A/N- four chapters in four days! wow and to think I had no idea where to go with it when I first started. well I was back at college today and this and that had made today pretty difficult. this has been a right bugger to write but in some ways I think it's been slightly therapeutic. I'm feeling pretty low right now though so reviews would be great. I would like to say thanks to all my readers, especially those of you who have read it more than once. for anyone who does comment I'll credit them in the authors notes and stuff. PS. there is a bit of sexuality talk in here, nothing explicit but I've written it in because I think it's true and also to raise awareness of a marginalised sexuality.
Disclaimer- same as usual. I don't own RD or anything else. I only own a dream where I have a yellow Vauxhall Nova with black go faster stripes. Any lawyers smeg off because none of us on this site if we owned it. flames will be used to smoke kippers etc.
Several dimensions away, there was someone having an even worse day than Dave Lister and that person was Ace Rimmer. Ace sat in the cockpit of the Wildfire having a passionate argument over flight controls with the ship's computer, who hated the fact he never called her by her name not that he'd actually ever been told it in the first place. This Ace was not the original, and the computer didn't like him one bit. She didn't think he was the right man for the job, and that was something she had apparently never told any other Rimmer, Ace or otherwise. That was the thing, he wasn't the first, second or even thousandth Ace, let alone Arnold, and according to her the only Arnold who was possibly worse than him was the first one she had ever come across who wasn't from her dimension. The thing is he wasn't scared of training, he wasn't afraid of hard work and unlike most other Rimmers he had good taste. Also unlike most Rimmers he actually had a talent for engineering- hologrammatic engineering to be precise- and this talent had made him a lot more likeable and playful when it came to Lister because he'd been made an officer. This new playful attitude got both him and his Lister placed in stasis for a prank they'd pulled on Hollister involving fishing wire, a camera, a poker and a doughnut, the effect of which was almost unique amongst Rimmers- he was alive having been shoved in stasis.
The one thing that he did have in common with most Rimmers is that he was ace, in not just one way. This Rimmer like most, was asexual and only really made love that one time out of some sort of perceived social obligation. She wanted to do it with him- so he did it, not really wanting to. Only a fair few of them actually accepted this though and for him the irony had never been lost- the only Rimmer to feel sexual attraction and be truly universally sexually attractive at the same time was the one whose name was Ace. There was one thing he could say though, he'd seen many realities where Rimmers were all kinds of things but he'd never met a fully straight one. Bisexual, usually asexual or gay, even a couple of really strange ones like where his doppelganger cross-dressed in a rather sexualised way, but he had never met a heterosexual Rimmer.
Today's dispute was about flight controls- he wanted control occasionally, she wanted full control. Every single Rimmer had been to see 2001: A Space Odyssey and every single one, including Ace the Original, was secretly terrified of computers with total control. That was why he'd fashioned hologrammatic controls to go along with the real ones, so if the worst happened he could still control the ship. God knows she'd made it hard enough to do anything, the instruments had a black on black motif in a poorly lit test ship in the middle of deep space which was, funnily enough, black. Rimmer was glad that the Ace in front of him had retired rather than died so he could always ask questions and had plenty of time for training. He pitied any Arnold left in the lurch by a dying Ace and expected to take the baton. But now he was thinking he would quite like to retire too, since the computer hated him and he still couldn't do the voice and he was still a spineless weasel. "Computer set up dimension jump to nearest possible dimension" he said in his plain old Arnie J. Smeghead (or so the computer called it) voice. There was no one to fool out here, and he wasn't going to hurt his throat for no one because he'd run out of butter mints a long time ago.
He sorely wished he'd stayed at home with his Lister, Cat, Kryten, Holly and even the hologrammatic Kochanski, who he had come to tolerate over time. Even if that was only because he was a hologram engineer and had, in theory, power over her action, life and death so she didn't argue too heavily when he acted like he outranked her. He wasn't the first Ace to get homesick, he wouldn't be the last, but he was the only one ever to use his singing ability inherited from his life as Alexander the Great's chief eunuch for composing and crooning songs. Most GELFs were fond of the old crooners and so singing the oh-so-apt suspicious minds to a bunch of fans who didn't understand the words actually gave him an advantage when trading, strangely enough.
He was still thinking over whether there was an interdimensional pension scheme when the psycho computer from hell interrupted him. "Oi smegpot, we're in a new dimension and we're getting a message do you want it or not?" What Ace did want was a lump hammer, a reason why he took the job, and a way out of said job but afraid she would comply with one or all of those requests in nasty manner (dropping a lump hammer on him, for instance) he replied "why yes my pixelated friend" (or words roughly conveying the same meaning) in the full Ace Rimmer language, voice, body language and manner combo, hating himself a little more with every second that passed. Little did he know that this call would be his finest hour, calling for his special abilities.
Roughly 15 interdimensional minutes earlier, in his own dimension Kryten had decided enough was enough with Mr Lister's moping. It had been a week, and even though Kryten was the first to admit he really didn't understand the human act of grieving, he was sure it sure be done in a week. 'Just look at Mr Cat' he thought 'three days afterwards he was doing the conga'. In all fairness to the Cat, he was doing a pasodoble, and had never stopped dancing in the first place.
Kryten scrolled through his data banks looking for relevant information to help Lister but none of it seemed applicable. All the data seemed to be for women, involved flowers and were about parental or spousal death. There wasn't a whole lot it seemed on helping the universe's slobbiest entity cope with the loss of his anal retentive, love-and-hate, smeg-for-brains, unpopular, already-dead-but-not-properly, roommate when you don't have any Arum Lilies. Still lost for what to do, Kryten suddenly had an epiphany moment. "Of course! Holly! A computer with an IQ of 6000 should know what to do. Plus she was female, and females are supposed to be good with feelings", justified Kryten in his thoughts. Unfortunately the version of Holly that booted up was a middle-aged balding man with blue eyes and a deadpan cockney accent. Quickly Kryten realised this must have been the original Holly he had heard about when he had joined the crew officially. Luckily however, despite the face change, Holly seemed to have a full memory and so still might be able to help, Kryten thought.
"Alrigh' mate, what can I do ya for" the talking head deadpanned to Kryten who was still glancing in every direction to make he was alone. "Well Mr Holly sir" Kryten responded unsure how to address him, "I was hoping you could help me with getting Mr Lister to stop grieving, sir". The head shut his eyes for a second and replied "grieving, for who?" Suddenly Kryten started to think this was not the smartest of ideas but it was what he has. "He's grieving for Mr Rimmer sir". Upon hearing the name Holly tilted his head, and looked puzzled. "Wha' Arnold, well he died years ago, I made the hologram meself Dave don't need to get himself up set. Yep, Kryten was pretty sure now he'd made the wrong decision but he went along with it anyway " No sir, I don't think you quite understand, he's gone hologram and all sir, and we have no spare light bees so I want to cheer Mr Lister up a bit. Again the computer thought, and slowly came up with a solution. "How about gettin' on the blower to that Ace fella, he might come for a visit which might perk Dave up a bit." Suddenly Kryten was sure he did indeed chosen the right co-conspirator and smiled to himself as he set up the radio gear. Precisely explaining what had happened what easy, explaining to the Wildfire's computer why exactly Ace should help them when she was clearly in a bit of a state was much harder. Personally Kryten wondered if she might be on her computer hard-drive RAM clearance period this week. For female computers they went mad over every little thing and cry, and male robots got more pedantic and slightly more resistant. The only immune ones were simulants and Kryten didn't like thinking out those creatures, a disgrace to mechanoids. At the same time he felt sorry for holograms who suffered from both RAM clearance and hormonal change one week a year, making them frankly aggressive, pedantic and irritating beyond compare. Though Rimmer was always those things, since he received his hard light bee he actually did something when he got aggressive and usually Kryten and Lister chloroformed him with a pair of socks and kept him in quarantine for the first couple of days, which always were the worst part of the week.
Ace was smegged off. Not only had the computer from hell jumped him into a reality very close to another ship, but this ship was requesting help and she was fighting with the mechanoid sending out the distress signals. It was inconsiderate and petty, both towards him and the mechanoid. The moment he found another Rimmer, no matter how much training they had or how suitable they were for the job he was gone, retired from the threshold of front line service.
Swerving to miss a small chunk of debris in his direct path he manipulated the controls to point at the giant red ship. He didn't care whether it was a really important mission or not, he was going. Computer be damned. In fact if they computer didn't think it was worth it- all the better, he was in control dammit and he was going to assert himself. Because this mission was on Red dwarf and where there was a Little Rouge one there was a Rimmer he was going. Because where there was Rimmer there was a ticket to a cosy retirement.
Luckily for him the computer did eventually agree with the mechanoid, giving him an almost feral grin as she explained that "they wanted help because they'd just lost a crew member". Ace shivered, she knew something, and she wasn't sharing it with him. And because of her reaction he was almost completely sure it was going to be something that would throw a spanner into the works when it came to his plans of an early retirement.
The Wildfire pulled into the landing dock having narrowly missed what looked like a small moon lodged in the side of the ship, for no other reason because the captain and the autopilot were both attempting to fly the small craft, imputing opposite direction information just to try and annoy the other into surrendering control. But eventually it was in, and smoothly landed in one of the catapult assisted short bays without outwardly obvious issues. Then the cockpit opened, lined up perfectly to the ladder and first the head, then shoulders of a man with perfectly coiffed straight blonde hair and wearing a golden flight suit popped up.
Ace climbed out, wondering at the empty bay, usually he got at least one witness, before noticing the lone, highly recognisable frame of a Series 4000 mechanoid stood in a dark corner a short distance away from the floodlighted landing pad. Taking a deep breath, he prepared. It was time, time to be Ace once again.
A/N. hope you enjoyed it guys, now remember to review. I now live off the hope of a review, and that hope is waning. Have a nice day!