bloke do you take me for? Why the smeg would I want to try on some old lady's knickers? I promise you, Rimmer, I never, never played dress-up. At least not until I got really wasted that night with Petersen. Or that time when me and my mates back in Liverpool snuck into a pub we were banned at. But never when I was a kid. At least not that I remember."
"Oh," said Rimmer, his face dropping. "N-neither did I. Silly, girlish thing to do. I personally would rather put on tights and pretend I was Robin Hood of Nottingham."
Lister smirked knowingly at Rimmer, who shifted uncomfortably.
"I mean," Rimmer stammered. "There may have been the odd occasion when my brothers would force me to try on one of my mother's evening gowns, and playing the Queen of Spain in their Three Musketeers game usually involved them adding a little rouge to my cheekbones. But I would never intentionally have done it on my own. It's not like I enjoyed it or anything—I fought them tooth and nail until I was blue in the face whenever they got near me with a tube of my mother's ruby red lipstick."
"Yeah, sure," leered Lister. "Keep telling yourself that, Rimsy-Mimsy."
Rimmer shook his head furiously. "We should go after them. Wearing those things too long can turn a young lad strange."
"You're probably right," said Lister. "Would you be living proof to that testament?"
Rimmer's face went red and Lister smirked in satisfaction. They left the sleeping quarters to confiscate the questionable items in the boy's possessions.
Lister found that Jim and Bexley liked to press buttons. He didn't know how they did it, but they were pushing buttons in the drive room, and suddenly Holly was speaking in Swedish. It was a full hour before the combined efforts of Lister, Kryten, and the Cat figured out how to override whatever order Jim or Bexley had given. Holly had been trying to help them figure out what to do, but they hadn't understood a word she had said.
Meanwhile, while Lister, Kryten and the Cat repaired Holly's voice circuits, Rimmer was in charge of supervising Jim and Bexley.
Jim had been stunned the first time he had been laughing, running down a corridor pursued by Bexley, when he suddenly closed his eyes as he saw that he was about to collide with Rimmer. Jim ran blindly, anticipating the crash. Much to his surprise, he passed right through Rimmer.
Jim opened his eyes and turned around, staring at Rimmer in amazement. He turned on his heel and ran through Rimmer again, laughing joyously.
"What's wrong with you?" asked Jim gleefully. "Why can I run through you?"
"Because," Rimmer explained bitterly. "I'm dead. I'm a hologram, composed entirely of light."
"Oh," said Jim, nodding and pretending to understand. "Hey Bexley! Look at this!"
Bexley jogged up to them, panting. "What is it?"
Jim demonstrated his new found discovery and ran through Rimmer again.
"Wow, let me try!" cried Bexley, and he too ran through the hologram.
"Stop that!" Rimmer barked. "Have you no respect for the dead?"
"You can't be dead," said Bexley simply. "You're still here."
The twins continued to play their new game, giggling in delight.
"I'll give you one fair warning," said Rimmer sternly. "Stop running through my person or you will have to endure the unpleasantness of my terrible wrath."
"We're not scared of you," said Jim.
"Yeah," said Bexley. "What can you do to us? You're dead!"
Rimmer became quite mad, and turned as if to chase off the boys. They screamed and ran playfully down the hallway.
"Go on," Rimmer growled, and pursued them down the corridor, the boys shrieking all the way. "You're both grounded!"
"But we're having fun!" Jim and Bexley exclaimed together.
"Well I'm not," said Rimmer bitterly.
"That's because you're no fun," said Jim, as he once again turned and ran through Rimmer's helpless image.
"Lister, can't you control your posterity?" asked Rimmer, swiftly walking down the corridor in pursuit of the twins.
"What's going on here, boys?" asked Lister, as Jim and Bexley ran into him. They squealed again and hid behind Lister, their arms wrapped around the back of his legs.
"They've discovered that I'm a hologram," said Rimmer. "And they think it's quite an amusing game to run through my person as they please."
"Well, it is," Lister defended. "But it's a novelty. They'll get bored with it after a while."
"They're just like you," said Rimmer. "No respect for their superiors, even when they're dead."
"They're just kids," Lister defended. "It's just a stage. They'll grow out of it. They're only having a bit of fun."
"No respect…" Rimmer murmured. "Listy—could I have a word with you in private?"
"Sure," said Lister. He looked over his shoulder at the twins. "Go play, boys. And try to stay out of trouble."
Jim and Bexley turned and scurried off to the sleeping quarters behind them. The doors to the sleeping quarters had been open for several minutes, and had decided to spontaneously close on their own. Jim got through the door, but Bexley barely missed. The result was that he collided headfirst with the closing door.
Lister and Rimmer heard the noise and turned just in time to see Bexley stumble backwards and land heavily on the floor, clutching his mouth with both hands.
Lister came to Bexley's aid as fast as he able to do with painful sutures tugging, and knelt down at Bexley's side. "Bexley! That didn't look so good. Are you all right?"
Bexley sat in stunned silence for several moments, before his face grew red and his eyes started to stream. His shoulders shook uncontrollably as he whined painfully as blood tricked down from the corner of his mouth.
"Oh," said Lister concernedly when he saw the blood seeping from Bexley's mouth. "Let me see…"
Bexley shook his head and sobbed harder. Lister prized Bexley's hands from his mouth, and was startled to see how rapidly the blood was streaming from Bexley's closed mouth, and his palms were stained red. Lister whipped his head around to look at Rimmer for help.
"Which one is this?" asked Rimmer.
"What?" scoffed Lister. "You mean to say you can't tell them apart?"
"No," said Rimmer. "They're completely identical. How can anyone possibly tell them apart?"
"I can," said Lister simply.
"Yes," said Rimmer tauntingly. "But mothers can always tell, can't they? So, is it Jim or Bexley that just made acquaintances with the door?"
"It's Bexley," said Lister.
"Bexley, open your mouth, please," said Rimmer, standing over Bexley. Jim had figured out that his twin hadn't followed him, and had come out to see what was holding him up.
"What's wrong with Bexley?" asked Jim, staring wide-eyed at his brother.
Bexley reluctantly opened his mouth, and Lister and Rimmer leaned in for a closer look. One of Bexley's bottom teeth had been knocked out, and a gaping, bleeding red hole had been left in its place.
"His tooth!" Jim cried in horror. "It's gone!"
"But where'd it go?" asked Lister, looking around the floor.
"Here!" said Jim, holding up a small, pearly white tooth and handing it to Lister.
"They just got these in," said Lister, shaking his head while looking at the small tooth in his palm.
"Well, they are around the age children start to lose their baby teeth and get their adult teeth in," Rimmer said. "I remember the awkward stage perfectly. I was known as the Bonehead Jack-O-Lantern from the time I was six to nine years old."
"It hurts!" Bexley wailed, flinging his arms around Lister's neck.
"I know, I know," said Lister patting Bexley's back and cradling him back and forth as Bexley sobbed into Lister's shoulder.
"Don't smother him!" Rimmer scolded. "They have to start learning to deal with their problems on their own."
"Rimmer, don't tell me how to raise my kids," Lister replied vehemently.
"You're going to spoil them," said Rimmer. "They're not babies anymore."
"But they still are babies," Lister said, then added regretfully, "Or at least they should be."
"Daddy! Daddy! Look what I can do!" exclaimed Jim, as he hopped around the sleeping quarters on one foot.
"That's great, Jim," beamed Lister. Rimmer too managed to smile slightly.
"That's nothing, Jim," said Bexley. "Look what I can do!"
Bexley took a step back, planted both hands on the floor, and reared into a handstand. He lost balance and toppled over.
"Easy, easy!" said Lister, helping Bexley to his feet. "Don't hurt yourselves."
"Well I can do this!" said Jim, attempting to do a lopsided cartwheel and crashing into the dirty laundry bin.
"Me, me! Look at me!" cried Bexley, and he did a somersault.
"That's fantastic, boys," said Lister with his nose plugged as he scooped the putrid socks back into the basket.
The twins had been competing for his attention nonstop for the past hour. Now that Bexley had lost a tooth, the two of them seemed to be taking turns, pulling out one tooth after another. Rimmer pointed out that Jim most likely would have lost a tooth first if it hadn't been for Bexley's encounter with the door.
Lister had been very concerned that they'd have no teeth left, and was startled to discover that their permanent teeth were coming in just as quickly as they were loosing them.
Whenever one of the twins performed a trick that Lister considered to be very impressive, the other twin would always have to find another trick to outdo his brother. Lister was thrilled with all of the new things that they were learning, but at the same time he wished that they would stop showing each other up for his praise and affection.
"Let's do something else now, lads," said Lister, lying down wearily in his bunk.
"What's this?" asked Jim, pointing to a spot on the wall.
Lister's gaze followed Jim's pointing finger and lead to his guitar that was propped up against the wall.
"That's me guitar," said Lister, holding his bandaged side and reaching to grab the neck of the guitar with his other hand. "Do you want to try it out?"
"Please, no," Rimmer pleaded, clasping his hands together. Jim nodded and climbed into the bunk. Lister handed Jim the guitar and showed him how to hold it.
"Oh smeg," said Rimmer, covering his ears before Jim even started to play. Rimmer decided that since Jim was a Lister, he'd naturally play the guitar about as well as El Kabong.
"What do I do?" asked Jim, running his small hands along the neck of the guitar.
"You strum it, like this," explained Lister, taking Jim's right hand and guiding it to the correct placement over the strings. He raised Jim's hand up and then strummed in a smooth downward stroke. "See?"
Jim grinned as the sound of the guitar's few mismatched and un-tuned strings harmonized in the air much like a car pile up on the freeway. Jim strummed the guitar again and again, more quickly and with more ferocity.
"Sounds good, son," said Lister proudly. "Let me show you the other half of playing. You can also put you fingers on the strings up here to make the notes sound different."
Lister situated Jim's fingers so that they formed a triangle high up on the neck in the second and third frets. "There you go. That's the D chord. It's one of the only ones I ever bothered to learn."
Jim strummed the guitar, but the D chord was not what came out of it. It was a sound worse than fingernails on a chalkboard, a sound that man would never have thought a guitar was capable of making. But Jim, just like Lister, seemed to thing that the gods had smiled down on him and made him a rock n'roll diva, so he continued to play with confidence.
"My turn!" exclaimed Bexley, snatching the guitar from Jim and holding it upside down and backwards. He bit his lip and strummed violently.
Rimmer groaned and pressed his fingers so far into his ear canals he could have sworn his fingers made contact with his brain.
"Way to go Hendrix-style!" said Lister, clapping. "It sounds great, Bex!"
"Are you kidding?" said Rimmer incredulously, wrenching his fingers out of his ears and checking to be sure that there wasn't any pinkish gray substance on his fingertips. "Your whole family is completely tone-deaf."
Bexley propped the guitar back up against the wall. He and Jim exchanged a silent glance, nodded, and started out of the sleeping quarters.
"It really creeps me out when they do that," said Rimmer edgily.
"Where are you going, boys?" called Lister from the bunk.
"We're just going to pop down to the dispensing machine. Jim wants a drink," said Bexley. "D'you want anything?"
Lister shook his head slowly. "No thanks, I'm good."
"What about you?" asked Jim politely to Rimmer. "D'you want anything?"
"No, James, I do not," said Rimmer, pacing and trying his best to sound pleasant. "I am a hologram, therefore I am dead, incase you forgot so quickly. Therefore, I can no longer enjoy the pleasure of consuming any sort of culinary delicacy."
"Oh," said Jim in a small voice, and he and Jim skipped off down the corridor, each with the same foot forward, their arms swinging in sync, each singing the same song by Rasta Billy Skank.
"A simple 'no thanks,' would have done it, Rimmer," said Lister once the twins were gone. "You should've been nicer to Jim. He didn't know that you can't eat. He was just trying to be friendly."
"I was merely stating a fact!" said Rimmer defensively. "I don't appreciate being constantly reminded that I'm not truly among the living and that my whole existence is an illusion generated by light by a senile computer, that I'm just a shadow of the person I was when I was alive. "
"Thank goodness for that," said Lister with a sigh of relief. "If this is just a shadow of what you're really like, I don't think I could handle the full Rimmer."
"I mean, do I really resemble myself at all? I could've sworn I had a better physique when I was alive, muscles don't just disappear like that. And that time I made a second me—he was so much more motivated. He said I'd gone soft."
"Well, maybe you have. Sorry to change the subject," said Lister, not sounding remotely sorry at all. "Have you seen the Cat or Kryten around?"
"Not for awhile," said Rimmer. "I think the Cat's trying to stay clear of the twins right now until he's had all of his suits laminated. And the last time I saw Kryten he was polishing every glass surface in the ship. But then again, it is the middle of the night. They're most likely sleeping, which is what I would be doing if the noise level in here was even somewhat bearable."
"I wish I could sleep, too," said Lister, yawning. "But I'll only sleep when they do, and the boys say they're not tired."
"So," said Rimmer, looking down at his hands. "When are you going to tell them?"
"Tell them what?"
"About everything," said Rimmer. "The circumstances behind their births, the reason they're ageing so fast, if they even notice—and the fact that they'll be dead in a fortnight if they don't go back to their universe. They deserve to know, and soon."
"I'll tell them eventually," said Lister offhandedly. "If it crops up naturally in conversation. I don't even know if they're old enough to understand it all. To be completely honest, I think it's a miracle they can even speak with how quickly they've had to learn words. I actually think they're doing really well coping with it all, better than I am, anyways. But there's still a lot of things they don't know. They don't even know about women, so there's the first place I'd start, or the rest of it wouldn't make sense. I dunno. Maybe they're still too young. I'll give it a few more hours."
"But you need to plan how you're going to tell them," said Rimmer. "You won't know when and if it will even come up in conversation and frankly you need to be prepared on how to handle this impending delicate situation. I mean, you can't very well say, 'Yes, it's true—you are but products of my perverse self-gratification gone hideously wrong.'"
Jim and Bexley skidded into the room at that moment, obviously excited about something. Their small arms were loaded with silver cartridges. The twins each had something white sticking out from between their lips.
"Look what we found!" exclaimed Jim proudly, showing Lister and Rimmer the boxes in his arms, silver packages glinting in the light.
"My cigarettes!" Lister exclaimed in incredulity. "I was looking all over for these! Where'd you boys find 'em?"
"In a closet," said Bexley, the cigarette bobbing in his mouth as he spoke.
Lister snatched the cigarettes from Jim and Bexley's mouths. "You're too young for these. Which closet did you say?"
"A closet where I quite rightly knew you'd never think to look in," said Rimmer smugly. "The cleaning supply closet."
"Eh. I'll remember that," said Lister. "Well, give 'em here, boys, these aren't meant for kids."
Jim and Bexley obediently handed Lister the many packs of cigarettes. Lister caressed one of the boxes lovingly against his face.
"You're not going to smoke them now, are you?" asked Rimmer sternly.
"'Course I'm not," said Lister. "I think I can wait a couple of days to start up again." He piled the cigarette cartridges haphazardly in his storage locker.
"We found a bunch of these, too," said Bexley, pulling a can of lager out from under his shirt.
"Me lager!" Lister cried, accepting the can from Bexley, "These were in that closet, too?"
"Yep," said Jim proudly. "A whole smegging bunch!"
Lister was overjoyed to tears of happiness at the prospect of having his lager back. He gratefully knelt down, overwhelmed, and pulled Jim and Bexley into a tight hug, kissing them both as he thanked them again and again.
"You shouldn't drink that yet either," Rimmer advised. "I don't think it will work well with the pain medication you're taking. I've heard horror stories of people who've mixed narcotics with depressants like alcohol."
"Pain medication?" asked Bexley curiously as Lister released him from his embrace. "Are you hurt?"
Lister looked down at the floor, and Rimmer smiled gleefully. "So the truth comes out. Now would be that appropriate time for that talk we talked about possibly talking about."
"What happened?" asked Jim with concern. "Is that why you always touch your tummy like it hurts real bad? And why you have that medicine thing with you?"
"Yeah," said Lister slowly, not sure how to handle the situation he was now in that he hoped would not come up for at least another day. He didn't even know if Jim and Bexley would even understand, being only about six years old. Yes, it had been around a full day since their birth. He only had two days left with them, and Lister decided that he would have to tell them sooner or later.
Lister lifted up the hem of his t-shirt and showed them the faintly bloodied bandages, and they gave a gasp of surprise. He needed to let the stitches get some air anyway if they were ever going to heal. He thought how unfair it was that Jim and Bexley grow up so quickly, when his incision gets to heal in time with his universe.
"What happened to you?" gasped Jim.
Rimmer pretended to cough behind his hand. "Hhhum, hhhum, you did."
"What did we do?" asked Bexley, looking at Rimmer tentatively. "We didn't do anything!"
Bexley looked uncertainly at Jim. "Did we?"
Jim shrugged. "I don't remember."
"Come here, boys," said Lister, taking their heads and leading them over to the bunk. Lister sat down and the twins sat on either side of him. Lister put an arm around each of their shoulders and drew them closer to him.
"This all might be a little hard for you to understand," said Lister slowly. "So if I say anything you don't understand, just tell me, okay?"
"Okay," said Jim and Bexley together. Lister took a moment to gather his thoughts, and Jim and Bexley patiently waited for him to begin speaking.
"I guess I should start back at the beginning," said Lister. "I never knew who my parents were. I was adopted—found under a pool table in a pub back in Liverpool. That's where I was born and raised. Back on Earth."
Lister closed his eyes as Jim and Bexley fired off a million questions.
"What's 'Liverpool'?"
"What's 'parents'?"
"What's 'adopted'?"
"What's 'born'?"
"What's a 'pool table'?"
"What's Earth?" asked Bexley curiously.
"I've got a lot of work to do. Come on," said Lister, slowly standing and pulling Jim and Bexley to their feet as well. He tucked a photo album under the crook of his arm. "Follow me. There's something I want to show you."
ARNOLD J. RIMMER—MY LIFE, MY DIARIES
27 SEPTEMBER, 3,000,002, 181
Tape on, Holly. Where have you been today, anyways? Oh well, I guess getting used to your new sex must involve a lot of alone time. The birth of Lister's twin boys occurred around 3 in the morning, and the operation was a complete success. He named them Jim and Bexley after that ridiculous footballer who thinks it's great fun to make a fool of himself trying to play major league sports in zero gravity. We discovered that the boy's time will be short here, as they are suffering from highly accelerated growth rates. They entertained themselves today at my expense, much like their dear mum. Lister's just taken them to go explain everything to them. I wonder what he wants to tell them that he can't say in front of me…oh, if he tells them about Gazpacho Soup Day or the time I accidentally called Todhunter mummy, I'll kill him. Tape off.