***
Chapter 3
A while later...
"Bleep. Bleep. Bleep." Kryten stood, linked to the pulse-machine. "Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep."
The Cat stared in mild amusement. The bleepy-thing had previously packed in, following getting knocked over from a couple of weeks back... by him, naturally. Now Kryten stood as a replacement. His groinal socket had proved useful yet again. Lister lay on the steel table, tubes and pipes stuffed down his throat, up his nose - he didn't particularly need them he HAD only fainted after all... but the Cat had insisted. Having Lister swallowing Kryten's multi-use genitalia was enough to make anyone cease preening and watch.
"Mister Lister Sir? Mister Lister Sir? Mister Lister Sir...CAN YOU HEAR ME?!" Kryten bellowed, as Bexlie, Rimmer and the Cat shielded their eardrums.
Lister woke with a start. And a headache. "Aye, man... me ears!" he massaged his temples and looked around, almost instantly clocking the woman who had done this to him.
Bexlie was coaxed gently by Rimmer, as she stood forward, tensely and rigidly. She took Lister's hand, and in a stuttering whisper, she introduced herself to him.
"Hel-l-lo. David Lister... I'm B-b-be-"
"Hold on, I've got tubes down me -" He paused. "Wait a smeggin' minute! Kryt, I thought the bleeper had packed in?"
Kryten explained the tube situation...Lister spat them out immediately. "Ugh..."
She carried on. "D-dave Lister... My n-n-name is Bexlie. I'm your d- daughter."
He couldn't comprehend what this strange, stuttering girl had just said to him. The only person related to him with the name Bexlie was Bexley, his son. Not daughter. Son! Maybe this was all just the concussion speaking? He didn't know. He knew for a fact that his son was a son. His two sons were sons. Twins. Of course he would know, because he went through the agony of childbirth for them. They were MALE. No doubt about it. Or was there? And what about Jim, Bexley's twin? Where was he?
She picked up on what he was about to say. "Why am I a g-girl? Dad...you nnn-never changed me once! What was there to det-termine whether I was a b- boy or not?! Plus, the act of c-crossing us through the Parallels ob-bvious- sly had an effect on us!
"Yeah," Smirked the ever-tactful Cat. "In m-m-m-more ways than one!"
She ignored his petty remark and carried on.
"...Well, we were boys on your side right, girls on the other! And what about Jim? Jim is called Jane."
"Wait a god-damned minute," The Cat interrupted after a thoughtful silence. "You mean to say, that in all probability... when you crossed the Parallel Dimension, you and this Jim-aney character had - a sex change?" He stood in amusement. "As babies? Is that LEGAL?!"
She shot a witheringly annoyed glare at the animal, and he cowered behind Kryten. "Sorry...Madam...do excuse my manners, and DO please, carry on..." He exclaimed in his most posh of voices.
She continued. "And, I'm sorry Father, but you may well have to sit down for this..."
Lister gestured at the table he was lying on, shook his head and sighed. "What about Jane then? How is she? Is she OK? Where is she?!" Lister was becoming steadily irate.
She explained to him that Jane had gone on to become the first female test pilot for the Space Corps, but after many years, had sadly tested one short- circuited ship too many.
"She's dead. Took on a wall at twenty-five-thousand-odd miles an hour. Couldn't brake - as the company later found out, they'd forgot to install brakes... I'm sorry. I vowed to find you after it happened, and although, at the time you left us, the barriers between yours and Mum's Universes had a strange effect on our life cycles, the barrier has steadily broken down over the years... Only now has it been safe enough for me to get through to you. Jane has been dead for years. And although I am too, her light-bee was destroyed after an electricity leakage. Exploded. There is no way to fix it. She's gone. Forever." Tears welled up around the rims of her eyelids. He squeezed her hand, before again, passing out. It was all too much to take in. Way too much.
"Miss Lister Ma'am? Are you ok? Mister Lister Sir?" Kryten didn't quite know what to make of the whole affair.
Neither did The Cat.
Neither did Rimmer. Almost reluctantly, he stepped forward and embraced her gently, lightly pressing her face to his chest. Her eyes were streaming. Even her tears were beautiful, he mused. The 'Whole Affair' had now seemed a hell of a lot more than simple now. She was Bexlie Lister. She was a blood-relation (well, not technically a blood-relation now she was a hologram) of the scum of the earth, and he...well...he was...he was in love with her. A LISTER. He rolled his hazel eyes into his head, shut them tightly and groaned softly along with her as she wept.
Cat had had enough of all the solemnity. He stood up and casually made his way to the nearby sink, filled a glass of water, casually made his way back, stood beside Lister and poured the H2O right over his face.
Lister screeched.
"Now... that should bring him round." He grinned insensitively as he made his way yet again, down the hall to his quarters.
"It's three-and-a-half minutes past shower time.. five hours past beauty time... and twelve hours past mirror time! I'm behind schedule!! Miiiaaooooooowwwww!" His screeching echoed down the hallway as he strutted.
"Oh Daddy," Bexlie began sympathetically. "I..I mean...I really didn't mean to shock you so much. I had to find you. You would have found out eventually, I guess."
"You guess?! And...don't call me daddy. I'm not your daddy. How could I be? I haven't talked to you in.... however many years I haven't seen you -"
She adamantly corrected him. "Twenty years."
Kryten and Holly let themselves out. This was becoming slightly too personal to listen to.
Rimmer stayed on the same spot grinning excessively behind his dumbfounded expression. Twenty years? He mulled it over, letting her words roll around in his skull for a couple of seconds. Twenty? That was HALF his age! She was twenty whole years his minor, and was definitely interested in HIM.
"Mmmarvellous!" Rimmer exclaimed, rather loudly, out loud. His resonant thought was greeted by two glares from each Lister. He backtracked.
"Sorry... just, well, erm..."
And with that immensely detailed explanation, he too let himself out. Quickly. Bexlie smiled after him as he very nearly, in all his rush, walked into the door.
She mopped her Father's brow. He lay, staring at her, still ill content with the revelations. She didn't even look like him. The accent was off. And from what he could see... she was smarter than him too. How could an offspring of his actually be smarter? Maybe it was because she didn't actually ever properly TALK with him growing up. Maybe because she lived in a parallel universe, The Listers were intelligent. Despite having so many already answered, questions still swarmed like a plague of locusts around his mind, munching ceaselessly at his brain.
"What's with your accent then? And WHY don't you look like me?!" he barked.
She sighed heavily as she explained that, because she never really had a paternal figure around back home, her Mother had found someone else. A guy called Kristopher Kochanski. Because he was a high-ranking officer on Red Dwarf before the minor-apocalypse, he was very educated, prim, proper. Bexlie had found refuge in conversation with him. Her mother was too busy eating Vindaloos and insulting Arlene Rimmer to educate her, let alone talk with her even occasionally. She would spend around ten hours a day just talking with him, about the stars, life on board Red Dwarf, her problems, everything. And THAT was where Bexlie's accent derived. Not the harsh Liverpudlian twang of her lowly mother, but the soft, velvety Scottish tones of Kristopher. Arlene, the ship's hologram, was also a strong influence on Bexlie's life. Her relentless teachings on Hammond Organ music and Twentieth Century telegraph poles, not to mention her lessons in saluting a superior officer were simply priceless. She just generally enjoyed her company. Because Arlene was really the only female idol she had on the ship, Bexlie was completely and utterly crushed when she had to leave to become Ace Rimmer. However, on a recent visit from her hero Ace, she was taught all about the Dimension Jump Drive. How there are many coexisting Listers, Kochanskis, Rimmers, Hollys, and how each of their dimensions had differences - and of course, how her mother was also her father, and how her father WAS her mother...in retrospect.
And with that, Bexlie began to piece together everything missing in her life that Kochanski had probably accidentally omitted to fill her in on.
Then, she only had one goal. Find her biological father.
Now, she had found him.
On hearing his daughter's tale, Lister also, began piecing things together.
"Kochanski? Kristopher Kochanski? HE made a better Mother than me?" he perished the thought.
"And RIMMER?! How could you get along with Rimmer?! That one in YOUR universe is just ours with a rack!" guffawed Lister. "And judging by what this one's been blessed with - " In his mind, he looked Rimmer up and down. "They're not exactly going to be that special."
"I hoped you would be nothing like our Lister, but that slither of hope is disintegrating faster than her taste buds," she defensively quipped back.
Bexlie was slowly but surely becoming quite upset with her long-waited for find. She'd travelled all this way just to find her dysfunctional mother in a man's body. Just her Mother, but with obvious extra bodily functions, worse body odour and a fifty-percent lower IQ level. Great, she thought to herself. "Just great."
"Well... didn't exactly thrill me when you turned up, finding out I only had one twin left, she's a She, doesn't look or sound like me, and was brought up by a heartbreaker and a Morris-dancing, girlier version of the most disgustingly irritating man dead!" Lister recklessly declared. "He's a complete SMEGHEAD! Our Rimmer is, your Rimmer is... everybody's Rimmer is!!"
That was the last straw. She gasped with disgust and stormed out the door. On her way out, she stormed gale-force one into the chest of the quite- blatantly spying Arnold Rimmer. He smiled calmly at her saddened, but mostly angered demeanour.
He may have been spying intently, but Rimmer also had found the time to wash his hands and finally persuade Holly to fix him a new outfit. He had a new haircut. A less gawky, blotchy complexion. And, a much firmer and toned body. Quite obviously, he had taken the time out enough to revamp his whole look. Bexlie let out a lungful of air. Was this the Arnold J Rimmer, BSc SSc she had met some hours previously? Or was this some film-hunk from a kick-ass action film?
"Howdy doodly doo!"
"...Rimmer." She ultimately decided.
"What's wrong Bexlie darling dearest?" He cooed. She thrust her head angrily onto his shoulder. With a pained expression, he stroked her face and hair as she explained how much of a complete and total smegger her father really was.
"I know, I know" was the synthetically sympathetic reply.
Then she looked him in the eyes. An idea had struck her like a whip on the face - you couldn't miss it. She grinned naughtily, gripped Rimmer's tie tightly in her hands and pulled him forcibly round the corner into the medi- bay. Arn was obligated to follow suit, like a small Daschund on a leash, idiotically smiling after her.
Lister was perched on the edge of the medi-table. He looked up at his daughter and bunk-mate in the doorway.
"Dad... you said you hated Rimmer?" Bexlie asked.
"Hate isn't strong enough a word darling..." Lister retorted sarcastically, eyeing Rimmer up and down again with disgust.
"Well...You know what Dad - " Bexlie begun, and she tugged a genuinely shocked Rimmer into a kiss. He immediately fell into it... but just before he could get his tongue in properly for a little dance, she pulled away, glared at her Father, grabbed the hand of the panic-stricken, love-craving hologram and waltzed off with him up the corridor to the lifts.
"Geronimoooooo!!!" Came the Rimmer-esque cries from down the hall as they began to run.
Bexlie had hit on her desired effect. Lister was livid. HOW could Rimmer take advantage of his daughter like that?!
"He's old enough to be her DAD!!" he roared, as he vaulted from the table, tripped over some of Kryten's groinal wiring and went speeding off after them.
His face, now puce, veins pulsing like pistons, roared as he powered down the halls - tables, cans, chairs, Skutters, Cats and Krytens flying out of his way as he strode.
"Maybe we should stop him...?" enquired Kryten, rather flustered as the Lister shaped blur thrust it's way past.
"I'm smeggin' gonna smeggin' smeggin' knock his smeggin' ugly smeggin' features off his smeggin' face!!!!"
The Cat stared as Lister flew by. Then at Kryten. "Nah...." he replied eventually.
Chapter 3
A while later...
"Bleep. Bleep. Bleep." Kryten stood, linked to the pulse-machine. "Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep."
The Cat stared in mild amusement. The bleepy-thing had previously packed in, following getting knocked over from a couple of weeks back... by him, naturally. Now Kryten stood as a replacement. His groinal socket had proved useful yet again. Lister lay on the steel table, tubes and pipes stuffed down his throat, up his nose - he didn't particularly need them he HAD only fainted after all... but the Cat had insisted. Having Lister swallowing Kryten's multi-use genitalia was enough to make anyone cease preening and watch.
"Mister Lister Sir? Mister Lister Sir? Mister Lister Sir...CAN YOU HEAR ME?!" Kryten bellowed, as Bexlie, Rimmer and the Cat shielded their eardrums.
Lister woke with a start. And a headache. "Aye, man... me ears!" he massaged his temples and looked around, almost instantly clocking the woman who had done this to him.
Bexlie was coaxed gently by Rimmer, as she stood forward, tensely and rigidly. She took Lister's hand, and in a stuttering whisper, she introduced herself to him.
"Hel-l-lo. David Lister... I'm B-b-be-"
"Hold on, I've got tubes down me -" He paused. "Wait a smeggin' minute! Kryt, I thought the bleeper had packed in?"
Kryten explained the tube situation...Lister spat them out immediately. "Ugh..."
She carried on. "D-dave Lister... My n-n-name is Bexlie. I'm your d- daughter."
He couldn't comprehend what this strange, stuttering girl had just said to him. The only person related to him with the name Bexlie was Bexley, his son. Not daughter. Son! Maybe this was all just the concussion speaking? He didn't know. He knew for a fact that his son was a son. His two sons were sons. Twins. Of course he would know, because he went through the agony of childbirth for them. They were MALE. No doubt about it. Or was there? And what about Jim, Bexley's twin? Where was he?
She picked up on what he was about to say. "Why am I a g-girl? Dad...you nnn-never changed me once! What was there to det-termine whether I was a b- boy or not?! Plus, the act of c-crossing us through the Parallels ob-bvious- sly had an effect on us!
"Yeah," Smirked the ever-tactful Cat. "In m-m-m-more ways than one!"
She ignored his petty remark and carried on.
"...Well, we were boys on your side right, girls on the other! And what about Jim? Jim is called Jane."
"Wait a god-damned minute," The Cat interrupted after a thoughtful silence. "You mean to say, that in all probability... when you crossed the Parallel Dimension, you and this Jim-aney character had - a sex change?" He stood in amusement. "As babies? Is that LEGAL?!"
She shot a witheringly annoyed glare at the animal, and he cowered behind Kryten. "Sorry...Madam...do excuse my manners, and DO please, carry on..." He exclaimed in his most posh of voices.
She continued. "And, I'm sorry Father, but you may well have to sit down for this..."
Lister gestured at the table he was lying on, shook his head and sighed. "What about Jane then? How is she? Is she OK? Where is she?!" Lister was becoming steadily irate.
She explained to him that Jane had gone on to become the first female test pilot for the Space Corps, but after many years, had sadly tested one short- circuited ship too many.
"She's dead. Took on a wall at twenty-five-thousand-odd miles an hour. Couldn't brake - as the company later found out, they'd forgot to install brakes... I'm sorry. I vowed to find you after it happened, and although, at the time you left us, the barriers between yours and Mum's Universes had a strange effect on our life cycles, the barrier has steadily broken down over the years... Only now has it been safe enough for me to get through to you. Jane has been dead for years. And although I am too, her light-bee was destroyed after an electricity leakage. Exploded. There is no way to fix it. She's gone. Forever." Tears welled up around the rims of her eyelids. He squeezed her hand, before again, passing out. It was all too much to take in. Way too much.
"Miss Lister Ma'am? Are you ok? Mister Lister Sir?" Kryten didn't quite know what to make of the whole affair.
Neither did The Cat.
Neither did Rimmer. Almost reluctantly, he stepped forward and embraced her gently, lightly pressing her face to his chest. Her eyes were streaming. Even her tears were beautiful, he mused. The 'Whole Affair' had now seemed a hell of a lot more than simple now. She was Bexlie Lister. She was a blood-relation (well, not technically a blood-relation now she was a hologram) of the scum of the earth, and he...well...he was...he was in love with her. A LISTER. He rolled his hazel eyes into his head, shut them tightly and groaned softly along with her as she wept.
Cat had had enough of all the solemnity. He stood up and casually made his way to the nearby sink, filled a glass of water, casually made his way back, stood beside Lister and poured the H2O right over his face.
Lister screeched.
"Now... that should bring him round." He grinned insensitively as he made his way yet again, down the hall to his quarters.
"It's three-and-a-half minutes past shower time.. five hours past beauty time... and twelve hours past mirror time! I'm behind schedule!! Miiiaaooooooowwwww!" His screeching echoed down the hallway as he strutted.
"Oh Daddy," Bexlie began sympathetically. "I..I mean...I really didn't mean to shock you so much. I had to find you. You would have found out eventually, I guess."
"You guess?! And...don't call me daddy. I'm not your daddy. How could I be? I haven't talked to you in.... however many years I haven't seen you -"
She adamantly corrected him. "Twenty years."
Kryten and Holly let themselves out. This was becoming slightly too personal to listen to.
Rimmer stayed on the same spot grinning excessively behind his dumbfounded expression. Twenty years? He mulled it over, letting her words roll around in his skull for a couple of seconds. Twenty? That was HALF his age! She was twenty whole years his minor, and was definitely interested in HIM.
"Mmmarvellous!" Rimmer exclaimed, rather loudly, out loud. His resonant thought was greeted by two glares from each Lister. He backtracked.
"Sorry... just, well, erm..."
And with that immensely detailed explanation, he too let himself out. Quickly. Bexlie smiled after him as he very nearly, in all his rush, walked into the door.
She mopped her Father's brow. He lay, staring at her, still ill content with the revelations. She didn't even look like him. The accent was off. And from what he could see... she was smarter than him too. How could an offspring of his actually be smarter? Maybe it was because she didn't actually ever properly TALK with him growing up. Maybe because she lived in a parallel universe, The Listers were intelligent. Despite having so many already answered, questions still swarmed like a plague of locusts around his mind, munching ceaselessly at his brain.
"What's with your accent then? And WHY don't you look like me?!" he barked.
She sighed heavily as she explained that, because she never really had a paternal figure around back home, her Mother had found someone else. A guy called Kristopher Kochanski. Because he was a high-ranking officer on Red Dwarf before the minor-apocalypse, he was very educated, prim, proper. Bexlie had found refuge in conversation with him. Her mother was too busy eating Vindaloos and insulting Arlene Rimmer to educate her, let alone talk with her even occasionally. She would spend around ten hours a day just talking with him, about the stars, life on board Red Dwarf, her problems, everything. And THAT was where Bexlie's accent derived. Not the harsh Liverpudlian twang of her lowly mother, but the soft, velvety Scottish tones of Kristopher. Arlene, the ship's hologram, was also a strong influence on Bexlie's life. Her relentless teachings on Hammond Organ music and Twentieth Century telegraph poles, not to mention her lessons in saluting a superior officer were simply priceless. She just generally enjoyed her company. Because Arlene was really the only female idol she had on the ship, Bexlie was completely and utterly crushed when she had to leave to become Ace Rimmer. However, on a recent visit from her hero Ace, she was taught all about the Dimension Jump Drive. How there are many coexisting Listers, Kochanskis, Rimmers, Hollys, and how each of their dimensions had differences - and of course, how her mother was also her father, and how her father WAS her mother...in retrospect.
And with that, Bexlie began to piece together everything missing in her life that Kochanski had probably accidentally omitted to fill her in on.
Then, she only had one goal. Find her biological father.
Now, she had found him.
On hearing his daughter's tale, Lister also, began piecing things together.
"Kochanski? Kristopher Kochanski? HE made a better Mother than me?" he perished the thought.
"And RIMMER?! How could you get along with Rimmer?! That one in YOUR universe is just ours with a rack!" guffawed Lister. "And judging by what this one's been blessed with - " In his mind, he looked Rimmer up and down. "They're not exactly going to be that special."
"I hoped you would be nothing like our Lister, but that slither of hope is disintegrating faster than her taste buds," she defensively quipped back.
Bexlie was slowly but surely becoming quite upset with her long-waited for find. She'd travelled all this way just to find her dysfunctional mother in a man's body. Just her Mother, but with obvious extra bodily functions, worse body odour and a fifty-percent lower IQ level. Great, she thought to herself. "Just great."
"Well... didn't exactly thrill me when you turned up, finding out I only had one twin left, she's a She, doesn't look or sound like me, and was brought up by a heartbreaker and a Morris-dancing, girlier version of the most disgustingly irritating man dead!" Lister recklessly declared. "He's a complete SMEGHEAD! Our Rimmer is, your Rimmer is... everybody's Rimmer is!!"
That was the last straw. She gasped with disgust and stormed out the door. On her way out, she stormed gale-force one into the chest of the quite- blatantly spying Arnold Rimmer. He smiled calmly at her saddened, but mostly angered demeanour.
He may have been spying intently, but Rimmer also had found the time to wash his hands and finally persuade Holly to fix him a new outfit. He had a new haircut. A less gawky, blotchy complexion. And, a much firmer and toned body. Quite obviously, he had taken the time out enough to revamp his whole look. Bexlie let out a lungful of air. Was this the Arnold J Rimmer, BSc SSc she had met some hours previously? Or was this some film-hunk from a kick-ass action film?
"Howdy doodly doo!"
"...Rimmer." She ultimately decided.
"What's wrong Bexlie darling dearest?" He cooed. She thrust her head angrily onto his shoulder. With a pained expression, he stroked her face and hair as she explained how much of a complete and total smegger her father really was.
"I know, I know" was the synthetically sympathetic reply.
Then she looked him in the eyes. An idea had struck her like a whip on the face - you couldn't miss it. She grinned naughtily, gripped Rimmer's tie tightly in her hands and pulled him forcibly round the corner into the medi- bay. Arn was obligated to follow suit, like a small Daschund on a leash, idiotically smiling after her.
Lister was perched on the edge of the medi-table. He looked up at his daughter and bunk-mate in the doorway.
"Dad... you said you hated Rimmer?" Bexlie asked.
"Hate isn't strong enough a word darling..." Lister retorted sarcastically, eyeing Rimmer up and down again with disgust.
"Well...You know what Dad - " Bexlie begun, and she tugged a genuinely shocked Rimmer into a kiss. He immediately fell into it... but just before he could get his tongue in properly for a little dance, she pulled away, glared at her Father, grabbed the hand of the panic-stricken, love-craving hologram and waltzed off with him up the corridor to the lifts.
"Geronimoooooo!!!" Came the Rimmer-esque cries from down the hall as they began to run.
Bexlie had hit on her desired effect. Lister was livid. HOW could Rimmer take advantage of his daughter like that?!
"He's old enough to be her DAD!!" he roared, as he vaulted from the table, tripped over some of Kryten's groinal wiring and went speeding off after them.
His face, now puce, veins pulsing like pistons, roared as he powered down the halls - tables, cans, chairs, Skutters, Cats and Krytens flying out of his way as he strode.
"Maybe we should stop him...?" enquired Kryten, rather flustered as the Lister shaped blur thrust it's way past.
"I'm smeggin' gonna smeggin' smeggin' knock his smeggin' ugly smeggin' features off his smeggin' face!!!!"
The Cat stared as Lister flew by. Then at Kryten. "Nah...." he replied eventually.