Fic: Children - R/L - R

[kahvi]

Title: Children
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I own not Red Dwarf, that honor belongs to Grant/Naylor. I make no money from this.
Spoilers: Parallel Universe, and to some extent Kryten.
Notes: A stand-alone follow-up to Colorless. Many, many thanks to roadstergal for help with the science bits. I'm sure I messed it up anyway. ;) Feed me back and let me know! Written for the fanfic100 challenge - my table is here.



"You're going to carry it to term?" Rimmer's nostrils expanded to previously unexplored widths as he ran to keep up with the brooding Lister. Brooding indeed! The whole idea was patently absurd. Rimmer had mocked him endlessly for over a week, until he had come to the astonished realization that the goit was actually intending to go through with it.

"Not it, Rimmer, them. And they've got names, you know."

Rimmer knew all too well. Naming embryos, it was beyond ridiculous.

"And yeah, I am." Lister came to a screeching halt at one of the vending-machines, and kicked it angrily.

Rimmer sniggered. "I keep telling you, Listy; it's not the fault of some machine that you can't drink or smoke anymore."

"Yeah, it bleeding well is! It's Holly and his..." he hesitated, his mind, no doubt, boggled by the same thing as Rimmer's; that odd and sudden sex-change the computer had initiated. "...her, whatever, smegging hop-drive!"

"Oh yes? And you jumping into bed with the first person who offered - which, unsurprisingly, turned out to be yourself - has nothing to do with the situation?"

Lister grunted, and started walking again. "Smeg off, Rimmer."

"Now, now," Rimmer tutted. He was enjoying this. "Just because some of us have self control..."

"Oh, eh?" Lister interrupted, rather rudely, Rimmer thought. "And what about you then? Don't tell me you and yer woman-self spent the evening with yer legs crossed exchanging RISK stories!"

Rimmer blushed. How did he know? Then, slowly, it dawned on him; Lister was making fun of him. He actually thought... oh smeg, Him and that ghastly woman? The thought alone was enough to make him break out in holographic hives. Still, a theoretical sexual conquest was a theoretical sexual conquest. Rimmer decided not to correct the error. "Of course not! But there is such a thing as taking the proper precautions, miladdio. That's where the self control comes in; being able to think before you stick your tadger where it doesn't belong." Something about that sentence brought uncertain, blurry images to his mind, and he felt a slight blush coming on. But why? He was just talking about sex; a perfectly laddish, masculine activity that. With Lister. Sex with... talking about sex. With Lister. He swallowed.

"Yeah," Lister mumbled, "that's easy fer you to say, isn't it? Yer dead. It's not like you could have gotten pregnant."

"That's not the issue."

"Smeg off, Rimmer." Lister turned a corner, and Rimmer, suddenly aware of their surroundings, got a very bad feeling about where they were headed.

"Where are you going?" he asked, anxiously.

Lister shook his head, mumbling something under his breath. "I thought I told you to smeg off," he said, aloud.

"Look," Rimmer said, "the only thing down that corridor is the EVA-lockers and the showers, and I know you're not going to the showers. What the smeg are you up to?"

They had, in fact, passed the showers by already. A large door labeled 'Lockers/Vestgardejo' loomed in front of them. Lister opened it, angrily, making it shut again straight through Rimmer, who shuddered, before walking himself clear of it. Ignoring him, Lister headed towards the rack of spacesuits on the back wall, and started to take one of them down.

"I said," Rimmer persisted, watching Lister unscrew the helmet and working at the security clasps that would open the suit up, "what are you up to?" When there was no reply, he went on; "you're going to go EVA, aren't you?"

Stepping resolutely into the now open suit, Lister looked up with an arrogant sneer. "No, I'm just putting this on because I find it comfortable, and I like the style. Of course I'm going EVA!" The lower half now hugging his legs tightly, Lister maneuvered his arms into the top half, and began to seal the suit shut.

Insanity. Had the hormone-injections gone to his head? "What; in your condition?"

"What do ya mean, 'in my condition'? I'm not even two weeks along! And what - you worried about the boys now, all of a sudden? A minute ago you were telling me to get rid of 'em!"

"What?" Rimmer felt his nostrils flare in outrage. "I did nothing of the kind! I merely suggested that perhaps bringing children into a world that consists of a mile long space-ship filled with nothing but boredom and ennui, the only possible bright spot in their potential lives being the faint hope that they might, one day, reach a planet that may or may not still exist that they have no connection to might not be the most responsible and sane idea I've encountered." He inhaled deeply; a purely psychological reaction.

"Whatever." Grabbing the helmet under his arm, Lister walked resolutely over to the air-lock on the other side of the room. Rimmer considered trying to block his way, but Lister had shown time and time again how little respect he had for the limitations of a holographic body. It was simply common courtesy to keep up the illusion of solidity. There were several staff training vids on the subject - Respect the Dead; Differently Alive; Deceased is Not a Disease - Rimmer had slept through all of them, back when he was just plain regularly alive.

In lieu of anything useful to say or do, he yelped a pathetic "Listy!"

His hand on the outer airlock safety lock, Lister tilted his head and raised one eyebrow in a gesture that seemed to communicate utter loathing for the object currently in view, which was one Rimmer, Arnold J. "I'm just going out to check on the port side sensor array. Holly says they've been giving erratic feedback, and he's worried they can't be trusted."

"Can't the skutters do that?"

"In zero gravity?" Lister snorted. "They can barely manage to get around inside the ship without hurtling themselves at the walls; I don't want to know what they'd get up to in space, man. I mean, who designed those things? Cute little buggers, but I wouldn't want any of 'em preforming micro-surgery on me, if ya know what I mean."

Yes, Rimmer thought, and isn't it lovely to be completely dependent on them for every smegging little task? Did you ever stop to think about that, you twonking bastard? He sighed, and decided to give it one final try. "Lister, you could get hurt out there."

"I can handle myself fine."

"Oh, yes. You're a highly trained chicken soup machine maintenance technician. Even disregarding injury - there are diseases out there. Holly says that virus you got - the one you kept saying was just pneumonia, by the way - could be small enough to penetrate your spacesuit, which is why we had to incinerate it, remember? God knows what was left behind when that Confidence character offed himself. I bet there's bits of him still attached to the hull."

"What, after a year?"

"You never know! And you never know what that thing might do to your body now that it's pregnant and stuffed full of whatever the hell it is Holly keeps pumping into you either."

Earnest brown eyes met his, and for a moment, Rimmer could have sworn there was something else twinkling in them, at the very back. "Why should you care?"

Well, that was an easy question, wasn't it? "Because without you, matey pie, there would be no reason to keep me running, would there? Why should Holly waste resources generating me when there's no living crew member to keep sane? He'll probably need all the processing power he can get to generate his image now that he's a woman; with all the make-up and hair things and... things. That women use."

The safety-lock switch lit up red for a moment as Lister touched it, and the airlock door hissed open. "See ya later, Rimmer." He stepped in, waving exaggeratedly and gurning at Rimmer as the door closed, resolutely, again.

"Can't this wait? I'm really very busy."

Rimmer did not doubt that one bit. Holly's digital image was highly pixelated, the computer's voice now sounding more like a her than a him, but very metallic, corrupted every now and then by bursts of static. "Has Lister come back yet? He's been out there for hours."

There was the vague impression of a frown on Holly's blurry face. "No, he hasn't."

"Yes, he has."

"He hasn't, Arnold."

"I think you'll find he has."

"No, he hasn't. He was just out there ten minutes. Came back in and went to straight bed; said he had a headache."

Rimmer wished he had the time to count to ten. Or five. Any number would do, really. He tried 'one'. "Why didn't you tell me this right away?"

"What, that he had a headache?" digital laughter flowed disturbingly from wherever Holly's speakers were located. "What are you, his mother? He'll be all right. Just let him get a good night's rest and... hey, where are you going?" Rimmer, already out the door, started counting again under the breath he didn't have.

It took Rimmer nearly three hours to get Lister set up in the medi-bay, or rather, have the skutters set him up there. He'd looked around half-heartedly for the Cat, but seeing no sign of the creature, quickly gave up. He would not have been much help anyway. If the self-obsessed feline had been any use, he would have volunteered to check those blasted sensors. But no; it would have taken him several weeks just to modify the spacesuit to his tastes.

Rimmer bit his lip, looking at Lister's unconscious, sweating face. He'd been shivering in his bunk when Rimmer had found him, mumbling incoherences, his blankets and pillows on the floor. Smegging idiot, for going out there. Smegging Holly, for letting him. Smegging Cat for being bloody useless; smegging Rimmer for even bothering.

The eager clicking of a skutter's maw made Rimmer look down. It was holding up a sample of Lister's blood, which it had finally, apparently, managed to draw. "Put it in there," Rimmer directed it, indicating an indentation in a console on the left-hand wall. The skutter obeyed, the sample sliding into the machine soundlessly. Presently, Holly's garbled image appeared on the adjacent screen.

"Oi," Holly said, in what was now clearly a female voice, "what's this?"

"Lister's blood," Rimmer said, tiredly. Hadn't it been just a few days ago that he'd found Lister's pregnancy to be the joke of the century? He wished he could remember why he'd found it so hilarious. Come to that, he wished he fully understood why it was bothering him so much now.

"Don't you think I know that? Gordon Bennet..." the pixelated image rolled what appeared to be eyes. "just don't sneak data up on me like that, would you? It's hard work, turning yourself female. I've got to concentrate."

All out of snark, Rimmer pinched the bridge of his nose. "Can. You. Analyze. It."

"Already did." There was a soft 'ping' as a red light lit up on the console in which the sample had been inserted.

Rimmer swallowed. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't look like good news."

Holly made a shrugging-like motion, complicated both by the lack of shoulders and, at this point, a proper face. "He's got a virus, all right. Same as last time. Tiny, determined little blighters, they are. Resilient too."

Oh god. Another performance of that three-ring-circus. Rimmer wasn't sure he could handle it. Would what was left of that corpse outside come alive? Would they have to arm the skutters and chase zombie microbes around the place? "Can you cure him?"

"I suppose." Holly gave another one of those attempted shrugs. "Don't really see why I should bother, though."

"You..." Words swam around in Rimmer's mind, unhelpfully. His mouth flapped open and shut, uselessly; the two processes failing to inter-connect. Had everyone gone mad? Would he go mad? What if he had already? Would he be able to tell?

"The medical cocktail I've got him on should have enough anti-virals in it to fight off anything that's thrown at him. You really don't want to know what's in it. Honestly, you've no idea what it takes to stabilize a male pregnancy in the first place. A male pregnancy conceived in a mirror universe?" There was a vague shaking of digitized head.

"So he'll be OK?"

"More or less, yeah. No worse off than he was before, anyway. I can try to keep in him a state of non-REM sleep for the duration of his symptoms. His dreams can't materialize if he's not dreaming anything."

Rimmer was trying to sort out how he felt about this when Cat slinked his way in, looking vaguely offended. "What's up with chubby-cheeks?" Before Rimmer could command the skutters to stop him - not that they ever obeyed quickly enough for that to be of any use - Cat was more or less climbing on top of the bed on which Lister lay, poking at the various wires attached to him. "Hey, you!" he shouted. "Where's my breakfast?"

Intangibility was frustrating at the best of times, but Rimmer had gotten used to that. As used to it as a person could get, anyway. But not being able to push someone away, or block them, or throw them out when you really needed to - that was unbearable. All he could do was yell, impotently. "Get off him, you bumbling idiot!"

Not giving Rimmer the slightest bit of attention, Cat started slapping Lister's face. "Wake up, buddy! I don't see no Krispies in here!"

"I said, get off him!" Rimmer waved a fist through Cat's face, hoping it would annoy him sufficiently enough to go away. When it impacted, throwing the feline across the room, leaving him wild-eyed and yowling by the EKG-machine, no one was more surprised than Rimmer. His hand throbbed with pain as he held it up to his face. "Smegging hell..."

He was alive.

Holly had no explanation to offer, and eventually tired of Rimmer's endless questions, turning his or her attentions back to resolving what was left of his or her gender ambiguity. And so, Rimmer was left watching Lister sleep, not knowing quite what to do with himself. He was alive. Not just a solid hologram - what a contradiction in terms that would be - but actually alive, in a human body. From what Holly had told him, he still registered as a hologram as far as the ship's systems were concerned. His simulation was still running, but what it was running appeared to be a live human being. Holly had offered to turn his projection off to see what would happen, but Rimmer had vehemently refused. And that was it, really; that was why he couldn't relax and enjoy this - he didn't know what it was.

Besides, all his sensory impressions seemed so... loud. Just sitting on a chair was intensive enough after years of numbness. He'd put his hands on his thighs, but even that had been rather disturbing; he'd felt himself actually getting hard from the touch. Getting off on touching himself was one thing; it was generally the only way he did get off after all, but getting off on touching his thighs? What kind of perv was he?

Lister shifted in his sleep, and Rimmer studied his face. At first, Rimmer had wondered if what had happened to him was the result of... but no, that was a ludicrous notion. Still... their lives were filled with facts that were ludicrous notions. And if it was Lister that had made him solid, what would happen when the goit woke up? Rimmer remembered that time he'd been exercising, and had caught Lister practically oogling him. It had thrown Rimmer off to the point where he'd actually thrown himself off the bike in the end. Yes, Lister may very well be a poof, and where did that leave Rimmer? Much good a brand new body would do him if he'd always fret about what might happen to it if he - say - dropped the soap in the shower? He would just not shower, he decided. He'd take a washbasin off to some secluded place in the cargo bays, and clean himself with his back against the wall. And his clothes still on.

Rimmer sighed. It had been five hours since Lister had started showing symptoms. According to Holly, he should be through the worst in another hour or so. An hour. Well, Rimmer would just stay here. Then again, would he want to be here when the gay man who'd just fantasized about him in his sleep woke up? He's not fantasizing about you, Rimmer tried to convince himself, but what other possible explanation could there be for his sudden solidity? Oh, this was hopeless!

Pushing the chair away angrily as he stood, Rimmer strode out of the medi-bay, locking the door behind him. Cat had run away crying something about his hair, but Rimmer didn't trust him not get in there and mess things up again. Then again, a hair crisis might well keep the bastard away more than four hours. With no idea what he wanted, other than to get his mind off things, Rimmer started walking, picking a direction at random. His senses had stopped screaming quite so loud at him, and he was only barely aware of the feel of his clothes brushing against his body as he moved. That mild, not unpleasant sensation, however, turned his mind in a very tempting direction. Very tempting indeed. Abruptly, he turned on his heel, and started walking in the opposite direction, towards his quarters. He felt oddly nervous, which made no sense. It wasn't as if he'd be likely to run into anyone, and Holly was busy, and wouldn't bother him. And yet, even as he lay in his bunk, the door securely locked, Rimmer was still shaking a little.

"Lights off," he mumbled. Rimmer didn't particularly like seeing himself naked, it having been explained to him at a young age that only people with filthy minds liked looking at naked bodies. Naturally, that would include your own. With the room safely darkened, however, he felt comfortable unzipping his fly and gently sneaking a hand inside to brush at his penis through his underpants.

With a gasp and a whole-body shiver, he came instantly.

Well. That was quick, even for him. It was just the intensity of the sensations; wanking in a holographic body didn't really feel like much at all. Rimmer did it all the time anyway, of course, because it was better than nothing, but he had nearly forgotten how mind-blowing the real thing could be.

Feeling himself harden again (Rimmer had heard this didn't happen to everyone, and it had always confused him; how could people make sex last if they only came once? It'd be over in five minutes!) he very, very carefully pulled his underpants down, and just lay there, trying hard to think about astronavigation. That usually never failed to cool him down. It did help, to some extent; this time he just about managed to get a firm grip on his cock before another orgasm took him. Not wanting to waste any more time, Rimmer kept his hand in position, stroking slowly up and down, letting his mind drift. Yes, this was more like it. It wasn't the need for release that had brought him here - though that had been part of it - it was the need to stop thinking for five twonked-up minutes. Sex, for Rimmer, even if it was just with himself - which it usually was - was blissfully free of thought. Every other blasted moment of his life, Rimmer thought. And with thought came worry, so he worried. Worried every smegging, worthless moment of his life except when he masturbated, and smegging hell now even that didn't seem to be working! He didn't want to think about anything, because the last thing on his mind had been Lister, and... he came again, rather violently this time, gasping and arching his back as his hand kept pumping on auto-pilot, until his whole body shuddered to an exhausted halt.

Oh, it was useless. With a frustrated whimper, Rimmer flopped over onto his stomach, and tried to bite into his pillow, but his pillow wasn't really there - it was holographic, and so his jaw hit the solid mattress with a thud, rather painfully. Perfect. Smegging perfect. He was alive, but he was alive because some curry-brained perverted slob had wet-dreamed him into homoerotic existence. Oh god, Lister fancied him, and given that Rimmer's new solid body was the subject of his dreams, who knew what it might be capable of? It would have to be gay, for one thing. Hell, it had already made him masturbate while thinking of the goited bastardb, smeg only knew what it would do when confronted with a Lister that was awake and ready for action, as it were. No, better he stay in here. Stay in here, and wallow in self-pity until he died from starvation and could be resurrected as a safely intangible hologram again. Catching that thought by its tail, Rimmer sat up, abruptly. What was he thinking? He shook his head. He wasn't himself. Lister might have turned him into a gay sex-slave, but better anything than dead!

Feeling utterly out of options, Rimmer sat on the edge of his bunk, staring at the door. He could go for a walk again, but that hadn't helped the first time, had it? Would he spend the remaining time until Lister woke up in a mad dash 'twixt corridor and bunk? He was, he decided, losing it. He was actually starting to hear voices. Laughing, high-pitched, happy voices, singing cheerfully... he frowned. That wasn't the sort of voices people usually heard, was it? He rose, walking guardedly towards the door, as the voices seemed to get closer. He opened the door cautiously, and something small and hysterically giggly hit him square in the knees.

"What on Io..." he yelped, staggering backwards, only to feel something eerily similar to what was now hugging his left leg attach itself to his right. "What?"

"Arn!" cheered the clamp on his right leg. Rimmer looked down to see a tightly curled head of hair at about thigh-level. A virtually identical head was now pulling on his left leg and giggling.

Aliens, part of Rimmer's psyche tried to insist, but what remained of his rationality suggested something else entirely. Children. Short, happy, cheerful children dressed in what appeared to be a collection of brightly colored scraps of fabric sewn together at random. Their tiny leather boots looked like they had been made up of bits of other, much larger boots, and at least one of them were now kicking at Rimmer's own in an attempt to get his attention. "Who..." he began, as one of the heads looked up, revealing a startlingly familiar grin and set of dark brown eyes.

"Arn, we can touch ya! That's great, then we can hug!" As if to illustrate, the... child, the very, very Lister-like child released his grip on Rimmer's leg, only to wrap his arms around both legs at the same time. This task was made difficult by the interference from what could only be his brother, who was trying to do the same thing.

"Arn - Arn," said the second child, "when are you going to take us camping in the diesel decks again? You promised you would take us again soon. Can we go today?"

"Aw, Bex," complained the other, wiping his nose loudly on Rimmer's trouser leg, "yer naggin' him. Dad said we shouldn't nag."

"It's your, Jim," the one that was apparently called Bex complained, in what Rimmer felt was an irritatingly nasal voice, "not yer. Isn't it, Arn?" With that, he looked up, revealing a face identical to his brother's.

"Why are you calling me Arn?" Rimmer said. It was the only sensible thing he could think of to ask. Even his mother had called him Rimmer.

"'Cause that's what dad calls ya," Jim said, matter-of-factly, flashing that impossibly wide grin again.

Dad. Their names, Rimmer thought. What had Lister named those blasted embryos? "And I... er... take you to the diesel decks?"

"Yeah," the boys chorused.

"And..." Rimmer hesitated, unable to process any of this, "you enjoy that?"

Jim let go, finally, and stood back with his arms crossed. Rimmer tried to guess his age, but he had never been good with children, in any sort of way. He hadn't been particularly good at being one himself, for that matter. The best opinion he was able to form was that the boys ought to be in school, not dallying about like this, which was, of course, absurd. "Bexley likes the engines," Jim said, nodding at his brother, "but I like that it's dark and spooky, and that we can tell stories in the tent before bed, and that."

"Yes," Bexley said, detaching himself, "and I like it when we play RISK. I get to be blue, because blue is the best. Last week I invaded Poland!"

"You like RISK?" Rimmer looked from one eager face to the other, fighting the urge to brush away what was no doubt grotty fingerprints on his trouser legs.

Jim's face lit up. "Can we play now?"

"Yeah," Bexley cheered, "let's go play now!"

"Wait," Rimmer just about managed to shout before both boys disappeared around the corner, running much faster than seemed possible on such short legs. When Rimmer rounded the corner himself, there was nothing left but the faint echoes of young voices laughing. While he stood there, pondering what to do, Holly's unfamiliar calm mezzo-soprano rang out over the PA system.

"Oi, Arnold. You'd better get back in the medi-bay. Dave's waking up."

Lister rubbed his head tiredly, his puffy red eyes locked on Rimmer's. “I keep telling you,” he muttered, “I didn't dream anything.”

“So what you are telling me,” Rimmer said, beginning to pace up and down beside Lister's berth, “is that you weren't dreaming?”

“No!”

“Nothing? Nothing at all?

With a frustrated grunt, Lister jumped to the floor, wincing as his feet hit it. “No! I didn't smegging dream any smegging thing! The last thing I remember is going to bed. Then... waking up here.” He glared. “With you throwing questions at me like I'm some Mimas City tour guide.”

“He's right, Arnold.” There was no image at all on screen at all this time, but Holly's voice came through loud and clear. “No REM. Told you I was going to repress it, didn't I?”

“Then how do you explain...” Rimmer began, then bit his lip. He hadn't told Lister about his new body. He knew the first thing that touchy-feely smegger would do would be to poke his stubby fingers all over Rimmer. He went for a screeching u-turn. “...the kids? I saw Jim and Bexley messing about in the corridors.”

Lister perked up. “You saw them? You saw the boys? What did they look like?”

Rimmer frowned. Wouldn't Lister know? “You, mostly. Just shorter and more annoying. As if that were even possible. Speaking of which, why were they there, if he wasn't dreaming?”

“Just because he wasn't dreaming doesn't mean there was no brain activity. My guess is, the virus fed off his subconscious.” Holly's screen flickered a little, but there was still no image.

“His subconscious?” Rimmer didn't like the sound of that.

“Yeah. The deepest reaches of his psyche; his innermost desires, repressed emotions, that sort of thing.”

Definitely not good. “Oh yes?”

“Hey now...” Lister shuffled over, pointing at the space where Holly's face should have been. Rimmer took a panicky step back to avoid him. “That makes sense, yeah? I really wanted to see the boys, and I kept thinking, you know, these last few days, how nice it would have been if I didn't have to deal with all of this,” he waved his hands to indicate his not-yet-visibly-larger stomach, “fer nine months first. I thought about them growing up, and how w... how I'd raise 'em. What they'd be like.” He glanced quickly at Rimmer, a slight blush on his face. Well, he was probably embarrassed to admit all this. Rather sappy, wasn't it? “Anyway, the disease must have picked up on that. Made 'em real.” He looked away. “Wish I could have seen 'em.”

“Yes, well...” There was nothing for it. Rimmer had to know. “What about me?”

Holly's voice somehow manage to give the impression of a frown. “What about you?”

“What about my...” How to phrase this without Lister suspecting anything? “...condition?”

“Yer what?” Lister turned abruptly.

“Never mind, Listy,” Rimmer snapped. “Well, what about it?”

Holly laughed, sounding, for some reason, all the more feminine for it. “I should think that was rather obvious, shouldn't you?”

“Erm...” Obvious. Oh, smegging hell, even Holly knew!

“What are you two talking about?”

“Shut up, Lister,” Rimmer mumbled. “Holly, pretend I'm an idiot - and no smart remarks to that, please. Just spell it out.”

Holly's voice gave a sigh. “Spoilsport, you are. Anyway, like I said, it's obvious, innit? The virus makes you hallucinate your innermost thoughts desires, and makes 'em real. Lister wanted to see his sons, so the virus made them come to life. Then, when he got better, they disappeared.”

“Yeah, Hol,” Lister said, “we all know that. Like last time, yeah? Only I didn't dream anything.”

“But what about me?” Rimmer persisted. “That was Lister too, wasn't it? It's obvious, like you said; he's got some sort of weird obsession with me, and the virus found it, and made me real!” His voice rose as he spoke, ending in near hysteria, to match his mood.

“What?” Lister had to steady himself against the berth.

There came a disgruntled mumbling from the screen, followed by a “oh, hang on...” Finally, two disembodied eyes blinked into existence. Presently, Holly rolled them, then blinked them away again. “Of course not, you daft git! Lister didn't hallucinate you, you did!”

“I did?” Rimmer hugged himself, protectively. “But I was never infected! I mean, how could I be, I never left Red Dwarf! It was him,” he pointed an accusing finger towards Lister, “he was the one who went EVA while pregnant with twins; he's the one who exposed himself to the bacteria outside the hull!”

Holly sighed again. “First of all, Arnold, bacteria don't give you viruses. Viruses do. You can tell by the name, yeah? Secondly, whatever gave you the idea he was infected outside the hull? There's nothing harmful there.”

Rimmer licked his lips, as he tended to when nervous. “But Confidence... I mean, he exploded out there! Surely...”

“That was a year ago. Even so, he was just a symptom, he wasn't carrying the virus. Cat was.”

United in confusion, Rimmer and Lister locked eyes, then chorused; “Cat?”

“Yeah. It's asymptomatic in Felis Sapiens. He's carried it around all this time; there's no telling when either of you got infected. We don't know the incubation time. I had one of the skutters jab him with some broad-spectrum anti-virals; he should be fine.”

“He should be fine?” Rimmer spluttered. “What about me?”

“And you,” Holly explained, patiently. “I did a deep-scan and reboot of your personality disc - fixed it right up. Didn't take long; bet you didn't even notice. Anyway, you're cured now. Symptoms should have started wearing off five minutes ago.”

As Lister stared at him, uncomprehending, relief flooded Rimmer. Safe. He was safe. Not only was he not the subject of Lister's gay sex fantasies, but he had been cured of a dangerous virus before he'd even realized he was infected by it. Cured. No more symptoms. No more hallucinations made... solid... He looked down at himself, as the implications of Holly's revelation finally struck home. Before Lister could react, Rimmer ran over to him, yelling at the top his lungs, completely failed to grab him by the shoulders, lost his balance, and fell right through the gawping smegger, stumbling through the wall and out into the corridor, where he kept on running. Behind him, Lister's concerned voice rang out, but Rimmer didn't care. Besides, what could Lister do to him now? What could he possibly do?

Back in the medi-bay, Holly flashed into view on the screen. She was excited about her new looks, and while she would have preferred a better audience, she knew wasn't exactly spoiled for choice. Shaking her new, blonde hair and smiling widely, she burst out an enthusiastic “there! What do you think?” But the room was empty. Her brand new face falling, Holly sniffed, and bit her carefully colored lips. “Men!” she grumbled.