Bodily-Impaired

We come from not being and march toward not being: nothing between two nothings, zero between two zeros, and since between two nothings nothing can be, let's drink to the splendour of our not being our bodies. - Julia De Burgos

"Rimmer...?"

"Mr Rimmer, sir?"

"Hey, smeg-head!"

"Sssh Cat, he's waking up."

Rimmer knew those voices. His eyes opened but at first he could not see anything. Suddenly he began to focus on his surroundings and there they were. The faces behind the voices. They were familiar like a childhood song long forgotten and hummed for no reason during a mundane task. Somehow he knew them. Who were they?

Ah! A name sprang to mind. Arnold Rimmer. No, no... That was his name. He was Arnold Rimmer. He was a technician. He was on a mining ship from Jupiter called the Red Dwarf. The man to his left was David Lister and the man on his right was a humanoid evolved from cats and the man in front of him was a Series 4000 MechanoidcalledKrytenandtherewasacomputercalledHollyanditwas3millionyearsintothefutureandeveryonewasdeadand-

"My apologies, Mr Rimmer. It'll take a while for your memories to collect and sort themselves out. You could suffer a thought overload so try not to think about anything."

"He's used to doing that!" the Cat grinned. Lister was led aside by Kryten for a quiet private word. "Sir, I think it is best that we don't tell him he's dead and that he's a hologram, not for a while."

"What d'ya think will be his first clue? That he can walk through stuff or that he's not breathing?"

"Seriously sir, you know how easily panicked he is." Lister nodded and didn't notice when Holly cropped up on the wall beside him. "Actually Dave, he's been dead for the past two years."

"Eh?" Lister spun round, glancing over at Rimmer who was already up and waving his arms disappointedly through objects watching as his image disappeared momentarily with each passing. He certainly seemed more dejected than shocked or afraid by his predicament.

"Earlier with the time-slides when you lot were messing about - when we started he was dead. But when we came back he was alive."

"I'm afraid I'm not quite following you," said Kryten.

"Well alright, first you guys were just messing about with Hitler and holiday snaps. Then Dave went back in time to make his 17-year-old self invent the tension sheet. So 'course he became rich and famous and Rimmer couldn't stand it so he went back to try and make himself the inventor, but it all went belly-up and when we came back he was suddenly alive."

Kryten nodded his head verily, "...I'm still not following."

"So, Rimmer is from a different timeline?"

"We both are. It's very peculiar," she hummed and hawed. "Don't quite know what to make of it. But in our timeline he was dead. I've had a look about and it seems to be the only difference."

"Yeah, we both went into stasis coz Hollister didn't want him disrupting any more exams. When we came out we found out everyone had been killed because someone wrote down that Rimmer was going to fix the drive plate. They forgot he was still in stasis."

"Why didn't you bring back someone as a hologram if Rimmer wasn't one?"

"He hid all the discs when we kept fighting over who we wanted to bring back." Of course, thought Holly. "So, our history with you is different? Did I get pregnant in your time?"

"Yeah, and you and Rimmer fought all the time and the Cat only thought about himself and Kryten was everyone's au banana."

"You mean au pair, ma'am."

"Right, and I'm still a few sticks short of a campfire," she said, seemingly undeterred by this. Lister watched as Rimmer accepted his second death with a deep sigh, and he could almost feel what little hope and joy Rimmer still possessed trickling away.

"Sorry, Rimmer, I really am," Lister offered. Rimmer just glared at him with unfamiliar, angry eyes and walked off out of the room and down the corridor. They all listened for a moment until they heard the Star Trek swish of the doors down at Rimmer and Lister's room. "Thought so," Lister sighed, "he's gone to sulk."

"Well he has just died again, sir."

"He's got to learn to be more positive. Being dead isn't that bad. He should think of it as being, I dunno, bodily-impaired."

"Wasn't he bodily-impaired before?" the Cat quipped and dodged a small swipe from Lister.

"Very funny, Cat."

Kryten said, "Well he did seem a little bit jollier these past few months. Though technically... though technically, it never happened in his mind."

It dawned on Kryten that the Arnold Rimmer lying in his bunk down the hall was not the one he knew from that morning. It was the one he first met. "Permission to feel discouraged, sir?"

Lister granted it.