This entire series is dedicated to Tim, who got me hooked on this show. So it's all his fault.
This is a slightly rewritten version, with some coding, spelling and grammatical errors removed. There were also one or two scenes that I wasn't thrilled with, so I futzed with 'em. Not to mention that I took the entirety of chapter 3 and turned it into the prologue. I also removed a lot of the Author's Notes, as this is a story, not a fucking Live Journal. This baby's thoroughly futzed with, I says.
Enjoy the fuzting.
Deep in space, three million years from Earth, the JMC mining ship Red Dwarf was in trouble. It had blundered from hapless adventure to hapless adventure, and now it was all coming to an end. The ship was burning, being eaten away by a terrible, mutated virus. The majority of the crew had abandoned ship, leaving behind only those prisoners of the penal wing, Floor 13. They were prisoners that could not be put in stasis for some reason or another. Of course they would not be saved.
Smoke and fire all around. Choking on the fumes and ashes, Rimmer glanced up, and saw Death. With the black cowl looming over him, final, fatal, and forever, he knew that his life had, after three separate tries, come to a sorry, sad conclusion.
"Arnold Rimmer, your life is at an end. Come with me, we shall cross the River Styx, where you shall..."
Interrupting Death was something that could only be done by such a smeghead like Rimmer. "I don't think so, no." With that, he kicked Death in the groin.
"OW!"
"Sorry mate, but only the good die young." And with that witty remark, Rimmer scampered off, away from Death. He didn't care exactly where he went, just so long as it was away from that THING. Fortunately, not all of the ship was burning. Unfortunately, the Chameleonic Virus had made it's way to the precise place where the posse had made their way into the Mirror universe.
Come to think of it, how had Kryten gotten them in there in the first place? Where did that device come from? Rimmer was fuzzy on the details.
Rimmer made his way down several decks, avoiding the lifts, crawling on his hands and knees through the belly of the ship, through the air ducts. He had to detour a couple of times, once when the virus had completely melted away the mesh steel of the floor, and once when he thought he saw a dark and menacing shape before him. He had no intention of rumbling with Death again Besides, nobody likes a swift kick to the groin. The anthropomorphic personification of Death was sure to be pissed.
Finally, he made it to his goal. The quarters that he used to share with Lister. Dropping out of the ceiling, he was momentarily overcome with a twinge of homesickness. After all, he and Lister had shared these quarters for several years. And now he was living on Floor 13. Almost brought a tear to his eye. Of course, pretty much anything made him cry...
Enough of the sappy remembrances. He had a mission. Throwing open the locker, Rimmer began to roughly rummage through it. Throwing aside Lister's guitar, and Inga, his polythene pal who's fun to be with, he finally found what he was looking for.
The luck virus. It had been left there by an oversight of the prison confiscators. They hadn't known what they had. Which is what Rimmer had counted on, having swallowed a drop before they hauled his sorry ass to jail.
Or, at least, they left vial that used to contain the luck virus. It was empty. There was a large crack in the side, presumably from when Rimmer had thrown all caution to the wind in ransacking the locker. He was now the proud owner of the luckiest storage unit in deep space.
Howling in rage and frustration, slumped down on the deck, his face buried in his hands. This was it, then. No more chances. He'd sniveled and connived and weaseled his way through life, and now he had no bolt hole. For the first time in his life, Rimmer began to pray.
"Oh, God. Look, uh, hi, it's me. Arnold Rimmer, Sss, Bss. I know we're not on the best of terms, but if you wouldn't mind getting off your lazy arse and getting me some help here it'd be super-duper. Amen." Not the best prayer in the world, but certainly sincere.
After a moment, he felt something wet along the seat of his pants.
Jumping up, he clapped his hands to his bum in embarrassment. Then, he realized that he hadn't wet himself. He tended to notice that sort of thing, after all.
He was sitting in a puddle of the luck virus. He was now the proud owner of the luckiest ass in deep space.
Without hesitation, Rimmer pulled off his trousers and began to suck on the wet spot. It was in this manner that Lister, Kryten, the Cat and Kochanski found him when they fell out of the mirror over the sink.
"What the hell. . .?" began Kochanski, who was, understandably, put off by the sight of Rimmer sucking at his pants.
"Hey Rimmer. Nice boxers," stated Lister.
"Nice? Oh my Cloister, they're PAISLEY!" screeched the Cat.
Rimmer, instead of dropping the pants and stammering an excuse, simply pumped his fist in the air and screamed, "It WORKED!!!" around a mouthful of khaki.
The others stared at him. Kryten was the first to recover. "Sirs, Ma'am, I suggest that we enact our plan with all haste."
Rimmer spit out his trousers and put them back on. "What plan?" he asked.
"Well, when we were trapped in the Mirror Universe, we realized that even if we managed to transport the antidote formula to the virus here, we would have no time to synthesize it. When we couldn't find you, Mr. Rimmer, Lister pointed out that you were stuck back here. So we agreed to move to a safer portion of the ship to mount a rescue party. Now we don't have to. I assume you used the luck virus to facilitate that outcome, sir?"
"In a way," said Rimmer, buckling his belt.
"Excellent idea, sir. To continue, I realized that we could not go back the way we came, so we snatched the Trans-Dimentional Trans-Port from that Mirror Universe, came to Lister's quarters, and crawled through. Now, we are going to do something mind boggling. We need a second mirror. Who has one?"
They all turned to the Cat.
"Hey! Why assume me? Why not officer Bud Babe?"
They continued to look at the Cat, eyes wide with amusement.
"Oh, fine," he pouted, and pulled a silver plated hand mirror out of his jacket. "Here. But if you break it, you're reimbursing me." He handed the mirror to Kryten.
"Thank you," said the mechanoid. He held the small mirror up to the bigger one over the sink. "Ladies first."
"Why?" asked Kochanski, suspicious.
"So that way, if anything happens, it'll happen to you." said Kryten in a deadpan.
"KRYTEN!" exclaimed Lister and Kochanski together.
At that moment, the door melted away, to reveal the corridor outside. Thick, black smoke poured in, hazing the view. The posse had only seconds.
"Quickly, sirs and ma'am! Go! I'll hold up the mirror! Go!" he commanded. They wasted no time. The Cat went through first, followed by Lister, then Kochanski. Rimmer clambered up the sink and turned to Kryten.
"Are you gonna get through ok?" he asked, uncharacteristically. After all, the mechanoid had just saved his bacon. . .
"I'll be fine, sir! I'll bring my hand through last! Now hurry!"
Needing no further incentive, Rimmer dove through the mirror.
He felt like Alice upon falling into the rabbit hole. He fell with a thud, face down on something hard and smooth. He was almost afraid to look up. But he did anyway.
He was in a long corridor, that seemed to stretch out infinitely. It looked like a bad fun house effect, achieved by putting two mirrors facing each other. He got to his feet and looked around him, walking slowly down the corridor. Reflected in those slivers of mirrors were an infinite number of Rimmers. Almost all of them resembled him so exactly that he was startled when he came upon his first variation. Reflected back in the mirror at him was a handsome man in a silver jump suit, with a terrible wig and a long, brown cigarette in his mouth. Wondering at the difference, he continued down the corridor, glancing left and right, trying to find other differences.
Quite a few mirrors held nothing at all except for a few small, sad little space caskets. Rimmer shuddered, not bearing to think how or why those were reflected back at him. One mirror held a frightening vision, a man with black, straight hair, and a cruel sneer on his face, and the name-tag Judas on his breast. But then he reached a mirror where, instead of his own face, he saw Lister's peering back at him. Lister made a startled face, reached his hands through the mirror, and, (much to his astonishment) hauled Rimmer bodily through.
Rimmer found himself in his old quarters. Before him stood his friends, looking none the worse for the wear, and seemingly bemused by something. Turning slightly, he saw Kryten's foot emerge from above the sink. He scrambled to remove himself from the line of descent. He'd hate to get a back full of heavy mechanoid. Kryten's other leg appeared, followed by his torso, then his head, and finally his arms and hands. He was grasping the little silver mirror like a drowning man would cling to a piece of driftwood, or Lister would cling to the last curry. The Cat marched up and grabbed it away, tucking it in his suit.
"Where'd you go, eh? How'd you show up in the mirror like that?" asked Lister. But Rimmer had no answer to that question, so just shrugged his shoulders instead.
Wherever he had been, he was here now. And not only was the room not burning around them, but everything was exactly the same as on the other Red Dwarf. The original. When he had gone to the first Mirror Universe, he'd had the captain's insignia on his collar, and his hair was parted differently. And the Cat was. . . well. . . a nerd. And Kochanski was a blonde bimbo receptionist. He hadn't seen Lister, but he supposed that was all for the best, really. But this made no sense. Everything was exactly the same, minus the teensy detail of the ship being dissolved around them.
"What the smegging hell just happened?" he asked, afraid of getting the answer.
"Sir, this is another Mirror Universe. In fact, this is a reflection of the first Mirror Universe. You see, I got the idea to generate a second Mirror Universe from something Mr. Lister said."
"Which was what?"
"He said, 'I wonder what would happen if we held a mirror up to this mirror?' Anyway, everything in this universe will be the same as in our universe, but the ship won't be breaking down, due the virus that's in our universe. But in this universe, the virus never came here. Essentially, we've Mirror Universed that virus right out of existence."
"Kryten?"
"Yes, Mr. Lister?"
"Stop saying 'Universe.' You're giving me a headache."
"Yes, Mr. Lister."
At that point, three heavily armed guards had burst in. Apparently, the crew hadn't abandoned ship in this place. They had no need to. There was no virus. They demanded to know how the five miscreants had managed to escape their cells on Floor 13, cuffed them all, and goose stepped them back to their respective cells. All in all, that was a better ending than being roasted alive or turned to Jello by a horrible virus.
But still, it sucked great big smegging donkey dick.