Till Dwarf Do Us Part
by Irene Sabian
(Note: This is a Red Dwarf story with some creative license taken. It is five years after Lister was let out of 
stasis. The events depicted in the episodes “Bodyswap,” “Holoship,” “Legion,” and “Stoke Me a Clipper” 
never took place in this reality.)

Prologue

October 27, 2180

The dinner rush would not begin for another hour. Second Class Catering Officer Dorcas Price sat in the 
Red Dwarf kitchen reading a film magazine. Or rather, trying to read a film magazine, a task made difficult 
by the braying chatter of Third Class Catering Officer Olaf Petersen. Price looked up in irritation at 
Petersen and his chum. They were oblivious to her, as always. Everyone on this ship was oblivious to her. 
Everyone in this universe too, for that matter.

Price tried to block out the noise and concentrate on her magazine. A new Dickens adaptation was opening 
on Miranda. Too bad the Dwarf had left Miranda two weeks ago. She always loved the classics, even 
though this particular Dickens adaptation had an entirely android cast. Oh well, she would just have to wait 
for the video to reach Neptune and get routed to the Dwarf. Tonight’s movie was the remake of 
Casablanca, set in Rick’s Café Earth on Jupiter’s seediest moon, Europa. While this would have seemed 
like sacrilege in another time, this remake starred holograms of Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and the 
lot, although Major Strasser was played by the tall and imposing droid who starred as Gary on the TV soap 
opera Androids. While purists complained, the producers explained that they had to do something to lure in 
the android market. 

Although Price loved the classics, she didn’t feel like going to see Casablanca. She just wasn’t in the mood 
for a love story tonight. In a month, she would be thirty. She’d always assumed she would be married by 
thirty, maybe even have some kids. As a little girl, she and her older sister would play wedding, although 
Beryl always had to be the bride, so Dorcas was forced to be bridesmaid. Perhaps that should have tipped 
her off as to what the future held. Still, as a child, she used to say, “when I get married…” By the time she 
was twenty-five, she had modified to “if I get married,” and lately…lately, she had ceased to talk about it at 
all. 

There aren’t a lot of prospects around here, she thought, eyeing Petersen and his simian companion. As 
near as she could determine, some friend of theirs had been sentenced to stasis today as punishment.
“Three smegging years!” Petersen yelled. “For taking care of a cat!”
“Ain’t none of us safe,” said the other. “It’s crypto-fascist I tell ya”
“Couldn’t they at least have given him a day to say goodbye? I would have treated him to the best Japanese 
lager on the ship!”

Price groaned. It figured that Petersen would know a guy who got dumped in stasis for hiding a cat. Of 
course, all the men on the Dwarf weren’t like Petersen. Price shook her head at her own social ineptitude. 
There were more than three-thousand men on this ship, in a closed system, with precious little planet leave 
and distraction, and yet she couldn’t meet a single one. Because she didn’t even try. She was too scared, 
too suspicious, too reticent, too… She reflected that she must be the loneliest person on the whole Red 
Dwarf. Well, maybe not the whole Red Dwarf. After all, with five thousand-plus people, there must be 
someone lonelier. The thought that really haunted her was that there could be some man, someone right on 
this ship who could be perfect for her, someone she’d passed in the corridors, someone who’d enjoyed her 
wild mushroom casserole on Gourmet Night, someone who was just as lonely as she, and yet, through 
sheer lousy luck, they would never meet. 

The oven timer buzzed and Price put down her magazine to check on the chicken pot pies, typical mining 
freighter fare, produced in bulk, and not overly-burdened with distracting elements such as taste. As she 
stuck a toothpick in one, she heard a bizarre roar. Turning around she saw something disturbing: Petersen 
and his friend had been replaced by two skeletons. They were suffused in a blinding white light and the 
roar was deafening. More disturbing still, the light was headed straight for Price. 
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she thought. 

It was the last conscious thought she would have for three million and five years. 
 
1

October 14, 3,002,185

Lister examined his pudgy face in the mirror, taking special note of the lines around his mouth and on his 
forehead. Why had he never noticed them before? Because he didn’t regularly stick his face two 
millimeters from the mirror, he reasoned. But today he was concerned about his appearance because it was 
his birthday, or at least the day he celebrated as his birthday, being that he was found in a cardboard box in 
a pub and no one knew the exact date he’d entered the world. 

Thirty. He was thirty. An old man. Well, technically, three million and thirty, but let’s be fair here, thought 
Lister. Thirty felt old enough. Soon he would surpass Rimmer! The thought gave him hives. Rimmer had 
died at thirty-one and his hologrammatic appearance would stay the same if he lived another millennia. His 
spindly frame would never gain a pound. His chaotic thatch of reddish hair would never go gray, while 
Lister would go to seed, year by year. And wouldn’t Rimmer gloat over that one? 

Well, thought Lister, being alive did have its advantages. At least he could do plenty of things that Rimmer 
couldn’t. He looked at Krissy Kochanski sleeping snugly in the bed they shared. And one very important 
thing, especially. 

Sitting in the place of honor at his birthday party, Lister put aside his depression about aging and focused 
on the positive. Looking around, he had to admit he was a lucky guy. That was a strange statement for a 
man who had been marooned three million years from earth with only a hologram, an android and a fully 
grown housecat as company. But lately, things had been looking up. 

First they had found Krissy Kochanski. For years he had dreamed about finding her again, and now, here 
she was in the flesh, sitting at table with him. The first time he saw her standing across the linkway to 
another reality, his heart did a dance around his rib cage. Her falling through the linkway and joining his 
reality was just an accident, one that she resented at first. She wouldn’t stop comparing Lister to his 
counterpart in her reality, the hologrammatic Lister, the competent, sensitive, brave Lister who had grown 
so much through their adventures. But Lister was persistent. And eventually he won her over with 
his…well, with what exactly? 

Krissy did say that he made her laugh. And she had missed that in the years following the accident. And, 
after all, he was the only human male available to her. And beggars can’t be…Well, thought Lister, best 
not to think about that. 

And thank God, the Blue Hat Cats had finally left. For six weeks the Dwarfers had played unwilling hosts 
to Cat’s distant relations. After two hundred years of searching for Fushal in their space ark, the Blue Hats 
had returned to their place of origin, the Red Dwarf. When Cat explained to them that Lister was Cloister 
the Stupid, their God, the Cat High Priest knelt down before Lister and the whole group broke into songs of 
praise. They reasoned that they had found Fushal since Cloister was there and they decided to stay 
permanently. This was a source of deep irritation for the entire crew but, surprisingly, it was worse for Cat. 

The years of deprivation in their ark had transformed the Blue Hat Cats into veritable Calvinists. They 
strictly adhered to the Seven Cat Commandments: Thou shalt not be cool, Thou shalt not be vain, Thou 
shalt not own more than ten suits, and so on. Cat found himself laughed at, denounced as a pathetic 
throwback. The more fervent of the Blue Hats tried him for heresy at one point. When Lister noticed a 
gallows being constructed in the Cat Church, he decided he’d had enough. He invoked his status as God to 
send the Cats away. But one stayed behind. She had been an outcast in her family since she embraced the 
old ways of shallowness and vanity. The instant she saw Cat’s wardrobe, she fell in love...with the fabrics. 
It appeared she was willing to tolerate Cat in exchange for some swatches. So now the Cat had a mate as 
well. Like all Cats, she was nameless but it took the crew all of five minutes to dub her “Kitty.” The two of 
them sat there now, catty-corner naturally, stealing each other’s food, baring their fangs, and generally 
creating a ruckus. In their own Cat-like way, they were in love, or at least in lust. And it suited them just 
fine.

Kryten stood up and tapped on his glass, shattering it with his clumsy android strength. 
“Oh, I’m so sorry Mr. Lister!”
“No matter Kryten. Did you want to make a toast?”
“Yes sir. Well, now I have no glass to hold up, so this is most embarrassing. I was going to say ‘Let’s raise 
our glasses to Mr. Lister,’  but that hardly seems appropriate now. I’m afraid I’ve ruined your evening, Mr 
Lister-”
“Oh for smeg’s sake Kryten, stop blithering and get on with it,” snapped Rimmer. He didn’t have a glass to 
raise either, since he couldn’t eat or drink. Holly could give him hologrammatic food, but Lister knew he 
didn’t much care for it.
“It’s all right Kryten,” said Kochanski, standing up. “Dave appreciates the thought.” She gave a pointed 
look to Rimmer who slouched sullenly.
Kochanski raised her own glass. “When I last saw Dave...this Dave, he was a callow youth of twenty-five. 
Irresponsible, lazy and shiftless. Now...he’s still all those things but he’s just not a youth anymore.”
Everyone laughed, even the birthday boy himself. 
“But seriously Dave, happy birthday. I hope the next thirty years are...well, better than the first.”
Lister piped up, “I know they’ll be if I spend them with you, Kris.” 
Kochanski smiled, embarrassed. He could be so cute when he got sentimental. She threw her arms around 
him and they whispered sweet nothings, oblivious to their audience.
“Awww, ain’t that sweet,” said Kitty. “Cat, I love you!” she yelled.
Cat looked trapped. “Hey baby, don’t get mushy on me!”
“Say it!” she hollered, tackling him with rapacious hugs and kisses.
“All right, all right! I...what you said,” mumbled the Cat.
The room was full of love. Even Kryten was crying android tears.
“It’s so beautiful,” he exclaimed.
Then, over Krissy’s shoulder, Lister caught a glimpse of Rimmer. He was walking away, but his usual 
expression of disgust wasn’t present. In its place was something else: abject sadness. He slipped out of the 
room silently; hologram footsteps made no sound.

2
He’d thought the first few months were the worst, after Holly generated him and he sprang to life again in 
the drive room. And for a few blissful seconds, he didn’t know what had happened. Then the black box 
recordings of the accident flooded his mind. The horrible white, blinding light rushing at him through the 
corridor. The pain, my God, the pain! How could he have survived that? 

Then he knew the truth: he hadn’t. Even before Holly said a word, Rimmer realized that something was 
wrong. He couldn’t feel the floor beneath his feet. He felt like he was floating, and yet he seemed to be 
standing normally. Then he massaged his brow in confusion and felt it: the “H,” the symbol of a hologram. 
He was a hologram. A computer-generated simulation of a dead person. To quote one of his favorite 
childhood movies, Arnold J. Rimmer was really most sincerely dead. 

Being Lister’s appointed companion was bad. Being three million years away from home was also bad. 
Being attacked by Gelfs, Polymorphs, Simulants and God-knows what other kinds of hostile life forms was 
no picnic either. But the worst part, beyond a doubt, was being dead. Or rather, being a hologram.

If he was really dead, Rimmer reasoned, he might be living another life now. Reincarnated as a Space 
Corps Captain, adventuring through the cosmos. Hell, he might even be in heaven, even though he didn’t 
believe in all that twaddle. But he wasn’t really dead because he was here. But he wasn’t really here in any 
physical sense either. He couldn’t touch or feel anything except his own hologrammatic body and any 
hologrammatic items Holly created for him. He’d once dreamed of command in the Space Corps, ordering 
around thousands of officers, calling the shots for the universe. Now he couldn’t read a book without 
someone else to turn the pages for him. 

But smeg happens, he told himself. He would just have to get used to it, and he had. For five years it had 
been just him, Lister and the Cat, and later on Kryten. At least the situation was somewhat bearable since 
they were all in the same boat. But now...

As he sat alone in the quarters he used to share with Lister, before Lister set up house with Kochanski, 
Rimmer thought seriously of asking Holly to turn him off. He wasn’t really needed anymore. He was only 
generated in the first place as a companion to Lister. But Lister had Kochanski now, Cat had Kitty, and 
Kryten...well, as long as Kryten had dishes to clean, he didn’t really need anyone. 

Rimmer could live with being useless. Hell, he’d been useless all his life - his parents had made that quite 
clear from day one. What he couldn’t live with was all the happiness around him. The whole smegging 
ship was becoming a lovefest. What if those Cats had a litter? Vomitisation, it would be a nightmare! And 
Kochanski, that uppity, self-righteous Kristine Kochanski, lording her officer status over him, tossing her 
hair in that haughty manner and swinging her bottom provocatively all over the ship, leaning over him at 
meal times, in deliberately tight, bosom enhancing clothing, her ripe breasts all but bursting out of her... Oh 
smeg, he was really losing it!

Rimmer turned on some Hammond organ music to get his mind off of sex. He had tried unsuccessfully to 
push sex into the back of his mind since puberty. Mostly because he sensed even at the age of fourteen that 
no girl would ever want to have it with him. He had accomplished sexual intercourse once in his life. Once. 
And then he had died. Now, being that the human race no longer existed coupled with the fact that he had 
no body, his prospects were, to put it mildly, dim. 

It was better before, he whined. Better when it was just the four of them and they were all sexually 
frustrated. Now it was just him. Sitting in that birthday party tonight, Rimmer felt like he used to at family 
gatherings. John would bring his wife and the kids, Howard would bring whatever young thing he was 
dating at the time, and Frank would bring Janine - the beautiful Janine who Rimmer had had a mad crush 
on since the first time he saw her. And Rimmer would show up, as always, alone. Janine was pregnant 
when Rimmer had died. He wondered idly if it had been a boy or a girl. It didn’t matter because he 
wouldn’t have gone home for the christening anyway. It had gotten too painful to go home and be around 
his successful, fulfilled brothers and their successful, fulfilled families. Nothing ever changed for him. He 
was on the outside looking in. And that’s the way it would always be. 

3
The derelict ship glistened an odd, lavender-blue. Holly said its coordinates were from the Space Corps. It 
was probably about two hundred years younger than the Dwarf. Lister eased the controls a little. He wasn’t 
used to piloting Starbug. Lately, the Cat had taken over piloting duties, but the Cat didn’t have to be along 
for this little jaunt.
“Tell me again why we’re boarding this thing,” said Krissy. It was just the two of them in the small craft. 
“You know we didn’t scan any food or useful items of any kind. There’s nothing to be had.”
“Well, I want to check it out,” said Lister. “I’m looking for a certain item.”
“Care to fill me in?”
“I will if we find it.”
“All we’re gonna find on this thing is Gelfs. And I just hope none of them are your in-laws.”
Lister scowled. He didn’t like being reminded that he was technically a married man, although his Gelf 
wife looked like a cross between a hippo and a Tibetan yak. 

Lister and Kochanski crept through the dimly lit corridors of the abandoned ship. They had no tangible 
proof, but they were pretty sure they weren’t alone. All they could do was hope that their companions 
aboard were harmless Gelfs and not lethal Simulants. 
Lister spotted a floor plan of the ship and found what he was looking for. 
“Down one more flight,” he called to Krissy. She followed him, irritated that he wouldn’t be more 
forthcoming. Why do men have to play these macho games all the time, she wondered. Dave - her Dave, 
the hologrammatic Dave from her reality - would never keep her in the dark and put her in danger like this. 
She was idly wondering why she’d let herself get so involved with this Dave when the man in question 
stopped. 
“Here we are,” he said and headed into a room that was labeled, “Hologram Simulation Suite”. 
Walking in, Kochanski found Lister removing the main transmitter from it’s moorings in the center of the 
room. 
“It’s not too heavy to move. Brutal!” said Lister.
“Why do you want a hologram projector?” asked Kochanski. “Is there anything wrong with the Dwarf’s? I 
should think you’d be happy to be rid of Rimmer.”

Before Lister could answer his face blanched. Krissy turned around to see what he was looking at and was 
hit square in the face by the rancid breath of a Gelf. The hugely ugly entity stood there, hands on his hips 
like an angry fishwife. 
“Hhharakak hhhekoffurgah! Hurrongah kkkachakolof!” yelled the Gelf.
Lister, who still didn’t speak Gelf, despite marrying into the culture, took an educated guess as to the 
meaning. 
“Oh, I’m sorry. You want me to pay for this, right? Well, how about I give you these valuable black disks 
and we’ll call it even?” he said. 
The Gelf examined the black disks with interest. They might have been the worst records in Rimmer’s 
music collection, but the Gelf didn’t know that. In fact, he was mightily impressed. Lister felt the trade was 
going to be successful, if he and Krissy could just escape before the Gelf discovered how to play the 
albums and heard James Last for himself. 
“So, we’ll just be going now,” Kochanski said, picking up one end of the heavy transmitter. But before the 
couple could edge out of the room, the Gelf got pissed again.
“Hhhrookorok gofpp!” said the Gelf, raising a bushy eyebrow. He was pointing at Lister’s bum. 
“I think he fancies you,” giggled Kochanski.
“Oh no, why am I so irresistably sexy to these Gelfs!” sighed Lister. It looked like this trade was just not 
meant to happen. 
But then the Gelf gestured to his own tattered trousers and then at Lister’s bum again. Lister understood.
“Me bluejeans? You want these? They’ll hardly fit you, y’know.”
“Hhhhooorg!” insisted the Gelf. 

“Can’t we turn the heat up a bit, Krissy?” whined Lister. He was sitting in the Starbug cockpit wearing his 
leather jacket, tee shirt, and boxers. But the projection unit was theirs and Lister hoped the temporary 
humiliation in front of Krissy would be worth it.
“Now, enough mystery,” she said. “Why do we need another projection unit?”
“Okay, I’ll tell ya. It’s October the twenty-seventh in a couple of days. That’s Rimmer’s death-day.”
“Death-day?”
“Yeah, he refuses to celebrate his birthday anymore since he’s not getting older. So we settled on the 
anniversary of the accident instead. Actually, it’s your death-day too.”
“No it’s not, thank you very much. In my reality, I survived and you didn’t! So as far as I’m concerned, it’s 
your death day.” 
“All right, enough quibbling. The only dead person in our crew is Rimmer and I want to give him a 
present.” 
“What kind of present?”
Lister smiled. “A mate.”

4
“All the connections are set up, Mr. Lister,” said Kryten. “All we have to do now is select the candidate.” 
“Brutal, Kryte.”
“But sir, if I may be permitted to voice my doubts,” said the mechanoid deferentially, “I can’t help 
wondering if this is likely to work. You must remember who we’re dealing with. Mr. Rimmer was unable 
to have a successful relationship with his own clone. What makes you think he could possibly form a bond 
with a woman?”
“I don’t know Kryten,” said Lister. “But I think it’s worth a try. Holly-”
“Yes Dave?”
“Remember what we discussed yesterday? Go ahead and run the program. Out of all the female Red Dwarf 
crew members, whose disks are available, select the best match for Rimmer.”
“Righto.”

Lister sat back and smiled at his own audacity. Was this another of his ill-conceived, badly-planned 
miscalculations? Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe it could just work. 
Why on earth did he care about Rimmer? Lister pondered it. There was nothing to like about the man. 
Nothing. He had made his life miserable as his superviser. In one month he had put Lister on report sixty-
two times. It had set a Space Corps record and Rimmer and Lister had been forced to have joint counseling 
with the ship’s psychiatrist. And after the accident, Rimmer had shown precious little improvement. Even 
after all they’d been through, his first response in emergency situations was to suggest throwing everyone 
else out of an airlock and commandeering an escape pod for himself. Arnold J. Rimmer was, without a 
doubt, the most annoying man that had ever lived. 

And yet...Lister had to remind himself, wouldn’t Lister himself be just as bad if he’d had the life that 
Rimmer had lived? It couldn’t have been easy for Rimmer, having such unloving parents, those horrible 
brothers, always having his nose rubbed in their every success. And to be so hopelessly unable to measure 
up, no matter what he did. And then to die, in that horrible way, and be stuck as a hologram... Well, who 
wouldn’t be a little disagreeable with that kind of background?

Seeing Rimmer’s reaction at the birthday party, Lister had felt a stab of conscience. He tried to put himself 
in Rimmer’s place. Watching Lister and Cat with their “mates” must be awful for him, thought Lister. He 
remembered the night - four death-days ago - that Rimmer had gotten drunk on hologrammatic booze, and 
had admitted to Lister that he’d only had sex once in his life, with Yvonne McGruder, a concussion victim 
who didn’t even know who she was bonking. Just think - that was the closest thing Rimmer could ever 
claim to a “girlfriend.” Hell, Lister was the closest thing Rimmer had ever had to a friend, and Lister could 
barely stand him! What a lousy life, Lister thought. He stopped putting himself in Rimmer’s place because 
it was just too hideous. 

Lister had felt bad for Rimmer, but what could he do? Even if there was another woman on board, Rimmer 
couldn’t touch her anyway. The only things holograms could touch were other holograms. Other 
holograms... What if they could find a way to project another hologram, Lister had wondered. There were 
over two-thousand disks housing the personalities of female crew members in the ship’s library. All they 
would need to do was find another hologram projection unit. And then, a few days later, they spotted the 
derelict...

“I’ve got it, Dave. Come look at the results,” said Holly. Lister walked over to the screen nervously, almost 
as if it were his future about to be decided.

5
“You’ve got to be kidding. Three million and five years?” Price said. Or rather thought. The whole 
conversation was taking place in the world of computer-language. Holly thought it best to handle it this 
way. A new hologram should be eased into her situation, so Holly was talking to Price’s consciousness, 
before she was generated as a visual hologram. Holly had forgotten to do this with Rimmer because she’d 
been so addled after three million years alone. As a result, Rimmer had had a panicky first few minutes 
after his generation; Holly was hoping to avoid that this time. Price seemed to be taking it well enough but 
she was asking some awkward questions that Holly didn’t know how to answer.

“I still don’t understand. Why generate me? I’m a second class catering officer. What about the Captain? 
Did you lose everyone else’s disks or something?”
“I think it best if Mr. Lister answers your questions. He can explain it much better than me.” 
There, thought Holly, let him deal with it. This whole thing was Lister’s idea to begin with and Holly 
wasn’t about to explain to this poor woman that she’d been selected as a concubine for the world’s most 
irritating hologram. 
“Do you think you’re ready to be generated?” Holly asked.
Price was still dazed from the awful news. She was dead. They were all dead. Not only the Dwarf crew, but 
every single soul she had ever known. Three million and five years had passed. It was incomprehensible. 
And now this Lister guy, who she was pretty sure she’d never met, wanted to generate her as a hologram? 
Why her? She had a feeling there was something fishy going on but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She 
didn’t have a finger to put on anything because she was just a consciousness without a form. It was very, 
very strange. 

“Price? You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” said Holly.
Price thought about it. The idea of not existing was frightening. She had not existed for three million and 
five years. Did that mean there was no heaven? If not, then maybe living life to the fullest was what 
counted. But she had hardly lived at all, thought Price. Now she was being offered a second chance at life, 
a life of sorts, anyway. How many people got a second chance? She’d be crazy not to take it. 
“All right, power me up Holly.”

Lister squinted at the monitor, perturbed. He wasn’t too thrilled with Holly’s selection. The woman was 
awfully plain; a pale face with straight brown hair, pulled back unflatteringly. She had not smiled for her 
Red Dwarf ID photo, and her overall appearance was cold and off-putting. Still, she was a woman, and she 
had won the probability test. Besides, Rimmer had a face that could curdle milk, so they’d probably get on 
famously. 
“Okay Holly, are they gone?” he asked.
“Starbug left about ten minutes ago, Dave.” 
Lister had been clever. He had sent Kryten to take Rimmer asteroid spotting, under the guise of a death-day 
present. Lister wanted the girl - Price, her name was - to get used to things before she had Rimmer shoved 
in her face. Krissy had insisted on being there for Price’s generation. Another woman there might make her 
feel comfortable, Krissy explained. The Cat and Kitty also knew about Lister’s plan but they were too busy 
sewing matching suits to care about the momentous occasion. 
“Turn her on, Hol,” said Lister.

The light bee rose off the floor. It began to emanate pixels of light which floated around it and took their 
individual places. The pixels grew more numerous until they formed a recognizable human. And then, 
Dorcas Price stood there in the projection suite in her dull khaki uniform, a silver “H” adorning her high 
forehead. She was shorter than Lister had expected, but at least she didn’t look quite as bad as her 
photograph.
“Hello there,” said Krissy, smiling reassuringly.
Price looked at Lister and Kochanski, barely taking them in. She seemed more concerned with the floor. 
She couldn’t feel the floor beneath her feet. She took a step and she saw her right foot go down but she 
couldn’t feel any of it. It was horribly disconcerting. 
“Oh God...” mumbled Price. 
“Are you all right then?” asked Lister. “I know this must be weird for you, but I’m Dave Lister and this is 
Krissy Kochanski. We were both aboard Red Dwarf with you. You probably served us meals all the time. 
Did you know Olaf Petersen?”
Price was barely hearing them. She was feeling the “H” on her forehead and she burst into tears. 
“Oh smeg...” said Lister. A woman crying. Now what was he supposed to do?
“It’s all right dear,” said Kochanski. She tried to put a comforting arm around Price but her arm bisected 
Price’s neck and shoulder in the process. Price was so horrified that she actually screamed. 
“Oh my God, I don’t believe this!” she cried. “This is surreal, it’s too bizarre for words...Who are you 
people? Why do you want me as a hologram? I’ve never even met you!” She glared at them with 
suspicious hostility.
“Well, it’s like this Dorcas - may I call you Dorcas?” Lister asked. Dorcas: what a horrid name.
“No!” said Price. Dorcas was a horrid name.
“Well then, Miss Price, we’ve all been together for some time now - there’s six of us in the crew - and we 
just thought it’d be nice to have a new addition. We found this extra hologram projection unit so we asked 
Holly to select someone at random to be our new crewmate.”
“And she chose me?” asked Price, incredulous. She didn’t believe it. She could tell he was lying. 
“I’m sorry if the whole thing is a shock to you,” said Kochanski. She started to explain about Lister being 
the only survivor of the radiation leak and how she’d come from a different reality where she was the sole 
survivor of the radiation leak. When she got to the part about there being highly evolved housecats on 
board, Price’s head was spinning.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t deal with all this!” said Price. She was walking around the room, unsuccessfully 
trying to touch things. 
“I’m dead, I’m composed entirely of light and I can’t touch a damn thing. I don’t know what the smeg 
you’re talking about, but right now I’m just trying to get my bearings...and you’re not making it any easier 
on me!” 
She was quite combative, with more than a touch of whine in her voice. Lister reflected that she might be 
an excellent match for Rimmer after all. But he was afraid they were blowing the deal. 
“I don’t think I want to live like this,” she said. Lister cringed. All this effort for nothing. Would they have 
to pick another woman now, and go through this all over again? 
But then Krissy said, “Dave, maybe Price would like to talk to another hologram. To help her sort out 
everything.” 
Price’s eyes brightened with curiosity. “Another hologram?”
“Yes, we have another hologram crew member.”
“Brilliant, Kris!” exclaimed Lister. Noticing Price’s curious glance, he did a quick save. “I mean, that’s a 
good idea there. Our other hologram is named Arnold Rimmer. He was a first technician, did you know 
him?” Lister tried to sound casual. Please, please don’t let her know him, he prayed. That would really 
blow the deal.
“Rimmer...No, can’t say I remember anyone by that name,” said Price. She was a little relieved that there 
would be another hologram to talk to. She knew she was behaving badly towards these two, but being two-
dimensional was upsetting her to the point of panic. She needed some time alone.
“Would you mind if I look around the ship or something? I need to...suss things out.” 
“Of course,” exclaimed Krissy, glad that Price was calming down. “If you need us, just tell Holly.”
After Price left, taking tentative steps on a floor that she couldn’t feel, Lister and Kochanski talked over 
their preparations for the evening. If all went well, Rimmer would have a death-day he would never forget.

6
“So what do you think, Kryten?” asked Rimmer as Starbug approached the Dwarf.
Kryten was in a quandary. Rimmer had just explained his idea about turning himself off, basically 
committing suicide. Kryten was never any good when it came to comforting humans. He always tended to 
say or do the wrong thing. Like that time he gave Kochanski the Heimlich maneuver to stop her crying. 
And he couldn’t say the one thing that would lift Rimmer’s spirits: telling him about Lister’s surprise. But 
he had to say something.
“Comfort mode. There there, Mr. Rimmer. There’s no need to take such drastic measures. You’re very 
valuable to this crew.”
“You really think so? I’ve been feeling a little useless of late…”
“Oh no, sir, you’ve always been useless. You’re inability to do any physical tasks might be compensated if 
you had a keen intelligence about space travel or some fragment of leadership ability. But your lack of all 
these traits hasn’t made the crew desire your termination in the past… Although, actually, we have, on nine 
separate occasions seriously discussed it, the general feeling has always been that as much as we’d like to 
switch you off, it would simply be wrong.” He paused for emphasis. “Very wrong, sir. 
Rimmer stared at the squareheaded android with disbelieving horror. 
“This is your comfort mode? You must do a lot of work with lemmings.”
Kryten was perplexed. What had he done wrong now? “Sir, I’m just trying to point out- ”
“That everyone would be happy, or at least indifferent, if my light bee fell down the garbage disposal. 
Thanks for the reassurance you bog bot from hell!”
“Oh no, Mr. Rimmer sir!” Kryten was quite upset now. He had to make Rimmer feel better. Why wasn’t 
the 4000 series better at social nuances? He tried again.
“There are times when we’ve wished you dead. Or rather, wished you to be erased since you’re already 
dead, of course-”
Rimmer was glaring. “You’re not helping, Novelty-Condom Head.”
“But, who hasn’t wished that about people they live in close quarters with? Why just yesterday I put Ms. 
Kochanski’s best red teddy in with the Cat’s laundry and when the Cat saw the pinkish hue that had been 
added to his suits, he disconnected my head and put it in the spin cycle for a full twenty minutes until Mr. 
Lister came to rescue me.”
“So what’s your point, Kryten?” Rimmer slouched in his chair. Starbug was approaching the docking bay 
doors. 
“My point, Mr. Rimmer, is that you’re one of the crew. And despite your many character flaws, which I 
won’t list now due to a lack of time, we all care about you.”
“I just don’t believe that, Kryten. You talk a good game, but when it comes down to it, who gives two 
smegs about Arnold Rimmer?”
“I do, Sir! And Mr. Lister does. In fact, he’s planned something very special for your death-day…Ooooh, 
screw my nipple nuts and rotate my legs! I wasn’t supposed to tell you!”
Rimmer brightened up. “Something special? Did he actually get me a present?” He paused for a moment 
and then his familiar, distrusting expression returned. “I know what it is. He’s going to give me back those 
records that mysteriously disappeared, isn’t he? I knew he didn’t ‘accidentally’ drop James Last’s Greatest 
Hits out of an airlock. That would be typical Lister though, wouldn’t it? Giving me something that already 
belongs to me…”
“I think you’ll find, Mr. Rimmer,” said Kryten, easing the Starbug to a smooth landing in the docking bay, 
“that your present is a lot more…elaborate than you could imagine.”

Price eyed the skutter suspiciously. Even though it was mechanical, she had the feeling it didn’t like her. 
But maybe she was just being paranoid. It had certainly been a disturbing afternoon. She was in her 
sleeping quarters, amazed at how little had changed. A spaceship was a hermetically sealed environment, 
but three million and five years and not a single cobweb? It was eerie. 
“Take out my vid collection. Over there,” she said, pointing to a cabinet under Maria’s bunk. Maria, her 
bunkmate. Her long, long dead bunkmate. She’d never liked Maria but she tried to work up some nostalgia 
for the three years they’d bunked together. All she could remember was Maria’s endless, sappy 
conversations with Bruce, her boyfriend who was stationed on Venus. The bills they racked up on those 
stupid video phone calls, Price thought. One of the good points about being perpetually unattached was that 
you saved money, Price used to tell herself. Now, sitting in her quarters, three million years after the end of 
human civilization, she pondered the irony of all that money, saved in a Space Corps bank account, never 
spent on anything fun. 

7
Price was pleased to see that her videos all seemed to be intact. She’d spent years amassing that collection 
and it was one of the only things she truly cared about. She was just about to have the skutter pop “The 
Apartment” in the vid unit when Lister and Kochanski walked in.
“Hello Price.” You getting on okay?
“I suppose...but it was a little strange meeting those cats. They weren’t too friendly.”
“Well, you did interrupt their main afternoon snooze. You’ve got to watch out for the fifteen hours a day 
they spend sleeping,” said Kochanski. “We’d like you to come to dinner.”
“Dinner? I can’t eat, right?”
“Wrong. I asked Holly to whip up some hologrammatic food for you. In fact,” said Lister, trying to sound 
as casual as possible, “Rimmer might be back in time for dinner so maybe you can talk with him a bit.”
“I’d like that,” said Price. “Thanks for the offer.”
They led her down to the Captain’s private dining room, where the crew had taken to eating since the 
civilizing effect of women had taken over. Price was surprised to see that only two places were set. 
“Aren’t you eating?” she asked.
“Well, we can’t have hologrammatic food,” said Kochanski, cheerfully. “We’re still cooking ours.”
“Oh, all right. I guess I’ll just wait here,” said Price, relieved not to be obligated into small talk.
“Ummm...do you have anything a little more, um, dressy you could wear?” asked Lister, eyeing her 
unflattering khaki uniform. Rimmer had long since switched to a red dress uniform reflecting a rank which 
he had never truly earned. 
“Why? You don’t look like you’re exactly dressed to the nines,” Price snapped.
Kochanski ushered Lister out of the room before he did any more damage. “Don’t treat the girl like she’s a 
hired escort, you curry-head,” she hissed.

Rimmer, still reeling from Kryten’s pep talk, wandered out of the shuttle bay and was accosted by Cat and 
Kitty before he could get any further.
“Hey, Goalpost Head! Happy Death-Day to you, buddy!”
“I don’t know what you’re up to, Cat, but I just want to go to my quarters, so get out-”
“You’ve got to come with us, Mr. H,” said Kitty. No amount of explaining would convince her that 
Rimmer’s “H” was not his initial.
“No I don’t, just leave me alone!” said Rimmer. But the cats wouldn’t budge, so he sighed and walked 
straight through them, one of the few advantages of his non-corporeal condition. 
“Owwww, he’s a slippery smeg!” The Cat spoke into a walkie-talkie to Lister. “Cat to Monkey, Cat to 
Monkey: Laundry-Shute Nostrils has landed! I repeat, Laundry-Shute Nostrils has landed!”
“Copy, Cat,” came Lister’s static-filled reply. He couldn’t resist. 
“How did Cloister get into that little thing?” asked Kitty. Cat smiled, revealing about fifty-seven pearly 
whites. It was so nice to have someone on the ship who was dumber than himself.

Lister apprehended Rimmer on his way past the drive room. 
“You’ve got to come to dinner, Rimmer.”
“Why? You know I hate that hologrammatic food.”
“It’s your death-day, we’ve got to celebrate. I’ve gotten you a present.”
“Celebrate with snooty Officer Hot Pants, I’m tired. I’m going to play some organ music and- Wait, if 
you’re giving me back my records as a present then do it right now, you thieving space hippie.”
Lister rolled his eyes. Had he really gone through all this trouble for such an ungrateful smeghead? Well, 
Rimmer would be grateful once he saw Price. Maybe.
“Actually, I had to trade the records to get you your present, Rimmer. And I promise you you’ll be 
surprised if you’ll just come to the dining room.”
Rimmer’s curiosity was piqued. But suspicion took over again. “You said surprised. You didn’t say I’d be 
pleased.”
“For smeg’s sake, Rimmer, I hope you’ll be pleased, but I won’t know until you come and look!”
“All right, all right. Don’t get your bowels in a sheepshank, I’m coming.”

Rimmer followed Lister into the dining room and looked around. Kochanski was sitting at the table 
wearing a rather drab outfit. But then she turned around and it wasn’t Kochanski. It was a hologram. A 
female hologram.
“First Technician Arnold Rimmer, meet Second Catering Officer Dorcas Price,” Lister was saying, but 
Rimmer didn’t hear any of it. At that moment, he couldn’t have said what color hair Price had, if she were 
tall or short, or built like a hippo. Hell, she could have been a Gelf for all he noticed. All he could see was 
the “H”. Another hologram.
Lister was babbling something in a desperate attempt to make small talk, since neither of the holograms 
had said a word so far. 
“You remember, Rimmer, how we all talked about generating a new hologram. Y’know, add a little variety 
to the crew? You remember that, right?” He was winking surreptitiously at Rimmer, who was too baffled 
to notice.
“Is this ‘Better Than Life’ or something?” he finally asked.
“No, no, no! This is real. We traded your albums for another hologram unit. We just generated Price 
today.”
“Only a few hours ago,” said Price. Hearing her voice seemed to ground Rimmer in reality a bit. 
“Anyway, Kris and I felt that it would do Price some good to talk to another hologram, so I’ll leave you 
two alone,” said Lister, and he was gone.

Rimmer had no idea what to say. It finally dawned on him that this was a woman, and he never knew what 
to say to women. What on Io had given Lister the idea to generate a new hologram? Why hadn’t anyone 
told him? Then it hit him. The present. She was supposed to be the present! Oh my God, my God, my God, 
thought Rimmer in a panic. 
“Are you all right?” asked Price. She was a little concerned. This hologram fellow didn’t look like he was 
playing with a full deck. 
“What? Oh, yes...I’m just surprised by all this. I didn’t know what Lister was up to you see.”
“I’m a little confused by that myself.” 
There was an uncomfortable pause. Rimmer finally took a good look at Price. She certainly didn’t look like 
a prostitute. Couldn’t Lister do any better than this? Typical Lister, he thought. Get me the mousiest call 
girl he could find. 
“Well…” said Rimmer, trying to come up with some acceptable small talk. “Did you used to…do this on 
the Dwarf?”
Price didn’t understand, but then she looked at the food in front of her. “Oh yes, I was a chef in the 
officers’ cafeteria.”
Rimmer was getting confused. “So I guess it didn’t pay well and you did…this on the side?”
Now Price was confused. “Did what?”
Damn, why couldn’t she just make it easy on him? Here he had the prospect of sex for the first time in five 
years and all he could feel was terror. And she certainly wasn’t helping by being so coy!
He searched for the right delicate phrase. “Well, you know, how would you put it, ummm…turning 
tricks?”
Price stared at Rimmer for a long moment. Had he really said what she thought he’d said? Then it all 
became clear to her. Lister and Kochanski: a human couple. Those two cats: a feline couple. And a male 
hologram with no female counterpart. She finally knew why she was here.
“What did you just say to me?” she exclaimed. “What the smeg gave you the idea I was for rent!”
Rimmer was totally perplexed. Why was she getting so upset? Didn’t Lister say she was a present? 
“I don’t believe this,” she yelled. “You generated me solely so you could have a bedmate?”
“I…I don’t know what-” 
“ ‘Oh, we just wanted another crew member so we chose you at random’: what a crock! I should have 
known something was up. If you’d just been honest I never would have let Holly generate me!”
My God, had Lister not told her? The stupid goit! What was Rimmer supposed to say now? 
“I’m sorry, but I think we’ve got our wires crossed,”  he fumbled.
“Damn right we do, because I’m not any man’s Pleasure-Gelf!” she yelled and headed for the door, turning 
to throw in a parting shot. “And…I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last hologram in the universe!”

Rimmer was left standing there, completely flummoxed. Then Lister entered the room quietly. He had 
heard the whole thing. Rimmer threw himself at Lister, hands outstretched in strangling motion, but he 
passed right through his former bunkmate and his light bee hit the wall with a angry little “clack.”

8
No amount of cajoling by Kochanski would change Price’s mind. She had never liked women like 
Kochanski anyway. Little princesses who got all the horseback riding lessons and personal flute teachers 
and trips to Charon Ski Country for their prep school graduations. 

Price wanted to be turned off. They had all lied to her and she certainly had no desire to remain in their 
company. Well, she had met the mechanoid, Kryten, when he brought her some hologrammatic chamomile 
tea, and she had to admit that he was nice. But the rest…The very idea that she was supposed to be that 
man Rimmer’s “mate.” It made her sick! He wasn’t even attractive. She’d never seen such flared nostrils 
on a human being, and his eyes had a deep-set, shifty quality. She could feel them looking her over when 
they were in the dining room, rating her physical attributes. So she wasn’t a great beauty: he wasn’t so 
much to look at himself! 

She told Kochanski all this and finally got the woman to leave her alone. She spent the next day in her 
quarters watching her old movies with the skutters’ help. It was strange not needing to eat, but she counted 
it as a blessing that she wouldn’t have to venture out to the cafeteria and run into any more of those liars. 
Then Lister came to talk to her. Kochanski had informed him that this whole situation was his fault and he 
should bloody well make up for it. 

“Look, I’m really sorry, but you’ve got to believe this: the whole thing was my idea. Rimmer didn’t have a 
clue.”
“I find that very hard to believe based on what he said to me.”
Lister groaned. He was going to have to make himself look like an insensitive git in order to help Rimmer. 
“I told him I had a present for him and that you were it. So he thought you were…”
“A bloody tart, that’s what he thought…Look, even if that were true-”
“It is true. You saw how shocked he was when he first saw you.”
Price had to admit that that was accurate. The man had looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
“All right, I’ll believe you. But I can’t stay here. Not knowing the expectations you all have of me. How 
would you like to be generated solely for someone else’s benefit?”
“That’s why Rimmer’s here. Holly generated him to keep me company after I came out of stasis. And it 
worked; we fought so smegging much that I forgot to be depressed about being the last human. And now 
I’ve got Krissy and…I just wanted to do something nice for the smeghead. So sue me.”
Price was a little touched. Lister seemed sincere. “You must be a good friend,” she said. “But I still can’t 
stick around. I’m just not comfortable with the whole situation. I’m having Holly turn me off tomorrow.”
“But you’ll be dead!”
“I’ve been dead for three million and five years. I think ‘dead’ is where I belong.”

Lister stormed around the ship looking for Rimmer. He couldn’t let this happen. It wasn’t right. Okay, 
maybe he’d cocked up everything good and proper, but he couldn’t let Price erase herself. He’d feel too 
damn guilty. It would be like having a death on his conscience. 
He located Rimmer in his sleeping quarters. The hologram was lying on his bunk listening to some kind of 
military march and staring into space, depressed as usual. 

“Rimmer, you’ve got to talk to her,” said Lister.
“If it isn’t Red Dwarf’s answer to Superfly the Pimp.”
“She’s gonna erase herself tomorrow if you don’t say something to her.”
“And what am I supposed to say? Thanks to your brilliantly executed plan, I all but called the woman a 
whore! It’s quite clear what she thinks of me, and she certainly doesn’t want to be my mate! How could 
you even think such a thing was possible? A normal woman being interested in Arnold Rimmer? Please!”
“It’s possible.” Lister racked his brain to think of an example. There was only one. “What about Yvonne 
McGruder?”
“You’re the one who pointed out to me that she thought I was Norman Fielding from Cartography.”
“Yeah, well…she was still crazy about you until the concussion wore off.”
“Lister, this is not helping!”
“I just wanted to do something nice for you. And it could still work. You just need to talk to her. Apologize 
for what you said. Talk her out of erasing herself.”
“I don’t want some hologram woman around if she’s just gonna reject me.” Rimmer grimaced. His self-
esteem was low enough without the one woman available to him in the universe deciding she could do 
better.
“Rimmer…” wheedled Lister, giving him his most annoying puppy-dog look. A look that represented all 
things good, pure and noble. It was a damned irritating look. Rimmer wanted to smack it off his face but he 
couldn’t smack anything anymore. 
“Oh all right!” But I’ll go there on my own. You’ve helped enough for one week.

Rimmer stood outside of Price’s door. What could he say to her? He had never known how to talk to 
women. After about five minutes of work-related questions, he ran out of things to say. And that was just 
casual conversation. Right now, he was supposed to talk a woman out of ending her existence. Smeg, he 
wished he could do some real physical damage to Lister!

Still, he had to admit that Lister’s heart had been in the right place. For five years Rimmer had dreamed of 
having a hologram companion. At one point he had even cloned himself with the Nova 5 projection unit. 
He had wanted a companion so badly but he was too scared to generate a female crew member. Generating 
another him was the safest thing he could do and Rimmer was never known for being a risk-taker. Of 
course it hadn’t worked. He was filled with so much damn self-loathing that he and his double couldn’t 
stand each other. Then Kryten and Cat crashed the Nova 5 on an asteroid and destroyed the projection unit 
along with the rest of the craft. 

After that, Rimmer had filed away all hopes of having a hologram companion. Someone who could 
understand. Someone who he could actually touch. It had been so long, he’d almost forgotten what it felt 
like to touch another person. Of course, as an adult, he’d done precious little touching anyway, so perhaps 
he shouldn’t have missed what he’d never had. But Rimmer missed it anyway. 

He remembered how Howard, the most sadistic of his brothers, used to shove his face into the mud as a 
child. It was Howie’s favorite summer pastime. He would even use the hose to create vast pits of mud in 
the backyard, for the sole purpose of shoving Rimmer’s face into it. Smegging hell, it was horrible, 
Rimmer shuddered. And yet, he felt right now that he would gladly choose to be an eight year old 
drowning in a mud puddle if only for the chance to feel it. To feel the cold water, the squishy Ionian mud, 
Howie’s knee in his back…To feel again. Yes, he’d go back there. In a heartbeat. 

And now there was another hologram on board. But she wouldn’t let him touch her because he’d offended 
the smeg out of her. She probably already hated him. If she were around and she wouldn’t let him near her, 
it would be almost unbearable. Rimmer was tempted to go back to his quarters. He’d been rejected enough 
in life; he didn’t need any more in his afterlife. But then he thought about it some more. It would be 
marvelous to have another hologram around, someone who could understand what it was like to be dead, to 
be so ineffectual, like a ghost among the living. Well, thought Rimmer, if she wouldn’t be his lover, at least 
she could be his friend. But what could he say to her?

Finally, he took the plunge and called out her name. “Miss Price? Are you in there?”
Price was in the middle of “On the Waterfront,” and the interruption was a bother.
“Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?” she said.
“I can’t knock,” replied Rimmer.
Oh, right, thought Price. It was that hologram, Rimmer. Now she felt a little guilty. But she didn’t send the 
skutter to open the door. 
“Leave me alone, I’m busy,” she called.
Rimmer was getting frustrated. What right did she have to be so irritable? Well, actually, quite a lot of 
right, considering what she’d been through. So he tried again. 
“All right, Miss Price, I’ll just talk to you from out here. I know it’s quite a shock discovering you’ve died, 
and that three million and five years have passed, and that you’re a hologram now, and that Lister just 
brought you back to…well, let’s not get into that…but I think I speak for everyone in the crew, even the 
Cats, when I say that we’d like you to stay.” 
“I know why you want me to stay,” she shot back.
“Look, I honestly didn’t know that Lister had planned this. He even stole my favorite records and traded 
them with a Gelf for your generator. He didn’t prepare me in the slightest for the whole thing. To be 
perfectly fair to him, he’s a mutton headed gimboid who couldn’t win an argument with a soggy teabag.”
Price snickered a little, in spite of herself. 
“All right, so Lister’s a bit daft. I could see that from the start. What’s your point?”
“The point is…” he paused. What was his point? Oh yes, getting her to stay. “We…I would personally like 
it if you stayed. Not as a…mate or anything, but just as a friend. I’d like very much to be a friend to you, as 
one hologram to another.” Rimmer winced. He sounded like a sappy greeting card, and he knew it was 
coming out all wrong. 
But to his surprise, the door opened. Price peered up at him; she was smaller than he’d realized. 
“You want to be friends?” she asked.
“Absolutely!” Rimmer exclaimed, trying to arrange his features into a pleasant expression. He needed to 
practice at it more.
“So you don’t expect sex?” said Price.
Rimmer turned a bright red that matched his uniform. “Sex? Of course not! I haven’t the faintest desire- 
well, I mean I do have some- I mean I’m a normal, red-blooded, well- hologram, but I wouldn’t want- I 
mean...” Damn! There was no way he could wrap this up acceptably. Then, Price smiled, and her whole 
face changed. It was the first time she’d smiled since her generation the previous day.
“I didn’t know holograms could blush,” she said. 
Rimmer was caught by surprise, but immensely grateful that she wasn’t laughing at him. 
“Well…this one can,” he replied. Then Rimmer smiled, a genuine smile, the one he didn’t get much 
practice at. At that moment, Price decided that Rimmer wasn’t such a bad guy after all. He wasn’t exactly 
sincere, but he was so bad at being phony that it was the same difference in the end. 
“I think,” she said, “I’d be willing to give it a try.”

9
Over the next three weeks, Price gradually got used to her new state. Rimmer was a great help. When she 
told him how hard it was to sleep because she felt like she was floating in midair, he insisted that Holly 
give her some hologrammatic bedding like he had, even though it was an extra power drain. 
“So? It’ll just be one degree colder in here. We can’t feel it anyway, and Price has got to sleep!” he said. 
He gave her some helpful hints about how to get the skutters to fall in line. All she had to do was show 
them a steady diet of John Wayne movies and they’d be at her beck and call. Luckily, Price had “The Quiet 
Man,” “True Grit” and “The Searchers” in her vid collection, so the skutters were soon treating her like a 
queen.
He showed her how Holly could analyze any item of clothing and produce a pretty credible hologrammatic 
replica. Soon, Price had abandoned the dull khakis and switched to a blue engineer’s uniform. She had no 
interest in engineering; she just liked the color.
One day she asked why Rimmer rarely bothered with hologrammatic food. 
“I found that it tastes more like an algorithm for food than actual food.”
“Hmmm...you’re right, you know that? There’s something synthetic about it that’s been bothering me. It’s 
a shame though, because I love to cook so much,” said Price
“Maybe you could cook us a meal,” Rimmer suggested. Then he quickly added, “For everyone, I mean. Of 
course no one else could eat the hologrammatic food, but, um...” Damn. He was blithering like an idiot 
again. He just didn’t want it to sound like he was asking her for a date. 
“Maybe I could do both. If the skutters help me...”
“I tried that a few times. Doesn’t work too well. You tell them to watch the lamb, and they do. They sit 
there for three hours and watch it burn.”

Price reflected that it was very nice to have another hologram around to commiserate with. She wondered 
how Rimmer had gotten through five years on his own. But, otherwise, she didn’t feel quite comfortable 
with him yet. But that was part of her nature, she realized. She’d always been very awkward around men. 
She could only feel comfortable with older, father figures or men that were taken. That’s why she tended to 
be more relaxed around Lister, Cat and Kryten. Rimmer was “available” to her, and that made him 
someone to be avoided. 

Rimmer felt rather uncomfortable himself. He tried to be nice to Price, but she could be so clipped and 
distant. He never knew whether his presence was welcome or not. At least Lister came out and told him to 
smeg off. Women were so smegging mysterious, and this one more than most. He really just wanted to be 
friends with her, but he’d never been any better at making friends than he had at meeting women. Finally, 
he decided to just be himself, putting aside Lister’s suggestion that being himself was the worst thing he 
could do. Maybe if he did something nice for her, she would warm to him. He surreptitiously read her 
personnel file and discovered that her birthday was November 19th, only two days away. 

When he suggested to Rimmer and Kochanski that they could all have a party for Price, the couple 
exchanged glances. Kochanski hated to admit it, but Lister’s idea seemed to be panning out. Rimmer 
throwing a party? The man’s idea of a fun evening was recounting every roll of the dice in a Risk game 
he’d played when he was seventeen. Something was changing him and it had to be Price.

Price had thawed to Kochanski a bit, though she still couldn’t forget that someone like Kochanski would 
never have been friends with her if it weren’t for the bizarre circumstances they found themselves in. So 
she was willing to force a little girl talk with Krissy and Kitty as she got ready for her birthday dinner. 

“I’ll tell you one thing that’s nice about being a hologram...” She paused for emphasis. “No more periods!”
Kochanski laughed in agreement, but Price noticed an unusually pensive expression on Kitty’s face.
“I wouldn’t mind being a hologram for a week out of every month if I could avoid PMS,” said Kochanski. 
“I had PMS the day I died,” mused Price. “I saw the nuclear wind headed for me and I thought, ‘Oh smeg, 
I’m retaining water, I’m having a bad hair day, the chicken pot pies are burnt, and now I’m gonna die. 
What else could happen to me?” 
There was an awkward pause since Kitty didn’t understand the joke, and Kochanski was a little horrified 
by it. Then Price burst out laughing, and so did Kochanski, relieved that the woman had a sense of humor, 
although a very morbid one. Even Kitty laughed, although she didn’t know why.

“Now, you can’t seriously intend to wear those threads,” said Kitty. “You need something with sequins, 
girl! Velvet, chenille, a little watered silk maybe!” 
“Yeah Price, it’s your birthday. Have Holly simulate your nicest outfit.”
Price thought about it. Aside from her uniforms, she only had ultra-casual clothes and a couple of business 
suits.
“I’ll stick to the uniforms, thanks.”
“Hmmph! Just like Mr. H. Must be something about being dead that saps your style,” Kitty pouted.

The dinner party was quite a success even though the guest of honor was embarrassed at being the center of 
attention. Holly tried her best to whip up some holo-food that tasted like the real thing, and the effort was 
much praised by the former chef. 
The only person who didn’t enjoy himself thoroughly was Rimmer, because Price was mostly ignoring 
him. She spent most of the evening listening to Lister’s stories, which were comprised of embarrassing 
anecdotes about himself, Kryten, Cat, and especially Rimmer. 
“Did we tell you about last March when Rimmer got this holovirus?” asked Lister.
“I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear that, Lister!” yelled Rimmer.
“Sure she does! I know I’d like to hear it again,” crowed the Cat. 
By the time Lister got to the part about Rimmer wearing the gingham dress and talking with a stuffed 
penguin, Price was laughing so hard she almost fell under the table, and that’s where Rimmer wanted to 
crawl for the embarrassment. 

Afterwards, Rimmer sat at the dining table alone, drinking some hologrammatic coffee. It tasted like 
electrical yak dung, but he didn’t care much. Why was she so chummy with everyone except him? 
Amazing. From the time he was four years old and no one would play with him at Sagan City Nursery 
School on Io, not a single thing had changed. Was he the most dislikable man that had ever lived? 
Impossible! There had to be someone worse. How about Hitler? No, even Hitler had a girlfriend...The 
closest Rimmer had ever come to a girlfriend was Sandra Kemble in cadet school. They’d gone out six 
times and she’d even let him put his hand down her jumper - a first! But it turned out that she was only 
sticking with him in the hopes that he would take her home and she could meet his brother Frank. 
Smeg, he wasn’t even expecting Price to like him that way. But was a little friendship too much to ask for?

As if on cue, Price entered the room. 
“Rimmer,” she said and paused. She knew she would stumble over her words as usual. “Umm...Krissy told 
me that the party tonight was your idea. I didn’t know. I just wanted to say thank you.”
“Quite all right,” said Rimmer curtly, and he returned to staring at his coffee. 
“Well then...” said Price and she started to leave. But she couldn’t. “I’m...I also wanted to say I’m sorry 
for... if I seemed a little distant tonight.”
His nostrils flared with contempt. “Tonight? You weren’t any different from any other night, or day for 
that matter.”
Price was getting upset. He wasn’t going to let it go. “It’s not you, really. I’m just...a bit of a fish out of 
water around men.”
Rimmer looked up, startled. He’d used the exact phrase many times to describe his own comfort level with 
women. 
“Really?” he asked. “You seem fine with Lister.” 
“Well...that’s because he makes me laugh. I don’t have to be serious with him...” Or worry about being 
touched, she thought.
“Yes...Listy’s certainly got a plethora of stories. Mostly at my expense.”
“I’m sorry for laughing at them. It must have been horrible for you. To be stuck in that planet of your own 
mind...and the holo-virus.” And despite herself, Price started to crack up.
Rimmer was exasperated. “Yes, that’s right, go ahead and laugh. Arnie Rimmer: everyone’s favorite music 
hall act, just here for your amusement!”
“I’m sorry,” she said, gasping for air. “I was just picturing you in a red and white gingham dress with that 
little penguin...” and she fell apart again. And to his own surprise, Rimmer began to laugh too.
“I suppose I must have been quite a sight...But you should have seen Lister when he had the Space 
Mumps.”
“Oh, you have to tell me!” cried Price. 

And Rimmer did tell her. He eagerly recounted every humiliating incident that had happened to Lister, and 
a few that had happened to him, but he just changed the names. Suddenly, Price looked at her watch and 
realized that three hours had passed.
“Strike a light, I can’t believe the time!” she said. 
“Have we been talking that long?” asked Rimmer incredulously.
“Must be. I should be turning in.” She got halfway to the door but then turned around. “You never said if 
you forgave me.”
Rimmer raised an eyebrow. “Forgive you for what?”
“For being rather cold these last few weeks. I really am sorry.”
Was she being sincere? Rimmer decided to trust her. “It’s all right. Nyet problemski.”
“You said you wanted us to be friends. I’d like to take you up on that,” said Price. She smiled, a tentative 
smile which quivered around the edges. 

Rimmer wondered whether to ask the favor he wanted so badly. “Price...” he ventured.
“Perhaps you could call me Dorie. Price is a bit formal and I’ve always hated Dorcas.”
“Well then, Dorie...I’ve always hated Arnold, so-”
“Arnie it is.” She smiled again.
Rimmer decided to take the plunge. “This is going to sound a little odd, but I wondered if you’d mind 
terribly if I could touch you.” 
He saw her eyes immediately cloud with apprehension. He quickly added, “I mean, just your hand. Just for 
a moment. It’s been five years since I touched another person. I just...” Smeg, he’d screwed up again, just 
when things were going well! Why couldn’t he ever learn?
“I’m sorry, forget I asked,” said Rimmer.
Price looked at him. She could see it wasn’t a ploy. And it wasn’t that much to ask, she thought.
“All right.” said Price. She held out her right hand stiffly, like the Queen of England at a royal function. 
Rimmer stared at the hand for a moment. Then, gingerly, he reached out with his own, and placed his 
fingers on her palm.

God! Electric volts seemed to shoot through his arm and to every pore of his hologram body. He gripped 
Dorie’s hand tightly. He was touching another person! The illusion of 98.6 degree warmth, of someone 
else’s flesh touching his own was almost too much. He wanted to pull her close and throw his arms around 
her. He wanted to fling her to the floor and ravish her madly. It didn’t even matter who she was; she was 
alive to him! A real person! Then something hideously embarrassing happened: he was getting a massive 
stiffie. He had to get away before she noticed. Hating to do it, he pulled his hand away.

“I’m sorry. I just...I’d forgotten what it felt like.” He turned away in embarrassment and made a hasty 
retreat, calling over his shoulder, “Thank you Dorie.”

Price stood there, frozen, for a long moment. Arnie had only touched her hand, but she could feel his 
neediness, his desperation, the isolation of so many years without a human touch. It was all there, 
communicated as though they were symbiotic for just that moment. She frowned in confusion. What had 
she gotten herself into? What did he want from her? And furthermore, she wondered, what did she want 
from him?

10
Over the next few months, Rimmer and Price spent a lot more time together, and though they were just 
friends, Lister was happy. Rimmer was about thirty percent less annoying, and it was all due to his plan. 
“I think Dorie has something to do with it too,” said Kochanski. 
“Dorie would be a dusty disk in the library if it wasn’t for me own clever thinking,” said Lister, and he 
completed his awful wrapping job on the present. There was something else to celebrate: the cats were 
having a litter. 
The night that Krissy and Dorie were discussing periods, Kitty realized that she hadn’t had one in awhile. 
That meant something didn’t it? She went to that floating head woman to ask about it. The floating head 
woman was awful smart. 
Holly was quite thrilled when her medical tests turned up three extra heartbeats. 
“Strike a light, I’m gonna be an auntie!” she announced.
The crew was mostly thrilled, although many voiced their doubts about the parenting skills of cats. 
“Three screaming kittens,” said Rimmer. “Just when life was getting a gnat’s more tolerable.”
“Oh come on,” Price smiled. “At least we can’t be saddled with any babysitting chores since we can’t pick 
them up or anything.”
“Who’d want to?” asked Rimmer. The couple of times in his life he’d tried to pick up babies, they’d 
immediately started crying. When his first niece was born, John had handed her over to Rimmer to hold 
and she’d promptly thrown up on his junior cadet uniform. “Uncle Arnold” was not a role he looked 
forward to playing again.

Lister and Kochanski finished on their presents for the Cats. They had ransacked many sleeping quarters 
until they’d located three child-appropriate stuffed animals. 
“There were about ten dolls in that room on Level 2134,” said Lister. “We should remember that in 
case…umm…we ever need any more.”
Kochanski shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She knew what Dave was saying. He wanted to have kids. 
Ever since that future echo, he’d been convinced that he was destined to have twin sons named Jim and 
Bexley. Kochanski didn’t put as much stock in the future echoes as he did. Any number of glitches could 
completely alter their reality, she told him. But the fact was, she just wasn’t sure about having kids with 
Dave.

The odd thing was that she’d really wanted to have children with her Dave, the Dave from her reality. She 
privately pinched herself for calling him “her Dave” again, reminding herself that she was living in this 
reality now and it was time to get used to it. But she remembered the early days in her reality after Holly 
brought her out of stasis. Three million years away from home and all alone. She didn’t drink herself into 
oblivion like Lister had done in this reality, but she did get horribly depressed. Then, after a few days of 
aimless malaise, Dave Lister walked into the room, with a bright metallic “H” on his forehead. 
“Why Dave Lister?” she had asked Holly. After all, she’d dumped him a couple of months before the 
accident. They weren’t exactly on friendly terms, although she had hidden the cat for him. So, in a way, 
Lister was responsible for her being alive. 
“I did a probability study,” Holly had said. “And Lister is absolutely the best person to keep you alive.”
Kochanski had a hard time swallowing it. For months, she resented Lister, wishing that Holly had brought 
back Tim, her boyfriend from Catering, instead. Based on what Price now told her about Tim’s 
philandering ways, Kochanski was convinced that it had all been for the best. 

Because she’d fallen in love with her Dave. Being a hologram changed his personality. He was so helpless 
and frustrated, it made him a lot more sensitive to people’s feelings. And since hologrammatic booze didn’t 
taste any better than hologrammatic coffee, he quickly became a teetotaller. Going on the wagon must have 
sharpened his mind, because he became more serious. He grew up and learned to take command. The Cat 
and Kryten respected him immensely, and so did Kochanski. They both knew their feelings had grown, but 
neither broached the subject because it would be too painful: they couldn’t touch each other. They would 
have to remain platonic friends.

But then the crew had met Legion. The gestalt entity pulled the Starbug into his space station one day and 
to everyone’s shock, he snatched Lister’s light bee right out of his body. After tampering with it, he flung it 
back in the air and Lister sprang back to life, with an important difference. He was a hard light hologram; 
he had a body at last. Kochanski had never seen Lister happier. When Legion tried to keep them there, 
Lister staged a daring escape. Back on the Red Dwarf, Kochanski and Lister ran off to her sleeping quarters 
from which they didn’t emerge for three full days. 

When Kochanski told this crew about Legion, Rimmer was so excited he insisted they take the risk and 
find the space station. He even said he would go there by himself, a rare act of bravery which indicated 
how desperately he wanted to have a body again. But it wasn’t meant to be. Though Kochanski led them to 
the coordinates, there was no space station to be found. Something must have happened in this reality to 
obliterate Legion, or send him far, far away. Rimmer got so depressed; he played Hammond organ music 
day and night. Lister couldn’t take it and reassured him that getting a hard light drive wouldn’t have made 
much difference. But Kochanski knew better. 

If anything, the hard light drive had given her Dave even more confidence. And they were able to be a 
couple in every sense of the word. But the one thing that got them down was the knowledge that they 
couldn’t procreate. Lister’s body had substance, but it was still made of light and algorithms; no sperm to 
be had. Of course, Krissy could have used the Cat as a surrogate father, and he would have been thrilled to 
volunteer, but she wanted to have Dave’s kids. Now, having fallen through the linkway, she had a chance 
to have Dave’s kids. But he wasn’t her Dave. Try as she might, she couldn’t erase the memory of her 
Dave, a man who was so different then the Dave who sat in front of her, filling out the “Blessed Event” 
greeting card and spilling some mutton vindaloo on the envelope. Did he know that she wasn’t thrilled 
about the idea of having kids with him? Could he tell? She cared about him so much, she couldn’t bear to 
hurt him. And yet, she wondered what would happen if they found the linkway again. Would she stay with 
this Dave, or run into her Dave’s arms and never look back?

“You ready?” asked Lister.
Kochanski was startled. Could he read what she was thinking? “Ready for what?”
“To give the Cats their presents.” 
“Oh, sure.”
“Maybe next year at this time, the Cats’ll be doing the same for us,” smiled Lister. 
Kochanski said nothing, but she squeezed Lister’s hand, as they headed out the door.

11
“So John was seventeen by now and he was already about six foot three. I mean, the rack had done its 
work,” Rimmer was saying. He and Price were lounging in the back of the Starbug which was tracking a 
nearby derelict. Kitty sat at the table, sewing some elaborate baby clothes. 
“He was at least six inches above the minimum height for Space Corps so he told Dad, ‘No more 
stretching.’ Naturally Dad went crackers and tried to force John on the rack, but John was a lot bigger than 
Dad and he hit him.”
“Oh Lord…” said Price.
“And I got upset and said, ‘You leave Dad alone Johnnie!’ But Dad actually got mad at me. ‘Don’t you 
think I can defend myself, you little twit!’ he yelled. Then he and John both strapped me to the rack and 
went off to the battle reenactment. I was on the thing for about seven hours before Mother got home. Then 
she wouldn’t take me off because she said I probably deserved it. Frank finally unstrapped me around 
dinnertime.” 
Price gaped at Rimmer in horror. For awhile they had been exchanging awful childhood stories, but his 
always beat hers by a long shot. 
“I can’t believe you lived through that…” she said. 
Rimmer was blasé about it, as always. “Oh well, I got out eventually. It made me who I am today, after 
all.”
“Yeah, a mess,” interjected Kitty. 
“Kitty!” said Price. She was surprised at how much they had in common once they started talking about 
their families. Her older sister Beryl was a compendium of Rimmer’s perfect brothers. Beryl was a lawyer 
with a perfect career, perfect social life, a perfect husband, and a perfect little son who played the clarinet 
in the Callisto Children’s Orchestra. As a child, Dorie could never measure up, and even though her 
parents weren’t as blatant about it as Rimmer’s, she knew that she disappointed them in many ways. When 
she went to study Culinary Arts instead of medicine or law, they had smiled thinly and said, “That’s nice, 
Dorie. Who knows, it might lead to something big.” Why did it have to lead to something big, she 
wondered. She just wanted to be a chef. Of course, even that modest ambition didn’t work out because she 
couldn’t find work at any nice restaurants, and finally, when she was about to borrow money to pay the 
rent, she signed up with the Space Corps Catering Division. Oh yes, she could understand Rimmer all right, 
and it was nice that he could understand her.

“You know Arnie,” she said. “The tragedy of your life isn’t that you didn’t become an officer…It’s that 
you had the wrong ambitions. I’ll bet you could have really excelled at a lot of careers but your parents 
drummed the Space Corps into your head from such a young age, you never opened yourself to any other 
possibilities.”
Rimmer stared at Price with astonishment. No one had ever suggested that he could have excelled at 
anything, except being a smeghead. 
“You really mean that?” he asked, some traces of the old suspicion returning.
“Yes, I’m always honest with you, Arnie. You’re like Willy Loman, you know that?”
“Willy Loman?”
“Yes, in ‘Death of a Salesman’. When he dies, his son says, ‘He had all the wrong dreams.’ I’ll have to 
show that to you one of these days.”
Rimmer grinned. He loved movie nights with Dorie. Sometimes she would run her vids in the ship cinema 
for the whole crew, but the best nights were when it was just the two of them, and Holly would whip up 
some hologrammatic popcorn that wasn’t half-bad. The algorithm of butter certainly tasted more real than 
your average movie-theatre fare. 

Suddenly, Cat ran into the room in a panic.
“Kitty babe! Duck and cover! We’re gonna become a Starbug souffle!” And true to form, he ran out 
without giving any further explanation.
“Oh dang!” yelled Kitty, and she hauled her hugely pregnant form out of the chair and crouched under the 
table. Rimmer and Price ran into the drive area and were confronted with a beautiful yellow planet, flecked 
with red storms, which would have been really lovely to look at, were it not approaching the Starbug at an 
alarming rate. 
“What the smeg is going on!” yelled Rimmer.
“This planet - we think it’s a - what’d ya call it, Kryte?”
“A gestalt creation Mr. Lister. I believe it was part of a twenty-fourth century scheme to terraform planets 
quickly by harnessing the personalities of deceased people. Their emotions become a gestalt entity which, 
in theory, should terraform the planet according to the specifications they were given. But something went 
wrong. The emotions became negative and evil.”
“Right. How would you feel if you lost your body and were turned into a patch of dirt?” added Kochanski.
“But why’s it pulling us in?”
“It desires new blood, Mr. Rimmer. Or rather, new emotions. Imagine being trapped with the same 
personalities for millennia upon millennia with no hope of escape.”
“I don’t have to imagine it! That’s my everyday life,” said Cat as he turned the wheel violently. It had no 
effect on their trajectory. The Starbug was trapped in some kind of  tractor beam.
Lister was getting panicked, punching in controls with no success. “So it’s gonna crash us into the planet 
and kill us and we’ll be stuck as a part of their primordial soup for the rest of eternity?”
“Yes, unless we can pull out of this tractor beam, Sir.”
“Well, that settles it,” exclaimed Rimmer. “Ready the escape pod.”
“Oh Rimmer, stop being such a Judas! You stay right there or I’ll throw you to those gestalt people as an 
appetizer.”
“I didn’t mean for me, I meant for Dorie and Kitty.”
Lister looked at Rimmer, astounded. In the six years he’d known him, Rimmer had never done one selfless 
thing. 
“Good thinking, Goalpost Head - much as I hate to admit it. My Kitty-Cat and her load have got to be 
safe.”
“Arnie, I’m fine, really.”
“No, you can’t stay here. There’s room for two small people in that pod and you’ve got to get back to the 
Dwarf.”
“It’s a moot point anyway, Rimmer, we’re talking impact in five minutes,” said Kochanski. “There’s no 
time-” suddenly a scream rang out from the back room. It was Kitty.
“Caaaaat!” she hollered. 
Cat was torn. “I can’t leave the controls,” he shouted. “See how she’s doing!”
Kochanski was already running to the back, where she discovered Kitty, still under the table, but she was 
moaning in pain and a puddle of water surrounded her. 
Lister was right behind. “What the smeg happened?” he asked.
“What does it look like? Her water broke.” Then, to Lister’s discomfort, Kochanski lifted up Kitty’s skirt 
and started poking around.
“Cripes! She must be five centimeters dilated. They’re coming at any moment!”
“Oh smeg,” said Lister, craning his neck to see the situation in the drive area. The gestalt planet kept on 
getting closer. 
“Get Cat,” cried Kitty. “I need him!” 
“I’m sorry Kitty,” said Kochanski gently, “but we need him at the controls right now. He’s the best pilot 
we’ve got. I’ll help you.”
“No Krissy, they need you out there to navigate. I’ll do the delivery.” Lister grimaced and rolled up his 
sleeves. 
Kochanski smiled. This was something her Dave would have done. She went back into the drive area, 
passing Rimmer and Price on the way. 
“Kitty’s having her litter,” she said.
“Really,” exclaimed Price, and she rushed in to see. Rimmer took one look at what was going on and 
fainted dead away. 
“Smeg, just what we need. Two patients. Do I look like Dr. Kildare?” Lister asked. 
“Owww, you’re hands are freezing Cloister! Get away.” Kitty tried to kick him. 

This won’t be so bad, Lister told himself. After all, hadn’t he helped his Gran’s dog Hannah give birth 
when he was ten? Okay, so he almost killed them by trying to feed them kibble when all they wanted was 
their mother’s milk; how was he supposed to know that? And there was no Gran around now to hit him 
with a wooden spoon; he would handle this professionally. Then Kitty screamed like hell, and he wished 
that Gran was nearby, spoon and all. 

In the drive area, Kochanski thought it best not to tell Cat what was going on. They needed his 
concentration, and Lord knows the Cat didn’t have much of that to begin with.
“Are you getting anything on sensors, Kryte?” she asked.
“The entities that make up this gestalt are communicating to us in a strange frequency ma’am. I am 
accessing translation mode...Oh my,” said Kryten, always the soul of understatement.
“What is it?” cried Cat, trying another tricky maneuver to break the tractor beam.
“The gestalt entity craves our consciousness. It needs to feed off our negative emotions to fuel its 
weakening hold on the planet.”
“What is it?” repeated the Cat.
“God, Kryten, if we get sucked in there will we become vile and vicious like the rest of the entity?” asked 
Kochanski. “What am I saying, that’s the way we are now...”
“It’s no use,” yelled the Cat. “We’re going down! Oh why do I have to die in my ninth favorite suit? If 
only I’d worn the-” he was cut short by the sound of a baby’s cry. And then another. And another. 
Lister yelled joyously from the back, “It’s a boy, and a girl, and a boy! Kitty, you did it!”
“I’m a dad?” cried the Cat. He abandoned his post and ran to the back. Kryten immediately grabbed the 
controls and started to ask Kochanski for instructions but she was almost out the door.
“Ms. Kochanski, we’re going down! Impact in thirty seconds.”
Kochanski shrugged. “That’s thirty seconds to hold a baby and be happy. I’m taking it.” and she left.
Kryten looked out the window just in time to see the murky yellow ocean collide with the Starbug.

In the back, everyone was gathered around the new arrivals, and everyone who could were taking turns 
holding the kittens. Even though they felt Starbug sink into the ocean, they didn’t much care; the joy was 
infectious. All of the Cat’s pearly whites were showing, and even Rimmer, once revived by Price, cracked 
a smile. 

At the helm, Kryten watched helplessly as the Starbug sunk through the murky, honey-like substance of the 
gestalt ocean. Thousands of transmissions from the entity flooded the craft’s computer, until deciphering 
became impossible. Kryten tried to be accepting. So they were going to die and have their consciousnesses 
sucked up into a giant gestalt entity. At least there would be no more Hammond organ recital nights. And 
no more scraping Mr. Lister’s underpants clean. Maybe part of Kryten’s consciousness could go on to 
Silicon Heaven, he reflected. It just goes to prove that there’s an up side to every situation, he thought.

Then, out of the blue, or rather the murky yellow, some enormous pressure pushed the Starbug up. Kryten 
could feel it rising to the top at ever increasing speed. The rest of the crew hardly noticed because they 
were too enraptured with the triplets. Then they felt the Starbug soar out of the ocean, almost as if the 
murky soup had spit the little craft up like a well chewed piece of tobacco. Lister ran to Kryten’s side and 
confirmed what he hoped was true. The Starbug was flying through space again, careening away from the 
planet propelled by the very same tractor beam that had hauled it down. 
“What happened, Kryten?” he asked. “Why did they let us go?”
“I believe the translation makes it clear sir. Their language is a bid cloudy but it’s something to do with us 
all being ‘too disgustingly happy’. Seems they’re so used to negativity and bile that we were like the 
proverbial glucose-coated boiled sweet to a diabetic.” 

12
Sitting in the Officer’s Lounge, which had long since been converted into a sitting room for distinctly non- 
officer types, Kochanski regarded Price. The hologram was reading a book with help of Bob, her favorite 
skutter, while Ted, her second favorite skutter, rocked little Cat Junior in his cradle. Despite, Rimmer’s 
protests, the cats had found a way for holograms to babysit, although Price really didn’t mind that much.

Price looked different, Kochanski thought. For one, she was wearing her hair differently. Sometimes she let 
it hang loose, or had Holly give it some curl. And she varied the uniforms she wore, today in a green 
navigator’s dress uniform. But it was something else. Her face was different; she sort of...glowed. And 
there was no question that the woman had changed. She wasn’t nearly as edgy and hostile as she’d been 
when they first generated her, when she looked at everyone with suspicious eyes. It couldn’t be true, could 
it, thought Kochanski. It just couldn’t. Not Rimmer. How could any woman with the slightest degree of 
taste have a thing for Rimmer? But that’s just what Dave insisted had happened. Kochanski was sure he 
was just saying that so it would look like his plan had worked. But watching Price, Kochanski began to 
wonder.

“Dorie,” she said pleasantly, “I was just thinking. It’s been nearly six months since you joined us.”
“Hmmm? Has it been that long, Kris? It’s really flown.”
“Certainly has. So, do you still regret not erasing yourself on the first day?”
Price laughed. “Oh no. I’m glad Arnie talked me out of it. I’ve really enjoyed myself. I know this sounds 
mad, but I’ve probably had a better time in the last six months of my death than I had at almost any point 
during my life.”
“I don’t find that mad at all...I’m sure Rimmer would say the same.”
“You think?” Price brightened noticeably.
“Oh sure. You should have known him before the accident. No, come to think of it, it’s just as well you 
didn’t. He was the most insufferable, bureaucratic git you could ever imagine. Made Dave’s life hell. I 
remember for awhile he had this petition going around to make his silly salute the Space Corps standard.”
Price giggled a little but she didn’t look too comfortable with Kochanski’s choice of topic. 
“Well,” she said, looking back at her book, “we all of us have our quirks...”
She’s defending him, thought Kochanski. Proof number one. Time to try a different tack.
“Of course. I can’t believe some of Dave’s foibles...but he’s changed a lot since we got together. Cleaned 
up his act quite a bit. Same thing with Rimmer.”
Price’s head snapped up. “How d’you mean?”
“He seems a lot...happier. I’ve actually seen him smile a few times. And he laughs much more, and not 
always at other people’s expense. And he’s just generally more relaxed and less of an irritating smeghead 
than he was.”
“You mean, before the accident?” asked Price.
“No, I mean, within the last six months or so,” replied Kochanski. She carefully watched Price’s reaction. 
“Since he’s known you,” she added, for good measure.
Price looked down at her book again, uncomfortably. “Maybe he just needed a friend,” she said, then 
quickly amended it. “Not that Dave hasn’t been a great friend to him, and all of you...but maybe he just 
needed someone who could understand.”
“You mean understand what it’s like to be a hologram?”
“Yes...and a lot of other things.” She paused. Kochanski sensed that silence would get her more 
information than a bunch of questions. 
Sure enough, Price continued, “Arnie and I are very similar in many ways. It’s funny, I’ve never had a 
close male friend...I never thought they’d understand. But Arnie understands me better than almost anyone 
I’ve ever met. He doesn’t always say the right thing...Hell, sometimes he stumbles around so much trying 
to say the right thing that I laugh and he makes me feel better one way or the other. Why just the other day, 
we were talking in the Drive Room and I said-” and then Price stopped, aware that Krissy’s eyes were 
burning into her. She had said too much and she knew it. She didn’t trust Krissy enough to bare her soul to 
the woman.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I’m glad that Arnie and I are such good friends. C’mon Ted, let’s take Cat Jr. 
for a walk. See you later Krissy.” And she left with the stroller-pushing skutter by her side.
And Kochanski had her answer. Hard as it was - no, impossible as it was to believe, Dorie was in love with 
Arnold J. Rimmer.

With sparehead two now firmly in place on Kryten’s neck, Rimmer was studying the 4000 series manual, 
to find some remedy for the droid’s wonky vision. Replacing his head had not worked, so it wasn’t the 
eyes themselves. Kryten suggested it must be something in the CPU, so Lister had gone off to search for 
some more tools while Rimmer read the incomprehensible technical writing aloud to Kryten.
“If the elliptical diode in the retinal scanner located at section B5937D shows signs of shrinkage…” 
Rimmer was saying.
“Shrinkage! Hardly likely. A ridiculous, impractical suggestion on the part of that outdated manual,” said 
Kryten, his vision now switching from triple to quadruple. “Now section B5938D I could see shrinking, 
but… Oh sir, it’s no use. We’d better wait till Mr. Lister comes back. One way or another, he always fixes 
the problem.”
“Yes, but out of sheer luck, not any particular skill. I can’t believe you entrust your CPU to his ham-
handed repair skills. Remember the time he had to saw you in half and you wound up walking backwards 
when he repaired you? I was just telling Dorie about that the other night, and she even said, ‘Isn’t there a 
Space Corps directive against Lister using a chainsaw?’”
“With respect, Sir, Mr. Lister has done his best to keep me in good repair despite a lack of formal training. 
I doubt you or Miss Price could do a better job, were you able to touch anything.”
“Y’know Kryten, you’d be surprised what holograms can do. Just look at that meal Dorie made for 
everyone the other night. Now granted, she had the skutters do the manual labor, but it was her inspiration 
that made it so superb.”
“Yes, it was splendid, sir. Ironic that you could not enjoy it yourselves.”
“Oh but we could, because she whipped up the same meal with holo-food for just the two of us the next 
day. And usually I hate holo-food, but Dorie’s cooking made it almost seem like the finest restaurant on 
Ganymede.”
Kryten looked at Rimmer. Or rather all four Rimmers because his vision was fast becoming insectoid. 
Something was wrong with Mr. Rimmer’s face, Kryten realized. He studied the hologram for more data on 
what it could be. Then he came upon it: Rimmer was smiling. And not the nasty smirk he sported whenever 
Lister suffered an accident of some kind, or the diplomatic smile he forced whenever they greeted some 
Gelfs, but a genuine grin which bisected his face. His features were not twisted into their usual 
contemptuous, frustrated scowl. Why, one would even say he had an air of contentment, but since Rimmer 
had never shown any contentment before, it was hard to say what that expression would look like. 

Kryten puzzled over what this new phenomena could mean, and then he remembered something that Lister 
had said. 
“Sir,” began Kryten, “I can’t help but point out that you have mentioned Miss Price by name or pronoun no 
less than sixteen times in the last fifteen minutes.”
Rimmer looked startled. “Really? So…what’s wrong with that?”
“Well sir, based on what Mr. Lister has told me, and speaking from experience with the humans I’ve 
served in the past, your behavior of late indicates that you might be suffering a chemical imbalance 
triggered by Miss Price.”
“Chemical imbalance? What are you driveling about, Kryten? I’m a hologram, I don’t have any chemicals 
in me to get imbalanced.”
“You do have a point there sir. I suppose you’re right; it can’t be love at all.”
“Of course n-” Rimmer said vaguely and then stopped. He stared at Kryten. 
“Love? I thought you were talking about a chemical imbalance.”
“I was sir. In the late twenty-third century, scientists proved beyond a doubt that love is a chemical 
imbalance that can be temporary, as in the case of many people working in the entertainment industry, or 
long lasting, even lasting beyond the death of  one of the parties.”
Rimmer paced around. “So…why are you bringing it up? Are you saying that I’m…”
“I only point out Mr. Rimmer, that you have shown all six indications of a man in love.”
“Six?”
“Yes sir. You’ve taken to smiling a great deal for no apparent reason, you have twice pointed out the 
significance of song lyrics, you’ve taken up hobbies that Miss Price enjoys, you’ve been spotted singing 
when you think no one’s listening, you’ve started keeping track of occasions, such as Miss Price’s 
birthday, you showed selfless regard for her well being when you suggested she use the escape pod, you’ve 
begun talking about the future in a positive way, and in general you’ve stopped being a total smeeee-
heeee,” said Kryten, unable to complete the insult, as usual. 
“That was seven.”
“Well the last one is just something that Mr. Lister threw in.”
“Lister! You mean you’ve discussed this? I don’t believe what I’m hearing. For the record, Kryten, Dorie 
and I are just friends. No matter what nefarious purposes Lister generated her for, I don’t think of her that 
way at all. So you can all stop your ridiculous matchmaking!”

Just then, Lister walked back in with his repair-a-droid kit. Damn! How much had he heard, wondered 
Rimmer. 
But all Lister said was, “Ay, Kryte, still seeing two of me?”
“It’s dividing into five now, sir, sir, sir, sir and sir.”
“I’ll soon get you fixed up.”
“I think his mind’s going too,” said Rimmer, but Lister just looked at him and smirked. Smirked as if he 
knew something. Damn! He had overheard. 

Rimmer sulked in his chair pretending to read the manual. Lister had such gall making assumptions about 
the way he felt. The festering gimboid, he had no right! The extenuating fact that the assumptions were true 
in no way altered the inappropriateness of their being bandied about, he thought, fuming. 

Smeg! How had Lister noticed? Did that mean everyone could see it? Could Dorie see it? He thought he’d 
covered it up so well, but as usual, he’d bungled everything. God, he hoped Dorie couldn’t see it. She 
wouldn’t want to spend any time alone with him anymore if she knew what he thought about when he 
looked at her. 

It was just sex, he told himself. It was only natural. He’d been without it for so long, and she was a 
hologram; the only woman in the universe that he could have, so of course he found himself wanting her. 
That was just lust, it certainly wasn’t love. He remembered the motto of the Love Celibate Society, which 
he’d joined for awhile during his tenure on the Dwarf: “Love is a device invented by bank managers to 
make us overdrawn.” Kryten was right, it was just a chemical imbalance, a sickness, a myth. And he was 
sure that Dorie, being a sensible girl, would feel much the same. Now he would have to block all this out of 
his mind because he was going to her quarters to watch a film tonight. As he left Lister and Kryten and 
walked toward the lift, his smile, quite beyond his control, returned.

13
Rimmer spent part of the evening helping Price reorganize her video collection. Once they settled on 
categories (did “Tearjerker” count, and was “Mystery” really that discrete from “Thriller”?), there was the 
problem of whether the order should be chronological or alphabetical, or perhaps grouped by director. This 
was ideal work for them since they were both so anal-rententive. Bob the skutter stacked and restacked as 
they crawled around the floor examining titles, Price insisting that Rimmer had to see all of them. 
Dorie couldn’t know it, Rimmer thought, but every brush of her arm against his was a small ecstasy. He 
had not really touched her since the night of her birthday, and he was taking the opportunity of her 
nearness to steal a little human contact. 

“Oh, now this is a funny one. We’ve got to watch this. Come on, the alphabetizing can wait. Put this in the 
player, Bob.”
So they watched “When Harry Met Sally,” and Rimmer had to admit it was funny. He usually thought love 
stories were utter bilge, but this one had a cynical edge that he appreciated. Of course, the diner scene 
made him turn as scarlet as his uniform, and Dorie mercifully excused herself to get them some popcorn 
from a vending machine. When it was over, Dorie was doing that female thing of basking in the glow of a 
happy, romantic ending. Rimmer had no idea what to say.
 
“Well, that did give me a good laugh,” he ventured, jumping up. “Clever writing and all. Good characters.”
Price got up and followed him to the door. 
“Y’know what I like about that story?” she said. “They were friends first before they were lovers. They 
really got to know each other, all their foibles and quirks, and then they fell in love.” She smiled.

Rimmer looked at her. Was she trying to tell him something? Or was it just idle chitchat? He could never 
tell. But she came a little closer to him and he felt his hologram heart skip a few beats.
“So, thanks for all your help with the vids,” said Price. “I’m umm…glad you could come tonight…”
“Indeed,” said Rimmer, too high pitched. “I always look forward…I mean, it’s always a pleasant 
evening…” He trailed off. She was looking up at him. She couldn’t possibly…No, she couldn’t really want 
him to kiss her, could she? 
A long moment passed. Then Rimmer made an elaborate show of looking at his watch and exclaimed, 
“Smeg, eleven forty already! Got to go. I’ve got to tell Lister…something.” His face turned a sickly shade 
of yellow and he backed out the door unsteadily.
“Bye Arnie,” said Price, quietly.
“Right! So long, sleep well, toodly-pipsky!” he yelled as he rushed down the hall. 
Lister, he thought. Must find Lister.

14
“I’m what?” said Lister, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“I said you were right, don’t make me repeat it again, you prat.”
“Right? Right about what?”
Lister was pouring himself some lager in the Happy Astro Bar as Rimmer paced around nervously. 
“About Dorie and I.”
Lister beamed. “No kidding? Did you two hit the springs, Rimmer?”
“No we didn’t ‘hit the springs,’ you tactless orangutan! I mean, you were right about…about the way I 
feel.”
“And what way is that?” grinned Lister, sipping his lager. 
“Don’t make me say it, Lister. I can scarcely believe it myself. I need some advice, and I can’t believe I’m 
going to you but there’s no one else.”
“How can I give you advice if I don’t know what you’re talking about?” Lister asked with a smirk. 
“All right, you’re not gonna be happy until you’ve embarrassed me, are you?”
“Nope,” said Lister.
“Fine. I’m very…I have certain feelings…Dorie and I…I think that maybe-”
“Spit it out, Rimmer!”
“I love her, you smeghead!” yelled Rimmer shoving his face about two inches from Lister. Lister smiled 
his widest, merriest smile and raised his can of lager straight through Rimmer’s face.
“Cheers, Rimmsy. So you have a heart after all.” 
Rimmer straightened up, quite dazed. Until he’d said it, he hadn’t really allowed himself to believe it. But 
now a smile played across his thin lips. Of course he loved her, he thought. How could he not? 

“At first I thought it was just…you know, physical. Having another hologram around to touch and all. But 
I’ve lusted after plenty of women, Kochanski included-”
“Hey!” exclaimed Lister. 
“…but I never felt about anyone the way I feel about Dorie.”
“Brutal! So what’s the prob?”
“The ‘prob’ is I don’t know if she feels the same way. And I don’t know how to approach it. We’ve got 
such a good thing going now, I don’t want to lose it, and the thought of her rejecting me when I’m the only 
hologram here…”
“You don’t have to worry so much, Rimmer. First of all, Dorie feels the same way about you.”
“Did she say so?” Rimmer’s eyes brightened with hope.
“Mmm… not in so many words. But let’s just say that Krissy can tell.”
“Marvelous,” Rimmer sunk into a chair, defeated. “I’ve got to rely on that scientifically proven concept of 
female intuition to decide whether to make an arse of myself in front of her.”
“Listen, we pulled your confidence out of the grave when we visited the planet of your mind, right? Don’t 
tell me it’s crawled back in again? She likes you Rimmer. Don’t ask me why in God’s black universe, but 
the woman actually likes you. So why don’t you ask her on a proper date? Just the two of you. Go to 
Parrot’s Café.”
“Then she’ll know something is up,” said Rimmer, his eyes darting around with panic.
Lister leaned close, using the special voice he usually reserved for explaining things to the Cat. “That is the 
point, Arnold.”
“But I haven’t been on a date in seven years,” he whined. “And I was never any good at it to begin with. I 
never know what to say or do.”
“Just be yourself. For some deranged reason, she seems to like that.”
“I don’t know, Lister. Maybe if I wait a while…”
“See this mug of lager?” he asked, “You don’t ask her out tomorrow, and I’m dropping your light-bee in 
this and leaving it to rot.”
Rimmer snorted with contempt. “You don’t scare me, Lister. You wouldn’t-” 
Lister flung his hand into Rimmer’s middle and the hologram watched helplessly as Lister located his light 
bee and positioned his finger over the off switch. 
“You choose, Rimmer. A date with Dorie or a foamy death. What’s it gonna be?” 
“I’ll ask her, I’ll ask her! Let go of my light bee!” he yelled. Lister, satisfied, withdrew his hand and took 
another sip from his mug.
“That was a horrible thing to do to a hologram!”
“Yeah, but it was brilliant fun,” said Lister, his merriest grin returning again.

15
Price looked in the full length mirror, unsatisfied. She was never satisfied with her appearance, and tonight 
she was even less satisfied than usual. 
“C’mon, said Kitty, who was nursing all three of her babies, Cat Jr., Felicity, and Tom, at once, Cat 
physiology allowing such a thing. 
“Ya look good. It’s flashy, it’s chic. It’s got style, babe!” 
“I just don’t think it’s me,” said Price. She had to squint because of the twinkling sequins that adorned her 
dress. 
“I don’t want him to think I went overboard…” Price sighed miserably. She wasn’t even sure if this was a 
date. What if Arnie just wanted to chat as always and she showed up looking like a Miss Solar System 
contestant without the silicon enhancements? 
But he’d never asked her to Parrot’s Café before. There had to be something special going on. She hadn’t 
felt this nervous in years, not since the first time she’d went out with Steven, her second, and last, lover. 
Steven, the doctor, who left the Dwarf to do research in cloning theory at Triton University Hospital. Of 
course, by the time he left, he’d dumped her for Krissy Kochanski’s roommate Barbara. What were the 
odds of that, Price wondered. It was a small Dwarf after all. 

“Oh no, this will never do,” said Kochanski, walking in to Price’s quarters. “Kitty, you’ve got her looking 
like a Mimian whore.”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked Kitty, fiddling around with Felicity’s pacifier.
“Here, have Holly try this,” said Kochanski, holding out a simple, but elegant blue dress. “I found this in 
my friend Sheila’s closet. She was about your size and she always had good taste. Holly, take a look, and 
put Dorie’s hair up in a Ganymede twist.”
“Righto,” said Holly. She analyzed the dress’s color, fabric, size, and contour. “Here goes.”
Then Price went out of focus for a second and returned in Sheila’s dress. 
Kochanski didn’t say anything for a moment. She remembered the dowdy figure that had emerged in the 
drive room six months ago. There was no trace of her now as Price turned around in front of the mirror. 
She was still not going to win any beauty contests, but something was making her beautiful tonight.

“Oh what does I matter what I wear?” yelled Rimmer who was in a ridiculous lavender morning suit that 
Cat had recommended. 
“I look like a complete git in this and I’m sure Dorie’s not going to get dolled up herself. Just give me back 
my uniform, Holly. 
He shifted out of focus and came back in his old khaki tech uniform, the one he had long since abandoned 
for more prestigious attire. 
“Not this one Holly! I want to look somewhat presentable.”
“Tell him, Dave,” said Holly.
“I think Holly’s trying to say that it’s this or you dress up. Make your choice.”
“Ohhh, not another of your choices. Are you going to flush my light bee down the bog if I don’t wear a tie 
or something? Fine, just give me a normal suit. None of the Cat’s Liberace costumes.”
“Give him the one I pinched from Todhunter’s wardrobe, Hol.” 
And Rimmer was suddenly dressed in a very well made gray suit with a conservative black tie.
“I’m gonna give you a blue tie, Arnold. It’ll go better with your eyes.”
“What color are his eyes, anyway?” asked the Cat. “He squints so damn much I can’t tell.”
“Stop it!” yelled Rimmer as a sky blue tie appeared around his neck. “I feel like some pre-pubescent girl’s 
Ken doll! Enough wardrobe changes!”
“You don’t need any more,” said Lister. “Much as it kills me to say it, you’re actually looking sharp 
Rimmer.”
“Sharp? Hell, he’s just moved up a notch from pile of mush to limp piece of spaghetti. No one on this ship 
deserves to be called ‘sharp’ except yours truly,” crowed the Cat. 
“Are we done?” sighed Rimmer.
“No we’re not. Remember what we talked about before? Repeat after me.”
“Lister…”
“Repeat after me! I will not talk about past Risk games.”
“I will not talk about past Risk games.”
“I will not complain about my parents.”
“I will not complain about my parents.”
“I will not tell stories about my horrible childhood.”
“I will not tell stories about my horrible childhood.”
“I will not ask Holly to play any Reggie Wilson or James Last.”
“I will not…Why not? What’s wrong with a little Hammond music?”
“Because you can’t dance to it.”
“So? Who’s gonna be dancing?”
“You are, smeghead.”
“Now you’re really overdoing it, Lister. I’ve never danced in my life, and I’m certainly not going to try it 
tonight and turn Dorie’s feet into mincemeat.”
Lister groaned, exasperated. “Haven’t you gotten anything out of those old movies she shows us? You’ve 
got to dance with her; that’s the moment when all the couples fall in love.”
“Are you insane?”
“Think about it, Rimmer. What better way to get close to her without having to exactly make a move? It’s 
just a dance, see? No commitment, but you’re pressed up nice and tight, feeling every contour, every soft 
curve, every little heartbeat…” Lister was lost in reverie. Rimmer’s eyes dilated.
“Really?” he squeaked
“I’m gonna go find Kitty and turn on some Barry White,” yelled Cat and he ran out of the room.
“Really,” smiled Lister. “So just have Holly turn on the music I’ve helpfully pre-selected for you, and trip 
the light fantastic.”
“More likely I’ll just trip. I don’t know how to dance, Lister!”
“Oh fine, I’ll show you. Just hold your hand up like this. C’mon, and your other hand down here. Okay, 
now pretend I’m Dorie…”

Kryten walked in on a strange scene indeed. There was Mr. Lister and Mr. Rimmer dancing together, 
although not too successfully. Lister was leading and every time he turned or changed position in some 
way, he would go straight into Rimmer’s hologram body.
“You’re supposed to follow my lead, dammit,” said Lister.
“How can I follow your lead? I can’t feel what you’re doing.”
“Then watch me!”
“How can I watch your legs from this position?”
“Excuse me sirs, but it is almost eight o’clock.” 
The two dance partners quickly broke their formation in great embarrassment. 
“That...wasn’t what it looked like Kryten.”
“No need to explain Mr. Lister. I’m glad to see you are both putting aside masculine taboos and expressing 
a healthy affection for each other.”
Rimmer looked at Lister with total disgust. 
Lister sniggered. “Speaking of affection, shouldn’t you be heading off to Parrot’s?”
“Yes, I guess I should,” said Rimmer. When he reached the door, he turned back, seeming to search for 
words.
“Good luck, Smeghead,” said Lister. “Now get going.”
Rimmer smiled weakly and was out the door.

“Mr. Lister, a question about human mating practices: are first dates usually this traumatic for the parties 
involved?”
“Yep. And all the other parties who have to listen to them, bolster their miniscule confidence, and teach 
them to dance. But you’ve got to remember that Rimmer’s spent more time with his toy soldiers than 
women.” 
Then Lister was thoughtful for a moment and added, “Nah...it’s not that scary for everyone. I remember me 
first date with Krissy. We strolled through the arboretum. Usually it’s on the guy to plan some jam packed 
evening with dinner, a movie, drinks, dancing, all that lot. But with Krissy and me, we didn’t need all that. 
We just talked for hours. And the amazing thing was she did a lot of the talking herself; it wasn’t just me 
boring her. She was mad about me though. We made love on our second date, and that was a little quick 
even by my standards...I could see later on that she was just slumming it, totally on the rebound from that 
Tom or Tony or whatever his name was. But for those five weeks, Kryte, we were in love.” 
Lister smiled contentedly but then his brow wrinkled.
“Do I detect a certain ambivalence in your attitude, sir?” asked Kryten. 
“I was just thinking, that Krissy is dead. This Krissy, the one that’s here now, isn’t the same woman. No 
matter how similar our lives are, she spent those five weeks with another Dave Lister, in another reality.”
“But surely you’ve always known that Sir.”
“Yeah, but I never gave it much thought. She’s always going on about her Dave this and her Dave that, but 
it works both ways. She’s not really my Krissy. Maybe that’s why things are never quite right between us. 
We’ve been trying to build on something that never existed.”
“Surely not Sir. Why Miss Kochanski couldn’t stand you when she first fell through the linkway. But over 
time she came to appreciate you for who you are.”
“I don’t know if she does Kryten, that’s the problem. I get the feeling she’s always seeing me as a poor 
substitute for her Dave.”
“Perhaps the solution, sir, is to create some new memories with this Miss Kochanski. Go out on a first date, 
start the relationship anew.”
Lister thought it over. “Yeah, that might help, Kryte.” Then he paused and let out a laugh. “Smeg! 
Whoever thought I’d be talking about ‘relationships?’”
“It must be related to that dark day you went into a wine bar, sir.”
“Bite your tongue Kryten!”
Kryten complied but he couldn’t see what help the severing of a few of his taste buds could be to Mr. 
Lister’s romantic problems.

16
Rimmer hurried down the corridors in almost paralyzing trepidation. What the smeg was he thinking? It 
would be a disaster from start to finish, just like everything else in his life. He remembered his last date, 
three million and seven years ago with Yvonne McGruder, the Red Dwarf’s female boxing champion. He’d 
always thought she was sexy as hell but she didn’t exactly move in his circles so he’d never had the 
courage to even approach her. Then he was mopping the floor in Shuttle Bay 12 one day and he’d seen 
Yvonne get hit on the head by a massive winch that had snapped loose from a front loading mining 
transport. Rimmer had been one of the first by her side and as they loaded her onto the stretcher, she’d 
given him such a look of gratitude that his heart jumped into his throat. 

It was the perfect opportunity, he thought. She had a concussion, and he’d done her a kindness, so perhaps 
her once-in-a-lifetime combination of gratitude and impaired judgment would make her agree to go out 
with him. He asked her right there before they wheeled her away. 
“Sure Norman,” she smiled.
“It’s Arnold,” he called after her. But the name thing didn’t bother him. He had a date with Yvonne 
McGruder! He heard the next day that she had checked herself out of the medical bay early, so he decided 
to surprise her by bringing her some pizza. When she opened the door of her quarters, she was still wearing 
the bandages on her head, making her look a bit like a Buddhist sage. 
“You brought me pizza? Oh Norman, that’s so thoughtful.”
“It’s Arnold, remember?” he asked “Arnold Rimmer.”
“Oh, right...” she said and smiled weirdly. For about five minutes, they ate the pizza as Rimmer chatted 
inanely. He knew he was blithering, but he was too nervous to stop. The whole time, Yvonne eyed him 
with a strange smile on her face. Then, without warning, she jumped up and climbed into his lap. 
“Do it to me, babe,” she said.
“Pardon?” Rimmer asked, his voice an octave above normal. 
“C’mon tiger, let’s loop the loop.” 

Rimmer was still puzzling out the meaning of that when she shoved her tongue down his throat. Thinking 
about it later, he could never figure out how they wound up against her sink, and although he’d never had 
sex in his life - never even come close - somehow nature took its course, very, very quickly. It was 
amazing, it was wild it was...fast, smeg was it fast! But the one unsettling thing was the way she kept 
yelling, “Norman! Norman, yes yes Norman!” 
“Does she even know who the smeg I am?” he wondered in between gasps. 
Apparently she didn’t, because in the days that followed, he’d had to introduce himself to her several times 
when he saw her in the halls, and she’d never betrayed the slightest recognition of him. Rimmer later asked 
Holly how long he’d been in McGruder’s quarters that night. It turned out the whole thing had lasted 
twelve minutes, including the time it took to eat the pizza. And that was the story of how Rimmer lost his 
virginity. 

He couldn’t help thinking about that as he made his way to Parrot’s. He was sorely tempted to turn back, 
tell her his light bee was malfunctioning, some excuse, any excuse to get out of this. He froze in place 
about ten feet from the restaurant door. He couldn’t go in, nor could he turn back.
His self-loathing, a huge and powerful beast, was  having an internal war with his much smaller and 
weaker self-confidence. 
“Are you mad?” Self-Loathing growled. “She doesn’t want you. There’s never been a girl alive who 
wanted you. She’ll just laugh in your face and then you’ll have to see her every day, remembering how she 
laughed in your face, how she didn’t want you even though you were the only man she could have. Your 
only escape from the misery will be to switch yourself off forever. Don’t do it, Rimmer. It’s just not worth 
it.”
But then his Self-Confidence piped up, sounding oddly like Lister’s talking toaster. 
The voice said, simply, “You love her Arnie. You’ve never been in love in your life. You’ve got to take the 
chance. You’ve got to.”

And, strangely enough, the weak little voice of self confidence won. Rimmer took a deep swallow and 
strode through the light-sensitive doors as purposefully as he could. Then he froze in his tracks again 
because he saw Dorie.
She was sitting at a table all alone, wearing the most stunning blue dress. All right, maybe it wasn’t the 
fanciest on the rack, but on her it was stunning. Then she looked up and saw him and her face lit up with a 
smile that could launch a thousand Red Dwarves. At least, that’s what Rimmer thought. How could he ever 
have thought she was plain? 
“Dorie...” he said, and searched for the right words. Finding none that conveyed just how he felt, he settled 
on, “You look beautiful.”
She blushed deeply. “Thank you.”
“Sorry I’m late,” he said and sat down at table.
“Were the boys dressing you?” she asked.
“What makes you think I couldn’t pick out a suit on my own?”
She laughed. “Because I’ve never seen you in anything but a Space Corps uniform. I bet the Cat picked out 
that tie. It really suits you. Brings out your eyes.” Dorie picked at her hologrammatic appetizer nervously. 
Had she overdone it? She had never noticed how green Arnie’s eyes could be. Most of the time they were a 
murky hazel. Funny, she thought, how you can suddenly see someone in a new light. 

Holly served the holograms the best holo-food she could whip up. After an awkward few moments when 
they just stared at each other, Rimmer and Dorie were quickly conversing as they always did, and flouting 
Lister’s orders, Rimmer did tell a couple of awful childhood stories, but only because Dorie liked them. In 
fact, she had taught him that seeing the humor in them took away a lot of the sting. For two hours their 
conversation never flagged, but the one thing they didn’t talk about was why they were there, dressed up, 
in the nicest restaurant on the Dwarf. It was a subject that both were too scared to broach. 

Just as there was a pause in their discussion, Holly suddenly piped up.
“Sorry to interrupt, Arnold and Dorie. But Dave insisted I play some mood music, so here goes.”
With that, the piped in strains of “Can I Have This Dance” filled the room.
Rimmer was first infuriated, but then Dorie said something that made him crack up. 
“Easy Listening. Who’d have thought it of Lister?”
All right, Lister, thought Rimmer. I get the hint. You could have done something subtle like kick me in the 
testicles with a steel tipped flamenco boot. Dorie was looking at the table, the walls, the room, everywhere 
but at Rimmer. 
“It’s now or never,” the little voice of Self-Confidence piped up.
Suddenly, Rimmer heard himself asking Dorie to dance.
She brightened, but then her face fell. “I’m not very good at it.”
“That’s all right, neither am I.”
“Then at least we’re well matched,” she said and cringed. Would he think she was giving him a hint?
For a long moment they just stood there trying to figure out how to start dancing. Then Rimmer put out his 
hand and Dorie took it. The rush of electricity coursed through him again at the touch. Tentatively they 
took a few steps and Rimmer tried to remember what Lister had taught him. It was a lot easier if you could 
feel your partner, he reflected. They were still holding each other at arm’s length when the music changed.

“Oh, I’ve always loved this song,” said Dorie. Then she noticed that Rimmer had gone rigid. 
“The little gimboid,” he said. “He remembered.”
“What is it, Arnie?”
The song playing was “Someone to Watch Over Me.” On the drunken night in which Rimmer had 
confessed his paltry sexual history to Lister he had also told him that if he ever found the right girl, he 
wanted this to be “their” song. 
“Nothing. Just Lister sending me a message,” he said. The song played on and Dorie sang a little of it.
“Won’t you tell him please to pick up some speed / Follow my lead / Oh how I need...”
And Rimmer joined in with, “Someone to watch over me...”
Slowly, imperceptibly, they pulled closer together. Holding her, Rimmer felt totally alive, for the first time 
since the accident. Hell, even before the accident. It wasn’t just that he was touching another person, or 
even a woman, but that he was touching Dorie. Dorie, who had changed his life. 

Dorie strained her neck to look up at Arnie. What was it about him tonight, she wondered. His nostrils still 
flared at the slightest provocation. His unruly hair still sprang away from his scalp as if it had a mind of  its 
own. When she’d first met him, he’d seemed comically unattractive. Right now, he was almost handsome. 
But his face hadn’t changed, of course. She had, and he had, and they - they were just inches apart in their 
own little world, the only sound being the Gershwin melody playing on a saxophone. 

She continued to look up at him. His eyes were closed and he seemed far away. What was he thinking? Did 
he feel about her the way she felt about him? If not, why had he asked her here tonight? Dorie was 
suddenly seized with the old anxiety that had plagued her entire life. She’d wanted so much for him to kiss 
her the other night, but then he’d just sprinted from her room like he couldn’t wait to get away. Was he 
being shy or did he just not want her? 

“Look at me…” she thought and the song suddenly ended.
Rimmer’s eyes opened as he snapped out of his trance and he looked down at Dorie. My God, was she 
really looking at him like that? The music was over but they didn’t break their embrace. Rimmer wanted 
more than anything to kiss Dorie, but he was paralyzed with fear. Images of her vomiting all over the room 
infected his brain, placed there by the Self-Loathing monster.
 “Do it, Arnie,” chirped Self-Confidence. “It’s never gonna be as perfect as it is right now.”
“She’ll spit in your face,” said Self-Loathing.
Oh shut up, said Rimmer to his Self-Loathing. Then he thought, “Geronimo!” and leaned down toward the 
expectant face. 

The kiss lasted four minutes and thirty-six seconds. It could have continued indefinitely since holograms 
don’t need to come up for oxygen. It only ended because Dorie broke away slowly and whispered into 
Arnie’s ear words that he found so incredible, he asked her to repeat them.
The words were: “Come back to my quarters.”

17
Seven hours and fifty three minutes later, when they were both too tired to go on any longer, Rimmer took 
the biggest risk he’d ever taken in his life. Of course, he’d played a lot of Risk games but taken precious 
few real risks throughout his short and unhappy life. But when you were dead, what did you have to lose? 
So almost eight hours after his first “Geronimo!” and twenty minutes after his sixty-fifth, he said 
something very risky indeed to the woman who lay beside him.
What he said was, “Dorie, I love you.” 

This would not have seemed as momentous a statement if Rimmer had not been Rimmer. The truth was 
that in his entire life of thirty-one years living and five years dead, he had never said “I love you” to a 
single soul. Nor had a single soul said it to him. 
Luckily, Dorie knew that. Not because he had ever told her, but because she knew Arnie, and so she knew 
that his statement wasn’t just the idle declarations of afterglow, but the real thing. 
Rimmer immediately regretted opening his mouth and braced himself for any number of disappointing 
responses. He didn’t even consider the response he got which was, “I love you too, Arnie.”

18
Dorie Price gazed at the stars through the super-strong plexiglass dome that formed the Observation 
Bubble. The last week had been really, amazingly blissful. Who knew that she could be so happy with 
someone like Arnie Rimmer? That they could make such a good couple? Who would have guessed that her 
death was becoming so much more satisfying than her life? True, he hadn’t said a word about them moving 
in together, although he’d spent every night at her quarters. And true, he was clearly very inexperienced, 
(twelve minutes against a sink with Yvonne McGruder did not an experienced lover make). But Dorie felt 
he more than made up in enthusiasm what he lacked in technique. She would never be able to watch certain 
old westerns again without getting erotic thoughts whenever Geronimo appeared. She was giggling about 
that when Rimmer walked in.

“Hi there,” he said, and rubbed his hands together, nervously. “Wonderful view, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” she smiled. He could still be so awkward with her, but it was a little endearing. 
“Well…” he said, pacing around. “Well well well well well…”
“Well?”
“Well, you should see the Cat! He’s a total basket case! Spittle over every one of his suits and vomit on his 
steam press. Kitty’s quite perturbed because she spent weeks sewing cashmere nappies and then the kittens 
had to go and use them for what nature intended. I mean, what did she expect!” He laughed loudly, but 
without mirth. His every move betrayed panic.
“I don’t know. They’re cats, they’ve got to be what they’ll be…Arnie, did you have something you wanted 
to talk about?”

Rimmer looked immensely grateful and immensely scared at the same time. 
“Yes. Well, it’s a little awkward, actually. I’ve just been wondering…” and he paused, wondering how to 
phrase it. “You see…I can’t help wondering if you’re with me because…there are no other holograms 
here.”
There, he’d gotten it out. He turned away and looked out of the window so he wouldn’t have to see her 
face when she said “Yes.”
But Dorie smiled and said, “I might very well ask you the same thing.”
Rimmer turned around in surprise. “Oh…right. Of course…Well, I used to think that what I felt for you… 
you know, that it was just the whole hologram thing…you know, all the years of being non-corporeal… 
ummm, and then having someone here who was, errrmm…touchable…”
“You mean it was all about sex?”
Rimmer contorted his face into a painful scrunch. “No! No…I mean…Well, at first I did, yes. But that was 
before…before we ever…”
“Got horizontal?”
Rimmer looked at Dorie. She was having a wonderful time putting him through the ringer. He couldn’t 
look at her face and not smile. 
“I’m blithering on badly, aren’t I? What I’m trying to say is, if we lived in a world of holograms, I’d still 
be madly in love with you. And I wanted to know…how you felt about it.” 
This time, he screwed up his courage and looked at her as she answered.
“If we lived in a world of holograms, and there were hologram men all around to choose from?” Dorie 
asked. “Well…I can’t say I wouldn’t look.”
Rimmer’s brow knitted in pain. Dorie burst out laughing.
“Oh don’t tell me you wouldn’t look, Arnie. I’ve seen you turn pale when Krissy leans over the 
navicomp!”
“That’s hardly the issue!” Rimmer yelled.
“But the point is, out of all the hologram men in the world I’d choose you. And I wish I’d met you on the 
Dwarf before the accident. I was so lonely for such a long time. And I used to think, what if there’s 
someone on this ship who’s totally right for me, but I never meet him. Turns out you were there all along.” 
Rimmer was touched. “We probably passed each other in the halls hundreds of times…Too bad it took 
death for us to meet.”
“I don’t know,” said Dorie. “Maybe it had to be this way. I know I’ve changed since I died, and everyone 
says you have. Why argue with fate? We’re here, we’re alive, in a sense, and we’re in love. I don’t know 
about you, but I’m happy.”
Rimmer couldn’t believe his good fortune. He threw his arms around Dorie’s waist and pulled her off the 
floor so their faces were level. 
“Happy? Am I happy? I never knew the meaning of the word until I met you!” 
After a little snogging, Rimmer suddenly dropped Dorie to the floor.
“Oh smeg! I almost forgot!”
Dorie fell so abruptly that her feet disappeared into the floor before the light-bee compensated and pulled 
her up again.
“Arnie!” she yelled.
But Rimmer was pulling a little black box out of his pocket. 
“The only way you could make me any happier,” he said, “is if you would marry me.” 
And he opened the box, revealing a beautiful hologrammatic diamond ring.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she whispered.

19
“Your best man? Is this a joke, Rimmer?”
“Do I look like I’m joking, Listy?” Rimmer beamed.
“What’s the point of you and Dorie getting married?” asked Kochanski. “It’s not like you have anyone else 
to choose from. ‘Keep only unto her’ would be meaningless.”
“And what about ‘Till death do us part?’” asked Lister. 
“That’s right, we’re already dead,” mumbled Rimmer. “I hadn’t thought of that. Oh well, we’ll throw 
something else in there.” 
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing!” cried Lister. “Rimmer getting married. It’s perverse, it’s pointless, it’s 
insane…”
“We want to do it, you unsentimental prat,” said Rimmer. “If you don’t want to be my best man, I can 
always ask Kryten. He’s a lot less likely to lose the rings down the loo anyway.” 

Dorie walked in and said, “There you all are. I told Kryten and the Cats. Kitty’s so excited she’s already 
designing my gown. I asked Kryten to give me away.”
“There, you see? Kryten’s the father of the bride so you’ll have to be best man. I’m certainly not going to 
have a best cat.”
“And Krissy, would you be my maid of honor?”
Kochanski could scarcely believe that they were having this discussion, but she found herself saying, 
“Sure, why not?”
“Well, Lister?” asked Rimmer. 
Lister thought about it, still incredulous. “What can I say, Smeghead? I’d be happy to stand up for you.” 
“You’re a hell of a guy Listy. I take back all I ever said about you,” said Rimmer. He was in “happiness 
mode” as Kryten would say and nothing was shaking him out of it. He and Dorie ran off to see to their 
wedding plans leaving Lister and Kochanski to puzzle over the whole thing.

“Amazing,” Lister said.
“Well, if they want to go through a silly charade like this, it’s their funeral. Or rather, wedding,” said 
Kochanski. 
 “Abso-smegging-lutely amazing.” What was the point of them staging a wedding, Lister wondered. It 
wouldn’t be real since there was no one authorized to perform the ceremony. And how real could any 
wedding be out in deep space where there was no “society” to declare your vows to anyway? And why 
bother with all the fuss? Why couldn’t they just move in together like he and Krissy, or the cats? It wasn’t 
like there were any other mates for them to choose from. They were only together because there was no 
one else. 

But then Lister thought about it some more. Maybe that was the point. They wanted to tell each other and 
the rest of the crew that they did have a choice. That they hadn’t just fallen into bed together out of a lack 
of other options. That they really loved each other. It was almost touching, Lister thought, if only Rimmer 
weren’t involved.

He looked over at Kochanski. His attempts to recreate their first few dates had been met with amusement 
from her. She went along with it, laughing all the time, never taking it too seriously. His stomach sunk as a 
thought occurred to him: hadn’t he and Krissy just fallen into bed together by default? He wondered what 
she would say if he asked her to marry him. Maybe he would do it right now! 
He took a gulp of lager and blurted out, “Hey Krissy, maybe they’ve got the right idea. Want to make it