Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The next few weeks are still hard. Holly can turn the ship around, bring them home, but they can’t get there for another three million years, which means stasis, and Rimmer insists that they need to check structural integrity on the outer hull before they do that again.

‘Holly could wake us up if anything happened.’ Lister protests. ‘How many tests can you run anyway?’ But he’s got some sort of complex about it - probably thinks being really, really careful and nitpicky from now on in will make a difference to his being a bungling bloody idiot before.

Meanwhile there’s the forgetting. Not as bad as after Nan died (Deb’d find herself in the biscuit aisle in the megamarket, looking at the pink wafers and bourbons, before she remembered she didn’t need to buy them anymore). More that she sort of knows every room in the ship is empty, but she hasn’t learnt to expect it yet. It’s still a downer every time she goes into the Copacabana or the drive room or the canteen or.. just about anywhere really.

It’s weird as well finding things where she left them – Marie was a tidy-upper, a putter of things in drawers, and Lister could never find anything in the bunkroom without a good rummage first.

Now it looks like something exploded in there. Like her place back on Earth, except without the damp and dirty yellow roses on the wallpaper. Cat picks his way through fastidiously, curious but disapproving, and then disappears off wherever he disappears off to with a glittery brooch and some hair serum stuff she never liked anyway.

Eventually he comes back with some Cat things. Books and what looks like maps. Star charts maybe? Cat avoids the subject whenever she raises it, but Holly says the others left decades ago, off to find their promised land.

And still, for weeks, all Rimmer wants to do is metal stress tests and inventory. Even tries to pull rank and rope her in, but she’s not in the mood to be bossed these days. Especially not if it means stock-taking. Been there, done that, worked in the supermarket.

‘Right, that’s it lass.’ Rimmer snaps. ‘You’re on report.’

‘What’s the point, Rimmer? No-one’ll read it. Thanks to you there’s no-one to read it, remember?’

‘That’s not the point Lister. I’ll know. It’s important we keep things shipshape round here.’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean why? Because we are – unfortunately in your case I admit - all that is left of a great civilisation. We need to preserve it. Nurture it. Otherwise we might just as well go mad.’

He’s serious too. Lister stares.

‘Might be a bit late in your case Rimmer.’ She says. Then as he draws himself up to his full height. ‘OK, ok, look, I’m not sure if I get where you’re coming from or not.’ She admits. ‘But d'you know what, if it’ll make you happy, put me on report. I’ll be in the bar.’

‘Wonderful idea Listy.’ Rimmer says obnoxiously. ‘Spectacular idea. Give my regards to the air.’

It riles her all the more because it’s true. She knows it is. Sitting like the last living wallflower in the Copa topping off a ready mixed pina colada with a paper umbrella and a cherry on a stick, raising it in salute to - who really? The whole human race?

Red Dwarf echoes. Metal stairs, metal hull, metal ceilings. Everything echoes. It used to hum like a hive.

Maybe going home is stupid, but there’s nothing for her here.

Chapter Text

Somewhere in all this – she’s lost count of the days by now - Rimmer starts jogging before breakfast, timing himself with the focus of a man who’s found something fresh to obsess about. Circuiting down the stairs between their decks, along her deck and then up and along his own corridor in the opposite direction. Which means he wakes her up, belting past, and she blinks blearily at the alarm clock and goes to get breakfast, still lingering at the food dispenser when he comes round again.

‘Just out of bed Lister?’ He says chirpily. ‘I’ve been up for hours. Late one was it?’

‘Mornin’ Rimmer.’ She says, thinking up for hours doing what? There’s nothing to do. She spends her own evenings watching the stupidest sappiest movies she can find, sobbing more at the happy scenes than the sad, which would be a bit tragic really at her age, if she was back on Earth. If she had the option of having a life.

Her interest in her appearance – never what you might call obsessive - nose dives to can’t be doing. She sleeps in her underwear and pulls on mismatched t shirts and work trousers when she wakes, loose and unflattering and hiding the fuzzy bits she can’t be bothered with either. She starts smoking again as well, something she hasn’t done since her teens.

Rimmer says it’s a deathwish, and she says so what if it is.

The bickering passes the time. Neither of them comment on how she’s got in the habit of dragging herself out of bed when Rimmer jogs past in the mornings, or how they’ve both taken to leaving their bunkroom doors open during the day. Wandering in and out much as the Cat does, albeit mostly to argue about Rimmer bossing the skutters or hiding her cigarettes.

‘It’s for your own good, Lister.’ He says, flicking the kettle on without really thinking about it. ‘Tea?’

‘Yeah, go on then.’ Cat has already told her where the cigarettes are. She’s just making a point.

He’s still got all his astronavigation revision out on the table. Still wants to take that exam, even though there’s no space corps to care. Lister flicks through idly, looking for practical stuff. Stuff they can use. She sort of knows how to steer the small transports – it’s a standard control column and they’re tough little beasts apart from the screens anyway. She’s got no idea about the Dwarf.

The books are useless. She can look at the pictures, but the words might as well be in Finnish for all the sense they make. What the smeg is a quasar, anyway?

‘I think I’m getting cabin fever.’ She says. ‘D’you think there are any planets around?’

‘Planets?’

‘Yeah, you know. Something to look at. I’m getting bored of reading Cat books.’

‘Well if the one you quoted to me is any indication I’m not surprised.’

‘C’mon Rimmer, you know that was for three year olds.’

The antagonism between Rimmer and the Cat has settled down to a low simmer. Mostly because the Cat simply doesn’t notice or care about Rimmer’s disdain, and Rimmer thinks the Cat is too stupid to worry about. Lister isn’t so sure. You can’t judge another species by human standards. Probably they seem stupid to him, just in different ways.

Or at least in one very specific way.

‘You know what I don’t get.’ He says, after a month or two, when he’s worked out she’s not going to steal her shiny brooch back. ‘You’re a she monkey and he’s a he monkey right?’

‘Right.’

‘But you’re down here and he’s up there.’

‘So?’

‘So I’m saying I don’t get it.’

Lister just gives him his krispies and an old fashioned look that he returns in kind and happily steamrollers over.

‘I mean I get that he wouldn’t be your first choice. Hell if I was you he wouldn’t be my first choice either.’ He smiles wide and lays his hand on his chest. ‘Obviously I would be my first choice.’

It’s not meant flirtatiously, he’s either absorbed what she said about species, or possibly has second thoughts of his own. He’s a sleek and finicky beast, and they must be as odd to him as he is to them.

Or odder, since Lister has actually had cats, and isn’t surprised when he does things like curl up in Rimmer’s bunk for a nap, and Rimmer comes charging downstairs to insist Lister remove him.

‘Be serious Rimmer, he’s not my cat is he?’

Then, since they’ve both got in the habit, she starts the kettle boiling, and Rimmer pushes a few extraneous items to the other end of the table to make room for his mug. He doesn’t look comfortable – he keeps scanning the place for snipers or spiders or something, and his legs are fidgety with the impulse to stand him up and march him out – but he has learnt to sit.

‘If I didn’t know better I’d think you’d had burglars in here.’ He complains.

‘We can’t all file our underpants.’ She counters. ‘Look, there’s another bunk in your room, why don’t you sleep in that?’

‘It’s too short.’

‘Move into another room then. There’s loads. You could move into officers’ quarters or something.’

‘So could you.’

‘I’m going back into stasis Rimmer, I’ve told you that. Holly said to when we go through lightspeed anyway. I might as well just stay there.’

‘And what happens to me if you do that?’

‘I don’t know do I?’ She says as if they haven’t had this debate twenty times before. ‘I’m not your Mum, Arnold. You could go into stasis too.’

‘You know I don’t.. Hang on.’

Something she’s just said has registered. His head shoots up, like a mongoose on the alert. Even his hair seems to stand to attention.

‘Just a smegging minute.’ He says. ‘Just scroll back a bit for me. When are we going through lightspeed?’

‘About a day. I thought Holly told you.’

‘Why am I always the last to know what’s going on around here?’ Rimmer demands. ‘I do happen to be the senior officer on board.’

Lister shrugs as apologetically as she can with two cups of tea in her hands and no real remorse. ‘I thought Holly was going to tell you.’

‘Well why would you think that? That computer has absolutely no respect for me you know.’

‘Yeah, I do know.’

At that, Rimmer bristles even more, and no doubt he'd come back with something really snappy if he wasn’t interrupted.

But a boom of noise, a shudder that somehow doesn’t make either of them lose their balance, doesn’t even make the tea slosh out of the mugs onto the table, silences them both.

A sensation of being shaken and then stable, a blinding light that leaves no afterimage, a deafening sound that doesn’t leave their ears ringing. Just everything, weirdly, the same as before, is just as unnerving.

Rimmer slides under the table, sleek and slippery as a weasel, but it takes Lister a second to react.

‘Holly.’ She asks. ‘What was that?’

He answers at cross purposes at first, confused or avoidant, his image see-sawing and breaking up on the screen, pixellating and shivering out of focus, before he pulls himself together and admits they’ve broken the light barrier 20 hours early.

‘I can’t do it.’ He says. ‘My bottles gone.’

‘Snap out of it man.’ Rimmer’s head pops out from under the table to bark the order. 'Pull yourself together.'

‘Oh hark at it.' Lister says. Then, when he glares up from under his collapsing fringe. 'You ok Rimmer? D’you want your tea down there?’

At least he's quiet as he crawls out.

‘Anything we can do, Hol?’ Lister asks.

‘No, I’m getting the hang of it now.’

She’s not sure whether she believes him or not.

Chapter Text

‘Can you hear that?’ Rimmer stops dead as soon as they step onto the stairs, peering up through the metal grating, trying to locate the distant stomp stomp stomp of feet coming down.

‘Have you always been this jumpy?’ Lister mutters. Although, ok, yeah it is weird. Normal people don’t walk down stairs like that do they? Each step so even, so much like the last. It’s definitely not the Cat, who travels in a light footed zigzag and prefers to use the vents to move from floor to floor anyway. Someone else – two people even - not exactly marching but moving in synch. Silent except for their footfalls.

She leans out and tries to peer up between the railings, ignoring Rimmer’s hissed complaint that she’s being a gimboid and should get out of sight before ‘they’ see her.

Down and down the steps come, and something of Rimmer’s fear must be infectious because surely she should be running up to meet whoever it is, not skulking in the shadows.

But if everyone else is dead then who, or what, might she find?

Or maybe she just needs to stop watching so many zombie movies.

Whoever they are they’re on the level above now, shadows shifting as they move under the wall light in its wire cage and then settling as they turn off onto the floor above.

Rimmer’s floor, where the Cat is still sleeping.

'OK.' Lister mutters to herself. 'I'm going in.'

She runs up as lightly as she can, waves urgently for Rimmer to follow when he hesitates. He catches up – not at all happy about it – just as she’s peering round the open corridor door.

Nothing. No-one. Not a sound or a sausage. The nearest bunkroom doors are closed just as they normally are. Only Rimmer’s is open. Just as it usually is.

‘Cover me.’ She says.

‘With what, exactly?’

‘I dunno. I’ve just always really wanted to say that. Just make sure nothing sneaks up on me, yeah?’

Rimmer rolls his eyes and skulks back a bit, trying to get a vantage point to check back down the stairs as well as keeping an eye on the corridor Lister is creeping down. It would be just his luck to be ambushed while valiantly guarding the rear.

It’s quite a nice rear though. Curvy. Under different circumstances he wouldn’t mind guarding it. At present, however, he wishes she’d hurry the smeg up. What does she think he’s going to do if some slavering beast erupts out of one of the doors behind her anyway? Find another table to hide under? Freeze to the spot?

Still he is here. If she was anyone else he’d be back down those stairs and gibbering in a cupboard by now.

He tenses as she turns into the bunkroom. There’s still no sound.

Lister glances round quickly once she gets through the door. First the Cat, comfortably curled up in Rimmer’s bunk, duvet pulled up over his lemon suit, arm snug beneath the pillow. He’s a tidy sleeper – not a hair out of place. He’s clearly unharmed. She checks the shower as well, since that’s the only place anyone could be hiding. Nothing. So she goes to beckon Rimmer.

Who takes the corridor in a flying run. Has to clutch at the doorframe to slow himself as he swings round.

‘Have you checked the shower?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good.’ He slaps his hand on the door panel to engage the lock.

‘Rimmer, calm down. Holly will know what’s going on.’

‘I wouldn’t trust that goited computer to know what day of the week it is.’

She ignores that. ‘How did they get on board anyway? We’re travelling at lightspeed.’

‘They’re probably lightspeed monsters.’ Rimmer says, revealing a hitherto unknown talent for space fiction. ‘They’re probably attracted to things that travel at lightspeed. Or maybe they themselves only exist at the speed of light, so we’ve just become visible to them. Or maybe they’re from one of the systems we’re passing through and we’ve broken some kind of interplanetary speed limit and they’re about to slap a colossal fine on us and then throw us in some foetid, sordid alien dungeon when we admit we can’t pay it.’

‘What’s he on about?’ The Cat asks blearily, opening an eye just wide enough to make his displeasure known. ‘Can’t you make him be quiet? Some of us are trying to sleep here.’

‘Yes, in my bed.’

Lister lets it go and leans over to tap the mirror that, in most quarters, doubles as a vid screen.

‘Hi Holly. You there?’

‘I’m a bit busy right now Deb.’

‘We think there’s someone else on board.’

‘Nonsense. Can’t be.’ He looks absolutely affronted at the thought. Insulted, even.

‘You sure?’

‘Absolutely. I’m scanning 24/7, round the clock. There’s nothing that happens on board I don’t know about.’

‘Were you scanning the stairs just 5 minutes ago? Because we heard at least two people, and it wasn’t skutters.’

‘Ah. I get it.’ Holly’s face relaxes into a confident smile. ‘It’s not someone else on board though. It’s just an echo. Didn’t I explain this to you?’

‘No’

‘You’re catching up with future events before they’ve happened.’

Chapter Text

It doesn’t sound so bad the way Holly explains it. A freak caused by travelling at the speed of light. Nothing to worry about, nothing that means they have to stick together, but somehow the silence on the stairs is louder than it was as Lister goes back down, and something niggles on the edge of her consciousness as she enters her bunkroom, makes her turn as she passes the table.

She doesn’t know why. Nothing’s different. Or if it was it isn’t now.

At least – unless – are the shadows strange? She’s not sure, but they don’t seem right, the tiny patch of darkness under the table is bigger than it should be. Stretched out, as if there’s light coming from the other side of the room.

But there isn’t. The only light is the one fixed in the ceiling. There’s a window, a tiny deep-set diamond-shaped porthole that looks out on empty space, but no light has ever come through that. It’s just there for psychological reasons.

She glances up to confirm that’s still the case, looks back down again and thinks – she’s still not sure – that the shadow has got longer. She takes a step back.

‘Freaking me out, man.’ She mutters to nobody in particular, still backing up even though she knows it’s smegging stupid. It’s just a shadow, but all the same she’s edging around it, keeping in the light. Wondering why none of the other shadows are pointing this way.

Sod it, she thinks, time for a drink. Maybe when she comes back from the bar all this weird smeg will be over with.

Up in his own luxurious suite, now thankfully free of the Cat’s presence, Rimmer is performing his usual before bed routine, getting his pyjamas off their hanger in the wardrobe, thoroughly brushing his teeth and gargling, giving his hair the regulation comb through, plumping up his pillows, setting his favourite language learning tape running.

Normally he would sit up a little while and read five or six pages of one of those books he firmly believes everyone should read (although he doesn’t personally enjoy them much and can only get through in small digestible chunks), but tonight he wants sleep, ambient noise, and not to see or hear anything that might unnerve him.

He doesn’t reckon on another explosion, shocking him out of the pleasant doze that precedes deep sleep, eyes flying open, legs tangling ridiculously in the duvet as he tries to scramble out of bed in the dark, calling for lights, and Holly.

Which only gets him a recorded message. Useless smegging goited computer.

Ĉu vi volas danci kun mi? The tape burbles in the background jen kiel ni dancas de kie mi venas.

‘Oh for..’ The lights flash up just as Rimmer wriggles his way out of the duvet and onto his feet, and whatever he was about to say sticks sharp in his throat, never to be said.
Because he’s facing the mirror, and what he’s seeing is himself but not himself. An older Arnold Rimmer, with neater hair and a green metallic uniform and the gleaming chrome brand of an H on his forehead. H for hologram. H for He Has breathed His last.

Vi enmetas vian dekstran kruron, vi eltiras vian dekstran kruron the tape winds on, mindlessly, but Rimmer isn’t listening to it. He’s already pelting down the stairs.

Chapter Text

‘Lister!’ Outside the room the emergency lights are on, flashing, casting apocalyptic flares of red and amber up the walls and making it harder to smegging see, actually. Who designs these things? But Rimmer has run this route every morning lately, down the stairs and past the dispenser and two, four, six doors down. It’s open.

The slight flutter of relief barely gets started before his heart sinks again.

‘Typical.’ He mutters to the empty room. ‘Probably gone for a smegging kebab or something.’ He supposes this is about three in the afternoon to her.

Back out in the corridor, the emergency lights have gone off. It’s quiet and still. Rimmer curses under his breath, staying angry to chill the sour feeling that it’s too quiet. That something has happened, that he’s completely alone. No Lister, no Holly. Not even the Cat.

Alone and soon (well soonish anyway, soon enough) to die.

He heads for the drive room, not really thinking too hard about why. There will be readouts, even if he can’t make sense of them. There will be something.

But the drive room is just as he left it. Clipboard propped up tidily to the right of the console, chair pulled neatly in. None of the screens are showing anything unusual. High noon on the Marie Celeste. So normal it’s frightening.

It’s a relief when Lister turns up at a sprint, skids hard enough to leave a mark on the floor, hair whipping around her shoulders as she scans the room.  

‘What happened then?’

‘Nothing. I found it like this. Just another echo.’

‘Great.’ She drops into a chair to catch her breath. ‘I’m not loving this y’know.’

She squints at him, confused when he doesn’t reply. He’s normally a snarky so and so. Silence and poker face is probably not a good sign.

‘Something wrong?’ Rimmer says stiffly.

‘Nice pyjamas.’ She offers, giving up. He’ll tell her when he’s ready to. ‘How d’you get them so starched looking?’

‘Starch.’

‘Figures.’ She stands. ‘C’mon, let’s head to the canteen, get some food or something.’

The canteen is a good idea. They can put the width of the table between them and eat in silence, and although Rimmer raises his eyebrows at Lister’s choice of chicken biriyani and strawberry milkshake, he manages not to comment.

In return she doesn’t do more than smirk about his mug of hot milk. Bless.

They’re just finishing up when Holly breaks in on them.

‘Oh hello.’ Rimmer says. ‘I thought you’d taken yourself offline.’

‘Leave it Rimmer. What’s the matter, Hol?’

‘The navicomps overheating. I need your help in the drive room.’

He might mean either or both of them, but it’s Lister who stands up.  Rimmer makes some sort of sound in his throat, as close to outraged protest as he can manage, but he doesn’t actually move.

‘You want to go instead?’ Lister asks, but Rimmer can’t seem to get his lips unstuck, and frankly she doesn’t think they have time to argue the toss.

‘Then I guess I am. Somebody has to.’

Rimmer doesn’t turn to watch her go. He feels quite literally paralysed with fear. Like something heavy is holding him in his seat, even restricting his breathing.

It’s not until she’s left that he can do anything at all, and even then it’s only pushing his warm milky drink out of the way so he can bury his head in his hands.

Humiliation comes as fresh and hot as it did to the quivering nine year old who hid under the stairs, the teenager who pretended his school didn’t have a sports day so that his parents wouldn’t turn up just to see him disgrace himself. Again.

All he can see is his father’s disappointment, his friends and brothers and uncles sneering.

He tries to tell them - tell himself - it’s not his fault. He’s not on top form. He’s had a number of shocks today, and Lister hasn’t actually seen herself as a dead person as far as he knows. But trumping that, every time, like an echo to every squiggly squirmy cowardly custard thought, is the simple fact she’s a girl. What kind of a man is he, anyway, letting a girl be braver than him?  What kind of a man lets a girl go off and be the hero while he sits here like a great gutless lemon?

Up in the drive room Deb is not feeling especially heroic, but she’s putting her best face on it. Holly’s even, slightly apologetic voice helps.

‘It can’t cope with the influx of data at lightspeed Deb. Can you hook it up to the drive computer?’

She recognises the drive computer from some of Rimmer’s paperwork. It doesn’t look like much. Just a squarish box with a few panels of wiring and some very basic software to filter out irrelevancies, feeding only what’s really needed back to the ship.

There are ten different inputs – hull temperature is one, taken from different points, and then fuel consumption and output and speed and - and she can’t remember any of the other six, but she doesn’t need to know them to connect a couple of ports up and flick ten switches.

One and two and three and four, bracing queasily for an explosion each time. Five and six and seven and eight, and her gut is churning, nine and.. hesitating and closing her eyes.. ten.

Done. Piece of cake.

Chapter Text

Over the next few weeks Rimmer’s brain performs a strange sort of advanced yoga, twisting into unnatural shapes, desperately trying to believe he didn’t see what he knows he did see in that mirror. It makes it harder to excuse or explain (anyway never explain, never apologise, as father used to say).

Which leaves him trying to pretend the whole night never happened. Cutting the whole thing dead.

Lister, who’s quite hyped about how she handled it, actually, thinks he’s cracking up. Hiding from explosions might make you a yellow bellied nit. Hiding from the fact you’re hiding from explosions is a whole new level of.. something.

Anyway he should be pleased. If there’s going to be an explosion then they can’t go into stasis. They'll need to be out and about to deal with it.

‘Unless.’ Rimmer says unhelpfully. ‘The explosion is caused by us not going into stasis. In which case we should go into stasis to prevent it. Except we can’t prevent it if it’s already happened.’

There’s some more stuff after that, about Oedipus and Alexander the Great, but Lister isn’t really listening. Wasn’t Oedipus the guy who married his mum? Because that doesn’t seem to be anything to do with anything, and Alexander the Great is just one of those empire building smeggers that Rimmer seems able to drag into any conversation.

Him and Napoleon, who Lister always pictures on his donkey, like in the Walker.

But it’s not just that, is it? Rimmer’s changing the subject on purpose. Again. And he’s.. Off, somehow. Weird, even for Rimmer. Wound extra tight. Dark circles under his eyes.

He insists there’s nothing wrong.

She’s still a bit stir crazy. Rimmer hangs out on the observation dome when the walls start closing in, but she wants a planet. Wants to be doing. Otherwise time just crawls past.

Even learning how to pilot Blue Midget is better than that. Even doing her hair properly – it needs moisture, and a bit of patience, and is still pretty anarchic when she’s done, but it’s a healthy anarchy. Not the tatty one she started out with.

She takes a leaf out of the Cat’s book too. Goes investigating. Poking around the diesel decks and the officer’s quarters and engineering, bringing back lipsticks and a guitar and an old spacebike she has to rope Rimmer in to lug back.

Rimmer, predictably, thinks she’s mad.

‘Are you really planning to ride this thing?’

‘Dunno. I thought I’d see if I can fix it first. There's the manual and everything.’ She takes a hardback book out of one of the panniers and hold it up so that Rimmer can see the line drawing on the front. ‘Can’t be that hard.’

‘But you don’t know the first thing about engineering.’

‘Rimmer, it’s just something to do. Found a jacket as well.’ She waves a screwdriver at the leather monstrosity she’d already left on the back of the chair.

‘You could live in that. It must be knee length on you.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ She’s already sitting on the floor, concentrating on unscrewing something. It occurs to Rimmer that he could probably see down the front of her shirt if he tried.

She’d notice though. And she was hissy enough when she found his copy of ‘how to get girls by hypnosis’. He’s discreetly disposed of the love celibacy leaflets.

Besides, it’s not totally awful sitting on the edge of the bunk with a cup of tea while Lister works. Reading, he’s amused to note, tapping the tip of the screwdriver against the text in the harder paragraphs. Muttering random nonsense like ‘What the smeg is a ratchet?’ or ‘come ‘ere you’ when one of the ball bearings rolls away. It’s quite soothing.

When Lister finally glances up she finds Rimmer has swung his legs up on Marie’s bunk and is a fair way to dropping off. Good.

Time to go for another walkabout. She’s been wondering where the Cat’s got to lately.

Chapter Text

‘..and now the old priest’s dead. Rimmer are you even listening?’

‘No. Yes. Maybe. What’s it to us anyway? We never knew he was down there in the first place.’

It’s about two in the morning but Rimmer’s door was open as usual. Apparently because he’s decided his room needs cleaning even though it was already spotless. He has also stretched out a large sheet of paper over the unnaturally gleaming surface of the metal bunkroom table and begun drawing up an impossibly intricate study timetable. A ruler, set square and eight pens in order of length are set out beside it in a regimental row.

Lister ignores it for now. There are other things on her mind.

‘And then they went to war about the colour of the hats. Can you believe they went to war about smegging hats?’

‘Not a lot of point in worrying about it now is there? It was centuries ago now. You may as well get upset about the Spanish inquisition.’

‘Yeah I s’pose.’ It’s been a depressing evening though, meeting the old man, and then seeing him keel over and die. Hearing the history of the Cat people and what they’d made of her half-arsed plans to open a fast food concession. Smegging stupid thing to fight about.

‘Anyway I can’t be bothering my head with this. I’m extremely busy.’ Rimmer says pettishly, rinsing perfectly clean cups and drying them again, buffing as if he’s trying to take the glaze off.

‘Yeah, I noticed.’ The room reeks of pine kitchen cleaner. Strong bleach assaults Lister’s nose as Rimmer opens the small fridge for the milk.

‘And why should you complain?’ He adds. ‘You did all right out of it. All hail the goddess of the cat people. I notice I didn’t get a mention.’

‘Rimmer..’

‘After all it was me who covered up for their blessed holy mother Frankenstein. One word to the captain and she’d have been a pair of fluffy mittens and a ballsack warmer.’

‘One of us is missing the point here Rimmer, and it’s not me.’

‘But no. I didn’t get a single gospel. I didn’t even get a footnote.’

Rimmer is now polishing the teaspoon and trying to see his face in it. Lister gives up.

‘So are you ready to tell me what’s wrong yet? S’just I’m getting a bit bored of asking.’

‘Stop then. Nothing’s wrong.’

‘Course not. That’s why it smells like someone sacrificed the ghost of Louis Pasteur in here.’

‘Its nothing you can help with, then.’

‘Oi. Goddess. remember? How do you know what I can help with?’

It’s a joke, obviously. Rimmer already has another bitter quip lined up in response. Suddenly though, he just can’t be bothered.

He manages to hand Lister her mug and then he just.. deflates, folding up like a concertina to perch on the edge of his bunk.

‘It happened when we had the future echoes.’ He admits. ‘I saw myself in the mirror. But it wasn’t me. It..’ He hesitates. ‘It was a hologram. Me, but a hologram. Older. Dead. I don’t know how old. I don’t know, can holograms age?’ His breath is catching in his throat, Lister can hear it. His voice is accelerating, getting choppy. ‘Not old, old. Forties maybe, but that doesn’t mean.. I don’t know.’

‘OK Rimmer, breathe, you’re hyperventilating.’ His knuckles are white, and he’s rocking slightly. His fingers are gripping the handle of his mug too tightly, resting it on his knees as if he thinks he’ll drop it.

Lister blows cool air over the surface of her own tea and sits beside him and waits.

‘I didn’t tell you because.. I don’t know. Never seemed like the right moment.’

‘You didn’t tell me because you moan like hell when there’s nothing really wrong and clam up like an oyster when there is. Smegging hell, Rimmer.’
Rimmer just looks lost. He looks younger when he’s lost. All limbs and angles. It’s weird. She tucks a stray curl behind his ear and, even though it’s Rimmer, links their arms together. She’s not sure it’s the right thing – Rimmer’s never been the most tactile person and they’re not friends, as such, but she doesn’t know what else to do and he doesn’t seem to mind.

Then they just sit there for a bit, sipping tea. It’s all very British and very understated and totally smegging useless, but what else is there? Lister might be blindsided by the sudden surge of anger, royally pissed off at the thought of being the last human being alive, but none of that is helpful right now. She takes a deep breath.

‘So what are we going to do? There must be something.’

‘Of course there isn’t. It’s already happened.’

‘Yeah but it hasn’t happened happened has it? You’re still here.’

‘For the moment.’

He’s so defeatist she wants to strangle him. ‘Look Rimmer, seriously. I’m not having it. I’m not being the last human. I mean.. can you imagine? It’s just not happening.’

‘Horrific though the thought is Lister, I don’t think you’re going to get a choice.’

Chapter Text

And then – nothing happens. Goes on happening long enough, in fact, that it becomes almost sinister in itself. As if the universe is trying to lull them into forgetting the cadence of stomping boots on staircases, the chimera of creeping shadows and mirrors that display the dark future. Or even the simple fact that they’re three million years out into deep space with all the navigational ability and survival skill of a bowl of petunias.

Gradually, despite Rimmer’s natural baseline paranoia and his perfectly sensible fatalistic freakout, the dull repetition of day after day nothing takes the sharp edge off his despair. He still insists on Holly doing a ship wide scan for alien life every morning but stops checking his food for broken glass, for example. He starts learning Esperanto again, more to fill up the time than from any conviction he’ll ever need it. He decides he doesn’t like the colour scheme of his brand new revision timetable and begins drawing up a new one.

Time still drags.

Lister finds her own unease unravelling, smoothing under the steady drip of time. She knows she oughtn’t, but it’s human nature. In the end she’s so bored she takes up baking and manages to set off the dry sprinklers on three floors.

Its impressive in a way. Who knew custard could catch fire?

The monotony drugs as slowly and surely as opium poppies. Like flies in treacle, in honey, in amber, they shake the apathy off like dogs, doze and ruffle up and wake and doze again. The only real skillset they develop is the ability to milk the very last dregs of incident and excitement out of minor occurrences.

A garbage pod being taken on board, a new film in the cinema, Cat’s wash day, the discovery of all thirty two paperback novels by Jackie Collins tucked in a recess behind the Captain’s wardrobe. Holly splitting himself into two people in order to play himself at chess and then having a minor identity crisis when it’s time to put himself back together again.

Rimmer contracting an unpleasant hallucinatory flu while up on the Officers’ deck, and somehow dreaming a pervasive smell of school cabbage into being in every dark corner of the ship, lurking like an olfactory fog waiting to mug the unwary nose while Rimmer shivers and sweats and babbles in his bed about ragging and football boots and six of the best (where did Rimmer go to school anyway? The 1880s?).

Then the paper people arrive. Heads flapping as they drift down corridors, faces contorting as they try to speak but can’t, flimsy tongues ululating uselessly in cut-out mouths, fingers creasing and collapsing as they try to grasp pens. Pencils. Anything to make a mark, to communicate whatever the smeg it is they need so badly to say. Lister is fairly sure that this, too, is something to do with Rimmer’s flu.

Holly’s scans confirm that whatever these things are, they’re not alive. They’re what they look like – animated paper dolls, crudely and lankily made, with a pink line down one side to designate the margin and blue lines across for writing on.

There is sentience there though, in the way they turn their whole bodies to watch as Lister walks around them. In the way they gather in groups of two or three, then four or five, multiplying while she isn’t looking, appearing just behind her when she doesn’t expect it. Piling up outside her bunkroom door, tongues wagging and eyes imploring as she pushes her way through their flimsy bodies.

‘Smeg’s sake Rimmer couldn’t you’ve dreamed of rainbows and kittens or something?’ She mutters, trying to get him to drink rehydration fluid through a straw while those things stand and stare, fanned out around her like a pack of cards. They’re cut subtly different from one another, some more angular, some with freakish limbs or wrists fused to their sides. She doesn’t know why that makes them worse.

Cat hunts them, pounces and brings them down. It doesn’t seem to hurt. They don’t seem to care. But it’s Lister they follow. Lister they’re trying to talk to. Groups of five become groups of ten. Twenty. More. She can hear the susurration of paper in her dreams, can go nowhere outside her room without drifts of cut-paper people in her wake, in her way. They flop and waft, leaving light, phantom touches to the skin of her forearms while she protects her face.

They don’t seem dangerous. Insubstantial as cobwebs.

She can’t bear to let them near her.

Chapter Text

Coherency comes back in waves. Rimmer feels revolting: soggy with sweat, joints aching, head aching, mouth fuzzy, blankets too hot and heavy. The smell of sugar – some kind of revolting energy drink – makes nausea coil low in his stomach, his mouth flood with salt as if his salivary glands want him to vomit.

He staggers out of bed and empties the mugful down the sink, trying to ignore the horrible fake strawberry stench of it. Replaces it with clear, clean water from the tap, oversensitive sense of smell soothed by the coolness even before he raises it to his lips.

Rimmer guzzles, fills and guzzles again in the hope it will either make him retch or settle him down.

It seems to be doing the latter. He still looks like smeg, but he feels slightly better. Awake anyway.

‘Holly?’

‘What?’ Holly’s head appears instantly in the mirror, squinting. ‘Blimey Arnold, you look awful. Are you sure you should be out of bed?’

‘Tickety boo. Takes more than that to lay Arnold J Rimmer low.’ This is a lie. Rimmer’s head is still pounding and every single sodding joint aches. What he really wants to do is crawl back under the covers and whimper.

Unfortunately growing up being told that sickness is just a sign of feeble-mindedness and there’s nothing that can’t be cured by a cold shower and a brisk run around a football pitch has left him conditioned.

‘So what’s been going on around here? Where are Lister and the Cat?’

‘Not sure to be honest. Give me a sec.’

Rimmer gives him a ‘sec’ and when he doesn't come back (How can Holly not know where Lister and the Cat are? There’s only three of them on board) decides to have that cold shower. In fact, on the strength of Holly’s incompetence he negotiates himself up to a warm shower. No one else makes an effort round here. Why should he?

‘Well?’ He asks when he gets out.

‘Not sure about the Cat. Lister’s in the Art room.’

It's snowed in the corridor outside Rimmer's bunkroom, or at least, that's what it looks like at first, but stepping out and squinting he can see it's just paper. Huge pieces of roughly cut paper lying like carpet inches thick on the floor, piled in corners, undulating where it's directly under the air conditioning units. 

There's more on the stairs, in every room he glances into. It’s.. weird. Familiar somehow in a way he can't quite put his finger on. 

He finds Lister in the Art room, sitting cross legged on the edge of a table looking at a long line of wobbly graffiti on the opposite wall, running down the length of the room and looping back to begin again. Thick blue powder paint, freshly mixed, is still dripping sluggishly down the pale grey metal of the walls.

I am a fish it says. I am a fish. I am a fish. I am a fish.

There’s one of the paper shapes – he can see it’s a life size cut-out of a person now it's just the one, even though it’s soaked through with paint, arm misshapen back to a stump, shoulder severed from the head by the weight of the dark fluid, saturated as it had daubed those words on the walls and dissolved itself back to papier mache.

‘Rimmer?’ Lister asks in a voice that says she's not sure and might be about to crack up if he isn't.

‘Hello, yes. Me.’ Rimmer says awkwardly.

‘Your brain is a really weird place, you know that?’

Chapter Text

‘Mornin’ Rimmer.’

‘Lister.’ Rimmer says shortly, abandoning his normal morning jog around the decks. ‘What on earth are you doing up at this hour?’ Not only up, he notices, but dressed in a rather cheery cherry red jumper and clashing bubblegum pink lipstick. 

‘S’Christmas isn’t it. Here.’

‘Christmas? We’re celebrating Christmas now?’ Rimmer asks dubiously as he peers down at the mince pie and neatly wrapped parcel Lister is pushing under his nose. ‘You might have told me.’

Lister shrugs. Human race or no human race Christmas was Christmas and she was not going to let Second Tech Arnold Rimmer get her down.

‘Aannnnnd tidings of comfort and joy to you too, Smeghead.' She says, smiling. 'Go on, open it.’

‘But I haven’t got you anything.’ He sniffs suspiciously. ‘and have you been drinking?’

‘Yes Rimmer,’ Lister explains slowly and patiently. ‘because it’s Christmas. Want one?’

‘I.. suppose I might as well. Um. Merry Christmas.' The words feel strange on his tongue. Christmas as a child had mostly meant avoiding his brothers or listening to how he'd have to buck up his ideas when he went back to school in the spring. The first time he'd watched A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens he'd really felt quite jealous of the young Ebenezer Scrooge left at school alone for Christmas by himself, and then, when he was picked up by a sister who actually seemed to want him home, Rimmer had had to leave the room with the excuse it was all too soppy. 

Hence his caution as he edges into Lister’s bunkroom and sets the parcel and mince pie down on the table next to the empty bowl tainted with more mincemeat and custard and a jug of something Lister is pouring into two mugs.

‘Buck’s Fizz.’ Lister says. ‘Found a few bottles in the officer’s deck when we were sterilising them’ Rimmer sips cautiously, still semi-expecting a trap, but actually finds it quite pleasant.

The mince pie, too, is perfectly edible.

‘Oh, well, Merry Christmas then. Again.’ He says, picking at a loose piece of tape on the small parcel she’s handed him. It's the shape of a hardback book, and about the right weight, and on unwrapping (and folding the paper into a nice, neat square), he finds that is indeed what it is.

Raymond Chandler, probably more Lister’s taste than his if she actually read at all, but he supposes it's the thought that counts. ‘Did you find this in the officers quarters as well?’

‘Library.’

‘Lister, you can’t steal library books.’

‘Relax Rimmer, it’s not a library book. It was in lost property. Another mince pie?’

‘Why not.’ Rimmer actually cracks a smile. Actually relaxes a bit. ‘Since it’s Christmas.’ 

Chapter Text

It’s Cat who notices first, strolling into Rimmer’s quarters where he and Lister are having their mid-morning cup of tea, ignoring them completely and saying ‘hey, Head, who’s on board?’.

He makes himself comfy on Rimmer’s bed, snaffling and sipping out of the milk carton whilst Holly first protests that there’s no-one else on the ship but the three of them, and then switches seamlessly to ‘hang on a mo. I am getting something. Switching to visual.’

The pictures are blurry, but that doesn’t soften the reality of what they’re looking at. Uniformed creatures (too tall to be human?) marching in units of six, down one corridor and then up another. Engine decks, recreation deck.

They’re dressed identically – dark padded jackets, a long dark kilt, some sort of helmet that hides their faces, thick boots and gloves.

Camera feed after camera feed. Unit after unit. They’re swarming with the things. The marching units don’t even break step to mount stairs.

The last bit of footage is of the lowest accommodation deck – maybe six floors down from Lister’s. There are a lot of closed doors on this one, but the units are checking each room as they go, slow but methodical, leaving a couple of soldiers on the floor once they’ve decided it’s clear.

Presumably they’re soldiers. Each one is carrying what is either a large stick, or some other sort of weapon.

Lister, who has never been great with authority, or uniforms, or all that daft marching about and saluting, can feel the hairs rising up on her arms.

Rimmer, who theoretically loves all that stuff, is near hysterical.

‘There are literally hundreds of them Holly. How did you not know this? Where did they come from? How did they get on board?’

‘Through the cargo bay. Must’ve, only way I could have missed them.’ Holly says confidently.

‘What, so alien life forms can just waltz onto the ship whenever they like, can they? Why aren’t you scanning?’

Holly has a good answer to this. He is scanning, but he’s not checking every bit of footage constantly. He’s simply not set up to do that - monitor all security cameras and fly the actual ship itself. The Jupiter Mining Corp never imagined that Red Dwarf would be run by him alone. A skeleton crew for a ship of this size is fifty.

Pointing that out is not likely to make Rimmer calm down, though. He saves his energy.

‘How did you know they were there?’ Lister asks Cat.

‘Smelt them coming.’

‘What through the walls and everything?’

Cat looks at Rimmer likes he’s stupid, which presumably means yes.

Actually, Lister realises, there are plenty of holes in the walls - pipes, air ducts, electrical channels, delivery hatches, doors. Nothing is really sealed off.

Still, they can try.

‘Can we lock them in Hol? Bolt the doors at the top of the stairs?’

‘They’ll just cut off the power to this section if we do,’ Rimmer warns, ‘starve us out.’

‘I’m just givin’ us time to think, OK? Maybe we can sneak past them through the vents.’

‘And go where and do what?’

‘I dunno, Rimmer. Think a bit more? Hol - doors?’

‘Done.’ Holly nods for emphasis. ‘I’ve sealed the stairs all the way up from there to here. Five floors.’

‘OK.’ Lister pops out to the nearest stairwell door to test it. ‘Yeah, door is locked. Of course now I can’t get to my stuff.’

‘You’ll live.’ They return to Rimmer’s quarters, where Cat is still watching the screen. On the top bunk now, empty milk carton tossed into the sink.  

‘I don’t get it,’ he says.

It’s obvious what he means. The first unit of whatever these things are had made it almost to the next floor before Holly locked it, but they don’t seem to know what to do about the fact they can’t get through. Don’t seem to be trying to communicate with the rest of their little army either. They’ve just stopped dead.

The three of them sit and watch in near-silence for a good five minutes as Holly flicks through different camera feeds and they see the same thing again and again. The soldiers stationed on each floor just standing where they were left and the marching ones just standing where they can’t get through.

‘D’you think they’re robots?’ Lister asks eventually.

‘I think robots would have more smegging sense.’

‘Actually. I think I’ve got a handle on what they are. Mapped the DNA against my database. Not an exact match but I think we’ve found the ancestor. Camponotus. Carpenter ants.’

‘Carpenter ants? There’s no wood here.’

‘Think they’ve evolved a bit beyond that Arn,’ Holly points out, ‘what with the uniforms and all.’

‘So what do they want?’ Cat asks.

‘Who cares?’ Rimmer asks back, ‘how we get them off the ship is the question. Holly, can you lock all the other doors. Trap them in their different sections?’

‘Can do.’

‘And the lifts?’

‘Shut them down first thing.’

‘OK. Now we’re still outnumbered, but they’re as trapped as we are. As long as they don’t climb up the lift shaft or cut the power…’

‘Or crawl through the vents,’ Lister offers, ‘or climb up the outside and break in the airlock.’

‘So, why don’t they?’ The Cat asks. Shrugs. Presses his tongue against one of his incisors thoughtfully.

‘They’re just standing there.’

Chapter Text

Lister’s first theory – that the ants are trying to psych them out – has to be abandoned when they start marching again. Turning all at once – and as one - to go back the way they came.

 Then, when they find they can’t do that either, turning to try to go up again.

Weirdly, madly, they don’t stop at that point. Just go on doing it as if repeated failure might change things. Back and forth along the corridors. Like guards, almost.

Watching the CCTV becomes like watching an hourglass turning or a wave machine. Rimmer’s right, they’re not even as smart as robots. More like clockwork soldiers.  Turn and march, turn and march.

For three days this goes on. For three days, there is an impasse.

On the fourth day one of the ants trips on the stairs. It’s not a dramatic fall, but he doesn’t get up for a while. The others don’t help either. Walk around rather than over him, but don’t otherwise react.

It’s becoming obvious, even with the poor quality CCTV, that none of the units are marching quite as steadily now, that the individuals don’t seem to be as strong, that marching is the last thing they should be doing - but they still don’t seem to know what else to do.

‘Are they mad?’ Rimmer asks for the umpteenth time. ‘They’re just wearing themselves out faster.’

Lister is getting uneasy again. She still doesn’t think the things look friendly, but she doesn’t want their deaths on her conscience either.

‘We need to do something. Maybe we could talk to them.’

‘Or maybe we could open all the doors down to the cargo bay, see if they’ll go back to their ship now, and flush them all out into space.’

‘No, Rimmer. No way. No killing.’

‘Well, the first part at least, then? Hopefully if they’ve had enough they’ll just leave.’

But they don’t leave. They do stumble back down, enter their ship – the doorway is just a dark hexagonal blob on the camera feed – and presumably feed themselves in some way. Rest too, maybe. Lister has been looking up ant behaviour, and they do sleep. Just not like humans do.  

Holly locks every door behind them, but they just line themselves up in the cargo bay in rows, all facing the interior doors, maybe waiting for something, maybe just not sure what to do now things haven’t gone their way.

Lister cycles between trying to forget they’re there and suggesting trying to parley with them. Rimmer between insisting they’re not smegging staying on Red Dwarf, and obsessively studying the camera footage to get intel, even though he admits they’re doing precisely sod all that would tell anyone anything.

Eventually, after another week of stalemate, Lister gets her way. They’re going to have to talk to them.

Chapter Text

‘I don’t get it.’ Cat looks at the ants’ ship. Looks at the glowing translation device they have set in the middle of the upper gantry so the six of them – the Red Dwarf crew and three ant soldiers – can communicate.  Below them the other ants are still lined up, six deep, twelve across, block after block of them.

‘It’s a way of communicating, you Bozo.’

‘I get that, Monkey-breath. I don’t get what these guys want with us. I mean look at their ship and look at our ship. What can we have that they’re gonna want?’

‘We want your queen.’

Bluntly stated. Clearly an answer.

‘Hey, I was talking to the monkey here.’

‘We don’t have a queen,’ Lister points out, ‘it’s just us three.’

Cat gets it now though. ‘You are the queen, Dumbo.’

‘What?’ Rimmer gets the word out before she does.

‘They want a fe-male,’ Cat sounds the word out like he’s taking to six-year-olds, ‘a queen.’

He’s probably entitled to be a bit smug, usually he’s the one lagging behind.

Lister looks at the ant representatives, horrified to see them slowly nodding, in tandem. She takes a step back towards the door. Rimmer, oddly, moves slightly in front of her.  Cat, losing interest, wanders off somewhere behind.

‘I thought you could just feed one of the workers royal jelly,’ she says.

‘That’s bees, Lister.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’

‘Diet is a factor but must be adopted early in the lifecycle.’ The closest ant says earnestly, ‘we are all, now, too mature. Our queens have all been killed. If you cannot help us it will be the end of our colony.’

‘Well join the club.’ Rimmer says unsympathetically.

‘Maybe there’s technology you could use. Splicing DNA or.. something.’ Lister suggests, trying not to look as if this whole discussion is making her want to scrub her skin raw with soap or lock herself in a cupboard, ‘that can’t be any more complex than trying to mix human and.. and your DNA. Campono -whatsit DNA.’

‘You do not understand.’ The buzz increases, more than three ants are talking now. They’re not loud, but it gives the voice a sharp, uneven edge, like the buzz of a wasp or the fret of a saw. ‘It is not only reproduction. The queen shapes the colony to a purpose. Her brain is fed and developed as ours are not. She can prioritise and learn.’

More voices join in the attempt to persuade. ‘Without her not one of us can survive alone. We calculate that we have lost over two thirds of our colony to errors a queen would have prevented. A queen would have realised your DNA is incompatible with ours and would know of this splicing you have told us of. She is the repository of knowledge, the great intelligence of the cluster.’

‘Sounding less and less like a suitable job for Lister, frankly.’ Rimmer points out, interrupting.

‘Cheers, Arnold.’

‘Oh, sorry, did you want to be kidnapped by a lot of jackboot-obsessed insects? Far be it for me to interfere then. Bye-bye Listy. Have a lovely time.’

‘This is you helping isn’t it?’ She realises. ‘Smegging hell.’

She turns back to the spokesperson. ‘Couldn’t you use, I dunno, a computer programme for the thinking bit?’

‘Lis-ter.’ Rimmer singsongs, still helping, apparently, ‘why are you getting involved?’

‘Scuse us.’ Lister takes his sleeve and tugs him out of hearing range of the translation device. Hopefully.  

‘What’s the beef, Rimmer? We might as well help.’

‘Waste of time frankly, they’re an evolutionary dead end.’

‘Takes one to know one. And it’s not like we don’t have the time, is it? All we ever do is figure out more elaborate ways of wasting time.’

Well, he can’t argue with that.

Chapter Text

It takes – a while. They’re so far out of their depth its almost funny, really, and it was never going to be a quick project.

Holly is the most helpful, suggesting modifications to the ants’ ship computer to allow it to make its own calculations. Lister gets stuck into the wiring, Rimmer tries his hand at research. Incubators, DNA.  

The Cat pops up long enough to ask about painkillers – which is actually a good point, because everyone can imagine these clowns going ahead and operating on one another without bothering, too focussed on results and not seeing the damage.

The more the Dwarf crew are around them the more they can what the ants mean about their own limitations. They just don’t operate well at the individual level.  They’re loosely connected – some sort of telepathy which would be really useful if they had any understanding what was sensible information to communicate and what was just noise. As it is, they mostly tune it out.

Even Rimmer thinks they follow instructions too blindly - dangerously, even - but if they don’t know what to do they just come to a standstill. Or come back and check every-little-step.

‘That computer’s going to need so much patience.’ Lister says. ‘I’m a pretty chill person and I’d end up killing them.’

‘Just wait for them to kill themselves,’ Rimmer says, ‘probably quicker.’

On the plus side the ship feels less empty with the ants on board. Time goes faster with something to do. Despite their lack of independent thought the ants do have some great tech and mostly still know how to use it.

Whoever their former queens were – they had two at the same time, apparently, but they kept to their own territories on board ship – they knew their stuff. Unfortunately they didn’t leave any blueprints. The only way to figure out how anything works is to take it apart and rebuild it.

Lister, who normally says she learns better with her hands than her head, still admits she wouldn’t mind a bit less trial and error.   

Rimmer tries to make exploded diagrams. ‘There must be the right sort of software somewhere on this ship.’

He finds it in the art room. 3d scanning and printing equipment. Things go faster after that.

The biology is harder. To get an egg, the ants need a queen, but to get a queen they need an egg – or at least a very young ant they can feed up.

The only eggs on board are chicken eggs or tinned caviar, neither of which will work.

Todhunter used to have ants’ eggs – he kept fish – but they’re long dried and dessicated to dust.

At least, until they think to check the last post pod - and there tucked away in a green envelope is a neat plastic subscription box of ants eggs. Protected and suspended in fluid to keep them fresh.

There they also find the outland revenue is chasing Rimmer for thousands in back taxes and his father has died. He gets in a bit of a tailspin about both, even though the taxman will never catch up with him now and, by all accounts, he didn’t like his dad much.

He spends more time up in the botanical garden. The glass dome at the top of the ship.

‘My Dad died when I was small.’ Lister offers, when she eventually goes to look for him.

‘Smaller.’ Rimmer corrects. He must be feeling better.

‘Yeah, alright, smaller. Smeghead. You coming to see this egg get fertilized? The Cat brought champagne.’

‘You don’t even like champagne.’

‘I don’t mind it.’ It’s true. Lister had never tasted champagne until after the accident, and she didn’t know what the fuss was about, but it wasn’t awful.

‘You’d rather have that horrible rum drink. Or that hideous blue one.’ They’re already down a floor, Rimmer tacitly accepting the invitation, ‘what’s it called…’

‘Blue Lagoon.’

‘Yes, that…’

They only have champagne at the priming of the first egg. Some DNA stripped out, some added. Ideal incubation conditions.  By now they’re all invested. All relieved when something actually happens. Growing, dividing. Living.

The ants are over the moon. Leave with two potential queens in embryo, gently pulsing with amber light in specially designed sacs, and a number of frozen eggs as back up.

Despite the euphoria, it’s not perfect. It would have been crazy to think it might. The work was never going to properly plug the gaps left by losing everyone the ants have lost. Things could still go wrong.

It is better though than it was. They have a chance.

And the Red Dwarf crew has allies now, of a sort, out here in the nowhere three million years from home. For what that’s worth.  

Then, for a least another week, it’s quiet again.

Chapter Text

It’s a relatively quiet Friday evening. Lister is behind the bar in the Copa topping up a Cosmo with the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries and singing along to a song about pink, pink sunshine. Cat is dancing – vogueing mostly, although he gets distracted every so often by pools of light flashing in sequence across the dance floor and chases after them, hunting and spinning and jumping. Pleased with himself every time he lands on one before it disappears.

Rimmer is perched on a bar stool, one leg twisted sideways, still in contact with the floor, like he can’t commit to enjoying this sort of thing. In front of him is a peach and white wine spritzer of which he has drunk exactly two small sips.

‘The words of this song make no sense, you know.'

‘C’mon Rimmer, try. It’s Friday night. D’you want some crisps?’

Rimmer sighs. He’s never understood why people enjoy this sort of thing.

‘Just the plain ones.’

Lister has Thai chicken flavour. Sometimes Rimmer wonders if she has any tastebuds left at all.

‘D’you think they’re OK?’

‘Who? Oh, our ant friends? Probably not.’

‘Cheers.’

‘I’m just being honest.’

Lister shrugs, stabs a cocktail stick through one of the cherries and tugs it off again between her teeth.

She’s fishing for another when the music goes down and the lights go up. Holly appearing on every screen at once.

‘Check it out,’ he says, ‘we’re getting a signal.’

‘What sort of a signal?’ 

‘Not sure. Probably nothing, but I thought you'd want to know.’

‘Comms room then.’ Lister grabs her jacket from the other bar stool, necks the last of her drink, ‘Cat, you joining us?’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’ Cat pretends to consider it, gives them time to get a good way down the corridor before following. He wouldn’t want them to think he was keen or anything.

The comms room is the domain of the skutters really, a cramped room with readout screens at various inconvenient heights and only two chairs suitable for people. The Cat takes the first, naturally. Lister the other, setting down the cup of tea she picked up on the way.

Holly has dropped back into the telegrammatic language he uses when imparting information rather than joking around. ‘It’s a distress beacon. A ship called the Nova Five. They’ve crash landed. I’m trying to establish contact.’

‘Not aliens then?’

‘No, they’re from Earth.’

Still Lister doesn’t really believe it until they’ve established contact, until a mechanoid called Kryten is telling them how worried he is (he looks it too, anxious enough to shake his neck bolts loose, as the saying goes. Sometimes Lister wonders if it’s cruel giving androids emotions) and transmitting medical details of the three surviving crew members. All injured, all female and all, for some reason with really, really lush hair. Not that Lister hasn’t lost hairgrips in her own from time to time, but honestly, you could lose a comb in ‘Ms Anne’s’ curls. You could probably hide a small animal.

She’s almost too distracted to comment on Rimmer’s sudden metamorphosis into ‘Captain Rimmer, Space Adventurer.’

Almost, but not quite.

‘Well what am I supposed to say?’ Rimmer asks. ‘Fear not, I’m the bloke who used to clean the gunk out of the chicken soup machines? Actually we know sod all about space travel but give us a blocked nozzle and we’re your lads?’

‘Might have made them laugh,’ then, since Rimmer still looks blank, ‘y’know, in a good way.’ 

‘There is no good way to be laughed at by women,’ Rimmer tells her. ‘You can’t laugh people into bed.’

‘Yeah you can, it’s happened to me loads of times. Anyway I wasn’t talking about bed. Maybe just make friends with them first?’ 

But Rimmer’s expression only goes from one shade of critically baffled to another.

‘Never mind. Holly. how long until we get there?’

‘About 24 hours.’

‘Only 24 hours.’ The Cat yowls, shooting straight up out of his chair as if it’s on fire and practically pirouetting out the door, sing-songing the words, ‘first in the shower room.’

He leans back in to add, ‘I’m so excited, all six of my nipples are tingling.’

Then he’s really gone, and when Lister looks round again Rimmer is putting his fingers together in a classic thinking pose, mock earnest and theatrical.

‘You know Lister, I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but something tells me the Cat hasn’t taken on board your very wise and measured suggestion that we try making friends first.’

Just for that she throws her teabag at him.

Anyway, if Cat hasn’t neither has Rimmer. He arrives in the cockpit of Blue Midget 24 hours later in a pristine white suit he’s nicked from somewhere – it’s certainly not his own, decorated with a line of command stripes across one lapel – and which really does not suit him. He’s too pale for gold braid and too slim to wear shoulderpads convincingly.  It hangs down off him like it would off a coat hanger.

‘Still going with the Captain Flash smeg then?’ Lister says.

‘And why not.’

‘Rimmer you said it yourself. We know sod all about space travel. How long do you really think it’ll take them to work that out?’

‘Why do you always have to undermine me?’

‘I’m not trying to undermine you. I’m trying to help.’ She tells him. ‘Seriously. I’ve no objection to you getting your end away, but if you think you’re going to do it this way. Well good luck Arnold, that’s all.’

Then since he’s still not getting it. ‘Look, it’s like padded bras, right? or those socks you’ve got stuffed down the front of your kecks. Sooner or later you’ve got to take it off. What’s the point of setting up false expectations?’

‘Getting to that point at least. Do you know how long it’s been?’

‘Yeah, much the same as me. Three million years, eleven months and two days. not that I’m counting or nothing.’

Or looking at the front of Rimmer's trousers often enough to spot when something changes. Which she hadn’t even known she’d been doing until she’d just heard herself admitting it.

Luckily Rimmer doesn’t seem to have noticed.  Is too busy being impatient.

‘Come on, we can’t wait for the Cat.’

‘C'mon. He’s been getting ready for ages. Don’t you want to know what he looks like?’

‘Oh, so he gets to dress up,’ Rimmer complains. ‘And you’ve done.. something.’

‘It’s called lipstick Rimmer, since we’re going out to tea. My old Nan would have had a fit if she’d taken me out to tea and I’d not made a bit of effort.’ She’s got her black jeans on too, and a wrap top coloured like a Hawaiian sunset. It’s probably stupid, they’re miles out in space, they’re not going to be judging her but still, she might as well look tidy.

‘Did your grandmother raise you?’ Rimmer suddenly asks.

‘Sort of, yeah. After Dad died. Mum had this new bloke and we didn’t really hit it off. It was easier at my Nan’s.’ She sits up straighter. ‘Hello, is that the Cat?’

It is the Cat. Coming in yowling in a pleased sort of way, paying himself compliments, and Lister has to admit to herself he’s got a point. He does look good. A vision in gold latex. Or possibly lurex. Something like that, anyway. Slim and handsome and immaculately dressed and coiffed, and absolutely not doing anything for her at all.

Do Cats at least get sticky when they have sex? Give birth? Somehow it’s hard to imagine.

‘Lets hope these three aren’t so fussy about species as some people I could mention.’ Cat finishes up.

‘I hope you make beautiful music together.’ Lister tells him. ‘Ok, all aboard? I’ll take her out nice and easy..’

She doesn’t, because she’s still new to this and the joystick’s not all that either, but she gets them where they need to go in one piece, and puts them down quite neatly, considering. Blue Midget has jets that cushion the drop, and she's pretty sure she’s getting the hang of it now.

It’s after the landing it all goes pear-shaped.

They’re all dead on the Nova 5.

Because of course they are - after three million years how could they possibly have been anything else? 

She says as much, back in the cockpit less than 48 hours later, checking screens and dials she barely understands so that she doesn’t have to look at the three small, pathetic piles of earth where they buried the remains of the crew that Kryten had gone on serving, mindlessly and desperately, ignoring the truth of their deaths even as the centuries picked their bones clean.

‘You sure you’re alright?’ Rimmer is already in place too, back left. The others are doing… something. Getting personal grooming supplies maybe, who knows.

‘Yeah, fine,’ Lister says, ‘I suppose I just didn’t realise how much I missed having other women around.’ She punches in the startup sequence, still studiously not looking out of the viewscreen. ‘Stupid of me. Holly told us everyone’s dead. I guess it just hadn’t sunk in. Not properly.’

‘Are you crying?’

‘Leave it Rimmer, I’m entitled.’

‘I..’ strange how it sticks in Rimmer’s throat. How it comes out in a rush when he finally unclogs it. ‘Of course you’re smegging entitled. I didn’t say you weren’t.’

‘I know.’ She slumps back into the seat, eyes still on the dashboard. ‘Just – I miss stupid stuff. Nicking each other’s makeup and sharing a bottle of Cinzano.’ She pulls a face, ‘I don’t even like Cinzano but, y’know, if everyone else is.’

‘You miss being forced to drink things you don’t like?’

‘I miss people Rimmer. I miss having mates. And yes, alright, drinking things I don’t want, watching crap telly, all the stupid little compromises you make to stay mates with people. I mean you and me just about get on, and the Cat can’t get past the fact I’m female, and the ants were just weird and kind of stuck. So...’  She flicks the headlights on and off, on and off, absently, fidgeting, tense. ‘I miss being taken for granted. “Wotcha Debs, can you keep an eye on this lot for five minutes while I pop out for the Chinese”. That sort of thing.’

She smiles, nostalgic. ‘D’you know I was the only girl in my class at school who wasn’t pregnant by the time she was twenty one? But it was nice to know it wouldn’t have mattered if I had been. On a cosmic scale who cares? Billions like me, knocking around, just getting on with it, having a laugh.’

She turns her head, so that Rimmer is more than a white suited blur in her peripheral vision. ‘Don’t you miss that? Not being the last. Not mattering?’

‘We-ell Lister..’

‘Oh don’t give me Mr Pompous, Rimmer. That’s so not what I need right now.’

‘Well.’ Rimmer tries again. ‘Well, I never dreamt I’d be saying this to you Lister, of all people, but I’m fairly sure you’re overthinking the situation.’

That should probably make her angry, but actually it makes her smile. ‘Yeah you’re right. Let’s get the Cat and Kryten and go home.’