Fragments of the Reclaimer

Mortuus Et Vivit

Inside the Hologram-Projection suite, Rimmer's lifeless light bee laid on the desk. Monitors that usually played Rimmer's dreams, thoughts and occasionally his hologrammatic vitals were blank — dead. Regardless, machinery still ran, droning, beeping and whining.

Outside of Red Dwarf, a bright blue light whizzed by; its trail resembled a comet's, green with bits of teal mixed in. It had been following the crew ever since they left the Mantle's Approach. It didn't register on Red Dwarf's monitors. The blue light then made a sharp one-eighty and phased through the airlock, then sprinted through corridors, made short cuts through walls until it made it to the Hologram-Projection suite. From there it jumped into the main computer, which fizzled a moment after impact.

Fzzzzzzt!

The sheer force of the bright orb knocked the light bee onto the floor.

The MC unexpectedly booted up, its whirs staring out low then heightening in pitch. Suddenly, a millisecond of a memory appeared on-screen; it was of Rimmer and Kryten in the kitchenette of Starbug, just before Lister ate space weevil for supper. It was gone in a flash. Then another, this time of Rimmer acquiring a hard light drive. It lasted a bit longer than the last time. Another with his useless Chinese worry balls. Then they started overlapping; his deaths, Lister's GELF wife, the Dove Program, Rimmerworld, JFK, Ace and Duane, Dangerous Dan McGrew, Legion, Expanoids, finding his brother, Howard, having sex with Aria, destroying Mantle's Approach — all of it showed on the monitors in a nonplussing flurry of images, until finally... nothing.

'MEMORIES RESTORED' could be seen in big white letters on every screen.

The blue orb jetted out of the MC and into the light bee. Like a vehicle that wouldn't start, repeated whirring and sputtering sounds erupted from the tiny projection device. Eventually, Rimmer's once dead light bee began to glow a bright orange. It floated upward, and screeched from an agonising resurrection, hovering a moment while it tried to get its bearings. Gliding unsteadily, it made its way to the door; it clanked against the door numerous times before giving up — obviously it needed hands to open it.

After it buzzed indignantly it whizzed off, stopped at the main computer and slipped into the light bee slot, then waited for an on-screen prompt.

Hologrammatic projection device accepted — Welcome! Please select what task you would like to preform.

A drop down menu listed restore, reboot, back-up, transfer and terminate. Restore was already highlighted. The light bee popped out of the slot, and using the very edge of the device, it hit enter.

Restore sequence selected — Is this correct?

It emanated a rather miffed whir, put out by the question. "Of course it was correct!" it thought. "You'd have to be a right idiot to select it by mistake!" Then it eased down onto the left arrow key, selecting yes, and then tapped on the enter key.

Validating your request. This may take several minutes.

Once again, the light bee buzzed in annoyance from having to wait. All it wanted was a body. Furious droning came from it, as if to say, "Hurry the hell up! My entire crew is under the assumption that I'm dead! So if you could just—!"

Request accepted — Reboot process initiated.

It hummed a sigh of relief. Soon enough Rimmer would be back, and soon enough he would be whinging on about how they just left him on the Mantle's Approach to die.

Beeping, clicking and whining of hard drives starting up emitted from the entire room. Cooling fans turned on to keep the computers from overheating. About ten minutes later, Rimmer was online, with a full battery and the intent to do some complaining. No-one listened to his messages — never mind the fact they were easy to miss in a life and death situation — and Rimmer would be dammed if he'd let any of them live it down.