Author's Note:
Hey! Sorry for not updating in a long time. I've had other stories that became more interesting to me, but I recently started brainstorming stuff for this one again. So let's just consider this one the start of Series II of this series.

The post pod's contents were scattered all over the place.

"Amazing," Rimmer sighed, sorting away meticulously alongside Kryten. "Look at all this stuff. Entertainment cassettes, postcards, letters, videos… Thank goodness technology made that big U-turn in the twenty-second century, or sorting this lot out wouldn't be very satisfying."

Kochanski was helping the Skutters gather up a few things, including a package of John Wayne videos and a letter from the John Wayne fan club. Once they were on their way, she joined the others. She skimmed the pile of videos, observing the titles silently until she found one she recognized. "I don't believe it!" she exclaimed.

"What is it, ma'am?" Kryten asked.

"They've remade Casablanca! How could they do that? That's a classic film! The one with Myra Dinglebat and Peter Beardsley was the definitive version!"

Rimmer was briefly reminded of Lister in that moment, but he shrugged it off.

"I saw that one," Holly remarked. "Knock out! 'Of all the space bars in all the worlds, you had to rematerialize in mine'," he quoted.

"Here's a cassette with an entire year of Earth News," Rimmer said, pulling out a video. "Finally, we've got a chance to catch up on what we missed."

Kryten froze where he stood as his rubber fingers wrapped around a small disc. "Oh, goodness!" he exclaimed.

"What is it?" Rimmer asked.

"It's a total immersion videogame!"

"What's that?"

Kochanski looked at the disc inquisitively. "I've heard about these," she said. "Never played one, though."

"For the best, ma'am," Kryten replied. "The total immersion games eventually proved to be a bit dangerous as the players would sometimes forget that they had started playing."

"How does that work?" Rimmer asked.

"The player inserts electrodes into their frontal lobes and hypothalamus, effectively transporting you into the game."

"And so while you're enjoying the game, you sometimes forget you're even playing?" Kochanski finished.

"Exactly, ma'am. However, some manufacturers took this into account and made some games more obvious. I could sort through these to find out which ones are safe."

"Good plan."

They soon found a bag of mail with Rimmer's old bunkroom number on it, so he decided to take the bag up to his quarters to sort through it and find out which were his and which Lister's were.

Kochanski remained with Kryten and Holly, sorting away for another hour before she left to get some sleep.

Kryten tidied about the mail for a little longer before he finally had everything arranged, and he proceeded to take the new movies down to the cinema to be added to the catalogue.

Once that was done, he made his way down to Rimmer's quarters to see if he needed anything before going offline. He knocked politely on the door before poking his head inside. He found Rimmer sitting at his desk, hunched over a single letter that he held in one hand while his balled up fist pressed into his forehead.

"Mr. Rimmer, sir? I was just going about my duties before going offline. I was wondering if you needed anything."

Rimmer didn't react. He just kept staring at the letter.

Kryten sensed something was wrong and waddled a little closer. "Mr. Rimmer, sir?"

Rimmer finally spoke, but what he had to say didn't exactly help matters. "Dead."

"Sir?"

"My father is dead."

Kryten looked startled by the news. "Oh, my goodness!" he exclaimed. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Mr. Rimmer, sir! I didn't realize! How could I intrude on your moment of sorrow like this? Forgive me, sir! I'll just…"

"Kryten, shut up," Rimmer said quietly.

Kryten blinked. He'd expected the man to be angry, but somehow, it was as if all the lights had gone out. His eyes conveyed an emptiness that the mech had never seen before.

After a long enough pause, he said, "Is there anything you need right now, sir?"

Rimmer shook his head before tossing the letter aside and standing, heading for the door. "I'm just going up to the Observation Dome, Kryten," he said absently. "I'll see you later."

Kryten didn't know what to do. Rimmer wasn't exactly the nicest guy in the world, but he didn't want him to be miserable. Unfortunately, he was only a mechanoid and didn't understand human emotions. He looked around uncertainly for something to help when he remembered Kochanski was once human.

The woman in question had just been nodding off to sleep when she was jolted back to reality by the sound of someone knocking frantically at the door. Cursing silently, she rolled over and padded across the floor she technically couldn't touch and voice activated the door open. She found Kryten wringing his hands nervously.

"What is it now?" she groaned.

"I'm afraid it's Mr. Rimmer, ma'am…," the mech explained awkwardly. "He received a letter with some bad news."

She raised an eyebrow, so he continued.

"The letter said that… his father has passed."

Kochanski stared at him. "Of course he's passed!" she exclaimed. "They're all passed! Everyone's passed! They've been 'passed' for three million years! They're more passed than a senior citizen driving a Bentley!"

Kryten squirmed at her sleep-deprived frustration. "Nevertheless, ma'am, the letter appears to have hit Mr. Rimmer particularly hard. He seemed very depressed."

Kochanski sighed heavily. She wasn't sure how she would react to news like that, even with three million years between her and the fact. Finally, she decided that no matter what the circumstances, she wouldn't want to be alone in a time like this. "Where's he gone?"

"Up to the Observation Dome," Kryten replied.

Without another word, Kochanski walked past, asking Holly to simulate a dressing gown for her, which she then wrapped around herself as she walked up to the dome.

She found Rimmer sitting on the bench, staring out at the stars in a lost daze. For a brief moment, her heart went out to him. He looked so small and lost. She silently approached, but he clearly knew she was there because he lowered his legs for her.

"Can't sleep?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"Kryten told me about your father…"

He didn't say anything, so she walked around the dome for a bit. She didn't know what to say. She'd never experienced the death of a parent before. Then she realized something. "I never really knew my parents," she said out loud. "They brought me up in Glasgow and sent me to cyberschool for eleven years – perfect computer-generated setting, with perfect CG teachers and perfect CG friends…"

Rimmer finally looked over at her, even though she was still looking out to the stars. "I knew he was dead," he decided to say. "And they're all dead, aren't they? It's just… getting that letter makes it feel like it happened yesterday."

Kochanski sighed. At least he was being semi-rational about this. "Were you close?" she asked.

Rimmer looked momentarily confused by the question, but the confusion was replaced by anger and disgust a moment later. "I hated him!" he snarled. "I detested his stupid fat guts, the popeyed balding git!"

She was certainly taken aback by that. "What?"

In an instant, it was all pouring out of him. "He always wanted to get into the Space Corps, but they wouldn't take him because he was one inch below regulation height! One. Inch. I had three brothers – when we were young he bought a traction machine so that he could stretch us. By the time my brother Frank was eleven he was six foot five. Every morning he'd measure us and if we hadn't grown, back on the rack."

"My god, Rimmer, that's awful!" she exclaimed, finding her own distant childhood to be very uplifting at the moment.

"He had this fixation that we all had to get into the Space Corps. At meal times he'd ask us questions on astronavigation, and if we got them wrong, no food."

"What did you do?"

"What did I do? I nearly died of malnutrition, that's what I did."

"How did you cope with that all your life?"

"When I was fourteen, I divorced them. I took them to court. Got paid maintenance until employment age and access every fourth weekend to the family dog."

"So if you hated him so much, why are you so broken up about him dying?"

Rimmer sighed, running his fingers through unmanageable hair. "Because… he was never proud of me. I just wanted him to be proud of me. For something. For anything. And now…"

He ran out of things to say.

She could only sit there and keep him company for a while.

Their version of Better Than Life was the non-addictive mark II version, much to their relief. Knowing that Rimmer needed cheering up, Kochanski had gotten them to put on the headsets so they could have some fun for a change. Rimmer had been reluctant at first, but once he knew what the game was about, he decided to give it a go. Cat put on his own headset while Kryten connected himself in via an extension wire. Holly then spliced Kochanski into the game.

It was amazing. They enjoyed the opening scenes wherein they arrived on a tropical beach and got to explore the different sections. Cat imagined himself a large motorcycle and drove off to have his own adventures while Kryten imagined a great big bus for sole purpose of cleaning it up. Rimmer imagined himself a Jaguar that a very promiscuous Yvonne McGruder inside and drove off to have some fun.

Kochanski, meanwhile, enjoyed being able to actually touch and eat things again. First thing she did was hit the best restaurant in town for a decent meal, complete with cottage cheese with pineapple chunks.

Everyone was really enjoying it until Rimmer's fantasies started going wrong. Somehow, every time he built up something nice or fun or enjoyable for himself to do, it went horribly wrong. His father called him a smeghead, McGruder became pregnant, he traded his fancy car for a mobile junk heap, and he was now stuck with six kids and mortgage, capping it all off with him owing Outland Revenue and all of them trapped in the sand with jam smeared on their faces.

It wasn't until they all managed to get the helmets off that they reappeared in reality.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Cat screamed at Rimmer.

"I'm sorry!" Rimmer wailed, his face a picture of shame and guilt.

"We were having a great time until you ruined it with your diseased brain!"

The feline stormed off to recover from the ordeal, leaving Rimmer in the Drive Room with Kryten and Kochanski. He turned to see them both looking at him and immediately began trying to placate them. "I didn't mean for it to happen! I just… Nice things to don't happen to me! My brain just won't accept it."

Kochanski held up a hand. "Okay, Rimmer, just calm down. Deep breaths, remember?"

Rimmer nodded dumbly and inhaled through his sizeable nostrils, thankfully calming himself down. "Yes… I'm… sorry… I just… don't know… what's wrong with… me… and my diseased… brain…"

"Your brain's not 'diseased', Rimmer. Cat just doesn't understand."

"Well, that's dandy, because neither do I."

Kochanski wished in that moment she could put a hand on his shoulder, so she said, "Kryten – put a comforting hand on his shoulder."

Kryten blinked in surprise before nodding. "Right away, ma'am," he replied, placing his rubbery-plastic hand on Rimmer's uniformed shoulder.

Rimmer stared at it in bemusement. "Er… what's this for?"

"Rimmer, listen to me, okay? You can't help what just happened in the game, all right? Yes, it was annoying and terrifying, but it was all down to your subconscious, and I'm afraid that your subconscious hates you."

"… Well, that made me feel better."

"It's no surprise, really," Kochanski continued. "Your entire life, you've been told you're a worthless piece of nothing, and no one has told you otherwise."

"You're so good at this. Ever consider being a psychiatric counselor?"

"Just listen, okay? Because you're not nothing. You're Arnold J Rimmer, and you're the last human being alive. It could very well be that the future of our species is resting on your tiny testicles. That's how important you are. Understood?"

Rimmer stared at her for a long moment. "… You're serious?"

Kochanski smirked. "Yes, I am. So you got it? You're not nothing. If your father was so obsessed with making you the man he wanted to be, then he's the nothing. Clear?"

The thought had simply never occurred to Rimmer at any point in his life. His father was a nothing? Sure, he hated him, but he'd been like a god to young Arnold all his life – to disobey him meant suffering on the hot coals in Satan's best poking spa.

"Clear?" Kochanski repeated.

… Well, she was his superior. "Crystal," he replied with less conviction than he'd been hoping for.

Kochanski nodded. It was going to take some time for the thought to really attach itself, but hopefully, she'd planted the seed in his mind, and he'd start to get better. "Well then," she said at last. "Guess we'd better get to work clearing all of this away. Good night, Rimmer."

Rimmer watched her leave to fetch the Skutters and stood there for a long moment before deciding to head back to his quarters. He was halfway to the hatch when he noticed something amiss and sighed with irritation.

"Kryten, get your hand off my shoulder."