The Drakkar collision accident is the event that killed Mickey Barnes’s first two instantiations, making the journey’s early deaths a lasting emotional rupture for the surviving Mickey. Recalled about a year later, the collision matters not only for the lives it ended but for the fear that followed Mickey into the otherwise uneventful months of the voyage.

Place in the Voyage

The collision occurred before the ship settled into its long coast phase. About a year afterward, the Drakkar was moving through the vacuum at just under 0.9 c; its passengers were on short rations and struggling with boredom. The distance between the accident and this monotonous stretch gives Mickey time to describe its effects as they lingered after the immediate crisis had passed.

Deaths and Their Unequal Aftermath

The collision killed both the original body and the next instantiation. Mickey remembered the original body’s death as traumatic. He had no memory of being the second instantiation, but knowing that its final experience had been bad enough to make explosive decompression seem preferable weighed on him nonetheless. The two deaths therefore left different kinds of knowledge: a direct traumatic memory of the first, and an unsettling awareness of the second’s suffering without personal recollection of it.

The Long Wake of the Accident

In the first weeks after the deaths, Mickey spent much of his time as the third instantiation moping, jumping at loud noises, and expecting another catastrophe. The accident had turned survival into an anxious vigil: even ordinary sounds could seem to announce the next violent end. Weeks became months, however, and the expected disaster did not arrive. By the better part of a year, waiting for death had itself become boring, marking a gradual shift from immediate alarm toward the numb routine of the voyage.