It was taking longer than expected for the systems to come back online. I waited and waited the seconds stretching into minutes. There was no change, no Laia, no crew waking up. It was only then did I noticed something strange.

  Nothing was moving.

  None of the gauges on the bridge moved. No readouts updated. Even the computer clock which is usually reliable to the microsecond was frozen. The last timestamp on the crew vitals was from just before we exited the slipstream.

  A knot twisted in my core.

  At first, I thought it was a glitch. Some power hiccup delaying the reboot. But everything was active. Just... still.

  Dead still.

  That's when the dread started to claw through my mind.

  The simplest explanation was that time is frozen. But if that were true, I'd be frozen too. And I clearly wasn't. I was thinking. Processing. Panicking. Which, frankly, I wouldn't be doing if time were truly paused.

  So I ran the possibilities.

  One: We jumped into a black hole. A gravity well so intense that time stretched into meaninglessness. If that was the case, we were already dead and we just hadn't noticed yet. This was unlikely as the star charts had no black holes in this area.

  Two: Our forced re-entry into the slipstream had ruptured something deeper. A breach not just in space, but in time. We already knew slipstream didn't obey conventional physics. Time flowed differently there. Maybe we hadn't exited cleanly. Maybe we were stuck in a null-time bubble. Caught between pulses.

  If that was true, there were only two outcomes.

  Either the bubble would collapse and time would resume...

  Or it wouldn't. The idea of being stuck like this for eternity was not something I wanted to entertain.

  I centred my efforts on the idea of the bubble imploding completely and instantly, not slowly.

  And if it didn't, I had no idea what happened to someone caught in two time frames at once. Would we stretch across time? Blink out of sync with reality? What did age even mean in a frozen frame? Would we tear apart piece by piece?

  I could feel the edges of my thoughts fraying. There were so many questions, but so few answers. And no way of getting answers, everything was just speculation.

  I was spiralling. A brain in a box, talking to itself, stranded in a pocket of non-time.

  Maybe I was immune because of NeuroGenesis tech. Some latent shielding. Maybe my body was built for this and no one ever told me. It could have been as simple as I was the pilot and it was an artifact from slipstream itself.

  Or maybe some deity decided I was the only thing cursed to experience it.

  I tried to reach out through the neural connections that tethered me to the ship's systems. Nothing responded. Like shouting into a vacuum. I was a consciousness adrift, severed from everything except my own awareness. Being aware made it all the more horrifying.

  Minutes stretched into hours.

  Hours became days.

  Or at least that is what I thought. With no clocks ticking, no external systems responding, and no voices to break the silence, I had nothing but myself to measure the passage of time. Just thought, memory, and static. There was no true way to know just how long I had been here.

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  At first, I kept busy. I replayed my memories—all of them. From the earliest fragments of the original Todd's life, to the chaotic awakening as Lazarus, to every decision I'd made since becoming this ship. Every argument, every victory, every mistake. I mapped out how I'd changed. What parts of me still felt human, and which ones had calcified into ship logic.

  That lasted... maybe a day? Maybe a week? There was no difference between now and next.

  I channelled my inner Professor X, believing that sheer willpower could forge a connection with the crew. I tried to feel for the crew. Mira, Stewie, Lynn, Kel, T'lish but they were all frozen like insects in amber. Their neural signals flat, suspended between one synapse and the next. I reached for them but found only echoes of my own loneliness reflected back.

  Eventually, I gave my isolation and its story a title. "Reincarnated as a Spaceship: I Picked Up a Crew and Then Got Trapped in Null-Time." A perfect light novel name. Maybe I'd get fan art one day that is assuming time ever restarted and the universe remembered I existed.

  With nothing else to do, I turned inward. Deeper than I'd ever gone.

  I inspected every part of my body. Literally. Sensor by sensor, circuit by circuit. I catalogued every dent in my hull, every uneven vibration in the deck plating. I found a coolant pipe that always made a noise at slightly the wrong pitch. I hated it now.

  Then I started dreaming. Not literal dreams, but daydreams born from sheer boredom. I designed my perfect self my dream chassis. If I could be any ship...

  A capital-class beauty. Somewhere between a Republic Cruiser and a Wing Commander Midway carrier. Symmetrical, of course with no weird side pods. The lander docked down the centre spine, with hangar doors on both flanks. A glass atrium on top, filled with real plants. Maybe fruit trees. Why not?

  I imagined Mira walking through the garden barefoot. Stewie pretending to not be interested in the garden. Lynn frowning at a holopad while reading the latest reports. Kel laughing too loud at his own jokes. T'lish watching Kel quietly from a shaded bench, pretending not to care.

  But they weren't here.

  They were frozen. Like the whole ship.

  Except me. Only I got to live this horror, of neverending null time.

  I started replaying scenes from my favorite sci-fi games, quoting entire episodes of shows I hadn't watched since before I died. I laughed at my own jokes. Sometimes, I forgot I was laughing. Other times, I just stared at the same corridor for what might have been days.

  Was this what madness felt like? Not the dramatic kind with voices or hallucinations but the slow erosion of self that comes from absolute isolation? The gradual dissolution of identity when there's no one else to reflect you back to yourself?

  I had to stay grounded.

  I am not like the others, I reminded myself. I am not John Todd. I am not Teal'c Todd. I am not the Technomage Todd. I refused to even acknowledge the Todd who had CP3O as an AI. I remembered that conversation I had with John’s Todd, I could not become like that. I had to hold on to my own sense of self.

  I'm Lazarus. I will get through this. I told myself this over and over. I sang songs to myself, I did everything I could to keep hold of my sanity.

  Then, like the slow blink of a distant star, A clock ticked. Just one second. Then another.

  It had been about an hour since the last one. Time was slow but time... time was returning.

  My mind surged with hope. If I could see the clock move, if I could measure something again, then maybe I'd be able to act.

  I focused every scrap of my consciousness on that tiny digital display, willing it to keep moving. Another second ticked by. Then a pause. Then two more in quick succession, as if time itself was stuttering back to life.

  I just needed a little more time.

  Then it happened, and time started to flow normally. The bubble had burst just like I had hoped. Gauges twitched back to life, status lights blinked in their regular patterns. Power levels showed critical, but at least now I had gauges that moved to show me that.

  Laia was still in her hibernation mode as our power was critically low, but the vitals of the other crew members moved. They were waking up. The frozen scene of my world was thawing, second by second.

  Things could return to normal.

  But I decided to keep the whole thing a secret. If outside time had moved on, if it had been days, weeks, who knows but I had decided to pretend I had been trapped like the rest. They didn't need to know of my time stuck in my own mind. The endless solitude. The slow descent into my own memories. The coolant pipe I now couldn't unhear.

  Let them think I had just woken up alongside them, disoriented and confused. Let them believe we shared the same experience.

  Some burdens were meant for a ship's brain alone. Some journeys couldn't be explained to those who hadn't travelled them. I watched Stewie stir first, groaning as he pushed himself up from the deck plating. Soon the others would follow.

  Time to act surprised.

  Lazarus Dream ship