For the disclaimer, please see the first chapter.

A/N: Well, Chapter 3 is finally here! I apologise profusely for the delay! But I really hope you enjoy this! Chapter 4, the final chapter, will be coming very shortly afterward! So please keep checking up on this fic! Thank you all so much for your kind reviews! This has been my most-ever reviewed story! I loved reading all you had to say! Here are my replies!

Zombie Kitty: Thanks ZK! I'm glad you like that line! There is indeed some angst in this chapter – hope you enjoy it! I tried not to be overly angsty though as I have that tendency sometimes (!)

Henry: Thank you so much! That was such a kind comment! I'm so glad you thought it was well-written! You made me blush! I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as the last!

cazflibs: Thank you! Hehe, sorry it took so long to get this chapter up! Uni work's come down on me like a ton of bricks! But I hope it's been worth the wait!

Sunrise over the Tango factory: Thanks so much! Indeed, knowing Rimmer I wouldn't expect him to take it all that well either! I know I wouldn't if I were him! Hehe! I hope you enjoy his reaction!

Lady Draco: Hey there! Thanks so much for leaving a review here, too! You spurred me on to write more of this through your comment in my LJ! Thanks so much for giving me that extra kick I needed to get going! Hehe! Hope you enjoy!

Draco the Lizard: Hehe, all my friends come here! I'm so glad I got them in-character! That's one of the best comments I can get! And you're right, it's great fun filling in blanks from the books! I love doing that!

cravat: Thanks muchly! I'm really glad you're enjoying it so far, and that you like my writing style! I hope you enjoy this chapter too!

Star-Stallion: Hehe, cliffhangers are nasty things, aren't they? Luckily this chapter doesn't end on such a cliffy note! I'm so glad you're enjoying the story – hope you like this chapter too!

Alankria: Wow, thank you! Your comments really made me blush! I'm so glad you're enjoying it so far! I'd love to know what you think of this chapter! Thanks so much for your kind reviews!

And now, without further ado, it's the long-due third chapter!

This is the First Day of the Rest of Your Death

--Chapter Three--

At first, he didn't know what to think. He simply stood there, his impatience melting into complete and utter bewilderment at what had just taken place.

His hand hadn't gripped the handle of the bazookoid, but fell directly through it as if the weapon were nothing but an illusion, some trick of the light where there was nothing but thin air. He pulled his arm back, aghast, and racked his mind for something, anything, that would make sense of this impossible predicament. Nothing came.

Feeling a feverish sense of panic, he examined his palm. It looked perfectly normal down to the finest detail. He couldn't understand it. Bringing up his other hand, he pressed his finger hard against the seemingly phantom limb. It was solid – solid as it had ever been. What on Io was going on?

And then it dawned on him.

Oh, please, no.

Desperately he reached for the bazookoid again, once more to have his hand swipe through the metal as if he were clutching at an impossible mirage. It was a strange, foreign sensation; his fingers tingled uncomfortably, sending painful shock waves through his arm and shooting down his spine. Defeated, he withdrew for a second time. Holly watched as Rimmer stood, rather shakily, his eyes wide and bulging. For a long while he was silent. Then, with a great sense of finality, the hologram drew in a tight, sharp breath and raised both hands to his forehead.

Rimmer hated his H. Not a day went by when he would not stop to curse the man who insisted that holograms be required them in their programming; that they should carry them like some hideous birthmark wherever they went. A second chance at life should be considered a blessing; this morbid stamp made it a curse. It was the mark of the deceased, the dearly departed, the gone-but-not-forgotten; why on God's earth, Rimmer would think, should he be forced to suffer the constant reminder of this fact? What had he done? Had he ever committed a crime so great as to merit so painful a punishment?

As he ran his fingers around it for the first time, the foremost thing he noticed was that it stuck welded to his forehead like iron. The second was that it felt like plastic - a smooth, slippery, artificial texture – but as he soon found out, there was no force great enough in the universe to pry it from his skin. He tried to claw his fingers around its sides, but found nowhere for them to go.

"I'm sorry, Arnold," said Holly. Although his face filled the entire monitor, he did not look up, and his eyes remained fixed to the ground.

"Sorry?" The lump in Rimmer's throat was painfully obvious. "Sorry? Is that it?" He moved his hands to his sides, fingers tensing. His voice shook as he pointed at the screen, "Sorry," he emphasised the word with a lemon sourness, "is what you say to people dressed in black, mourning over someone who has passed on; kicked the bucket; popped their clogs." He scowled at Holly's unblinking face, "I've popped more clogs than the whole of Amsterdam." The words caught in his throat. "And you knew all along, didn't you."

"I'm a tenth-generation AI computer, not a counsellor," Holly replied, rather more matter-of-factly than Rimmer would have liked. "It's all I've got to go on, I'm afraid."

Rimmer creased his brow. "Why," he asked, his voice seething with both anger and misery, "didn't you tell me about it earlier? Surely you could have granted me that. Or is even something that small too complicated for your superior intelligence to grasp?" The words slipped sarcasm-filled from his tongue.

"Look," said Holly. "I think we're beginning to lose sight of the situation here." Rimmer was having none of it.

"The situation," he interrupted, "is that I have just found out that I am, in fact, dead." He folded his arms. "Now I don't know about you, but I think that's quite an important event in my life!"

Holly ignored his contradiction. "Arnold, it is imminent that you get to the mall as quickly as possible."

Rimmer scowled, "Oh, is that it?" He turned his back on the monitor and began to pace somewhat aimlessly about the drive room, his arms folded behind his back, his fingers writhing angrily. "Welcome back Arnie – oh, and by the way, you've snuffed it - now go and help your rather more alive companion?" The resentment he felt at Lister doubled, then tripled as his rage began to build. If there were some higher being up there, he thought, they certainly had it in for a certain Rimmer, Arnold J. He'd be on their blacklist in ten-foot letters, underlined in bright red marker, his fate sealed in some sort of divine bureaucracy that hung over him year after year.

"The gas readings are increasing," said Holly, his voice more urgent this time. "If he doesn't get help soon, there'll be no-one alive on this ship at all."

"Well you can count me out," Rimmer replied. "Oh, and if you need me," he added cynically, "I'll be busy planning my own funeral." But despite the acid in his voice, as the words left his lips he felt a pang of guilt surge through him. Guilt was not something he felt terribly often - that honour was reserved primarily for pomposity, envy and haughtiness – but this struck him hard, as if the point of a weapon had been thrust through his body. He already had the deaths of the crew on his conscience; was he really prepared to add another to the tally?

Holly sighed a virtual sigh; it was time to resort to drastic measures. "Arnold," he said, "I have access to all hologrammatic and medical databases aboard this ship."

Rimmer raised an eyebrow impatiently, "So?"

"So," said Holly, "unless you want an enormous boil as irritating as your average reality TV star throbbing constantly on the back of your neck, you should go and help him."

At this, Rimmer's eyes widened, and his nostrils flared to almost double their normal width. He thrust his finger at the screen, "Right!" His voice reached a ludicrously high pitch. "That's your plan, is it? Just you wait until the Captain hears about this. I'll –" He paused in mid sentence, realising the futility of his statement. He sighed in annoyed defeat, "Just you wait."

Rimmer sat in one of Red Dwarf's Xpress Lifts, legs crossed, head leant back against the rim of his seat. Across the lift, which was almost the size of his bunkroom, two of the ship's working skutters beeped and whirred, opening and closing their claw-like beaks at each other as if in some kind of conversation.

He'd already been there half an hour. Red Dwarf's enormous shopping mall spanned ten vast floors of the ship, but it was still a huge distance from the Drive Room. He checked his watch for the second time in as many minutes.

The enormity of the situation was only just beginning to settle in his mind. But the strangest thing of all, stranger than finding out that the entire human race was extinct, stranger than discovering that Lister was the sole survivor, was that everything felt so utterly normal. He didn't look any different; he still had the same emotions, the same reactions; in fact, he was the same down to the finest detail.

Except for the fact that he was dead.

I've got to look on the bright side, he thought to himself, rather unconvincingly. Rimmer wasn't an optimist. He couldn't remember the last time he'd thought anything remotely optimistic. When he walked confidently into the room of the Astronavigation exam, he only did so to hide the fact that he was totally and utterly terrified of that three-hour paper. But he had to try. After all, what else was there to do?

I've outlived my brothers, he mused. Then he decided that 'outlived' probably wasn't the right word. Outdied? No, that was stupid. He scrapped the idea and started again. A deep and painful bitterness began to collect in his stomach. What was he doing? After he'd got Lister out of this mess, what the smeg would happen then? Lister certainly wouldn't want a neurotic dead man for company!

A/N: Please review! I'd love to know what you thought of it!