Disaster strikes Lister's curry supplies have been destroyed by the battle with their future selves, Lister has a good solution: go back in time and order 500 curries, but they end up in Dallas in the year 1963.

Ace Rimmer turns up much to the annoyance of Arnold Rimmer, it turns out Ace is dieing and he wants Rimmer to take his place.

Over 3,000,000 years ago in the Aigbuth Arms pub, a box with a baby inside was placed under a pool table with just the word Ouroboros written on the side... Returning to the present day, the crew come across a wormhole between dimensions. They go through the wormhole, and meet an alternate version of themselves. Rimmer isn't there, Lister is a Hologram, Kochanski is alive, and Kryten is wearing a gold suit. They decide to exchange information and Kochanski requests that Lister fills a canister up with his sperm, so that she may have a child as her Lister cannot bear children. Unfortunately, Lister's in-law's - the GELFs attack (see Emohawk), and cause a break in the wormhole and Kochanski becomes caught on this side.
They eventually manage to escape the GELFs, thanks to Kochanski's navigation. Kryten is jealous because Lister likes Kochanski more then him and is glad when they return to the wormhole to get her back to her own dimension. On a box they found some supplies in, Lister

Kochanski is not adjusting very well to being on Starbug and Lister tries to make her feel better by building her a makeshift bathtub and finding some extra clothing for her. Kryten thinks that this means they are growing closer and soon will not need him so he 'accidentally' causes an engine failure, forcing the crew to crawl around in the air ducts to get to the engine room.

While Kochanski is still trying to get back to her dimension and Kryten is still jealous of the relationship that she could have with Lister; Lister begins to miss Rimmer and reflects on some of the fun times that he and Rimmer spent together in the early days after the accident. When he has a dream that Rimmer returns and he and Rimmer kiss, Kryten tries some psychology to get to the bottom of Lister's problem. However Kochanski has a little talk with Lister and makes him realise why he misses Rimmer, much to Kryten's disgust. Kryten, having to be one step better than Kochanski, creates "The Rimmer Experience" a virtual reality rollercoaster created from Rimmer's memories, depicting him thinking of himself as a 'Hero' and a 'Remarkable Person', giving Cat fashion tips and believing that Lister has called for Rimmer to save him before he wets himself. As the ride finishes Lister is so angry at Rimmer that Kryten sticks it to Kochanski because his method worked better than hers.

Kryten finds a lobster scuttling around the cargo hold and cooks an elaborate feast for the crew as it is the anniversary of when he was rescued from the Nova 5. The rest of the crew however have prepared to enter a virtual reality world of Jane Austen, where Kochanski hopes to teach them a little culture. Kryten is extremely upset that they left without touching his feast and enters the VR world, blowing up the characters of the game with a tank and ordering the crew to supper. Kryten seems to calm down as they tuck into the lobster but Lister asks for a little ketchup to 'pep it up' and Kryten blows his top. Literally. They replace his head but the rage still flows through him and they eventually run out of spare heads. They go aboard a derelict ship and find some heads but they dont have their primers installed. The crew realise that it is a simulant ship and hightail it, but they cannot leave without the heads so they dress up as GELFs and make a deal with the simulant captain.

The crew come across another Jupiter Mining Corporation vessel. Everyone on it is dead except for one person who is preserved in a block of ice. They take her aboard Starbug but the ice doesn't melt, even in very warm temperatures. They decide to leave it till morning to decide what to do. During the night, the woman inside breaks out, covered in rotting skin and dead flesh and climbs into bed with Lister, who believes it's Kochanski. One thing leads to another, but when she kisses Lister, she falls dead, and Lister realises he's just taken about half her face with that kiss. It turns out it was a virus inside the woman, known as Epideme, who infects it's victims, takes their knowledge,hugs them and then preserves the body and waits for another victim. Epideme has now entered Lister. After hours of trying to reason with it, they try to get rid of it by forcing it into Lister's arm and then cutting the arm off. Unfortunately, it doesn't work and Epideme begins to regenerate himself

Lister is quite annoyed that his right arm has been cut off, but seems to enjoy Kryten nursing him 24 hours a day; and Kryten is absolutely loving it. Kochanski becomes fed up with seeing Kryten doing things for him that he could easily do with one arm and comes up with a solution - use nanobots from Kryten's self-repair system to rebuild Lister's arm. Unfortunately, Kryten hasn't last seen the nanobots since they had met the Despair Squid (see Back To Reality) They all go into the deep sleep booths and make their way back to the ocean planet. The computer brings them out of deep sleep and they discover a planet which the Navicomp says is Red Dwarf. They are able to retrieve the original Holly and he explains that the nanobots had deconstructed Red Dwarf, created their own miniscule version of the ship and turned the rest into a planet for safekeeping. They realise that it was the nano version of RD that they were chasing and the nanobots evaded them by coming aboard Starbug and tra