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"Changeover. Did you actually clean up your sty this time?" Cat yowled.

Lister pushed the joystick out of the way, Cat's voice running down his back like a set of fingernails. He hadn't seen the Cat since the last changeover, and he felt like he could pop in for another 200 years of sleep and not be ready to see him again. Same with Rimmer. Even Kryten's earnestness was starting to seriously get on his nerves. "Yeah," he snapped, "I think I got it to your lordship's standards." He pushed the chair as he got out, letting it spin. He squinted through the door to the midsection, where Kryten was laying out his dinner. "Seen Rimmer?"

"About the only good thing I can say about my day," Cat said as he pointedly brushed off the seat of the chair, "is that I haven't seen goalpost head."

Lister meandered out to the midsection. "Dinner, sir!" said Kryten, brightly. His excessive heartiness grated on Lister; the more enthusiastic he was, the worse the dinner. Kryten had pick up only the star drive from Legion's space station, assuming they'd have no need for supplies once they caught Red Dwarf. Lister was beginning to long for space weevil. He sat in his chair and frowned at the pile of green glop on his plate. Kryten was a competent cook, but there was only so much one could do with asteroidal lichen. Lister picked up a forkful, sniffed at it, and dropped the fork. He looked up, and saw Kryten staring at him with concern. "You're not eating enough, Mister Lister!"

"I'm not hungry," Lister replied, pushing his chair back and standing. That wasn't true; he was achingly, agonizingly hungry, with a hunger that clawed at his belly and kept him awake at night, but he was hungry for food/, not this makeshift swill. He turned back to what his mind had been gnawing at to distract him from all of the tasty things his mouth wasn't gnawing at. "You seen Rimmer?" The hologram had been absolutely smegging insane in the week he had been hard-light; running around, touching things, licking the walls, most likely doing any number of things that Lister didn't want to think about. But Lister was not certain he trusted the by-hand upgrade Legion had done when composed of the four of them. Holly had impressed upon him the delicacy of the hologrammatic projection device, and how any of a huge number of issues would cause the light bee to malfunction and shut down. /Would that be such a bad thing? part of his mind asked. He told that part of his mind to shut it.

Kryten shook his head. "Not since the last changeover. Do you... need something from him?" he asked, in the same voice he would have used to ask if Lister needed to have his toenails torn out one by one.

"Nah, just checkin'." Lister shook his head at the plate. "I'm not feelin' so good. I'm going to take a nap." He could not miss the concerned expression on Kryten's face before he turned, and it irked him. He was a grown man. He did not need a nanny!

Lister stopped by Rimmer's room and knocked on the door. There was no answer, so he hit the Door Open switch and walked in. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of Rimmer's room. Starbug's living quarters were meant to be temporary, and most of their things had been left on Red Dwarf, but still, Lister had personalized his room as much as he had been able to do, with what he had found in the stores and on derelicts. Rimmer's room, however, was, if possible, even more sterile than it had been as empty temporary quarters. Of course, as he had been soft-light up to a week ago, he wouldn't have been able to decorate it, but he could have asked Kryten to help him, couldn't he? Lister frowned. Maybe he was too embarrassed to ask. But as he walked in farther, looking for a malfunctioning light bee lying around somewhere, a form lying in the bed and covered by a blanket caught his eye. He grinned as he whipped off the blanket and pulled Rachel, repaired and inflated, out. Well, he had felt comfortable enough asking for /this/, after all!

"Lister!!" bellowed an irate, nasal voice behind him. He jumped slightly, and Rachel floated gently to the ground.

"Hey, man," Lister said, turning to see Rimmer standing in the door, nostrils distended to full-flared annoyance, his arms folded, that odd blue uniform on. "Just making sure you're OK."

"Yes, I can tell," Rimmer said, his voice stepping from irate to officious. "Rachel is just fine as well, I gather? Thought you'd poke in and see her behind my back again?"

Lister raised his hands. "I wouldn't dream of it. All yours, man."

Rimmer walked in and shoved Lister in the direction of the door. His eyes sparkled for a moment, as if the ability to do this gave him a visceral thrill. Lister felt vaguely creeped out by that. "Then why don't you keep your grotty smegging hands off of my things and your grotty smegging nose out of my room!" Rimmer barked.

Lister turned in the doorway, throwing Rimmer a broad grin as the hologram put Rachel in bed and tucked her in. "Heh, and you were giving me shit for having sex in that AR console we just picked up. That's rich, you know."

Rimmer turned with a sigh, as if Lister were a young child who did not understand his elders. The only thing that allowed Lister to keep his temper when Rimmer was in those moods was the knowledge that Rimmer only got into those moods when he was even more annoyed at Lister. "There is all of the difference in the world, miladdio/. I am not pretending /that/," he pointed at Rachel, "is an actual human being. It's a stopgap measure. I am not /evading reality."

"You know," Lister said, taking a step back into the room, "I'm not so sure about that. She's just a mindless, brainless thing for you to deposit your sperm into, isn't she? And that's your ideal woman, isn't it? Someone you can hypnotize and boink, then go brag about it to your nonexistent friends."

Rimmer's nostrils were huffing in and out like a horny baboon's. "Smeg off, lichen-breath."

Ah, Lister had him. "Denial ain't just another river on a nonexistent unstable middle-eastern country, is it, /Rim/mer?" He giggled, then turned.

"Like Kochanski was anything more," Rimmer spat at his back. Lister stopped and turned. Rimmer was grinning his vulture's grin. "Yes, you two went on how many dates? I'm sure you could count them with your shoes on. And you're still pining after her." Rimmer shook his head and tapped his lips with a slender forefinger. "You don't know her. She wasn't a person to you. She was just a perky pair of breasts and a nifty little wet bit that made your little dangly bit feel good, wasn't she?"

Lister tried to push his anger down, but it was bubbling fiercely in his empty stomach. He strode towards Rimmer, shaking his finger. "Don't you say a word about her!" he yelled.

Rimmer tilted his nose upwards slightly, giving Lister a view into two black holes. "Touchy, are we? And for good reason. Shove off and keep your nose out of my business, you grotty little bum."

"Pleasure and pain responses the same, eh?" Lister yelled, pulling his knife out of the pocket of his overalls and flipping the blade open. Rimmer yelped and danced backwards, his hand up. Lister ignored him, grabbed Rachel, and slit her from crotch to throat. She hissed as he punctured her, and gave a desultory whiny fart of escaping air as he dragged the knife up. He wadded her in his hand and tossed her at Rimmer, who was starting to gibber with startlement and anger. "Too bad about the first. We none of us get our dream-girls, do we, Rimmer?" Lister snarled. Rimmer grabbed the wad of ex-Rachel in his hands, giving Lister an oddly blank expression, his twisted lip the only mark of some indefinable emotion.

Lister closed his knife and left.