Lister barely had time to process the turn of events before Rimmer and the Cat came barreling in at the far end of the decks. He watched in helpless horror as Rimmer shot up the eight-foot tank ladder in a blur, and swan-dove into the tank of cleaned, recycled water. The Cat followed him up the ladder, but then sat down at the tank's edge, hissing and swiping at Rimmer every time the hologram swam by in a series of laps.
"Cat, what are ya doing?!" Lister shouted, "We have to get him out of there now! He's gonna destroy the tanks!"
"Don't look at me like that, monkey, cats don't go swimming! Especially not in this outfit! You think 'dry clean only' is just a suggestion?"
Just then Kryten barreled in, and still carrying the sedative, rushed over towards Lister, who let out a massive sigh of relief. "Oh thank god, Rimmer's in the tank and I can't swim! Even if you can't pull him out, just reach in there and hold him off for a bit so I can drain the tank!"
But instead of springing into action, Kryten fidgeted with the hypospray, and began to stammer with anxiety. "S-S-Sir, I can't g-g-go in there, the 4000 series i-isn't waterpr-pr-proof!"
As Lister let out a tidal wave of frustration and swore up a storm, a completely oblivious Rimmer was giggling in euphoria as he surged through the warm water, pushing off each end of the oblong pool and gliding along the edges. Having no need to breathe, he could go as far as he liked without needing to surface, but evidently he couldn't resist showing off his top-notch swimming skills to the rapt audience surrounding the tank, so he repeatedly pirouetted out of the water and crashed back down with a resounding splash.
Both mere inches and an entire reality away, Lister desperately dug through the detritus around the bottom edge of the tank, searching for anything that could be of value, or if nothing else, the tank's emergency drain. A pencil? Useless. Old maintenance reports? Useless. A harpoon gun? Useless! Wait! Lister picked up the harpoon, grabbed the sedative from Kryten, and doused the blade as thoroughly as he could in the drug. He quickly scaled the tank ladder up to the edge, and braced himself. He had one shot to get this right. He waited until Rimmer surfaced by leaping into the air like a deranged dolphin, and fired.
But as Rimmer soared into the air this time, his light bee suddenly glitched, momentarily freezing a Rimmer-shaped frame of static and buzzing soft light in midair, and allowing the spear to effortlessly glide through him. Rimmer didn't appear to suffer any damage at all, though his non-hologrammatic costume suddenly dropped back down into the tank, where it floated murkily on the surface. To Lister's horror, the spear continued onwards, in a clear trajectory towards –
"Cat, duck!"
"Ducks?!" The Cat's eyes lit up as he whipped around in search of waterfowl. Just as he turned his back, the drugged harpoon buried itself in his left shoulder. "Oh my God! Oh my God!" The Cat shrieked, "Look what you've done to my jacket! You've killed it! You can't repair suede!" With a screech, he yanked out the harpoon, and leapt down from the tank to go lick his wound.
Lister swore loudly, and started rewinding the harpoon as fast as he could. He'd deal with the Cat in a moment; for now, Rimmer was still the first priority, and as the hologram's light bee struggled back to hard light, Rimmer belly-flopped back under the water with a tremendous splash. When he resurfaced, Lister was relieved to find that Rimmer's light bee had at least managed to get him back in a hologrammatic uniform, though it continued to seize and glitch, flickering back and forth between hard and soft light and changing colors repeatedly. If he even noticed, Rimmer didn't seem perturbed by the errors, but as the water refracted the flashing lights like a disco ball, Lister kept losing his focus, and his headache began to return. He was running out of patience, and even worse, his only sedative was now gone. He couldn't think under all this chaos! Reaching hastily into his jacket, Lister pulled out the self-control virus and uncapped it. The vial was halfway to his lips before it occurred to him.
"I'm sorry for this, man, I hope it doesn't kill ya but I've got no choice!" He tipped the harpoon back and tried to pour the lavender gunge over the blade, but as might be expected of a self-control virus, it resisted any movement. Impatient, Lister smashed the vial instead, covering the barbed spearhead in the viscous goo and multiple shards of broken glass. It would take a hell of a lot more than just self-control to survive a hit from one of these, but Lister was out of options.
He assumed the position a second time, crossed his fingers, uncrossed them, crossed the fingers on his non-firing hand instead, and pulled the trigger. The harpoon landed a direct hit just as Rimmer was preparing to dive. The blade shot through his right buttock and held firm. With a shriek, Rimmer tried to flip to soft-light, but the light bee didn't respond. "Battleship!" Lister yelled, and dropping his head for a half-second in relief, but he had to move quickly, before the bee glitched again. As Kryten rushed over to assist, Lister called on his inner longshoreman and began to heave on the harpoon winch, dragging Rimmer, who continued to struggle, rapidly through the water.
"Hurry, Kryten, get the net! It's a 70-incher!" With a final keel-haul, they hoisted Rimmer out of the tank and catapulted him onto the floor below. In a pained daze, Rimmer continued to flail and flap about on the metal grate, his eyes wide and unblinking, his mouth wordlessly gaping and closing as he tried to form words. As the new virus took hold, though, he slowed. Several looks of confusion crossed and contorted his face as confidence and self-control battled for dominance. He laughed uproariously, then silenced, proudly splayed his limbs in a come-hither pose, then covered himself in horror, leapt to his feet, then twisted in a spasm as every muscle contracted and froze at once. His eyes flickered, slated, and were replaced by the spinning beach balls of a complete hologrammatic fit. Then, just as quickly as they had locked, Rimmer's muscles all simultaneously released, dropping him to the floor in a wet, smelly heap.
"Rimmer?" Lister climbed down from the ladder and lightly kicked the harpoon sticking out from Rimmer's backside, but got no response. As he inspected the hologrammatic flotsam, the Cat staggered over, reeling from side to side, slammed into Lister, and laughed hysterically into his face as Lister struggled to support the Cat's weight. Independent of each other, the Cat's pupils rapidly toggled between nearly filling the entire iris and shrinking to the tiniest pinprick, and back again. Cat giggled, then guffawed, then flopped over onto his back, his hands and feet weakly bicycling in the air for a few seconds before he hiccupped and passed out.
Wheezing and exhausted, Lister nodded. "Good idea, guys." He sank to his knees, rolled on his side, and sprawled out on the floor next to the prostrate hologram and strung-out feline. "Give us a mo, Kryten," he panted. "It's been a hell of a morning."