Life in Red... • RED DWARF • Arnold Rimmer x OC story

7. How to Lose a Job

I was pulled from my thoughts back into the present.

I looked at Hollister with a stoic expression, forcing the files back into his chubby hands.

"Fine... I confess." I said with a sardonic anguish, my face otherwise unemotional at the inconvenient news. "...Does this mean I'm losing my benefits too?"

"Luckily, you never had benefits, Edith." Hollister shoved the file absently into his drawer, taking out another file in replacement and quickly flipping through it. "...Well, aside from dental actually, but you'll have to go without that."

"Oh, damn." My mind was surprisingly blank. The panic I was experiencing was an eternal and rather disconcerting affair that involved a cardiac arrhythmia and an increasingly tight feeling in my chest. Hopefully it was a heart attack.

"...I suppose you also didn't finish college either?" Hollister glanced up momentarily, otherwise focused on flipping through the pages of the thin dossier.

"You don't need a college degree for Technician." I said, feeling it was a moot point that didn'y really need to be stated.

My brows furrowed as I tried to get a grasp at whatever was in new document Hollister was reading.

"How is it you managed to get hired, anyway? I'm a bit at a loss on how you evaded our record checks for so long." He said curiously.

"Well, Captain. It takes a very long, very in-depth sort of expertise and masterminding to bypass your otherwise flawless systems. So, I won't bore you with the technicalities..."

To be completely transparent, I changed my given name, 'Eddie' to Edith and fabricated the surname, 'Hammond'. 

'Hammond' because I'd stuttered and mispronounced the more conventional name, 'Norman' at my interview... I also changed my birthdate, not that it really mattered for anything other than the fact that I also misspoke and added an additional decade and a half to my real age. How did I evade prying eyes for so long? Well, it was probably because no one much looked at my records, did they?

Yes, it took some really 'thorough' conniving to beat the system... albeit momentarily.

The interview process for getting hired was a relatively easy one. I abandoned a drunken Selby at one of the loading gates and entered the nearest information center for the Space corps and from there, it took less than twenty minutes to be redirected to a recruitment center looking to hire.

They'd asked me the basic hiring questions, questions I'd mostly had to give false answers to. And yet, even with all of my 'truth-stretching' and added embellishments on an otherwise pretty pathetic resume, all that I had the qualifications for was a position as third technician. 

I didn't even have enough experience to be a Caterer, the position I'd initially asked for when the interviewer asked about my interests. Catering was the only thing that sprang to mind.

"Uh, Mr Hollister sir? I'm just wondering if there's a chance the space corps would consider rehiring me in the future?" I asked, half irritated.

Hollister finally looked up from his paper, an angular and jagged sneer traversing across his otherwise pretty round cheeks. 

"What do you think?" His voice was smooth, had the word 'smooth' taken a different meaning and instead was defined by the auditory sound of nails scraping against a chalkboard.

"...I'm thinking that a fine recommendation letter would do?" I swallowed.

"Hammond!" Hollister glared at me, an expecting look in his finite, needle prick pupils. "You're clearly not taking this matter seriously." 

His face was red like the outside of the ship. I'd begun to wonder what I did to make him so angry.

"H-Hollister, I think I am!" I protested.

I wasn't. 

"You have two options, understand?" Hollister's chubby finger dragged down to the middle of one of the pages tucked neatly into the file and he read aloud, clearly unbriefed with the situation at hand. "We can't send you to floor thirteen because it seems that you haven't been prosecuted in court yet, get it?"

Floor thirteen? The brig, Tank?

"Edith, your options are as follows; Either be confined by ankle bracelet to your quarters until we can get you prosecuted on board the 'Dwarf. Or, since it's in your legal right to be brought to trial by a jurisdiction from your place of origin, you can sign a waver to be placed into stasis until you can be delivered back on Mimas."

Oh. This was a real thing that was about to happen, wasn't it? This was real?

Suddenly the image of Rimmer's dinky little notepad flashed before my eyes, accompanied by the nearly dried ballpoint pen that he'd insisted on using due to it's weight. In my head, the pen was just as irritated as I was. 

Blue ink... I blinked at the abstract image of words that really had no meaning. 

I heard the scratching of Rimmer's abused pen on a pillow of lined paper. Blankets crinkling as another sheet from his notepad would be ripped and flung over for a fresh page. The sight was engraved in my brain. I'd seen it a hundred times before. 

Rimmer had mastered the calming sort of motion of writing infractions. I imagined the control of his hand as the blue pigment glided from his pen, quickly and without fail to write more meaningless words. Blue ink, it was always damned blue ink...

I thought for a moment, sort of mulling over my options with shaky precision as my eyes focused on Hollister's hand as he scribbled, in blue ink, my worker ID number on a very official looking document with my name on it. 

"...Edith? If you don't have a preference, I can surely help you make the decision." Hollister said, pulling me from reflection.

I remembered my two options. Either restricted to my grey, graphite coloured room for god knows how long; an unbearable decision really. It meant that I could mull over my time alone for days or weeks without company or pay to keep me occupied. it was either the ankle bracelet and solitude, or into stasis; which would mean a near instantaneous lapse of time and straight into court, straight into prison on Mimas.

I hated being caught so off guard. I'd almost forgotten about my fears of jail. I'd gotten too comfortable, too damned careless.

"I'll..." I bit the inside of my cheek and then moved on to my fingers, where I chewed absently as a war on the seconds of uncertainty passed. I could almost see the passage of time in front of me. It was written in the impatience on Hollister's face.

I cleared my throat, having made my decision. 

"I'll... I'll go into stasis."