Last Humans

Red Dwarf Fanfic: Last Humans
Prolog : Ace Returns 0/25

The claxon shrieked, a long, rolling whine that slid into Lister’s ears like a pair of greased fish hooks.

Lister turned over and pulled his pillow over his head, pressing into the mattress. It dulled out the sharp bits, but only just.

"Get up, Listy!"

Someone was pulling on his arm. He yanked it back and buried further into his bunk. "Nnn…"

"Up, Listy!" The hands moved to his leg, jerking hard enough to drag his arse over the bunk and half off. He yelped and sat up, the pillow falling away. All at once the un-muffled noise and the throbbing red light hit him. He grimaced, hiding his head in his hands and sniffling.

"Up and at 'em, boyo,"

Lister shielded his eyes with a hand and looked down at his bunk mate and fellow prisoner. Even Rimmer looked limp and red-eyed. "Wha' time is it Rimmer?"

Rimmer glanced at the communicator strapped to his wrist. "Holly, what's the time?"

Holly bobbed in his black background on the communicator screen, a striped blue pajama topper with pom-pom perched on his head. "Half past three."

"Smeggin' hell." Lister jumped down from the top bunk. "What's going on then, Hol?"

"Don't know, as I’m no longer the ship's computer. Bit in the dark all around, actually."

"Ha ha." Rimmer pulled his lavender prison-issue jumpsuit over his undershirt. "So there's nothing you can tell us?"

"I can tell you this. A one-man craft recently docked with the Red Dwarf."

"How do you know that then, Hol?" Lister zipped up his jumpsuit, yawning.

"Bob told me."

"A skutter?" Rimmer sneered. "You, a computer with an IQ of 6000, are getting information from a skutter? A service robot with all the computational power of an abacus?"

"I'll tell him you said that, Arnold." Holly replied, deadpan. "It don't matter my IQ if I've got no input to compute."

"'It don't matter…'" Rimmer muttered in a very good and snarky impersonation of Holly's mellow-to-the-gills voice.

Lister grinned. Even smeg-head Rimmer was better then no Rimmer. And he never thought he’d think that. He chuckled to himself, pulling on his boots and lacing them up.

A guard rattled their prison grating with the butt of his semi-automatic rifle. "Ready to go, love birds? Your lazy arses need to be in the pit by oh-four-hundred."

###

Lister waited in the pit, standing with his mates in row two of nine with fifty other level thirteen prisoners- the entire population of G-Tower. Kochanski looked like something the Cat had coughed up. Her hair resembled a porcupine with dropsy, and she didn't acknowledge Lister aside from muttering "Steamed milk and a breakfast muffin, please." After that she'd milled rather quietly alone by herself, eyes closed.

Cat was alert; he never seemed to be anything but well-rested, no matter the hour. He droned in Lister's ear a rant on how lavender made his ass look so wide he'd have to show his home videos in a planetarium.

Rimmer was quiet. Lister glanced his way when Cat took a breath. He looked even more then tired and disorientated, he looked depressed. Lister resolved to do something nice and, this time, something nice that wouldn't have Rimmer desperate to erase all memory of it.

Lister hummed happily to himself as Cat explained that the existence of mauve trousers was the reason the universe hadn't folded in on itself in depressed self-loathing.

"Do you have to do that?" Rimmer asked.

"Do what?" Lister replied.

"Hum. Inanely. Like that." Rimmer crossed his arms, leaning so he was eye-level with Lister. "It's making me go spare." He spat out the last word in Lister's scouce accent
.
"Rimmah—"

"Gentlemen!" Warden Ackerman's voice carried over the throng.

Lister and Rimmer snapped to attention. Cat straightened with a flourish and Kochanski emitted a soft, wuffing sound.

Lister poked her.

"Is it time for brunch already, mother?" she mumbled, then looked around and recognized where she was. "Oh, smeg."

"We have a visitor." Ackerman tapped the gantry railing with his billy club. "A distinguished gentleman in… bacofoil trousers."

Lister perked at the word 'bacofoil', turning to Rimmer with a grin. "I think—"

"Silence!" Ackerman thundered.

A guard at the end of the row fondled his gun menacingly and smiled at Lister.

Lister straightened, looking forward.

"Come forward." Ackerman gestured to someone behind him, a form shadowed by the third story gantry.

The man stepped forward into the light, light which reflected off of his shiny gold flight suit.

"Ace!" Lister didn't realize he'd called out till the man turned to look at him. "Ace, it's me, Lister! Down here, man!" Lister stepped forward, watching Ace on the gantry. The man's face betrayed a hint of annoyance - or was it anger? It then stiffened itself into a chipper mask.

The butt of a JMC issue automatic rifle slammed into Lister's shoulder. He spun and fell back, colliding with Cat.

Kochanski, reached out a hand to steady Lister, her eyes flicking between a thin-lipped Rimmer beside her and Ace in his bacofoil suit on the gantry.

"Steady on, chum." Lister forced his head up at the sound of Ace's voice, watching as Ace clapped Ackerman on the back. "No need to be rough on the old dogs."

"Is that him?" Rimmer hissed at Lister.

Lister glanced at his bunkmate. "Yeah. That's him. I think."

"You think?" Rimmer's nostrils flared in irritation. "You lived with the man for how many years and you can't tell?"

"You don't understand, man; it's confusing."

"Confusing? How many 'me's are there? One for every day of the week?"

"I—"

The guard who had given Lister the love tap grunted and waved his rifle butt. Rimmer returned to attention. Lister tried to stand straighter, but the motion pulled on his smarting shoulder. He could only manage a wobbly half stoop. Kochanski caught his arm and held him. Lister didn't dare turn to her to thank her, but he slipped his hand down from his injured shoulder to squeeze her fingers.

"Now, then; where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?" Ackerman flicked his billy club, managing to make the inch and a half thick stick of wood look prim. "Yes. This is Ace Rimmer. Captain Hollister's authorized him to commandeer a couple of convicts—" Ackerman leaned back from the gantry railing and glanced at Ace. "My, you do look familiar."

Ace smiled. "I'm a hard-light hologrammatic copy of one of your prisoners."
"Oh, are you?" Ackerman squinted at Ace then down into the pit, sniffing. "I really can't tell. They all look alike to me. All ghastly bristle. Evil, evil men." Ackerman tapped his club against the palm of his hand.

Ace inclined his head towards the pit, "Shall I get on with it, then?"

Ackerman nodded, "Quite."

Ace walked down the stair. "Evening, gents. Sorry to take up your quality Ackerman time. I'm sure he usually has you all in stitches." Ace stopped to grin at the men and women in the pit. A few wan smiles greeted him.

Ackerman preened behind Ace, "I do what I can to keep my prisoners happy."

Ace stopped at the bottom of the stair and rolled his eyes. "I'm sure you're more fun than a freighter full of astro-lube colliding into a convention of porn-stars."

A few convicts around Lister chuckled. Ace threaded his way through the convicts towards Lister. Lister grinned at him, fighting the urge to break ranks and run to the other man.

"You’re alive," Lister said as Ace stopped in front of him. He wanted to pull Ace into a hug, but the other man held himself at an angle that said, quite clearly, "piss off." Lister settled for clutching Kochanski's fingers.

"You expected any less of me?" Ace chucked Lister's shoulder, his voice genial. But his eyes pinched at the corners, settling on anything but Lister's face. He turned from Lister towards Rimmer. "So this is the man of the hour?" He clapped Rimmer's upper arms, catching hold.

"Get off me, you goit," Rimmer snapped, slapping Ace's hands away. "I don't want to catch whatever space-rot made you dress like a member of the gay Mountie musical ride." Rimmer glanced at the prisoners around them. "Having you in here is like waving around a double-fudge chocolate with lager-flavored filling. I'm surprised they haven't tried to unwrap you with their teeth."

Ace grimaced, muttering, "It's like a fun-house mirror. Git-o-version."

Rimmer opened his mouth to snark. Lister pushed between them, cutting him off. "Shouldn't you be finishin' up what you came here for… Ace?"

"Right you are. So… where were we?" He turned to Rimmer. "You're coming with me."

"What if I refuse on the grounds that I won't be seen dead with a poncy twonk in tinfoil trousers?"

"No choice, chum. Captain's orders. And you, too—" Ace turned to Lister, still not-looking at him. "You look like a guy who's good to have around in a scrape." His voice was deadpan.

Lister winced, and tried to respond. Then he realized he'd forgotten to breathe. "Yeah…"

Ace turned, jerking his head towards the stair. "Let's go."

"Wait!" Lister looked back at Kochanski and Cat. Cat was grinning inanely and silently at Ace. He'd learned his lesson about speaking out of turn, and it'd only taken a couple dozen beatings or so. Kochanski stared at them both in confusion. Lister shrugged at her and cocked his head at Cat. Kochanski could handle herself, but Cat…? How long was Rim—Ace taking them for? What was he taking them for? "Just us?"

Ace glanced back at him. "Where's Kryten?"

"Maintenance. He had a rather hard hit on the head a few weeks ago. Jumbled up his circuits, it did."

"Ah. Right. Then it's just you two. For now."


###

Lister chewed on one of his rasta plaits as he trotted behind Ace through prison security. He'd had to stop now and again to fetch Rimmer, who'd decided to voice his dissatisfaction by walking slower then Lister's grandma after six pints of bitter.

Ace led them off the prison floor into the lift to the main decks, waving the prison guard escort off. "I can handle it from here."

On the crew decks, Lister caught beige clad JMC personnel staring after him, probably wondering what his lavender kit was all about. Or Ace's bacofoil suit… Lister looked at the man's back, chewing and pondering what had happened to him over the last two years crew. He was different. Very different from his Rimmer. Ace moved with confidence. Or maybe it was urgency? Or maybe this wasn’t his Rimmer at all. Lister bit his plait. He hadn't had time to ask, to make sure.

"All right, gents. Here we are."

They'd stopped in front of a door. Ace pressed his palm against the key lock. It slid open.

"Officer's deck, penthouse suite."

Penthouse suite it was. Lister glanced around. On the old Red Dwarf there hadn't been anything nearly this posh - a room with a common area and separate sleeping quarters off to either side.

"Won't be a jiff." Ace said, nodding at Lister and Rimmer, then entering one of the bedrooms and closing the door behind him.

Lister hopped up onto a table bunted up against the wall, sliding across its top until he was pressed against the knobby white wall panel. He ran his fingers over the plastic texture, picking at it with his nails. It was the same stuff that'd lined the officer bunks on the old Dwarf; Lister had found it funny then. Wall-mounted bath mats were a staple of toff life?

"Stop it." Rimmer snapped. "Can't you go anywhere without idly destroying something?"

Lister grunted and leaned his head back against the wall. "Piss off, Rimmer."

The second technician sneered at him. He then took an exaggerated step forward and turned to face the same way as Lister, ending the motion by rocking on the balls of his feet. "So this madman in foil pantaloons is supposed to be me?"

"Would be you." Lister pulled his legs up onto the table and sat cross-legged. "That is, if you'd lived the past six years as him." Lister squinted, thinking how stupid that sounded. "I mean, he isn't an alternate you. He is you, but the you that hasn't skipped over the last six years—"

"Right. Well that clears that up. So what's he come back for? Missed his old snogging partner?"

Lister flushed and pressed the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "You acted just like this the last time. Same attitude. Everythin'."

"Last time what?"

"Last time you met yourself. I mean he met hisself."

"Listy, no matter how many times you explain it, it makes no sense." Rimmer smiled at him like he was a four year old.

"Yeah. I know."

"He doesn't look a thing like me." Rimmer sniffed.

"What?" Lister looked up at him. "He's identical to you, Rimmah."

"No he isn't. The hair, for one. That gay hippy hair." Rimmer tugged at one of his short, darkish curls. "Does that look long and blond to you? And there's something else about him. The way he moves. I don't know." Rimmer waved his hands. "His smug gittishness. His belle of the ball air. That can't be me, Lister."

Lister sighed and started to pick at the plastic paneling again. "It is you. You said the same smeggin' things the last time." He pounded the panel with his fist. "I mean he said the same things."

"So why's he here?"

Lister fidgeted, his boots bouncing against the table top. "I don't know." He lied. Lister had a good idea why. He glared at his fingers, trying to blot out the image of a billion tiny, blinking coffins, each one containing a version of Arnold Rimmer, tracing out a red scar through space.

Rimmer watched him steadily. Lister couldn't meet his stare, but he could feel the gears moving in the smeghead's mind.

A slam echoed from the room Ace had entered. Lister jumped up off the table, and Rimmer half-turned to look. The lights flickered. Ace screamed.

Lister was at the door to the room in three over-heated paces, pounding on it, "Rimmer! Rimmer!"

"What is it, you gimboid? I'm right here." Rimmer had followed him to the door.

Lister shook his head. "Not you. R—Ace! Are you okay?"

"Capital," came the strained reply. "Won't be a moment."

Silence.

Lister chewed hard on his plait.

The door slid open.

"Ace!" Lister jumped to the man's side, moving forward to help.

"Stop." Ace held up a hand. His face shone with sweat. He'd stripped the blond Ace wig from his head. "Sorry. Can't be touched right now."

Rimmer stared at the mussed mirror of Rimmer's own gingery curls, revealed from under the wig. "Smeg," he said under his breath.

Ace stooped over to a chair in the common area, and fell into it.

"What's wrong?" Lister hurried to his side, kneeling down to eye level.

"Listy, you're such a git." Ace reached out a hand. His fingers barely brushed Lister's face, but as soon as they made contact Ace flinched away, wincing. "My clock's cleaned, as that smegging goit would say."

"No way, man!" Lister stood and turned away, shaking his head. "No way!"

"Yes, Listy. Didn't you figure out that my life expectancy had taken a bit of a tumble once I slipped on the wig?"

Lister turned around. "How long?"

"Rather less then my last incarnation's death, I suspect. Maybe an hour. And it won't be as pleasant." A shudder stripped Ace of his voice.

Lister watched Ace struggle, feeling all every sort of dead. "What's wrong?"

"I've burnt out my light bee, squire."

"Then we'll build you a new one! The nano-bots—"

Ace shook his head. "Already done. Five times. I'm afraid what's wrong with me isn't in the hardware."

The plait fell from Lister's hands. "What do you mean?"

"It's all very metaphysical, apparently. I've maxed out some psychological metric, sending my bee into a infinite loop. I'm running at 100% computational power every cycle." Ace winced. "At least that's what that blasted computer told me. 'Have to recruit your successor' she said. Bloody thing."

"So you're here to…" Lister looked at Rimmer.

Rimmer glared back.

"There's no way, Ace." Lister shook his head. This Rimmer wasn't even a tenth the man hologrammatic Rimmer had become. Which hadn't been much of a man at that. "Not this one."

Ace snorted and, for a moment, the old Rimmer was back, as he looked at Lister like he'd just suggested they watch a live action version of the Aeneid staring Hammy Hamster. "I'm not here to recruit the next Ace." He pinned Lister with a pained stare. "I'm not going to take him from you."

Lister started. "You think--?" He looked at Rimmer, half laughing. Rimmer looked back, baffled.

Ace slammed the wall with his fist, then swore silently and swayed like he was about to pass out. When he regained himself, he continued, "Shut up, Listy! I haven't time for this."

"Then what are you here for?" Lister groused.

"The last Ace didn't explain much at all. Particularly why there were so many… 'me's dead. I was caught up in—" Ace gasped as his image jittered, leaving bloody welts along the fracture edges. The welts healed in seconds, but not before Lister watched Ace go white and gag from the pain.

Lister reached out a hand. Ace jerked away. "Don't. Too much touch overloads my input buffer, and it gets clipped." He leaned back in the chair, hissing as the velour rubbed against the skin of his neck. "It's unpleasant."

"Change into soft-light!"

"No use, Listy. I'm stuck like this."

"What happened, man?"

"A war," Ace replied. "It wasn't about being someone the universe can look up to with scads of wet rumpy-pumpy on the side. I don't know if it ever was, or if it was just my luck that changed it. A war, Lister. That's what I got. You will too, all of you. That's why I've come back."

"To warn us?"

"No." Ace looked at Rimmer. "I have something to give him."


###

"No smegging way!" Rimmer strode away from Lister, arms resolutely crossed over his chest. "Absolutely no smegging way!"

"But yeh heard him Rimmer! If yeh don't, we're dead."

"Oh yes? And have you seen him Lister? He looks like a jigsaw puzzle put together by half-wits. If whatever is in his head can melt circuits, what chance does my brain have against it?"

"Ace said it wouldn't affect yeh the same. He said—" Lister waved his hand, trying to piece the words together. "He said the human body was meant to deal with the… extremes of human psy… psychology. A light bee isn't."

"Amazing, Lister. Where did you find all those big words? Webster's pop-up Thesaurus?" Rimmer sneered. "What does it matter if this thing will catch up to us in - what, months? Years? - if my brain is a puddle of congealing jelly tomorrow?"

"Yer a coward."

"Right you are, Listy,” Rimmer said, with pride. “I am a coward."

Lister turned away from Rimmer in disgust, putting his hands on the table.

A gunshot splinted the tabletop. Lister jumped back, turning.

Ace stood in the doorway to the first sleeping quarters, his shoulder hard up against the door jamb. In one hand he carried a smoking pistol; in the other a black box. Lister recognized it as the remote brainwave hologrammatic simulator Kryten had used on him years before.

"You shot me." Rimmer held his hand against his shoulder. Blood seeped from between his fingers.

Lister looked from him to Ace.

"I grazed you." Ace countered, his pistol hand shaking.

"You could have killed me." Rimmer's voice was high, hysterical.

"You'll be dead today if you don't do as I say." Ace shoved the simulator at Lister and waved the pistol towards the table. "Sorry, squire. I don't have any more time for niceties. Get him strapped in."

Lister stared at Ace. "Yeh… can't do this."

"I can." Ace cocked the pistol hammer, pointing at Rimmer's head. "Get him ready. Now."

Lister took the black box and slipped it onto the table, catching Rimmer by his uninjured arm. "Listen to the man" He eyed Ace, wondering if he really was his Rimmer… hologrammatic Rimmer. He didn't recognize the look of bleak determination behind those familiar hazel eyes.

Rimmer offered no resistance as Lister pushed him down onto the chair in front of the simulator. Lister felt the second technician shaking. Shock, Lister thought and looked at Rimmer's hand, streaked with blood. It wasn't flowing fast; the wound wasn't deep. But this Rimmer wasn't used to injury or pain of any sort. Lister squeezed the man's uninjured upper arm.

"Here." Ace handed Lister a pulse-hypo. His hand shook as welts streaked it then faded. "A sedative. I can't… administer it like this."

Lister took it. Holding it felt unreal. Rimmer looked up at him, his face empty of emotion. "Don't worry. We did this a couple years ago. It all worked out in the end." Lister tried to keep his voice level and calm. He tried to smile to fight against the empty look on Rimmer's face.

Lister caught Rimmer's arm, lifted it up, and pressed the hypo against the pulsing vein between bicep and inner elbow. Inanely, Lister wondered why such a craven physical coward kept so fit.

The response was instant. Rimmer relaxed in the chair, his arms flopping down into his lap. Lister took a moment to look at his injured right arm. Ace had been right. Just a graze, little more then a scratch.

"Faster," Ace snapped, jerking the muzzle of the pistol towards Rimmer's head.
Lister obeyed, fumbling the diodes out of their sheaths and suctioning them on Rimmer's face and neck. His hands shook.

"What about the mental emetic?" he asked.

"This isn't a swap, miladdio. It's just a patch." Ace replied.

Lister nodded, swallowing.

"This isn't your fault, Listy. It's my fault. Full responsibility," Ace said, stepping up to the sedated Rimmer. "Remember that."

Lister nodded, again. Keep him talking, he thought. He searched his suddenly blank mind for another question. "What'll happen to him?"

Ace shook his head. "Can't tell for sure. Physically, he'll be fine." He caught Rimmer's jaw. "I don't know about the rest. He isn't that great to begin with." He pulled Rimmer's face towards him. "Like a funhouse mirror."

"How can yeh do this, man?" Lister asked, looking up at Ace.

Ace let go of Rimmer, hissing as skin slid against his hard light projection. "He would do the same if he knew what I know." Then he turned to look at Lister. "He'll be fine," he repeated, like a mantra.

"When does it happen?" Lister's throat felt like straw.

Ace smiled. "As soon as I'm dead."

"How long?" Lister asked, approaching the hologram slowly.

The other man closed his eyes. "A few minutes."

Lister slammed his fist down on Ace's forearm. He followed it up with an elbow to the side of the face.

Ace wheeled into the wall and slipped down to the ground, his chest heaving in agony.

The gun had fallen and skittered away across the floor. Lister lunged to retrieve it and leveled it towards Ace as he backed away. "Not today, Ace. Or whoever yeh are."

Ace struggled to sit up, propping himself on an elbow. He wiped his mouth, leaving a streak of blood across his cheek. "Congratulations, Listy. You managed to thrash a dying man." He coughed, spitting up more blood. "What do you do for an encore? Jump old grannies in a park?"

"I'm sorry." Lister gasped. "I can't let you do this!"

"Why not? Do you think he even gives two smegging shits about you?"

"Do you?" Lister winced.

Ace pulled himself to a seated position, one arm propping him up, the other draped over a knee. "I do…" He looked at Rimmer. "But I didn't when I was him."

"He's gonna be you in six years!"

Ace got to his knees and stopped for a breath. "No he isn't, Listy. He'll never be me."
Lister stepped back as Ace stood unsteadily. "He'll never be me. But I can give him those six years back. I can give him you back."

"But you said… You said you didn't know what would happen." Lister protested.

"I don't know. Not entirely. And I don't know how much he'll like the last two years I've lived, or what they'll do to him." Ace stepped towards Lister, hand outstretched and shaking. "But him knowing will give you all a fighting chance against what's coming."

Lister took a breath, hoping his mind would supply him with an argument. None were forthcoming. Lister closed his mouth, shook his head and lowered the gun. "What do I do?"

"I've programmed the simulator. All you have to do is place my light bee in the socket."

"That's all?"

Ace nodded, "Yes. Do you want me to go in the other room?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm about to die in a very ghastly way." Ace leaned against the table, palms flat on the top.

Lister sniffled. "I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"You know. Forcing you to be Ace."

"Did you?" Ace looked down at the black box, biting his lip against the pain. "I… I don't remember that."

"Then why did you—?"

Ace bowed his head. "I was tired of being a coward."

"There's all sorts of cowards, man. Remember that speech you gave me? After we met up with the holoship? You are what other people think of you. You would have done anything to be somebody others looked up to. I thought I was helping you get that. I--"

Ace laughed, and the laugh turned into a heaving cough. His image convulsed and left bloody rents slicing his skin. He clamped his fingers tight against his arms. "Not…yet." he forced through gritted teeth.

"What, man? Now?" Lister lunged towards him, catching hold of Ace's arms, trying to smooth out the creases in his projection. It didn't work. It only smeared fizzing hologrammatic blood over Lister's hands.

Ace pressed his fingers against his stomach, then in, penetrating his own projection.

Lister felt it when Ace's fingers closed over his own light bee, a shockwave that danced against his skin, sending prickles through his body.

"No!" Lister said, his hands scrabbling against Ace's shuddering image. "Wait!"

Ace crumpled like a wad of paper. Blood sluiced over the desk and onto the floor from thousands of rips in his body. Lister watched as he tried to straighten, tried to say something, and only spit up more blood. He watched as Ace faded away to nothing.

Lister was left watching the blood fade from his fingers, and then the light bee, buzzing gently on the desk where it had fallen.