Game Heads-Part 4

Hello everyone! I hope you are enjoying this story! I love mystery stories, where you are not exactly sure what is going on. Don't worry-you will find out the 'secrets' of this story soon! And the Cat will be coming soon, so please don't despair!

Rimmer hugged his knees closer to himself, watching Lister. He felt pins and needles shooting up his right leg, so he shifted, trying not to make any noise. The slight movement caused his longer bangs to fall into his eyes. Rimmer was getting increasingly annoyed with his hair. Too bad he couldn't get a hair cut in this stupid game. He glanced around, trying to divert his eyes from Lister clipping his toenails with his teeth.

They were hidden inside an old-fashioned train boxcar, full of cleaning supplies secretly going to America. They figured this was the only way to get to Kryten. Lister was propped up on a pile of fluffy dusters, while Rimmer was stuck sitting on hard plastic containers filled with cleaning solutions. This game just kept getting better and better! (AN: Sarcastic, if you didn't know...)

Rimmer found his reflection on a glass vacuum cleaner. A stranger was looking back at him. His usual wire-curly hair was flat and straight, some rebellious strands hanging over his bright eyes. If he had been wearing this brown jacket anywhere else, it would have looked stiff and uncomfortable, while here it hugged his frame as if he had been wearing it forever. He never wore blue jeans in his life, yet he was wearing worn jeans, with a few rips. This guy looked confident, cool, and even sexy. Rimmer's eyebrows shot up in shock when he realized he really was looking at himself, and not a stow-away movie star. Maybe this game did have some perks.

The train lurched to a stop with a metal screech. Lister put his finger up to his lips, signaling silence, then put his ear up to the door. Rimmer listened for himself. There was muffled voices moving away from them, so they thought it was safe to get out. Quietly, they opened the sliding door, and slipped off into a forest of trees right by the stopped train.

Rimmer thought the game was actually looking up. The place Lister and himself were sleeping tonight was not as bad as it had been in previous nights. The undergrowth of leaves, sticks, and dry mud made for a stiff but not uncomfortable bed. They had been trekking through the forest for the whole day, not seeing anything but trees. Rimmer never thought the US had so many stupid smeggin' trees.

As he tried to drift off to sleep, a random thought popped into his head, and would not let him go to sleep until he solved its mysterious depths. He glanced over at Lister, who had his head on his arm and was dozing off peacefully. Clearing his throat, Rimmer plunged into his question.

"Hey, Lister. Why did you want to become a chef?"

Lister half snuffed, slightly rolling into the leaves, like a teenager does in the morning with school. Where the bed is so inviting and it doesn't want you to leave. "Huh?"

"Why did you want to become a chef!"

Rimmer could practically feel Lister's eyes rolling back into his head. "What the smeg are you talkin' about, Rimmer? I'm tryin' to fall asleep. You don't know how hard that is with your lit'l pestering voice right in me ear."

Rimmer chuckled, and whispered under his breath, "Try sleeping while your snoring!" Lister heard that, and chuckled himself, even though he always denied that he snored. Seeing that this was somehow important to Rimmer, Lister groggily sat up.

"Okay, Rimmer. Ya got my attention. What?"

Rimmer bit his nail, trying to figure out what bothered him so much to ask that. "You remember that one time a few days after you were released from stasis, you wanted to outrank me by becoming a chef? You know, when I taught the Cat to order his own food from the dispensers?"

Lister nodded his head as if he was saying, "Duh!" When Rimmer didn't say anything, Lister spoke out impatiently. "Well!"

"Why'd you want to?" Rimmer clicked his tongue against his cheek. He had noticed that he had picked up a southern slang, which he hated with his very being. He hated slurring his words. He was turning into...Lister. Ugh.

"You already said. I wanted to outrank you."

"Yeah, but you could have picked another spot than that. Most every job was above us. Why a chef?"

Lister's eyebrows raised, still not getting it. "Why wouldn't I be a chef?"

Rimmer looked up into Lister's eyes, disbelieving. "You really don't get it, do you?" Lister shook his head irritated, getting highly impatient that the conversation was not going anywhere, and keeping him from his beauty sleep.

"That guy Kochanski ran back to when you were going out with her was a chef. You remember?" When Lister nodded, Rimmer continued. "You had raved on and on to me how you hated chefs, and their bloody hats. Then, all of the sudden, I was making fun of those hats when you wanted to be one."

Lister sighed, pulling on a dreadlock and trying to finish the conversation. "What's your point, Rimmer?" He didn't know why, but the last few days they had been together in the Better Than Life game, Rimmer hadn't gotten on his nerves at all. It seemed to be wearing off, though. He suddenly felt like insulting the man who would not shut up, or say his actual point.

"Did you pick to be a chef because that's what Kochanski went running to? Were you trying to mold yourself into something you know she liked?"

Lister sighed, falling back onto their makeshift natural bed with a crinkle. "You are reading WAY too much into that, ya smeghead. Now go to sleep." Lister drifted off into nothingness, thoroughly agitated at Rimmer's logic and annoying behavior. Rimmer shrugged angrily, turning to his other side, his back to Lister. He had the sudden feeling he had not had since he had been in the game to annoy Lister to death, and yell at him.

Rimmer was pretty much used to getting these dreams since he had been in the game, like his subconscious was trying to tell him something. So it didn't surprise him that he was floating around in a black void, waiting for something to happen. Slowly, the gray bunkroom appeared all around him, which surprised Rimmer. No funny dream, just straight to business.

Lister, Cat, Kryten, and dream-Rimmer all had their arms crossed, giving each other death glares. They were saying something to each other, but Rimmer couldn't hear any of it. The whole room was silent, but the dream peoples' lips were moving. Suddenly, Lister threw up his arms, and stormed away. Cat went the other way, and climbed into a vent. Kryten and dream-Rimmer, with the real Rimmer following close behind, took off after Lister.

As they rounded the corner into the Drive Room, they came upon Lister. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, a Better Than Life helmet snapped onto his head. Kryten and dream-Rimmer just shook their heads, walking out muttering something under their breaths. As soon as Kryten went back to the quarters, dream-Rimmer doubled back sneakily. He asked Holly to plug him in, and soon joined in on the game. A few minutes later, Kryten came shuffling back in, then he, too, came into the game to 'save them'.

As Rimmer watched the events on how they had gotten into the game unfold, the haze returned, and soon he was floating back to consciousness, fully aware of his lost memories.

They arrived in a small, run down town in the morning. The abandoned streets were deserted, and graffiti on the buildings showed how long this town had been run down. A small group of the NVCS members were busy happily scrubbing away a graffiti sign that read, "Go Cards!"

Kryten was among them, a soapy bucket in one hand, and a silly little pink apron wrapped around his waist. He glanced over, and when he saw them, he dropped his stuff and scuttled over to meet them.

"Thank Goodness, sirs! I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find you! I just got preoccupied with helping clean up. How do you feel?"

Lister shrugged, tugging at his black leather jacket. "Okay, Kryters. Why?"

"The black box we found before we came in here had a bonded chemical that was released into the air, that affected us so it brought out one emotion. In this case, it was anger. Someone must have touched it, and the pores must have soaked into the breathing air on the ship. That's why we were so mean to each other. When we came into the game, the emotion was turned into the exact opposite, and it made us nice to everyone. You probably already noticed that. It's hard not to notice when Mr. Rimmer is being nice."

Rimmer scowled at this. Kryten waved his hand, "Never mind. The chemical is still in our blood streams, and it's taking longer to get out of mine, because I have no blood streams, and it instead wired itself to my circuits. Anyway...the chemical is slowly leaving, and one of the side affects is short-term memory loss. You have gotten your memories back, right?"

Rimmer nodded, thinking about how his dreams had shown him, while Lister nodded, too.

Lister glanced around himself, then asked, "So, where's Cat!"

Kryten frowned, putting his hands on his hips in a very motherly fashion. "Don't you remember, sir? Cat didn't come into the game. He should be back on Red Dwarf, but who knows how long we've been in here."

Rimmer sighed, getting a very bad feeling about all of this. "So, how do we get out?"

"Well, that's relatively simple. Since we are all together, all we have to do is walk through the nearest doorway in the order we came into the game." At the looks from the others, Kryten shrugged. "Hey, I ran out of reading material. I read the manual."

So, Kryten showed them the nearest door, which was attached to a rusty building. Lister took in a nervous breath, then looked back at the two. Nervously, he said, "Well, see you on the other side!" He stepped through the door, thinking he was just going to be stepping into the building. A blinding purple light enveloped the door and Lister, and a second later, he was gone. Rimmer followed after him, with Kryten behind.

Hey! I know how they got into the game was the same as in the book, but I am going in a completely different direction. The Cat will become a huge part in the next chapter, and this story will slightly turn over to him. Hope you liked it!

Oh, and I know Bobby (Kryten) isn't American, but he sometimes sounds like he has an American accent, so I put that in there about him going to America. Maybe it's just me. And maybe I'll actually get around to going back to all my old stories, and cleaning them up a bit. A large task, no mistake.

The "Go Cards!" part was a little nod to my home team. The St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, who are now in the National League Finals. They are the only team and the only sport I love, and at the moment we are battling the Mets. I'm sorry, I just had to get Nationalistic on you all. If you are from New York, I'm sorry.