Tipp-Ex. Lister gazed out onto the busy Mimian street
Is it possible to get a transfer to another shift, sir?' 'Why?' Well, with respect, sir, I think you're mentally unstable. Sit down.' Rimmer shook his head. 'There's always one, isn't there? One wag. One clown. One imbecile.' 'Yes, sir,' Lister agreed, 'but he's not usually in charge, sir.'
'You're telling me they haven't installed an oxygen atmosphere yet?' 'No. I'll have to wander around my house in a spacesuit. But that's why it's so cheap!' He quickly downed two pints. 'You ought to move there. There's a plot of about two thousand miles right next door to me. I'm telling you - it's a great investment. Ten, twelve years, they have plans to install oxygen. Can you imagine what will happen to house prices once the atmosphere's breathable? They'll rocket, baby!'
He would happily have inserted two red hot needles simultaneously through both his ears so they met in the middle of his brain, and tap-danced the title song from 42nd Street barefoot on a bed of molten lava while giving oral sex to a male orangu-tan with dubious personal hygiene, if only it meant attaining that single, elusive golden bar of an Astronavigation Officer, Fourth Class.
And then he'd go into his impressions. His best one was of Parkur, the mechanoid aboard the Neutron Star' but none of the girls knew him, so it never went down that well.
Then he'd round off the evening with a selection of hits from The Student Prince. And then they'd play prize bingo. The prize in the prize bingo was always a can of jiffy WindoKleen. Nobody ever wanted a can of Jiffy WindoKleen, so Kryten always got it back and was able to use it as the next week's prize.
Years before, when he'd been promoted to Second Technician' he felt he hadn't succeeded in becoming a Second Technician' rather, he'd failed to become a First Technician.
You could have swallowed her entire lingerie collection without needing a glass of water.
'I'll take that one, instead.' 'That's my body,' said Rimmer, firmly. 'Was.' 'Now wait a minute. Me and that body go back years. It has great sentimental value. You can't just take my body.' 'Get him another one.' 'I don't want another one.' 'OK. Don't a get him another one.' 'OK, get me another one.'
His arguments were always countered with the witty ripostes of sardonic laughter
Rimmer was coming to the conclusion that his own mind wasn't exactly a terrific place to be trapped in
Their own point of view was that the universe was totally meaningless, unjust and pointless, and the only single thing of any substance or beauty in the whole of creation was the double-threaded wing nut, which was easy to screw on or off even in the most inaccessible of places.
existentialists with a penchant for a certain metal bonding device.
Rimmer moaned constantly. He couldn't understand how the Space Corps could spend zillions upon zillions of dollarpounds designing a ship the size of Red Dwarf, and not put a couple of buckquid to one side for the fitting of a 'start' button. Just one little red button marked 'blast off'. How much would that have set them back? Kryten pointed out repeatedly that Red Dwarf wasn't designed to stop. The nearest the ship ever came to rest was when it went into orbit around a planet. The idea that it might one day come to a grinding halt had never occurred to anyone. The explanation seemed to matter little to Rimmer, who kept on obsessively calculating the prices of small, plastic buttons. Even the most expensive button, Rimmer surmised, even one that came in a futuristicky kind of shape, carved from rhinoceros tusk, with 'blast off' hand-painted by Leonardo da Vinci in radioactive gold dust, couldn't have cost all that much. Kryten patiently explained that it probably wasn't so much the design of the button that had proved too expensive, but more the vast network of computer relays and the thousands of miles of cables the button would have to be connected to, that made it prohibitive. But Rimmer wasn't interested.
It was a very familiar feeling for Rimmer - the horrible slow dawning, the internal denials, the frantic mental search for someone else to blame, the gradual acceptance that, once again, he'd done something so unspeakably asinine it would live with him for the rest of his days,
Frankly, he'd always had a rather low sex drive, which he secretly ascribed to all the school cabbage he was forced to eat as a boy.
Twelve? Rimmer couldn't believe it. The only thing he ever lost when he was twelve were his Space Scout shoes with the compass in the heel and the animal tracks on the soles.
Lister laughed. He'd made it. He was back home. He laughed too long and too hard, a dangerous laugh that danced with insanity.
Inside the cockpit, insanity reigned. The Cat's emergency procedure of hitting every button in reach was not contributing massively to the restoration of calm.
and I'm sorry I can't be more fashionably cynical, but it's just not in my make-up pouch.
Ace craned closer to the screen. 'Display's a bit dim, isn't it, old sausage?'
Ace lit one of his rare cheroots — his only vice, unless you counted an extremely active, multi-partnered sex life as a vice, which Ace didn't.
Lister shook his head. No matter how many favours Ace did you, he always made it seem like he was in your debt.
He was relaxing. It felt as if he were truly relaxing for the first time in his adult life, but he chose not to dwell on that aspect of the sensation, because it would have disturbed his relaxation.
Lindy Lou was blond, sixteen years old and wore gingham.
Captain Oates: "I'm going out for a walk, I may be some time"?'
Strangely, the agonoids' creators were surprised when their creation turned on them. It wouldn't surprise you or me, but it surprised them. Blew them away, in fact.
'Lister, why don't you and the Cat pop upstairs and run around pretending you're aeroplanes for a few minutes, while the grown-ups discuss the problem rationally?'
'Well, old chum-burger' — he smiled good-naturedly — 'looks like you've got yourself in a bit of a pickle jar and screwed the lid down tight.'
'By the way, old sauce, I don't think I caught your handle.'
He was, after all, dead, the poor devil, and allowances should be made. Still, it was hard to shake the notion that there was a lot more to the man's problems than that.
Rimmer sighed. He was losing patience with his other self's mindless refusal to surrender to problems.
He deliberately twisted his broken arm and focused on the pain.