- Kryten diagnoses Rimmer with a stress-related condition, as a surviving Simulant attacks the crew. Fleeing in an escape pod, Rimmer enters a wormhole and must spend the next 600 years on a deserted planet with only his clones for company.
- The Starbug crew returns to the Simulant's battleship to salvage for food supplies. However Rimmer, who has been diagnosed with a tense nervous disorder, escapes on-board via a pod - which has no steering. He's then whisked away through a time-hole - only to find himself on a planet inhabited by clones of his own self.—Daniel Williamson
- Rimmer undergoes a medical examination and is diagnosed with a stress-related nervous disorder which could lead to an electronic aneurysm, Kryten prescribes some Baoding balls to relieve stress, Strabug comes across the simulant cruiser that was fought in Gunmen of the Apocalypse, Lister wishes to board it for supplies, which Kryten and Rimmer consider unwise as the ship is dangerously unstable, there's also the possibility of surviving simulants.
Lister wants to board the ship for proper food supplies as the fridge is broken, and for a more serious reason. A reserve fuel tank was damaged when the ship crashed into the GELF moon and they need an urgent replacement, the four of them board, Cat has a firearm, Lister tells him they can't use guns on the cruiser as a loud noise could destroy the weakened cruiser, Kryten discovers a functional, portable teleporter, they teleport a bulk of supplies to Starbug with Rimmer on guard with the firearm, a surviving simulant appears, the second-in-command, she aims a handgun at them, the others stall her so Rimmer can flank her, instead he jumps into an escape pod starting the ship disintegration.
Lister, Cat and Kryten take the teleporter off the cruiser and Kryten accidentally sends them back in time to a week ago. Back in the present they fire up Starbug and fly away before the cruiser is destroyed, Rimmer contacts them and requests pick up, the pod is not the simulant's own, it was looted from a seeding ship and has no controls, it takes its passenger to the nearest S3 planet, the nearest is a year-and-a-half. The pod changes direction and flies into a wormhole, Rimmer should expect a time dilation as he goes through the wormhole, for Starbug it'll take a few minutes to get there, but from Rimmer's perspective he'll be stuck there for six hundred years.
Rimmer lands on an uninhabited planet, the pod contains resources for terraforming, he creates a wilderness and then sets about creating a female partner, the experiment yields an identical copy of Rimmer. Starbug penetrates the wormhole and lands, Lister, Cat and Kryten are taken prisoner by Roman guards that all look like Rimmer, they're taken to a palace where they see a Rimmer with an 'H' on his forehead, Cat and Kryten detect he's not the real Rimmer.
They are thrown in a cell with the real Rimmer, he's been there for precisely five-hundred and fifty-seven years, his clones all bear his selfish personality and overthrew him, his hard-light drive prevented murder, so they imprisoned him. Lister forms up an elaborate escape plan which Kryten makes easier when presents the teleporter, they teleport out and end up on Starbug some weeks in the future where something has happened to Lister.
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