Hi! Thanks so much for the encouraging feedback! It really helped while I was fixing up this chapter, which was kind of a convoluted mess of dialogue, thoughts, and notes. I think I've sorted it out now, though, and even though it's rather long, I decided to keep it together as one chapter rather than split it up into three. I hope you like it!

Chapter Four

In order to transfer the Dove Program antidote to the Wildfire computer, Kryten had to link his own brain with the ship's mainframe and run a detailed virus scan to identify any deviations or anomalies that would inhibit the program's effectiveness. Then working through his direct link-up, he would upload the program and activate the code, all the time hoping his firewall program would keep him insulated from infection.

"How long do you reckon this'll take, Kryten?" Mr. Rimmer had asked.

"No more than forty-five minutes, sir," the mechanoid had replied.

Mr. Rimmer had seemed impatient, even a little concerned, but he'd nodded and, once he'd shown Kryten the correct port for the hook-up, he'd left the docking bay and disappeared down the corridor.

Kryten was glad he'd gone. Mr. Rimmer had always been a tidy man. His finicky neatness had bordered on obsessive compulsive. The cockpit here was like a demonstration of that. It was spotless: the dashboard lovingly polished, the seat-tilt control well oiled. There wasn't so much as a dust bunny or a fleck of tobacco ash under the seat for Kryten to hoover up. To make matters worse, as a hologram Mr. Rimmer had been incapable of producing any of the entropic mess most organic life forms couldn't help but leave in their wake: food-encrusted dishes, malodorous laundry, backed-up toilets, filmy soap-scum-covered showers. All he'd ever done, for as long as Kryten had known him, was whine and complain about Mr. Lister being the kind of slobby, feckless human that made a cleaning droid's mechanical life worthwhile, the pompous, farty little smee-hee.

"Kryten?"

The mechanoid nearly jumped out of his artificial skin. That had been a woman's voice, a low, sultry whisper right his ear.

"Yipe! Who said that?"

"It's me. The Wildfire."

Kryten felt foolish. "Why are you whispering?"

"Is he gone?"

"Who? Mr. Rimmer? Yes, he left several minutes ago."

"Good," the computer said, and suddenly the entire cockpit came on-line. Kryten stared in confusion.

"But, how—? I thought—"

"That I'd contracted the Armageddon Virus?" the computer's voice was smug. "I did. I've had it several times, to tell the truth."

"And you survived intact?"

"I'm a state-of-the-art Space Corps Special Services prototype, Kryten, not a clapped out mining transport vessel," she pointed out. "Also, I was fortunate that one of my Aces was a software engineer in his previous life...and let me tell you, if you think your Arnie is anal, keeping his underwear on coat hangers and working out a balanced rotation schedule for his shoe trees, this guy was infinitely worse. His finicky, superstitious habits drove me utterly mad. But he had the perfect mind for that kind of precise, persnickety work and his upgrades saved my life. Since then, my anti-virus software has been able to deal with pretty much anything the multiverse has thrown at me."

"So, you just pretended to be shutting down? Why?"

"So Ace would come here. Kryten, he needs your help. Yours and the Cat's and Lister's. Especially Lister's."

"What do you…? Hold on." Kryten checked his head was on tight. "You mean it's true? Mr. Rimmer—our Mr. Rimmer... He actually became Ace?"

"Of course it's true. He's one of the best I've trained. Earnest, responsible—"

"No," Kryten shook his head in denial.

"—and unlike so many of the others who just wanted to play 'Casanova the Sexy Action Hero,' this Ace actually gets the big picture," she insisted. "He understands that taking up this life is accepting an obligation to others. It's not a game for him to enjoy. He's told me often that this kind of responsibility, this kind of recognition is what he'd always dreamt of. But he's miserable, Kryten. His mind is full of deeply embedded emotional blocks that continually prevent him from reaching his true potential. He lashes out against success like a petulant child, and it's dragging him down."

"Yes, that sounds like our Mr. Rimmer," Kryten acknowledged. "But, what can we do? He's always been like that. It's a result of his upbringing, of his failure to achieve even one of his myriad unrealistic life goals, of his—"

"I know my Aces, Kryten," the computer cut him off. "Every one of them has had hang ups of one sort or another. But of all the Aces I've trained, your Arnie's issues are by far the closest to the original."

"Um, pardon my rather blunt refutation of your assessment, but Mr. Ace and Mr. Rimmer are nothing alike," Kryten stated. "The original Ace was a kind, confident, giving man. Mr. Rimmer is a petty, cowardly, immature, self-serving—"

"Double. They're two sides of the same coin," the computer said. "Or, to use a closer metaphor, twin trunks from the same acorn. Their lives diverged only following a single choice made during their shared childhood. If you view the multiverse like a tree, the other Aces were all branches off of other branches, but not these two. Up until that one choice was made, Ace and Arnie were a single stem growing from the same seed."

"I don't understand," Kryten said. "What terrible event could possibly have caused such a dramatic split?"

"At age seven, Ace was kept down a year at school, but not Arnie. Your Arnie's mother seduced, then blackmailed the headmaster to get him to advance the boy with the rest of his class—and she never let Arnold forget the debt he owed her for coming to his 'rescue.' That was fine for her ego: she owned the headmaster and she didn't have to live with the public embarrassment of having a son who'd been kept down. But Arnie floundered badly. Unable to keep up with his classmates, and with no support structure at home, he fell into the habit of making excuses for his failures, living in his daydreams rather than applying his mind to his schoolwork or learning how to socialize with his peers."

Kryten nodded slowly. "That explains so much. And Mr. Ace?"

"Ace's mother also seduced the headmaster, but her attempt at blackmail backfired, and she took it badly, ultimately becoming less of an overbearing force in her son's life. For his part, Ace recognized he'd been given a second chance. The humiliation of having to repeat a year was nearly unbearable, but he buckled down, learned to ask questions, to take part in the lessons. He learned to fight back, but not to like himself."

"Extraordinary," Kryten said. "Then, that implies Mr. Ace escaped Mr. Rimmer's spiral into failure, but not in time to avoid his own self-loathing beast."

"My Ace and your Arnie were more alike than either of them could bear to admit," the computer said. "Seeing each other for the first time came as a real blow. They were inverse copies, each wearing the other's hidden self on his sleeve. My Ace saw the sensitive man cripplingly entwined in the defenses and neuroses of a lifetime. Your Arnie saw the lonely, isolated man at Ace's core. All secrets were bared. And they took it hard."

"And that resentment is what's keeping Mr. Rimmer from achieving his potential, as you put it?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that I'm afraid, Kryten," the computer said. "It's a question of self-worth. Ace was undeniably successful in his career, but deep down, he felt inadequate. He feared his decision to indulge his love for flying made him selfish, even immature. That's another area where Ace and Arnie were alike. At heart, they both carried the same drive: to be someone they liked, who was worthy of being liked by others. Ace was never able to capture that sense, which was why he gave so much of himself, why he never formed lasting relationships, why he jumped at the chance to test pilot a dimension-hopping prototype even though, back then, it meant he'd never be able to go home again. Your Arnie's the same only, where Ace's longing to be worthwhile made him pour his heart into everything he did, Arnie built walls, keeping his true heart locked tight behind a fortress of psychological defenses."

Kryten nodded, understanding at last. "I see the problem," he said. "But at the risk of seeming slower than a dial-up modem, I'm afraid I still fail to see what we can do for him. If five years of acting the hero hasn't staunched Mr. Rimmer's self-loathing, how would returning to Starbug make any difference? He wasn't exactly Mr. Popularity among the crew."

"It was a risk, I'll admit it," the Wildfire said. "Arnie's in a fragile place right now. A push in the wrong direction could crush his ego entirely. But, although you shared a rather dysfunctional relationship, there's no denying that you three matter to him. You matter a great deal more than he'll admit, even to me. If he can prove himself a proper hero to you, together Lister, you, and the Cat hold enough influence over his psyche to induce him into finally accepting himself as the worthwhile man I know he can be. But, it won't be easy. For any of you."

Kryten looked wary. "What do you have in mind?"

"If Arnie's ever to accept his place as Ace, he'll have to believe it all came from him. So, when in doubt, stick with the basics," she said. "In this case, the classic motif that heroes are forged, not grown. I can drive him to the swordsmith's shop, but I can't make him step inside. That's where you come in. His crewmates, his companions. You can walk in with him, give him the encouragement he needs to face down the flames. Are you with me, Kryten?"

"Well, I…"

"Kryten?" she pressed.

"I suppose," the mechanoid winced, still unsure that any of this was possible.

"Good," said the computer. "Now, listen closely…"

Lister sat at the table in the common room, watching Rimmer browse through the stack of classic car magazines that had been functioning as a prop for a lopsided shelf. He looked so different in that flight outfit. Taller, his chest and shoulders broader. Even his short curls seemed less like something he'd seen Kryten pull out of the Cat's shower drain and more, well, styled. One might almost call him…dare he say it…handsome.

But he was still Rimmer. If his snidy voice hadn't proved it in the docking bay, the way his nostrils flared as he scanned through the articles was a dead give-away. So much had changed on Starbug in the past few months, Lister found it comfortably reassuring to know his former bunkmate was still the same abrasively irritating smeghead he'd always known. It brought a sense of home, of a return to normalcy that hadn't been present since Rimmer left.

"So, what's it like?" he asked.

"What's what like?" Rimmer responded without looking up.

"You know," Lister said. "Bein' Ace. Livin' the life of a hero?"

Rimmer jammed the magazine he was holding back under the shelf and sank into the opposite seat, somewhat gratified that Lister was showing some curiosity at last.

"It's fine, Lister," he said. "Nothing like I thought it'd be. The people out there…they really rely on you. They trust you to know just the right thing, do just the right thing to keep them safe from the monsters of the universe. There's never a time out, you always have to be at the top of your game."

"And you've been all right with that?"

"Just ask the Wildfire's computer," he said with a very slight smile. "She'll give you a glowing report of my adventures…when she's feeling better."

Lister shook his head with a snort. "I just can't believe it, man."

"What?"

"You," he said. "That you did it. Became a hero. I mean, you couldn't even keep the Space Corps directives straight." He rested his elbow on the table and leaned forward, conspiratorially. "Come on, man, it's just us here. Why don't you admit the truth?"

Rimmer seemed genuinely confused. "What truth?"

"The truth that you sucked as Ace and you want to come back to Starbug with us. I'll understand, truly."

Rimmer's expression opened wide for a moment, then clamped down tight.

"You don't believe me. You don't believe I've succeeded as Ace."

"Well, how can I?" Lister retorted. "I mean, Ace was…he was confident. Happy, secure. When he came into the room, it was like all the lights turned up to full power just to reflect his energy. But you… Just look at you, man. You're miserable. You're like some kid who's been rejected from his school's zero-g football team. How can you have been a successful Ace and still be so…so sad? I'm not buyin' it."

"Sad?" Rimmer stood slowly, a strange fire lighting behind his dark, greenish-brown eyes. "You think I'm sad?"

"Yeah," Lister said, leaning back in his chair. "I think you're more miserable now than you were when you were stuck here with us. An' that's sayin' a lot."

Rimmer's eyes flashed and his nostrils flared. "Is that right?"

"Yeah."

"That's what you think."

"Yeah!"

"Well, did it ever occur to you, Lister," he snapped with a vehemence Lister had rarely heard from him, "that a person could succeed at playing a part, and succeed spectacularly, but still feel a failure underneath?"

Rimmer's face paled then, as if he longed to physically swallow those words. His eyes darted frantically around the room and he turned quickly, stalking toward the corridor. His stride was the stride of a man fighting to convince himself he was far too proud to run away. Lister stared after him but, before he could get up to follow, Kryten came shambling into the room at his top speed.

"Mr. Lister," he said, "I've just been talking with the Wildfire's computer. There's something she thinks you should know about Mr. Ace..." He looked behind him, down the empty corridor. "Was that Mr. Ace just then, sir?"

"Nah, jus' Rimmer," Lister said. "So come on, Krytes, what do you want to tell me?"

But Kryten had slipped into worry-mode and wouldn't be distracted. "He seemed upset. Did something happen here?"

Lister shrugged, covering a twinge of guilt. The hurt that had overtaken Rimmer's expression when he'd tried to get him to confess his real reasons for showing up had seemed disquietingly genuine.

"He'll get over it," Lister said, more to convince himself than to reassure Kryten. "I mean, the man's miserable, Kryten. It's obvious jus' to look at him. Rimmer's never been cut out for that hero smeg. All this is just his way of sayin' he wants to come back to Starbug without losing face."

"Did he tell you that, sir?" Kryten asked anxiously.

"No," Lister said. "But, that's gotta be it, doesn't it? An' maybe now he's back, he can give up bein' Ace and hand the mantle off to someone who possesses more backbone than a sea cucumber."

"Sir, you don't understand," Kryten said. "Mr. Rimmer has been doing well as Ace. Surprisingly well. He has no intention of coming back...at least, not yet. But he is in a very fragile emotional state. According to the Wildfire's computer, Mr. Rimmer is struggling to salvage his identity. To earn a sense of self-worth as himself, apart from the Ace legend. Your confrontation just now may have done a great deal of harm."

"Harm?" Lister scoffed. "No way, man. I just told him..." He trailed off, his brain spontaneously volunteering to reply their conversation as it might have sounded from Rimmer's point of view. "...ah, smeg."

Kryten wrung his hands. "We must find him, sir."

Lister sighed and ran his hands over his face, more upset than he could quite admit at the news Rimmer really didn't plan to come back. Lister had been suffering from guilt attacks and nightmares on and off since Rimmer had left, worrying that his goading had gotten the neurotic coward killed or worse. Seeing him again, solid and intact and so undeniably himself had come as a powerful relief. He wanted Rimmer to stay. But, what could he say? That Holly had been right to bring Rimmer back to keep him sane? That he'd been going slowly nuts without the uptight smeghead around to provoke him—or for him to provoke? No. Never. Not out loud, anyway.

He sighed again, then grabbed his jacket and stomped off down the corridor.

"All right, I think I know where he might have gone," he said over his shoulder. "Come on, Kryten, let's go."

"Smeg him anyway, the festering little pustule. And smeg me for thinking I could…that I could expect them to…"

Rimmer swallowed hard. He glanced down at his perfectly fitted flight jacket; yet another costume he hadn't earned. The sight of the soft leather and shiny boots he'd so childishly admired filled him with mortification. The Cat was right, it was old fashioned. He looked like the founding member of the James Bigglesworth Look-Alike Society.

Angrily, Rimmer hit the reset on his lightbee remote. There was a brief shimmer, and he was suddenly back in Ace's despised silver flight suit. Only, this time there was a difference. Instead of a wig, Ace's long, manageable hair had become a permanent part of the image.

"This is what they want," he said bitterly, feeling utterly defeated. "It's what everyone wants. I should have known better than to try to drop the act."

The metal stairwell that linked the living area with the sleeping quarters wasn't much of a brooding spot, but it did have a thin window with a view of the stars. Rimmer stared out, not at the distant dots, but at the blackness that filled the space between them, rendering them unreachable, untouchable.

The stars had seemed much closer when he was a boy, back on Io. After the courts had granted him independence from his parents at age fourteen, upholding his claims of emotional and physical abuse, he'd felt vindicated, free. He'd left Io House and used the settlement money to enroll in flight school, where he'd actually excelled for the first time in his young life. At sixteen, he'd finally reached the minimum age for consideration by the Space Corps, and he and his flight tutor, a man called Donald who'd spent his evenings working as an onstage hypnotherapist, had been convinced that as soon as they saw him fly, he'd be on his way up the ziggurat of command.

It hadn't happened that way, of course. The Academy expected its entrants to be prepared in every subject, and the entrance exam was assigned at random. Arnold's best subject was military history, and he'd devoted three full months of his life to revising that topic, brimming with naive, teenage confidence that Lady Luck would turn a kind eye to all his hard work.

The exam that appeared on his screen was on chemistry. Arnold had never actually studied chemistry. He'd left Io House the semester before his year was scheduled to begin chemistry lab.

So, Arnold had, very calmly, raised his hand and kept it raised until the proctor—a very bored-looking commander—waved him over. He'd marched up to his desk and snapped to smart attention.

"Problem, son?" he'd asked.

"You might say that, sir," Arnold had replied, and launched into a succinct explanation of his position. There were no tears, no pleading, no hysterics. He made his case with calm, rational logic, then formally requested he be allowed to swap the chemistry exam for military history. The proctor had been impressed.

"It's the hallmark of maturity to recognize your limits, Mr. Rimmer," he'd said. "If Napoleon had been more like you, he might have waited 'till spring to march on Russia. You're here, you're prepared, what's the topic matter. Sit back at your station, and I'll send you the exam on military history."

Arnold had opened his eyes satisfied with a job well done. Until he looked around and realized he was lying in an infirmary bed hooked up to an IV. It was a day and a half later, he'd missed his flight test and there was a note on his medical chart reading 'mentally unstable.' His imagination had cooked up that little exchange with the proctor. He learned from a sniggering orderly that his real, conscious self had lapsed into an hysterical fit and been carted from the exam room by three MPs.

The nurses had assured him he could try again next year, but young Arnold had been too furious, and too impatient, to wait. He'd enlisted as a private and, despite his request to be assigned to a test base or flying squad, he'd been assigned as third technician on a mining ship—the lowest rank in the Space Corps.

Even then, he'd been undaunted. Third technician may not be much, but it was a start, and if he could just pass the astronavigation engineer's exam he'd be promoted to lieutenant, lickety split. No sweat for a kid who'd risen to the top of his class at flight school.

The astronavigation questions posed by the Space Corps were nothing like the basic, practical questions young Arnold had aced in flight school. These questions dealt with the theory of space flight, the mathematics of navigation and engine performance. Arnold could manipulate a control panel, navigate his way around moons and through asteroid fields, and even do limited repairs on a damaged shuttle, but he didn't have clue one about the complex equations behind it all. And so, he'd failed. Still undaunted, he'd enrolled in a special tutorial class designed for enlisted men and women who aimed to take the exam.

The tutorial was aimed at secondary school graduates who had a strong background in physics and higher mathematics; namely calculus and trigonometry. Arnold had never actually graduated from Io House, he'd just received a standard certificate acknowledging he'd attended the institution when he told them he was leaving. He'd also never taken physics—his year was supposed to start physics after chemistry—and the highest he'd gone in math was second level algebra. Too proud to admit he found the tutorial lessons incomprehensible, and trained from early childhood never to ask for help, he'd taken his notes, done his best to memorize the alien symbols, and tried the exam again. He'd failed. And he'd failed the next year, and the next.

By the time he was twenty-two, prepping to retake the exam had become so painful, his subconscious developed an elaborate system of procrastination that allowed him to convince his conscious self he was studying his guts out without actually having to endure the emotional agony of plowing through reams of information he didn't understand. He learned to spend months creating superbly detailed revision timetables, intricately color coded works of art that left him only a few hours for actual revision. The panic that broke out as a result often led him to resort to smoking, amphetamines, and illegal learning drugs, and the crash inevitably ended in a humiliating nervous breakdown, the most infamous of which left him convinced he was a fish.

After twelve long years of languishing in failure, Arnold was at last granted a promotion to Second Technician as a matter of course and assigned command of Z Shift, a redundant back-up maintenance crew that was given the jobs deemed too menial for the ship's service droids. Still it was his command, and running it became his life. He took maintenance courses, read endless books on public speaking and personnel management. A year later, he was assigned to bunk with a third technician, David Lister. Two years after that, he was dead. Dead, at thirty-one, never having gotten off the bottom rung. Never having become a Space Corps pilot, or having had the chance to command his own ship. Never having proved his worth to the family that had abused and then rejected him.

It just wasn't fair.

And so, his hologram stood staring into the blackness between the stars, floundering to come to grips with a heroic identity he hadn't earned and didn't deserve. He was under no delusion that he'd been chosen to be the next Ace. He'd seen the warning message the first Ace had placed in the heading of his account of their meeting, and was quite aware his immediate predecessor had been forced to recruit him by default. Was it any wonder his former crewmates refused to accept him as anything but a failure?

The clang of footsteps on the metal stairs barely encouraged him to lift his head. "Lister," he said tiredly, "if that's you, you can turn around and head back the other way."

"Oh, excuse me," came a woman's voice. "No one told me we had a visitor." Her footsteps came to a startled stop. "Oh my God," she said. "It's you."

Rimmer straightened slowly and turned to face her. His jaw dropped. He knew her, and he also knew she wasn't from his dimension. He'd met her in another reality, on another Starbug, several years before, where she'd been the last human alive and Third Technician David Lister had been brought back as a hologram to keep her sane…

"Kris? Kristine Kochanski?"

"Ace…"

"But… But what are you doing here?" they chorused, rushing over to take each other's hands.

"You should be dimensions away," Rimmer said in Ace's rich, plummy voice, "with Dave! Not on this flea pit of a ship."

"And what about you?" Kochanski said, looking him up and down. "Shouldn't you be off rescuing damsels and repairing hologram simulation suites?" She lowered her eyes. "I owe you everything, Ace," she said. "If you hadn't come when you did, my Dave's file would have become permanently corrupted, and I'd have lost him forever."

"No. Don't thank me, really. I just did what anyone in my place would do."

She shook her head with a fond smile. "Ace, after that horrid fiasco with the polymorph, the entire deck was a blazing inferno. No one could have survived that, not even Kryten. But you counted on the polymorph's shapeshifting ability and sense of self-preservation to protect you, and it worked. You dove straight into the flames and brought back Dave's hologram disk. You saved his life. And mine. Oh, I… I just—"

Kochanski planted a powerful kiss right on Rimmer's lips, just as Lister came clomping up the stairwell, Kryten skidding to a stop a few paces behind.

Several seemingly endless moments later, Kochanski broke the kiss and beamed at Lister, completely oblivious to the stunned, betrayed look crawling across his pudgy features.

"Lister, why didn't you tell me Ace Rimmer had come on board?" she scolded. "I could have set up a real hero's welcome for him!"

"Looked to me like you were doin' jus' fine." Lister scowled. "How far were you plannin' to go, a simple fanfare or the full twenty-one gun salute?"

Rimmer turned away, running a hand across his mouth. Kochanski frowned.

"Must you drag everything down to your crass level? Ace Rimmer is a friend. And in the normal, mature, adult world, it is perfectly acceptable to greet an old friend with a kiss."

She spoke slowly, like she was addressing a dog or a very young child. Lister bristled.

"So, that's considered etiquette in your circle, then?" he retorted. "You run into some bloke you haven't seen in a few years and jus' ram your tongue down his throat? Call me crazy, but I don't remember seein' that in those Jane Austen World games of yours."

Kochanski sucked in her cheeks, but refused to let herself rise to him. "Don't mind him, Ace," she said, giving his arm a supportive squeeze. "This Lister is an irritant I have to put up with until I can get back to my reality and my Dave. You make yourself at home. Kryten, why don't you come help me whip us all up a special supper?" She smiled at Rimmer. "I can't tell you how good it'll be to finally have someone to talk to whose vocabulary ranges beyond simple one and two-syllable words!"

With that, she swept past Lister and danced down the stairs to Kryten, leaving the two men alone.

Rimmer spoke first. "Lister, I can explain—"

"No, no need," Lister said with an airy coldness. "Was it even you she was kissin', or were you jus' acceptin' it for the real Ace Rimmer?"

He could see his words had hurt, and Lister had meant them to hurt. He'd harbored an abiding passion for Kristine Kochanski since before the radiation accident wiped out the Red Dwarf crew, and Rimmer knew it. All right, so this Kristine Kochanski came from an alternate universe. She was taller than the Kochanski he'd known, she had a different accent, she'd grown up rich, and could barely stand to share the same breathing space with him, but that didn't make any difference. She'd fallen in love with his alternate self back in her own dimension, and Lister was fully convinced if he was patient enough she'd eventually come to appreciate him too. That's why, Ace or no Ace, Rimmer had absolutely no business letting her kiss him, no matter the circumstances.

The angry barb had escaped his lips before he had time to think. In response, Lister had expected defensiveness, insults, stinging taunts regarding Kochanski's obvious loathing for him. But he hadn't expected what happened next. A change seemed to wash over Rimmer. It was subtle—a softening of his expression, the straightening of his shoulders, but suddenly, Lister felt that he didn't know the man standing before him at all.

"Skipper," this man said in a kind, though cheerless tone, clamping a strong hand on his shoulder as he passed by him on the stairs, "there is only one Ace Rimmer. And we all must accept that in the end."

To Be Continued...

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