Rimmer awoke to find himself restrained to a bed in the medibay by several lengths of thick white rope wrapped around his torso. He frowned, and struggled mildly against the rigging, to no avail. He felt as weak as a kitten with rickets, and was struck by how sore every muscle in his body felt with even the slightest movement. Just as his memory began to return, a large piece of well-chewed bubble gum appeared in his frame of vision, and peered down at him with those innocent, perky little eyes that annoyed Rimmer so very much.

"Mr. Rimmer, sir, you're awake at last!" Kryten cried. "Oh, thank heavens, you've been asleep for nearly two days; we were really beginning to worry!"

"What do you mean, asleep for two days? How could I have slept for two days; I'm completely knackered! And why on Triton have you tied me down? Let me go!"

"In a moment, sir, I just need to first assess your condition."

Rimmer snarled. "Look, Mechannie Wilkes, I'm in enough misery without any help from you and your antics. I order you to release me this instant!"

"All I need to know, sir, is can you get yourself out of there?"

Both squinting and slack-jawed, Rimmer's face froze halfway between contempt and incredulity. "Can I get myself…? Of course not, you stupid goit, you've tied me to the smegging bed! These ropes are tighter than an octogenarian's speedo!" He roared. "'Can I get myself out of there'? Have you lost your witless mechanical mind?!" The more ferocious Rimmer became, the brighter and more joyous Kryten looked, in an ever-worsening cycle.

"Oh, sir, it's a miracle! Look, Mr. Rimmer has no remaining trace whatsoever of either confidence or self-control!" Kryten stepped back triumphantly, and Rimmer saw Lister sidle up to the bed, smirking at him before dropping into a chair and kicking his stinky feet up onto Rimmer's bed near the helpless hologram's face. Just as Rimmer was about to unleash a second tirade, Kryten interrupted him.

"Mr. Rimmer, sir, try switching to soft-light mode. If your light bee is sufficiently recovered, you should be able to transcend the restraints without a problem."

Embarrassed but unwilling to show it, Rimmer grit his teeth and grunted. He paused, concentrated, and felt his physical form disappear in a flash. The cords dropped through him and hit the sheets. Rimmer sat up slowly, trying to ignore the incredible pain all over his body, which only grew worse when he switched back to hard light a moment later.

"Oh sir, your light bee has healed perfectly, how incredibly fortuitous!" Kryten clasped his hands together in joy, and Rimmer scowled.

"Fortuitous, Kryten? Yes, some smegging luck virus that was; look what it's brought me! I've been infected, persecuted, harpooned, humiliated, drugged, restrained, and, if this pain is any evidence, probably flensed! Though I suppose being stuck with you lot, I'm already the unluckiest man in the universe; I must have been mad to expect anything else."

"Er, no sir, I'm afraid you never actually took the luck virus. So far as we can tell, you took a virus that inspires self-confidence and boldness. Normally it's brief and harmless, but you consumed a dose so large that it completely infected your light bee. We had no choice but to sedate and restrain you, and wait out the infection."

Rimmer's snarl faded, replaced with a look somewhere between confusion and indigestion, the one he usually got whenever Lister played his entire collection of Rastabilly Skank at once. Confidence? It made perfect, terrible sense. "It was confidence?" he finally asked weakly. "All that energy and euphoria I felt was confidence? It can't be; I've never felt anything like that!"

Lister snickered as Kryten wrung his hands in embarrassment and hastily continued. "Yes, sir, and furthermore, I'm afraid that due to the severity of your infection, the scanner shows that you produced a substantial number of antibodies to combat the virus. Consequently, you are now immunized for life against any further infection by the confidence virus."

"Immunized?" Rimmer's heart sank. "What do you mean? I'll never feel confidence again?"

"Not necessarily, sir, you're only immune to the virally-induced confidence; in that another dose of the virus would not produce any effects on you. The virus isn't distilled confidence itself, but once it enters the body, it stimulates a hormonal and immune reaction which, as a side effect, causes tremendous overproduction of endorphins, inducing the feelings of confidence and motivation. As a result, you should still be capable of experiencing natural confidence, just as you would experience any other mood produced by your own mind."

"So I won't feel like that again until I have confidence naturally? Until I feel inspired by pride, motivation, a sense of worth, all that nonsense?"

"Precisely, sir!"

"I won't feel that ecstasy, that inner peace and self-assurance, until I accomplish something? Until I pass the exams and become an officer?"

"Or until you achieve some other goal, sir, such as a meaningful relationship, a personal milestone, or a different professional ambition."

"Oh for smeg's sake!" Rimmer hissed. Folding his arms and turning away from the duo, he began to sulk. After a moment, though, he noticed that Kryten's face had perched over his right shoulder, with a conspiratorial gleam in his eyes.

"Sir," the mechanoid asked quietly but with a distinct, illicit excitement, "Can I ask you…what was it like during…? You know, towards the end?" His brow ridge wiggled mischievously.

"What was what like, you gibbering gimboid?" Rimmer spat through clenched teeth.

"The ambivalence, sir, when you were infected with both confidence, a highly expressive emotion, and self-control, an extremely restrictive one. Mechanoids are not capable of sustaining two contradictory emotions at once, and so I find ambivalence to be the most impressive of all human emotions. Your performance was masterful, sir, and let me just say that it was a privilege to see your interpretation!"

Rimmer snarled. "Kryten, you have five seconds to get out of my sight before you get a front row ticket to my interpretation of a mechanoid being disassembled and ejected out of the three closest airlocks!" He reached out to grab Kryten by the scruff, but instead swore silently as the pain caused his arm to freeze and hover inches above Kryten's shoulder for several seconds.

"Er…oh dear. Awkwardness aversion mode. Congratulations on your recovery, sir, but please excuse me; I'm sure you need your rest." Kryten politely ducked under Rimmer's arm and then scurried out of the medibay. Rimmer gingerly retracted his arm and turned towards Lister, who was still leaning back in his chair and grinning. "That goes double for you, Lister," Rimmer sneered. "Do you have any idea what the penalty is for willfully and intentionally harpooning a superior technician in the rump, let alone maliciously infecting him with a dangerous, untested virus? I could court-martial you under aerospace, military, or maritime law!"

Lister shrugged, still smirking. "Yeah, man, I'm sure you could. But look, there is one upside to it all." He dropped his feet back to the floor, reached over, and picked up a piece of paper from a tray by Rimmer's bed. "I checked the exam computer while you were out, and… you passed." Lister held up a large ivory certificate, printed on the ship's finest heavyweight paper, trimmed with gold foil, and bearing Rimmer's name in bold, crisp lettering.

For a long pause, Rimmer sat perfectly still, except that his nostrils began to twitch rapidly as he stared. He swallowed hard, and in a barely audible squeak, asked, "I – I passed? I passed Beginning Astronav?"

"Astronav? No, man, of course you failed that again. You took confidence, not competence. Come on, you submitted a drawing, for smeg's sake. Though it does seem you've got some weird sort of artsy talent – you inspired the marking computer to follow its dreams and start studying to be a satnav instead. Won't be easy to fix; four reboots later, and it's still insisting we call it Siri." He shook his head slightly, and waited for Rimmer's retort, but Rimmer just stared at the paper in silence. "Well anyhow, what I was gonna say was, you passed your final swimming test. Thirty laps in four minutes while in the course of business, especially as sick as you were? You've earned yourself a gold swimming certificate." Lister tossed the paper onto the bed and kept talking as he got up and sauntered over to the door, smirking. He was probably cracking some rude joke about Rimmer's finishing time in the tank, but Rimmer wasn't listening. Instead, he sat paralyzed, his eyes transfixed on the certificate.

"Right, Lister, in a moment," he mumbled, still staring as Lister shook his head and walked out. For a moment, all was quiet in the medibay. Rimmer stood up slowly, resolute even as his face twinged from pain, and picked up the certificate, examining it carefully under the harsh fluorescent lights. Setting it gently back on the bedside tray, he paused, and then rotated it carefully one-quarter inch to the left. He stepped back, adjusted his sleeve cuffs, and slowly extended his right arm, wincing. He did his best to salute through the pain, carefully placed his arm down at his side, and gave the paper a curt nod.

But as soon as he looked away, his thoughts turned forward, and the anxious voices began to chatter again with a vengeance. True, he was now Arnold J. Rimmer, Bsc, Ssc, Gsc, and that had to count for something, but it hardly changed the fact that he'd failed his astronavs a fourteenth time, and was already 48 hours behind on revising for the fifteenth. He needed to start planning his timetable-making strategy, and to sew another pocket on his jumpsuit for a backup slide rule, and to order at least a 20-pack of fresh felt-tips – no wonder he'd failed again! Reminders and reprimands quickly swarmed in from all sides, and he wearily closed his eyes. He just had to keep on trying. This many consecutive exam failures couldn't all have been his fault, right? Sooner or later, his luck would have to change. With a sigh, he opened his eyes, turned towards the corridor, and slowly limped out.