Ace Rimmer leaned back in his chair, his eyes taking in the file on the screen in front of him while he rubbed his injured arm absently; he'd injured it in the crash after Wildfire came out of the wormhole that brought him into this universe, and he'd crashed into Starbug, and he'd been forced to knock down Kryten, much to his regret as he was instantly fond of the mechanoid, but luckily the droid understood the reasons, and the repairs to Starbug and helping the Cat who'd also been injured in the crash had taken priority over his injuries.

Besides, he'd gone through much worse injuries.

Pain could be controlled, you just disconnected it and focused on something else. It was a lesson Ace had learnt a long time ago, and it had served him well during Test Pilot training. Back in his home universe, Ace Rimmer was regarded as a daring pilot; they called him the Hero with No Fear, the Real Dan Dare, Captain James T. Kirk's real self, and so many others. Ace thought nothing of them, but he knew they were exaggerations. He did feel fear, he never let it get the better of him. Ace preferred thinking about the here and now and focused on it.

On the way back to Red Dwarf, Ace had picked up on the story of how the mining ship had appeared here, 3 million years into deep space. There had been an accident. The crew were wiped out, and 1,000 people or so were killed by a radiation leak after a faulty drive plate was shoddily repaired - instantly that raised some red flags in Ace's mind; there should never have been a defective drive plate on the ship in the first place, if there was it should have been given top priority. A faulty drive plate was not to be taken lightly. They made the meltdown of Chernobyl look like a summer breeze.

Dave had been in stasis at the time which was how he had survived. Ace had laughed fondly when he had learnt Dave had become so bored with the dull routine of the ship (much to his counterpart's disgust) and he had gotten himself in trouble by having a photo of his pet cat processed in the ship's photo lab.

While Arnie Rimmer was still angry and sore about that and the breach of rules on pets, Ace had realised Dave had done it deliberately to stop himself from being bored out of his wits anymore. Ace couldn't blame Dave for that, and since he would be leaving the Corps when they got back to Earth with his pay, he could get away with it.

Sadly that wasn't the case. Ace was stunned and horrified when he learnt his double, who was a second technician, was responsible for the drive plate repair.

Why?

How could Hollister be so stupid to give such a dangerous job to someone unqualified? Ace wasn't sure if things were just super lax in this universe, or if Hollister and his crew were just smegheads, but in his world, faulty drive plates resulted in whole decks being cleared, radiation shields activated, anti-radiation treatments issued to the crews in case an evacuation was not possible, and have a team of qualified engineers look into it while escape pods and ships were prepared in case something went wrong.

What did Hollister think was going to happen, that his counterpart would know the difference between a radiation hazard warning or a warning light?

Holly took the Dwarf out of the solar system to prevent any more chances of contamination when the crew were hit in the face by a blast of cadmium 2 radiation. Good idea. Holly was forced to spend 3 million years taking the ship out into deep space, stretching her memory and circuits along the way, waiting for the day to let Dave out.

At that time, Dave's pet cat had kittens and they began breeding and evolving; it was more likely Dave was not the only one who broke the no pets rule and other pets were forced into the holds.

Ace was tempted to check out Earth in this universe, take a look, see if any humans had survived; the Wildfire could transcend time quickly enough, and travelling Faster-than-Light should be easy enough. But he could do that later.

Ace was more interested in the differences between himself and his counterpart. He had never imagined he could hate himself, but the other Arnold Rimmer was a maggot, he was so weak, so bitter, twisted. But what made it all the more insulting was how his counterpart was so uninterested in bettering himself that he blamed others for the failures in his life.

And yet Ace was able to see just how he himself could have gone the same way; if his life hadn't unfolded the way he remembered, then wouldn't he have become like that? It made him sick to think so.

But he had to know what it was that made his counterpart like this. It hadn't taken Ace long to charm Holly into letting him take a look into Arnold's personal file, and he had decided to take a look into Dave's. Meeting a friend who was Spanners, and yet wasn't was intriguing.

As he looked over his counterpart's file, Ace saw that his counterpart's life was a mirror of his own. It was identical except there were small tidbits, which had little bearing later. Like himself, Arnold had suffered hundreds of humiliations at home, and at Io House. Ace had hated the school, he guessed his counterpart felt the same.

And then Ace saw it. At the age of 7, his counterpart was not held back a year. Ace remembered hanging upside down from that tree when his bitch of a mother had found him, and read that letter from the Io House headmaster, who'd decided not to hold him back a year. Ace remembered the scene; how his parents refused to speak to him, although looking back on it now, Ace realised the first nail in his desire to get away from his parents was nailed in.

But being held back a year had saved him, helped him, and made him into who he was. The humiliation of being the tallest boy in class (ah, yes, the rack; his father's obsession with getting his sons into the Space Corps had made him ruin their lives and bodies, another thing Ace refused to respect him for) by a foot had changed him, made him fight back, and Ace refused to stop.

And it made him open his mind to new ideas. Ace had always had problems with academics, he much preferred it when someone was telling him something or showing him how something worked. To him, it was a revolutionary concept of asking someone for extra tuition which didn't involve reading boring books.

And that revolutionary thought had helped Ace become a top student, athlete, and now, a commander and test pilot. But Arnold Rimmer had never had those experiences. He had never been forced to look at himself in a mirror and ask who the hell he was. He had never fought for anything, and he always gave up after the first hurdle. As he read through his counterpart's file, Ace's eyes nearly popped out in shock. His counterpart had tried sitting the astronavigation exam how many times? How was it he kept fainting? Was his body conspiring against him knowing he would never succeed in becoming an officer?

Sadness and sympathy crept into Ace's being as he thought about it; his counterpart was so deeply sad, and pathetic, and yet deep down he was driven to succeed. But it was the wrong type of drive. But nobody had bothered to make him see there were other ways he could succeed in life.

Swallowing his sadness a little, Ace moved on. He almost laughed with sadistic glee when he saw for himself the way his counterpart took his parents to court and divorced them at 14.

Ace hadn't done that, but at that age, he had known for years his parents hated each other. That was probably what screwed them up as parents, and was the principal reason why John, Howard, and Frank had never taken their kids anywhere near their grandparents. They might have been the apples of his parents' eyes, but the affection was not mutual. Ace had left home by that point, getting a berth as an apprentice on a freighter after deciding the academics didn't interest him, and he had never looked back since. He had fought for his position and made sure his parents had nothing to do with any of it. While they had gone about it totally differently, Ace and Arnold had one thing in common; they'd had enough of their parents, but instead of separating them like his counterpart had, Arnold had condemned them to live together forever.

Even now Ace had no idea if they would have had the guts to divorce each other.