Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers

  'My God!' Kryten stepped back in horror. 'I was only away two minutes!'

  'They've been dead for centuries.'

  'No!'

  'Yes!'

  'Are you a doctor?'

  'You only have to look at them,' Rimmer whined. 'They've got less meat on them than a chicken nugget!'

  'Whuh ... whuh ... well, what am I going to do?' Kryten stammered. 'I'm programmed to serve them.'

  'Well, the first thing we should do is, you know ... bury them,' said Lister quietly.

  'You're that sure they're dead?'

  'Yes!' Rimmer shouted.

  Kryten waddled over to Richards's leering skeleton. 'What about this one?'

  Rimmer sighed. 'Look. There's a very simple test.' He walked up to the head of the table. 'All right,' he said, 'hands up any of you who are alive.'

  Kryten looked on anxiously. To his dismay there was no response. He made frantic signals, coaxing the girls to raise their hands.

  'OK?' said Rimmer finally.

  Kryten's shoulders buckled' and he dropped limply into a chair' totally defeated.

  'I thought they might be ... but I wouldn't allow myself ... I didn't want to admit ... I ... I'm programmed to serve them ... It's all I can do ... I let them down so badly ... I...'

  Lister shuffled uncomfortably.

  'What am I to do?' Kryten said plaintively. A buzzer went off in Kryten's head.

  It was his internal alarm clock telling him it was time for Miss Yvette's bath.

  Automatically he raised himself and then remembering, sank back down again. He took a sonic screwdriver from his top pocket, flipped a series of release catches on his neck, removed his head and plonked it down unceremoniously on to the table.

  'What are you doing?' said the Cat.

  'I'm programmed to serve,' said Kryten's head. 'They're dead. The programme is finished. I'm activating my shutdown disc.'

  'Woah!' said Lister. 'Slow down.'

  Kryten's hands twisted the right ear off his disembodied head and pressed a latch which flipped open his skull.

  'Kryten - listen to me ...'

  Kryten started removing the minute circuit boards from inside his brain' and stacking them neatly on the table.

  'Kryten ...'

  He tugged out several batches of interface leads' neatly wrapped them up and placed them tidily beside the rest of his mind.

  Finally he located his shutdown programme. 'Sorry about the mess he said, and switched himself off.

  His eyes rotated back into the plastic of his skull; his body slumped forward in his seat and crashed onto the floor.

  NINETEEN

  'It's driving me batty. Must you do it here?' Rimmer surveyed the array of android organs spread higgledy piggledy all over the sleeping quarters. 'What's this on my pillow? It's his eyes!'

  'I'm trying to fix him,' said Lister, holding Kryten's nose in one hand and poking a pipe cleaner soaked in white spirit up his nostril with the other.

  It had taken them a week to transport the two broken halves of the Nova 5 back to Red Dwarf. They had needed all six of the remaining transporter craft, operating on auto pilot, to wrench the ship free of the centuries-old methane ice, but after five days of maximum thrust the small transporters had finally yanked the wreck clear, and hauled it slowly and precariously up to the orbiting Red Dwarf.

  The Drive section of Nova 5 held few surprises - Kryten had meticulously updated the inventory every Tuesday evening for two million years. Most of the food was still vacuum stored. Lister had been delighted to discover they had twenty-five thousand spicy poppadoms and a hundred and thirty tons of mango chutney; enough, he pointed out at the time, to keep him happy for the best part of a month.

  There was, thankfully, nearly two thousand gallons of irradiated cow's milk, and Lister had insisted the dog's milk be flushed out into the vacuum of space, where it had instantly frozen, leaving a huge dog-milk asteroid for some future species to ponder over.

  'Why d'you have to keep his bits all over my bunk?'

  'So I know where they are.'

  'Yes, well, I'm sorry, but I refuse to have somebody else's eyes on my pillow.'

  'Look - I'll have him finished by this afternoon.'

  'You've been saying that, for two months. What's this in my coffee mug? It's a big toe.'

  'Rimmer, will you just smeg off and leave me to it?'

  'What the smeg do you want to repair him for anyway? He's just a mechanoid. A mechanoid that's gone completely barking mad.'

  'I want to find out about that duality drive - I want to know if we can fix it.

  And. I... I dunno ... I feel sorry for him.'

  'Sorry for him? He's a machine. It's like feeling sorry for a tractor.'

  'It's not. He's got a personality.'

  'Yes, a personality that should be severely sedated, bound in a metal straightjacket and locked in a rubber room with a stick between his teeth.'

  'I think I can fix that.'

  'You think it's just like repairing your bike, don't you? Spot of grease, clean all his bits, re-bore his carburettor, and bang! He's as good as new.'

  'Same principle.'

  'He's got a defect in his artificial intelligence. You'd need a degree in Advanced Mental Engineering from Caltech to set him to rights.'

  Lister prodded one of Kryten's circuit boards with a soldering iron. The noseless head fizzed momentarily into life...'

  'Ah-ha,' it said, in rapid falsetto, 'elephant rain dingblat VietNam.' The eyes on Rimmer's pillow rotated and blinked. 'Telephone sandwich kerplunk armadillo Rumplestiltskin purple.'

  'Well,' said Rimmer. 'Once again you've proved me wrong.'

  ***

  HNNNnnnnNNNNNKRHHhhhhhhHHHHHHH

  HNNNnnnnNNNNNKRHHhhhhhhhHHHHHH

  Rimmer looked at his bunkside clock. 2.34 a.m.

  HNNNnnnnNNNNNKRHHhhhhhhhHHHHHH

  HNNNnnnnNNNNNKRHHhhhhhhhHHHHHH

  Rimmer clambered down from his bunk and looked over at Lister's sleeping body.

  He was still holding one of Kryten's circuit boards in one hand, and a sonic screwdriver in the other.

  And I'm supposed to keep you sane? he thought. Who the smeg is supposed to keep ME sane?

  Rimmer closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

  HNNNnnnnNNNNNKRHHhhhhhhhHHHHHH HNNNnnnnNNNNNKRHHhhhhhhhHHHHHH

  It was useless. He got Holly to simulate his red, black, white, blue, yellow and orange striped skiing anorak, and decided to check out the salvage operation in the shuttle bay.

  ***

  Rimmer voice-activated the huge corrugated lead doors of bay 17, which yawned open to reveal the two halves of the wreck of Nova 5.

  Even though it was the early hours of the morning, the massive salvage operation was in full flow. Rimmer looked down from the gantry at the battalions of skutters who were still unloading supplies from the mainly undamaged front section. Another group of skutters wielding laser torches were still trying to cut their way through the hull of the rear section. Even with the most powerful bazookoid lasers, their progress had been slow - barely two centimetres a day through the metre-thick strontium/agol alloy.

  But what really interested Rimmer was the second half of Nova 5. He'd gone through some of the ship's computer files, and had every good reason to suspect that the 'dead' segment contained something that might very well change his life.

  He stood on the gantry, hands in his ski anorak pockets, watching the skutters lasering their way through the hull.

  'How long before we're in?' he asked Holly.

  'Two, maybe three days.'

  There was a noise: the sound of creaking metal buckling and ripping as the huge, arch-shaped door, which the laser torches were cutting into the craft's hide, slowly teetered forward and fell like a medieval drawbridge, crushing all eight skutters.

  'Maybe even sooner,' added Holly unconvincingly.

  Rimmer raced down the gantry steps and across the steel floor of the hangar, to the newly burned entrance in
the stern section of the hulk of Nova 5.

  He peered into the dusty gloom. Floor lights glowed dimly down the length of the corridor. He summoned two skutters away from their unloading duties and, sending them ahead, stepped inside. The corridor was still warm from the laser torches.

  Electric cables and dismembered circuitry hung down from the ceiling like dead tubers in a petrified forest.

  Rimmer inched his way along the corridor as the skutters' headlights cut swathes through the murky gloom. Most of the doors were open, or hanging off their hinges. There was a sensation, a feeling he couldn't explain, that the ship wasn't dead - that there was something there. Something alive.

  Slowly he worked his way around the tortured topography of the first deck, then clambered down the broken spiral staircase, and found himself on the stasis corridor.

  Most of the booths had been scooped clean by the scalpel sharp corner of the glacier in the crash. Three remained. Two of them were punctured and, inside, the once-human occupants had been fossilised into the walls by centuries upon centuries of patient ice.

  The third was occupied.

  Skeletal legs jutted through a gash in the stasis booth door The impact of the crash had driven the incumbent's limbs through the reinforced glass.

  Rimmer peered in through what remained of the observation window. Somehow the rest of the body had been preserved, wedged half in and half out of the stasis booth. The legs had withered with age, while the upper body remained in suspended animation.

  Timeless.

  Unaging.

  Unharmed.

  Rimmer's voice activated the door. Surely he couldn't be ... alive. The door lock twirled and the door arced open.

  The man opened his eyes and looked down at his legs. His scream cut through Rimmer like a shard of jagged glass. Then he stopped screaming and died of shock.

  Rimmer's heart went on a cross-country run around his body. It bounced off his stomach, caromed into his ribcage, and tried to make a forced exit through his windpipe. It was still hammering around his chest cavity like a deranged pinball when he finally stopped running four decks up.

  He fell into a twilit recreation room and was on his haunches, still trying to suck air into his reluctant lungs, when he turned and saw the figure standing by the fruit machine.

  His brain uttered a silent expletive, and his heart put on its spiked shoes and went for another lap.

  TWENTY

  The figure turned to face him. The hologramatic 'H' on her forehead glinted fluorescently in the blue light of the Games Room.

  'Ah' there you are,' she smiled. 'Where's Yvette? I've been waiting for ages.'

  'Yvette who?'

  'I needed those course calculations.' She walked six paces towards him and held out her hand.

  'Thank you,' she said, and disappeared.

  Suddenly she reappeared at the fruit machine with her back to him.

  'Are you OK?' said Rimmer, getting to his feet.

  She turned.

  'Ah, there you are,' she smiled; 'Where's Yvette? I've been waiting for ages. I need those course calculations.'

  Yet again she stepped towards him, held out her hand - and vanished reappearing once more at the other side of the room.

  'Ah, there you are,' she smiled again, and Rimmer left.

  ***

  'Quark dingbat fizzigog Netherlands,' said Kryten's disembodied head. 'Smirk WindoKleen double-helix badger.' Then there was the fzzzt of a circuit shorting, and his eyes blinked closed. A thin whisp of smoke curled up from his open skull.

  Lister cursed. He peeked into Kryten's mechanoid brain, tutted, and fished out a half-eaten three-day-old cheese sandwich with chilli dressing. He prodded round with his soldering iron, absently biting into the sandwich.

  The Cat walked in with his lunch on a tray, and sat down at the table.

  'If you try and take this food, you're in serious personal danger.'

  'I'm not going to try and take it.'

  'Just don't even think about it.' The Cat pulled an embroidered lace lobster bib out of his top pocket and tied it around his neck. From his inside pocket he produced a solid silver case, lined with velvet and containing an exquisite set of gold cutlery with hand-carved mother of pearl handles, which he placed either side of his plate. He rubbed his hands together and went into his food-taunting eating ritual.

  'I'm gonna eat you, little chickie,' he chanted at the chicken marengo; 'I'm going to eat you, little chickie. I'm gonna eat you, little chickie. 'Cause I like eating chicks.'

  The song finished, he looked away from the food like a baseball pitcher checking the bases, then suddenly flicked the chicken off the plate and, in the same, smooth movement, caught it in mid-air with the same hand, and put it back on the plate.

  'Too slow, chicken marengo,' he chided. 'Too slow for this Cat.'

  'Why don't you just eat it?'

  'It's no fun if you don't give it a chance.'

  'But it's dead. It's cooked.'

  'Woah!' The Cat slapped his hand down on the plate, sending the chicken spinning into the air and over his shoulder. He kicked away from the chair, somersaulted backwards, and caught it in his mouth before it hit the ground.

  'Hey - this chicken is faster than I thought!' He put the chicken back on the plate, and had just started to juggle the potatoes when Rimmer walked in.

  'Gentlemen,' he beamed broadly, 'there's someone I'd like you to meet. Someone who's a deep personal friend of mine. Someone who' I'm sure will enrich all our lives. Someone, I've decided, who will be a more interesting and stimulating bunkmate for myself, which is why I intend to move in with this someone to the spare sleeping quarters next door. Gentlemen ...'

  Rimmer gestured like a medieval courtesan, and into the open doorframe stepped someone Lister and the Cat recognised instantly.

  There in the hatchway, standing beside Arnold J. Rimmer, was another, completely identical Arnold J. Rimmer.

  TWENTY-ONE

  After Rimmer left the woman by the fruit machine, he rounded up the skutters, and they made their way down the broken stairwell to Nova 5's hologram simulation suite.

  Her personality disc, scarred and warped, spun round and round in the drive, aimlessly projecting her through the same piece of dialogue for the zillionth time, in pointless perpetual motion.

  The woman's name had been Nancy O'Keefe. A Flight Engineer, Second Class' she'd been the highest ranking casualty in the ship's rear section. What remained of the computer's intelligence had automatically recreated her, even though her database was corrupted beyond repair in the accident.

  Rimmer told the skutter to eject the disc, and started searching through the rest of Nova 5's personality library.

  One by one he went through the eight-woman' two-man crew. One by one the skutters' clumsy claws placed each of the discs in the drive, and booted them up. And one by one all ten members of Nova 5 were resurrected before him. Each in some way was corrupted.

  All ten discs were unplayable.

  The frustration of it!

  For two cruel hours, while he went through each of the discs, he'd been able to entertain the prospect that at last he could acquire a companion. A hologramatic companion, who could understand how it felt to be dead. How it felt to be a hologram. How it felt. Someone who could touch him. Yes - holograms could touch. Someone he could touch. To touch again! To be touched!

  But, no.

  Denied. All ten discs warped, scratched, ruined. All ten discs destroyed in the crash.

  Rimmer sat down and tried to think. What if. What if he could copy his own disc from the Red Dwarf hologram library, and then use Nova 5's disc drive to simulate a duplicate him?

  Two Arnold Rimmers.

  Two hims.

  Who better as a companion than his own self!

  Arnold J. Rimmer 1 and Arnold J. Rimmer 2.

  Brill-smegging-illiant.

  TWENTY-TWO

  'How To Be a Winner - an Introduction to Poweramics.'

 
'Ours,' said the two Rimmers simultaneously.

  Lister tossed the book onto the computer trolley, with the rest of the Rimmers' belongings, and picked another off the shelf.

  'Cooking With Chillies,' he read.

  'Yours,' the Rimmers chanted in unison.

  Lister tossed it back on the shelf, then turned and opened the locker marked 'Rimmer, A. J. BSc, S Sc', which long ago Lister had learned stood for 'Bronze Swimming Certificate' and 'Silver Swimming Certificate', and started to heap all the contents onto the trolley. Twenty pairs of identical military blue underpants' all on coat hangers in protective cellophane wrapping, the pyjamas with the dry-cleaning tags pinned to the collars, the piles of Survivalist weaponry magazines' and his one CD - Billy Benton and his choir sing the rock'n'roll greats.

  'What about these posters?' asked the duplicate Rimmer.

  'They're mine,' said Lister.

  'I know they're yours, but the Blu-Tack isn't.'

  'You want to take the Blu-Tack?'

  'Well' it is mine,' pointed out the original; 'I did pay for it, with my money.'

  'I think there's one of your old finger-nail clippings under the bunk. I'll put that in too, shall I?'

  Rimmer Mark 2 eyed him narrowly. 'Don't try and be amusing, Lister; it doesn't suit you.

  For no reason that Lister could see, both Rimmers howled with laughter at this last remark, bending at the waist and thumping their knees.

  'Great put-down, Arnie,' said the original Rimmer through a mask of tears.

  Lister looked on, bemused.

  The duplicate stood up, still giggling. 'I'll go and check how the skutters are coping with the redecoration plans.'

  'See you, Big Man,' said the copy, stepping out of the hatchway.

  'Catch you later, Ace,' said Rimmer, with a look of total infatuation.

  'You're a very, very weird person,' said Lister, dropping a wedge of neatly ironed black socks onto the trolley. 'In fact, both of you are.'

  Rimmer was oblivious to criticism. 'What an idea. What a genius idea. Using Nova 5's hologram unit to generate a duplicate me. That's the best smegging day's work I ever did.'