Arnold Rimmer undergoes a medical examination and learns he has a stress-related condition that could give him an electronic aneurysm, resulting in his death. Kryten prescribes several stress relief measures too prevent this, including Chinese worry balls. Shortly after this, the pair join Dave Lister and Cat in investigating the simulant ship they defeated a few weeks earlier for supplies. While aboard, the group finds that one crew survived their encounter and confronts them. Rimmer opts to flee in an escape pod, inadvertently triggering the collapse of the ship. Kryten, Lister and Cat use the matter transporter they had been using to load supplies onto "Starbug" as an alternative exit. However, their return to the ship is stalled by Kryten making a programming error on the device and sending them back into their past a week ago, meeting their past selves. Once they have returned, the group finds Rimmer's pod, which Kryten discovers was looted and had terraforming equipment, is being drawn into a wormhole with time dilation effects, meaning that it will take six centuries from Rimmer's perspective for them to recover him but only a few hours from the crew's.




Rimmer opts to wait upon the closest S3 planet beyond the wormhole that the pod lands on, and uses the equipment to create a paradise from himself for the time being. When the rest of the crew finally reach him, they find themselves confronted by a race of power-hungry Rimmer-clones, who throw them into a dungeon with the real Rimmer. Through him, the group learns that he attempted to create a female companion but created clones of himself instead, who eventually overthrew him, much to his despair. With his hard light drive preventing him from being executed, Rimmer was imprisoned for over five centuries. Rimmer further explains that the others will be executed for having un-Rimmer like traits, which the clones consider a crime, which Kryten points out will cause the clones to not evolve and die out. Although Lister forms a complex plan to escape, Kryten simply suggests they use the transporter to return to Starbug, though he causes another programming error that takes the crew out of the present. Believing that they have again travelled into the past, Lister and Cat tease "past" Rimmer about his future six-hundred-year ordeal. However, informing the crew that they have in fact travelled weeks into the future, future Rimmer implies that something terrible will happen to Lister, leaving him worried for his future before they leave.