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Rimmer was right about one thing. Being dead took some getting used to.
Lister could walk around, sit in chairs, lie in his bunk--lean on anything with a hologram sensor--so it was easy to forget that when he reached for his guitar or his comics, his hand would pass right through them.
"Holly," he said, after he'd played all the 'how fast can I fidget before my leg slides through the floor' he could stand, "I'm bored."
Holly's face appeared on the monitor. "I've got a ship the size of a city hurtling at near light speed with a thousand wiring system errors still unaccounted for and you want me to entertain you?"
"Yeah," said Lister.
"All right," said Holly. "Charades using only your nose?" This was the only kind of charades Holly could reasonably play, and she always played by tilting her head back so that you could see up her nose. "Two words. Early hominid." She tilted her head back so that you could see up her nose.
"Forget it," said Lister. "Here, can you make me a hologram guitar?"
"No," said Holly immediately.
"Why not?"
"It's... too complicated. All those strings."
"Not my guitar," Lister pointed out. "Only two, and they're both G."
Holly appeared to consider this. Then she said, "How about a book?"
A hefty copy of War and Peace appeared in Lister's hands, and the monitor morphed back into a mirror. Lister looked up and startled. Two days and he still hadn't got used to seeing the wrong reflection in the mirror. The hologram's H. The pale skin. Nostrils like a roomy suite for two large badgers. Mirror vertigo aside, it was just plain unsettling to see what appeared to be Rimmer in a T-shirt.
"Hey, Hol," Lister called. "At least give me something good."
"Like what, Dave?" Holly's voice echoed.
"I don't know. Something with pictures." He paused. "Have you got any dirty mags?"
"There is one title in the holographic library listed as 'erotica.'"
"What, only one?"
War and Peace transformed into a slender paperback. On the cover an oil painting depicted a man embracing an amply-breasted blonde in a disheveled red dress. She was partially transparent, his arms visible through her torso, and she appeared to be experiencing the throws of ecstasy. On her forehead, in delicate script, the letter H. "His Hologram Lover!" declared the title.
Lister shrugged Rimmer's shoulders, climbed into his bunk, and opened the book to the middle.
"Darling Renaldo, every moment I cannot touch you is pure agony!" Jadette wailed. "Can it really be that we shall never be one again? That I shall never again know the sweet whisper of your manly hand upon my body?"
"Hush, darling Jadette!" Renaldo ejaculated scornfully. "Do you believe that I can only touch you with my hands? I will touch you with my eyes."
Jadette's emerald eyes widened. Beneath Renaldo's piercing stare, she began to moisten. She extended delicate fingers and swept them over her rapidly blossoming
Just as it was getting good, Lister's own body strolled through the door in a crisp but extremely unflattering uniform.
"Ah, Lister! Slobbing around as usual, are we? No matter; you can't do any harm to my body. I've just come from an invigorating weightlifting... rep. Sesh." Rimmer patted his torso as if he expected to find muscle there.
"Did I just jiggle?" Lister demanded. "You've made me jiggle!"
Rimmer waved a hand. "You've always jiggled."
"I haven't!"
"Relax, will you? Getting into shape takes time. Your body gets worse before it gets better."
"No, it doesn't. You're such a smegging liar, Rimmer. I knew I shouldn't have lent you my body. You're treating it like crap!"
Rimmer seemed nonplussed by the completely true accusations. Then a light dawned. "This is about yesterday, isn't it?"
"You mean when I found you in the gym sitting in a massage chair and drinking gravy through a straw, or when I walked in on you eating a chicken leg and jerking off?"
Rimmer winced. "I wasn't..."
"Oh, what were you doing, then, giving it a rubdown? Lift weights with it, did you?"
Lister's face scowled, and Lister struggled to maintain a stern expression on Rimmer's. It wasn't that he minded, really; he regarded orgasms as a basic right, and he didn't really expect Rimmer to agree to more than the usual level of chastity for two whole weeks. Not when boredom-induced masturbation was the number 1 official Red Dwarf pastime. At the very least, Lister would have expected him to patch up Rachel. It was just strange to walk in on yourself.
"Look, I admit I may have gone a bit..."
"The food I can almost excuse," Lister continued, on a roll, "but it's not like you haven't had the chance for three million years. I know for a fact holograms can touch themselves."
"I'm sure you do," Rimmer snorted. "Unlike you, Lister, not everyone has the impulse control of a bonobo monkey. Some of us are more evolved. Some of us have legitimate things to do with our time."
"Yeah, but you don't," Lister pointed out. "You can't seriously expect me to believe you never..." Lister started to snort laughter, and then shook his head, horrified. "No wonder you're so uptight!"
Rimmer sniffed. "No wonder you never amounted to anything."
"No wonder you were doing it wrong," said Lister.
"Shut up," muttered Rimmer. Lister watched his own face grow redder than he had ever seen it. It obviously bothered Rimmer to discuss the subject. So Lister continued. In an aggrieved tone, he moaned, "Talk about scarring for life. I come in here, my own room, and you've got your greasy hand all over my bits..."
"Your hand," Rimmer corrected sulkily.
"In my bunk, no less! You could have at least snuck around on me behind my back!"
"It's not my fault," said Rimmer, drawing himself up with great dignity. "It's your body. It's depraved."
Lister grinned. "Bigger than you're used to, is it?"
"It's crude," said Rimmer, "and completely lacking in subtlety. There you are going about your day, admiring reproductions of the great works of art, improving your mind, and you happen to foray into the Renaissance nudes, and you've got a Doric column down the front of your Y-fronts. How do you live like that?"
"It's a poor workman who blames his tool," said Lister seriously. He jumped off his bunk and walked out before Rimmer could think of a reply.
*
You would expect from knowing Rimmer, with all his obsession with rank and status, that he'd have a serious lack of goods, but his cock was actually pretty long--long and thin, like the man himself. Lister stroked firmly as he lay in Petersen's bunk (a spot that would not suffer much from witnessing yet another unholy act). Rimmer had fluttered his hand lightly over Lister's cock, like he was afraid to take hold of it. That had to be why he never got himself off--his technique. He was too delicate and cautious. Lister stroked with decisive manliness.
But it felt all wrong. Numb. He got hard, and it felt good, but not amazingly good. Not like it should. His hand was tired before much happened.
He tried thinking his go-to mental images. The wildest exes. The sickest porn. He even thought about the most explicit love scene in His Hologram Lover, which, while too metaphorical to be considered really hot, was fresh in his mind.
Nothing.
Maybe he couldn't. Maybe the book was poorly researched. Maybe holograms just couldn't.
Lister began to feel sorry for Rimmer.
*
Jadette shivered as Renaldo's arm swept through her. "Take me, Renaldo," Jadette moaned. "Enter me now!"
"Is that the hologram erotica?" Rimmer asked, striding into the room with a large sandwich. He rolled his--Lister's--eyes. "Figures."
"Yeah. Have you read it?"
"I wouldn't be caught dead."
"So you have then," said Lister. "Listen to this. 'As Jadette's glowing curves of light surrounded Renaldo's body, a wave of pure pleasure shot through her. She could feel every part of him in every part of her, from the top of their heads to the tips of their fingers. They were one. She enveloped him with her tingling form and shuddered with ecstasy.'"
Rimmer began shaking his head and only got more vehement as Lister continued. "That is the worst drivel I've heard all... well, I've been talking to you, so not in an impressively long amount of time, but only because the other drivel I've heard has been so drivelly."
"It isn't true then?" asked Lister.
"What, the story? Lister, there's something we call 'fiction'..."
"I mean, you don't think a hologram could get off that way." Lister had conducted some preliminary experiments by passing his hand through his guitar a couple of times, but it hadn't given him unusual satisfaction. Still, he thought it best to make sure.
"Of course not. Gooey, sentimental nonsense. The best you'd get from having someone pass through you is a slight tickle and yet another reminder that you're a second-class citizen."
Lister frowned, staring at his own back as Rimmer sat facing away from him, munching on the sandwich. He really hadn't gotten off in two years, had he?
"I'm sorry," said Lister. "I didn't realize."
Rimmer paused and turned around. "Sorry? For what?"
"For you," said Lister. "I guess being in your body has made me sympathetic. So. Sorry."
"Right," Rimmer nodded emphatically. "So you see why we need to arrange a time-share. After all, it's only fair. Why should you get the only properly working body? Weekends, maybe. A week out of every month."
Lister was only half listening. An idea had occurred to him. He snapped his fingers. "The holographic simulation suite!"
His face, on Rimmer, looked quizzical.
"There's computer controls for everything to do with holograms, right?"
"Right," said Rimmer cautiously.
"So you could get yourself off that way!"
"Are you still on that? I don't believe they thought to outfit the control panel with a little button labeled 'orgasm.'"
"No, but they probably have some way to hit the pleasure center. Trick the mind. It's worth a shot, isn't it? Have you tried it?"
"Don't even think about it," said Rimmer sharply. ""You're not allowed in there anyway." Rimmer had made Holly lock the door to the suite so only those expressly permitted by Rimmer could enter it. This was the result of a mishap involving Lister, Lister's ex-girlfriend, and Rimmer's memory.
Lister glanced at himself in the mirror. "I am now," he said.
*
Of course, he couldn't work the control panel with holographic fingers. He realized this as he stood, peering at the display, and trying to remember what the submenus had said, last time he'd been here.
"Ha," said Rimmer from the doorway. "You're really brainless, aren't you? Step aside." He sat down and pushed out the other rolling chair so that it landed across from the control panel. Lister shrugged and sat down as Rimmer began to peer down at the buttons and dials.
Lister watched his own face. His eyes squinted and his tongue protruded slightly from the side of his mouth. He looked remarkably stupid, though he didn't know if that was because of Rimmer's uncertainty with machinery, or if it was his own natural look. He was suddenly nervous. "Just remember this is your body, so if anything--Ow! What the hell?"
"Sorry!"
"You don't sound sorry."
"Well, obviously I've never worked this panel before. There's a learning curve."
"Let me see it."
"No. Stay there. There's nothing more irritating than backseat control paneling."
"Then how come whenever I'm--uh. Hey, Rimmer?"
"Yes?"
"I've gone blind."
"Ah-ha. Just a mis-key. Let's try..."
Lister's vision returned all of a sudden, like a monitor turning on. Before he could say anything, his mouth opened and, from somewhere deep in him, he burst forth with the title tune from The Sound of Music in a pleasing baritone. He'd belted out a complete verse before he fell silent and eyed Rimmer resentfully. "You're doing this on purpose."
Rimmer grinned. "Payback, I'm given to understand, Lister, is a bitch."
"What have I ever done to you? Not show tunes. Nothing on the order of--oh, hey," he said suddenly. "There you go." The feeling of pleasure was sudden and intense, but not exactly sexual; it wasn't local to the groin, but spread evenly though his body, down to his fingertips, just like Jadette. He looked down at his hand. Once again he was still vaguely surprised to see Rimmer's hand. He imagined what he must look like now. He almost wished he had a mirror. Rimmer in orgasm--how many people could claim to have seen that? His own body was looking intensely at the controls, not at him, so he felt free to lean back, close his eyes, let his mouth fall open.
Then the feeling receded. Was that it--was that all Rimmer was going to give him? He wasn't sure whether complaining would be likely get him more or less (spite), and had just decided to go ahead and say something when it came over him again, all at once, a great intense wave of sensation. He caught himself just before he fell out of his chair.
For a man who didn't get much, Rimmer seemed to know what he was doing. He toyed with Lister, bringing him close and then dropping him down again, each wave shorter and more intense, until Lister actually begged him for it. "Please," he said. As Rimmer slowly, slowly increased the intensity, he kept talking. He didn't know exactly what he was saying; he just poured out the usual sex talk type words: "Come on please honey yeah yeah," and "Yes! Oh, yeah!" as a burst of feeling poured through him. Rimmer must have just slammed it to eleven. There was none of the usual physiological stuff, no holographic come or anything, just several remarkably long, blissful seconds.
The feeling finally faded. Lister collapsed back in the chair, exhausted and numb. What had that been--an orgasm? A religious experience? He couldn't believe it had been Rimmer--Rimmer!--who gave it to him.
"Well?" said Rimmer.
Lister couldn't lie. "That was unbelievable," he said.
Rimmer grinned. "Good to know," he said, smiling insanely. Did Rimmer think he'd just made his second conquest? He didn't think that counted as sex, did he? (Did it?)
"We could make it a regular thing. You know, every time you're in my body..."
"Yeah," Lister found himself saying. "Okay."
Rimmer marched out, whistling. Lister got up and wandered dazedly after him.
* * *
"You," said Rimmer, striding into the room, already pointing directly at Lister, "you have problems."
Lister blinked slowly at Rimmer, annoyed at the interruption. He had been busy lying flat on his back on his bunk and aching.
It was a relief to have his own comfortable body back, but its time with Rimmer certainly hadn't done it any good. Lister had just completed his first day of a rigorous Holly-drawn schedule of running and working out. As a rule he objected to exercise for exercise's sake--it always seemed like a waste of perfectly good leisure time--but he was anxious to return to his old, admittedly unimpressive physique, and put this whole episode behind them.
"Holly tells me you shot the last of the mental emetic into space!" said Rimmer. "You do know without the mental emetic, we can't do a mindwipe, and without the mindwipe, we can't do a bodyswap."
"I do know that, yeah," Lister grinned.
"Well, what if we want to!"
"Rimmer, you were the only one who wanted to. Nobody else wanted to."
"Of course I wanted to! I'm dead!" Rimmer cried. "What about our plan to share the body?"
"Your plan," said Lister. "My body."
"But it could have been our body," said Rimmer dreamily. "It would have been..."
"Convenient?"
"Romantic!"
Lister rolled his eyes. He'd spent the past two days watching Rimmer gain ground on them as he ran halfway across the solar system with a tank full of gas, a hold full of doughnuts, and a dream. He'd sat uselessly in the passenger seat of the Midget, an impotent hologram, trying to persuade the Cat to care. If he'd learned anything, he'd learned that whatever had seemed to happen between Lister and Rimmer while they were bodyswapped was totally in Lister's mind. As usual, Rimmer had only been thinking about himself. "Don't give me that."
"What?"
"That relationship crap. We were never in a relationship," said Lister. "You only wanted me for my body."
"That's not true," Rimmer sulked.
"Isn't it. I suppose you were secrelty lusting after me this whole time. Every time you called me an insubordinate lowlife with the personal hygiene of a mentally deficient infant baboon it really meant 'I love you.'"
Rimmer reddened. "Is that so hard to believe?"
"Give it up, Rimmer."
Rimmer crosses his arms. "You've changed. I thought you'd learned something from living as me. Learned to have some sympathy for my plight. Maybe even some affection."
That was what Lister had thought, too--for about five minutes after the holographic simulation suite. The problem was that when he wasn't being a scheming bastard, he could actually be a halfway decent person. It was hard to tell which one was surfacing now.
Rimmer shook his head. "Now of course you've got your body back, so you're brushing me off."
"Rimmer, you hijacked my body and crashed it into a desert moon!"
"All right," Rimmer conceded, "we'll call it even. Still boyfriends?"
Boyfriends. Is that what Rimmer thought the sex meant? They hadn't discussed it while they were still friendly. Lister knew the correct response to this was "We were never boyfriends, and I wouldn't be yours in (another) million years," but he didn't. Rimmer seemed so hopeful, and if that was genuine, it was kind of sweet. Lister didn't want to destroy him.
Chances were that it wasn't genuine, though, so Lister pointed out, "You've got nothing to gain from me here. I really did destroy the last of the mental emetic. I couldn't get it back if I wanted to, which I never, ever will. So you can just forget whatever scheme you're working on now and go." With that, he rolled over and closed his eyes.
Rimmer said nothing more and Lister assumed he had left the room until a flash of light made him open his eyes. He found himself squinting through a field of white. Somehow, he was wearing a uniform and a t-shirt at the same time. Over his hand on the bed lay a pale shadow of a hand, just slightly off, like he was watching a 3-D film without the glasses on.
"Rimmer, is that you?" he asked incredulously. "Are you... spooning me?"
"Shut up," Rimmer's voice echoed from all around him.
"You are! You're enveloping me with your tingling form!"
"Just shut up."
"You're such an idiot," said Lister. "I can't believe I have such a gooey sentimental idiot for a boyfriend."