Hello again all! Thank you for reading and reviewing, very kind of you. I'm aware that the pace is slowing down a little bit with this now but it kind of has to. I hate that whole 'love all of a sudden' thing, it gets my goat. Especially with a character like Rimmer. I just don't see it happening. Even with Nirvanah Crane, he was still disgusted with himself at the end. Anyway, I digress. Please enjoy, and if you do, say so! ^^
This is an SOS distress call from the mining ship Red Dwarf. The crew are dead, killed by a radiation leak. The only survivors were Dave Lister, who was in suspended animation during the disaster, and his pregnant cat, who was safely sealed in the hold. Revived three million years later, Lister's only companions are a life form who evolved from his cat, a service droid found on a derelict ship and Arnold Rimmer, a hologram simulation of one of the dead crew.
Additional; seven days ago we found a survivor from the JMCS Andromeda. Although confined to quarantine, on the outset she seems fit and well. Dave Lister's morale has significantly improved, though his personal hygiene has yet to follow suit.
Lister wandered down the corridor towards the drive room, tossing a tennis ball up and down into the air, a can swinging in the pocket of his jacket, a smouldering cigarette hanging from his lip as he smiled warmly to himself. Inside the drive room Rimmer was looking down at the centre module, tapping one foot, scowling in concentration.
"Alright, man?" Lister said, sitting on the screen to block his view. The hologram rolled his eyes, looking up.
"You realise you have the complete guide to spatial vertices betwixt your buttocks, Lister?"
"Really? I didn't feel a thing," Lister said with a grin.
"Is there something in particular you wanted, Git-Features?"
Lister got up again, pulling the can from his pocket and popping the ring, taking a slurp before starting to wonder around the console.
"She's doing much better," he said as he paced, bouncing the ball off the ground. "Started eatin' and talkin' to Kryten. I even got a few words out of her this morning'."
"Marvellous…" said Rimmer coolly, returning his gaze to the monitor. Lister frowned, slipping his hand in his pocket.
"Yeah. She's great, in't she?"
"Hm…"
" Homo sapien 101. All solid and alive and stuff."
"Mmhm."
Lister caught the tennis ball, then threw it straight through Rimmer, causing him to snap his head up.
"Oi!" he said sharply.
"Don't you care?" Lister said in exasperation. "You've been up here for days, looking at that stupid screen like everythin's normal! There's a woman in that room, Rimmer. Wo-man. I know doesn't come up often in your vocabulary but even you still know what it means!"
Rimmer shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
"Lister?" he said, his voice still calm and level.
"What?"
"Kindly bog off, would you?"
Lister threw his hand in the air, turning to face the door.
"You're a nutter, y'know that? I'm going back down there to talk to her. Kryten reckons she's well enough to know about her situation now. I'm gonna tell her. Clearly I'm the only one that has any interest in what she's goin' through, as the only other human bein' in the universe!" He shook his head as he left the room, leaving the hologram to stare vehemently at his navigation notes. If he had been able to, he was pretty certain he would have punched Lister square in the chops.
Of course he cared. He'd done barely anything but think about Anneke Thorne and her wellbeing since the moment he'd clapped eyes on her pod. But in all realism, what could he do? He was comprised entirely of light, had the social skills of a teaspoon, the only other occasion he'd spent any time with a woman she was suffering a mild brain injury…
Being able to walk around, as it turned out, did not make him any less dead. It just made him all the more conscious of it. Anneke had told him her name, that was enough. If she felt comfortable around Lister now, then wonderful. He didn't need to be involved anymore.
"Bollocks," he muttered to the empty room.
He waited as long as he was able to tolerate it. About ninety seconds. Then he turned and walked out of the room, silently tailing Lister.
"Ey, look, don't cry, it's not all that bad, I mean, we don't know what we might find out here…"
Rimmer stood at the end of the corridor, watching, as Lister stammered around in circles apologetically. He heard something hit the window with a loud thud and the young man jumped back, hands on his head.
"Smeg! Look, I was just tryin' to do you a favour, better you know now than find out on your own- Hey! Hey, come on, switch it off! Anneke!"
From his spot in the shadows, he heard a string of expletives come over the speaker to the girl's room. Lister raised his hands in a motion of surrender.
"Alright, alright. You need some time, fair enough. Look, you know if you want or need anything', I'm here. Just ask Holly, ok?"
A silent pause.
"Right, well… I'll leave ye in peace then…"
He turned to leave and Rimmer ducked into the wall out of sight, waiting for his booted feet to clump away. When he was sure he was alone, he stepped out again, hands on his hips, brown knitted in thought.
Smoothly done, Lister, he thought to himself, shaking his head.
Could you have done any better, Smeghead? came an unbidden reply.
Grinding his teeth, he turned on the spot to leave, then paused, instead looking to one of Holly's ports on the wall.
"Holly, show me the inside of quarantine bay five one two," he said, folding his arms, fingers tapping lightly on his bicep. An image washed over the screen, a grainy feed showing the small form of a woman sat cross legged in the centre of the room, hands clasped over her head, tangled in her hair at the nape of her neck. A cup was in the middle of the linoleum floor. That must have been the noise on the glass; she'd thrown it at Lister.
"Lister, you tit," he muttered, bowing his head for a moment to exhale before looking up at the screen again. "Is she alright?"
"Heart rate and epinephrine levels are raised, but yes, Arnold, she's fine."
"Right. Well. Good then." He made a step towards the flight of stairs to up to the next deck, then stopped, closing his eyes.
"Oh, for goodness sakes…"
Then he was turning, walking down the narrow, dark corridor, twitching the knot of his tie to make sure it was entirely central. As he reached the edge of the bay he stopped, taking a few deep breaths before leaning forwards to look in the window.
Instead he was met by his own reflection. She had locked them out on privacy mode.
"Ah," he uttered. "Probably for the best…"
He straightened up, swivelling back to face the steps yet again, when he heard the soft voice over the com;
"Mister Rimmer?"
He screwed his face up silently, his mind screaming at him.
You were almost off Scott free, you twit! Now you'll have to answer her. Good luck with that!
As he squared himself up to the window, hands clasped nervously behind his back, the silver sheen faded, revealing the room behind. The lieutenant was stood on the other side of the glass, all of six inches between them, and as she came into sight, Rimmer went numb from the neck down.
She was looking up at him in that piercing way she had, her platinum hair falling past her shoulders to the middle of her back, gleaming under the halogen lights. She much smaller than him, barely coming up to his shoulder, slightly built with smooth, slim arms, bare in the simple white vest top she was wearing. Her face was young with Nordic features, cool and clean, the tips of her long eyelashes the same pale shade as her hair. As he gawped at her she lifted one trembling hand to tap her fingertips on the glass, saying his name again.
"Mister Rimmer? Is it true?"
She's talking to you! Hello, anybody home? Answer her!
"I, er… Sorry, what?" he fumbled, managing to will his legs to work and carry him back a few steps. She watched him for a moment before repeating herself.
"Is it true?"
He forced a swallow as he looked at her. There were small lines on her fair cheeks, tear tracks.
"You've been talking to Lister?"
She nodded and he jammed his hands into his pockets, mainly to have something to do with them.
"I'm afraid it is…"
The girl let out a small noise of pain, turning her back on him and taking a few paces round the room, fingers pressed to her lips, mumbling into them,
"Oh my God, oh my God… Three million, oh my God…"
She stopped, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply through her nose, stood in profile to him, her bare feet just visible out the end of the voluminous grey cotton trousers Kryten had found for her. Rimmer rocked on the balls of his feet for a moment, before pointing one thumb over his shoulder.
"I should probably go," he muttered, already edging away. The girl looked up, hands falling to her side, a frantic look in her eyes.
"Wait."
"Look, I, er… I'm not your man for this, trust me," Rimmer said, taking another step back. She was walking towards the glass again, face surprisingly calm, though her voice was cracking.
"Please. I just found out my entire species apart from that man-" She pointed down the corridor in the direction had not long left "-is extinct. Can't you give me one minute of your time?"
She looked up at him imploringly and Rimmer felt his shoulders slump.
"What do you want?" he said softly.
"Talk to me," she begged, more tears gathering in her eyes.
"About what?" Rimmer could hear his own voice becoming higher and higher pitched, his hands trembling as he clasped them behind his back.
"Anything. I don't care. Anything at all. Just say something…"
She sat heavily on the ground, her legs crossed, looking utterly defeated. Rimmer opened his mouth, then closed it again. He did this a few times, then finally summoned a chair from Holly and pulled it up to the very edge of the window. Perching on it nervously, he looked down at the girl inside, struggling to find his voice;
"The last thing I ate before things went belly up round here was a cup of chicken soup. It was my last meal ever and it was absolutely revolting. Like sick in a cup. You?"
With surprise, he heard a small, two second long laugh come from the girl, before she looked up at him, tapping her forehead as she spoke,
"You are a hologram then? That's pretty impressive. In my day we didn't have colour. Pontioff, Andromeda's engineer, he was in greyscale."
"You didn't answer my question," Rimmer said, feeling an uncomfortable knot in his stomach at the mention of his life-challenged status. He pushed it down, watching as she pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her cheek on one as she thought.
"The last thing I ate on Andromeda… Three garibaldi biscuits, the thin ones with the raisins in, and a double bagger cup of tea."
Rimmer nodded once, mind racing as he struggled for the next question.
"Last film you saw? Mine was Cassablanca. Again."
"Carrie. The one with Sissy Spacek in it from the twentieth century. My bunkmate had a thing about old horror films."
"Last place you walked on solid ground?"
"Io. Planet leave." She looked up at him, resting her chin in her palm.
"Hm. I was born on Io," Rimmer said, feeling himself smile slightly, a rush of warmth filling his face.
"There, you see? You can talk to me after all…" Anneke tucked her hair behind her ear with a wan smile. "It's not that much trouble." Rimmer could feel the heat in his cheeks getting worse, breaking her gaze as he started again;
"Last book you read..?"