"Time."
Rimmer straightened up, loudly cracked several vertebrae in rapid succession, and sighed in satisfaction. In three hours, he had managed to fully diagram, illustrate, and detail the inner workings of Red Dwarf and other Solar-Class 5 mining vessels, along with a full complement of anatomically proportionate crew members of various ranks and duties. True, he hadn't gotten around to answering the question verbally, but that wasn't where the points were. Words and numbers were overrated, and it was a rookie mistake to think that points were dispensed for providing technically correct answers. No, where mathematics was concerned, creative thinking was always lauded. This was a masterpiece, and he knew the computer would have no choice but to pass him, if not commission him a fleet right then and there. This was it! He had done it! With misty eyes and tremendous pride, he dramatically rose from his seat, sauntered over to the computer, and inserted his paper with a flourish. Gripping the receipt that popped out a moment later, Rimmer held it over his heart and took a deep bow, followed by a lengthy, lengthy salute. Any moment now, he had no doubt he would be vindicated!
The computer began clicking rapidly and beeped a sputtering alarm as faint traces of mysterious blue smoke began to rise from its intake slot. Surprised at first, Rimmer's eyes grew wide as he realized the full magnitude of what was happening – the machine was so impressed that it was giving him a 21-gun salute! What an honor! He didn't even wait to see the printed result before soaring out of the room; he knew he had passed with the highest score ever awarded to a former second technician. "Victory, thy name is R-R-R-R-Rimmer!" He trilled in ecstasy at the top of his lungs as he charged down the corridor.
In the furthest, deepest recesses of his mind, Rimmer was very faintly aware that something didn't seem quite right, and yet he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so good. His thoughts surged past him at ten thousand geegooks a second, in a fantastical blur of colors and sounds and memories and emotions, all overwhelmingly positive. He was completely at one with the universe now, and he couldn't recall why exactly he had spent so much time in life convinced that he was destined for failure. To the contrary, he was unstoppable! The worst thing that could happen to someone, death, he'd already experienced and overcome, and it had barely even affected him. Been there, done that, got the light bee.
Though he never appreciated it before, he'd actually been an incredibly lucky person long before he'd ever taken the virus. He of all people had the incredible good fortune to not only be resurrected as a hologram, but to be gifted with the miracle of a hard light drive, making him virtually indestructible! He didn't need food or water or oxygen; he could be punched and stabbed and crushed without the slightest bruise. He could leap off the top deck railing on Red Dwarf, and so long as he switched to soft light as he hurdled towards the boilers several thousand decks below, he could survive any impact without even feeling pain. True, he couldn't touch anything in while soft light, but that also meant nothing could touch him either – not bazookoid fire, not enraged simulants, and best of all, not Lister's never-been-washed hands or inadvertently curried clothing. With the structural strength of his hard light, the total intangibility of soft light, and the power to toggle between the two, he was invincible! In fact, he was just like the superheroes he'd admired as a boy! He couldn't believe he'd never noticed it before! Move over, Man of Steel, and make way for Holoman! He was stronger than Iron Man, more agile than Spiderman, and with the whole universe under his protection, authority, and control, he felt just like –