The Mammut screamed through space, its warp field shimmering like a fractured diamond. The stars outside the viewport twisted and danced, their light bending as the ship surged into transwarp. Not the standard controlled burst of speed—this was chaotic, a violent leap into the unknown.

I had no control. The console in front of me sparked and fizzled, the readouts spouting gibberish. The ship groaned under the strain, its ancient frame buckling but somehow holding together.

And then, it happened.

The Mammut’s warp field buckled, collapsing in on itself before flaring outward again in a surge of energy. It was like the ship couldn’t decide whether to stay in warp or exceed it. One moment, the stars blurred into streaks of light; the next, they snapped back into pinpricks. My body was slammed against the harness as the ship lurched violently, oscillating between warp and transwarp faster than my mind could process.

The flickering of space-time around me wasn’t just disorienting—it was tearing something apart.

Me.

I could feel it, a sensation like being stretched and compressed at the same time. My vision blurred, splitting into fragments as my mind grappled with what was happening. And then I saw it: two versions of myself, existing side by side. Two Flickers, occupying the same moment, the same ship—but in different timelines.

One of me was screaming, watching in horror as the Mammut hurtled toward the heart of a dying star. Its bloated surface glowed an angry red, its core exposed like a festering wound. There was no time to react. The ship smashed into the star’s heart with a deafening silence that defied physics, its core bending and warping around the hull. The intense pressure and heat forged the star’s core into an impossibly dense material, a substance that solidified around the Mammut just as the star began to collapse.

And then it exploded.

The supernova was instantaneous, a wave of fire and radiation that consumed everything in its path—including me. My final thought in that timeline was a flash of regret, a silent scream swallowed by the death of a star.

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But the other Flicker—me—was still alive.

In that timeline, the Mammut’s transwarp bubble held firm, phasing the ship just enough to avoid the star entirely. I watched as the fiery surface flickered past, the ship gliding through space as though it were a ghost. The hull shimmered with energy, absorbing something from the star’s core as the ship phased back into real space.

Both realities existed at once, colliding in my mind. I was alive and dead, whole and broken. The memories of both timelines surged through me, two sets of experiences vying for dominance. For a brief, terrifying moment, I was both Flickers, living and dying in parallel.

And then the timelines reasserted themselves.

The ship stabilized, the chaotic energies of the warp field collapsing into a single, steady pulse. The Mammut floated in real space, its hull covered in a strange, shimmering metal. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen—black as obsidian, yet glowing faintly with an inner light. The substance was harder than any known alloy, a byproduct of the star’s core and the impossible forces that had acted on the ship.

I slumped back in my seat, breathing heavily. My hands shook as I gripped the controls, but the Mammut was eerily quiet now, its systems humming with newfound stability.

I was alive. But I wasn’t the same.

The memories of the supernova—the crushing heat, the flash of light as my body disintegrated—lingered in my mind, as real as the console in front of me. I could feel the weight of both timelines, the impossible reality of having lived and died simultaneously.

“What… what just happened?” I whispered, my voice trembling.

The ship offered no answers, its AI systems still rebooting from the chaos. I looked down at my hands, half-expecting them to flicker like ghosts. But they were solid. Real.

I was real. Wasn’t I?

The Mammut drifted through space, its new hull reflecting the light of distant stars. The ship had survived the impossible, and so had I. But at what cost? The memories of my death—of being consumed by a star—haunted me, a constant reminder of how close I had come to the void.

And yet, the ship had gained something. The strange metal encasing its hull was unlike anything in the known universe, a testament to the forces that had acted on it. It was stronger now, more durable than any material I’d ever seen.

And me? I was still alive. Still Flicker. But I wasn’t sure if I was whole anymore.

The Mammut hummed softly as I stared out into the void, the memories of two lives—two deaths—echoing in my mind. Somewhere, in the back of my thoughts, a question lingered:

Had I truly survived? Or was I just a shadow, a fragment of my former self?

NO, I WAS FLICKER WICK! Son of Viktor and Olivia Wickerson. I am who I am and there is no one like me.

As I tried to calm down I gave myself something to focus on. Something to keep me grounded and sane after the insanity that I just went through.

Tapping on the controls to get external sensor readings about where I ended up showing gibberish. Looking at the internal sensors showed the same. Having exhausted my limited options I put the computer into full reset and would have to wait for the computer and ship AI to reboot.

The computer had no answers yet. But I knew one thing for certain: the Mammut wasn’t just a ship anymore. It was now my home. By that assumption, I might as well take atour and see what I don't have to fix on my new property.