Holly was waiting for them when they got to the Drive Room. "Right. Now, Dave, put on the shiny helmet on the floor there."
Arnold looked at the helmet. It didn't look like anything much, but maybe it would work.
"What is it?" Dave asked.
"It's a cranial upload/download device," Holly said.
Arnold looked at Dave to see if he understood what Holly meant, but Dave shrugged.
"It's gonna give you your memory back," Holly said.
"Oh," Arnold and Dave said at the same time.
Dave put the helmet on.
"You'd better sit down," Holly said. "These things have a tendency to make you shake and jerk around a bit."
"Is that normal?" Arnold said, feeling a little worried about his friend.
"Eh?" Holly said.
"I said, is that normal?" Arnold repeated.
Holly glanced from side to side before replying, as if he were looking for someone to tell him the answer. "Oh. Yeah. Sure it is."
If Dave was scared, he didn't show it. He gave Arnold the thumbs-up sign as he sat down. "See you soon."
"See you," Arnold said, trying very hard not to worry.
"Beginning memory download process," Holly said.
Dave's head lolled back and his eyes closed. Arnold started to chew on his fingernails as Dave jerked back and forth in his chair. Finally, Dave stopped moving.
"Memory download process complete," Holly said.
After a minute, Dave opened his eyes. "Did you upload them then, Hol?" His voice sounded stronger somehow, more self-assured.
"Yes, Dave," Holly said.
"Because I was just having this wild dream," Dave said. "I was eight, and I was here, and so was…" He trailed off as he saw Arnold. "Rimmer."
Arnold didn't know why Dave was calling him by his last name, but maybe that was a grown-up thing. Maybe he would call Dave by his last name when he was an adult too. Cautiously, Arnold waved at Dave. "Hi, Dave."
Dave looked surprised, but he smiled at Arnold. "Hey."
"Are you back to normal?" Arnold asked. It was a stupid question, but now that Dave was so much older than Arnold was, he didn't know what to say anymore.
Dave nodded. "Yeah."
"Did it hurt very much?" Arnold asked.
"No," Dave said.
Arnold finally worked up the nerve to ask the question he really wanted the answer to. "Are we still friends?"
Dave looked as if he didn't know how to answer. "I'm not sure you'll want to be friends with me once you're back to normal."
Arnold laughed. "What are you talking about? Of course I will!" Why wouldn't he want to be friends with Dave? Wait. Maybe they had a fight in the future, and Arnold didn't know about it yet. "Nothing…happens, does it?"
Dave tilted his head to one side. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, I don't do anything to make you mad at me?" Arnold asked.
Lister almost smiled. "No, you don't do anything to make me mad."
Arnold nodded with relief. "Should I do it, then?"
"Go ahead," Dave said.
"Okay," Arnold said. He bounced up and down on his toes a few times to work up some bravado. "Holly, give me back my memories, please."
"Beginning memory download process," Holly said.
He felt dizzy, and then he was falling. He landed on the floor, but it didn't hurt because the bees that seemed to be swarming through his brain were taking all his attention at the moment.
"Rimmer?"
"Memory download process complete," Holly said.
Rimmer opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor. Why was he lying on the floor? He blinked a few times as he got up.
Lister was crouched by his side, looking unusually anxious. "How are you, man?"
"Fine," Rimmer said. "Holly, was it supposed to take that…" Suddenly, he remembered what he had done, who he had temporarily become, and a tone of dread permeated the last word of his sentence. "…long?"
"I can't help it," Holly said. "I haven't got opposable thumbs to fix things when my wires get crossed."
Lister snorted. "Crossed is one thing. Shooting sparks is something else. Right, Rimmer?"
Rimmer hadn't been listening. He'd been thinking of all the embarrassing things he'd said to Lister in the past hour. "What?"
"You okay?" Lister asked.
"Yes, I just…I had these very strange…" Rimmer looked at Lister and decided not to tell him if he didn't already know. "Never mind." He got to his feet.
"Okay, Ace," Lister said.
Rimmer spun around to see if Lister was joking, but Lister didn't look like he was joking. He looked serious.
We can still be friends, the hopeful seven-year-old inside Rimmer said. Can't we, Dave?
And what would I get for it? Rimmer thought. A knife in the back. Humiliation for all eternity, or until Holly conks out. Lister was just waiting for Rimmer to trust him, and then he would do something to settle all their old scores. People were like that. You couldn't trust them.
But he never betrayed me, the seven-year-old said.
Shut up, Rimmer thought, silencing the hopeful voice. Nobody's listening to you anymore.
"You threw a member of the Armee du Nord at me, you gimboid!" Rimmer snapped at Lister.
Lister looked taken aback, which was unusual for him. "It didn't break."
"Yes, well, it could have, you…pregnant git!" Rimmer said, turning on his heel and leaving the drive room.
He heard Lister sigh behind him. "Well, I see things are back to normal around here."
Rimmer quieted the small part of himself that said normal wasn't necessarily a good thing and marched off to check on the skutters.
THE END
AN: I hope the Lister/Rimmer/Dave/Arnold/Ace name switches were clear; let me know if they could be clarified. Thank you for reading!