RD - Afterlife of a Smeghead

David Lister, Third Technician on the mining ship Red Dwarf, stared blankly out a window into space. Alone – well, not really alone, with The Cat and Rimmer onboard, but they didn’t count because they were smegheads – being alone in space on a humongous space ship was making him go insane. This he was sure of, after noticing the kind of thoughts he was having.

Fortunately, before he could question his sanity alone anymore, around a corner in the corridor appeared someone who could undoubtedly assure Lister that he was, indeed, insane.

“What are you doing, Lister? Are you looking for another ‘alien pod’?” Arnold Rimmer, Second Technician and superior officer on the ship, sneered, apparently forgetting the fact that it was himself who had mistaken one of the Red Dwarf’s garbage pods for a burial pod of a Quagaar warrior.

“Smeg off, Rimmer.”

“I most certainly will not! Now, come with me, we have an inventory check to go through.”

Lister shuddered. Inventory was a nightmare. He had to divert Rimmer’s mind from the horrid task. Of course, that in itself was nearly impossible. Arnold Rimmer’s mind could be like a steel trap – a </i>rusted</i> steel trap, but it could still hold something. Only one topic came to mind that could divert the Second Technician’s attention for the moment.

“Hey Rimmer, what do you think happens when we die?”

The hologram, which had kept going down the corridor, stopped in mid-stride. “What?”

“You know, when we die. Do you think we go to heaven? Or is it just…dark?” Lister frowned, mulling over the thoughts that had caused a headache.

“Well I don’t know. I’m dead, Lister. Dead</b>. And I can’t remember a thing between the blast that killed me and the time Holly revived me as this,” he gestured at the H on his forehead, and spun around to leave.

“Yeah? But that’s just a computer simulation of you. What if your real self is up there–“ Lister pointed upwards, indicating a Heaven of sorts, “ – and is laughing his head off at us?”

Rimmer, insulted at the hint that he may not actually exist, (never mind that, as a hologram, he really didn’t anyway), huffed and turned to go, obviously ending his part in the discussion. “We have to take inventory, Lister. Now.”

Lister groaned, and rose from his sitting position on the floor. “What if you are? What if you’re sitting on a rain cloud (and obviously a rain cloud, since you’re so dreary), eating chips, and choking on them because you’re laughing so hard at yourself, wondering why you want to waste your time taking inventory?”

“Black card, Lister.” Rimmer held up his hand with the aforementioned card. “Discussion over. Inventory, now.”

Lister grimaced, and followed his superior at a snail’s pace. “You never did answer my question.”

Before he could get very far, he heard a small noise behind him. Turning around, he saw a small puddle of water where there had been nothing three seconds ago as he had walked by that part of the corridor. And in the puddle, getting soggy, was a golden yellow chip.

Lister shook his head. “Even dead, you’re a smeghead, Rimmer.” Then he made a face and shuffled off to find a medical unit to insure he wasn’t getting that freaky mutated pneumonia virus again.