//------------------------------//
// Prologue 
// Story: Identity 
// by Tadrith 
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	What makes an identity? Is it a name? No, I gave mine up long ago. is it based on the choices one makes? not sure, I haven't felt I had a choice in what I do for the last two hundred forty years, so that can't be it. Is it ones personality? Also inconclusive. With each jump I feel I have lost more and more of what defines me. My response to things keeps changing. I know less about myself and how I think, or what I would do in a given moment than a fly does about the cosmos.

Why do I even bother thinking about these things? It's not like their going to make any difference. I'll still be just as lost as I ever was. I'll still have no real control over my life and no way home. After all, my life isn't my own anymore. My Life, what a joke! I lost that along with my heart on the same day this started all those years.

It's not like it has gotten any easier over the years. I start fresh, with barely an idea of why I'm there. I make new friends. Not because I want to, but because I have to if I am to succeed, but no matter how hard I try, I always end up caring about them. I even fell in love a few times. It was always for nothing though. Every time, it feels like my heart is being ripped out AGAIN! What am I supposed to feel when I am 'bounced' to the next world. The next pain. The next place I am supposed to protect, when I fear they may need to be protected from me.

So here I am again, waiting for my new body to recover from the shock of another ‘bounce’. something about this form seems vaguely familiar though, but I  can’t be sure until I have enough strength to open my eyes, let alone move enough to get a good look at myself.

For some reason, smell and taste are always the first to return. This is not a good thing, as I seem to have a knack for landing face first. Predictably the first thing I notice is a mouth full of dirt. It would seem that no matter what planet your’e on, dirt never tastes good. Oh but the smells, the smells are the biggest shock I have had in years. It smells like earth,like home, but stronger, cleaner. Cleaner? Well I can rule out home. I just can’t picture humanity getting their heads out of their collective butts long enough to clean up the planet.

Sensation is next to return, or should I say start. It feels like being put though a cement mixer, but you might come out with a few extra limbs. Six limbs. I have six limbs. while it’s not the first time, I must say it’s not my favorite. Seems like the more limbs the more it hurts, but at least I have an idea of what I am shaped like now. I don't feel any fingers or claws of some sort, so I'll assume for now that I have none.

How is it there are crickets? If this isn't earth, then where am I? There is even the call of a fox off in the distance, at least I think it's a fox, but what else could it be? This is all getting to weird for me. It's moments like this that give me hope that I'll wake up at home in bed, having had a really long and weird dream.

[SubJect N.R.G.-3.B.5.]

Ok, that's never been part of the dream.

[You Have Reached You FiNal DesTiNaTion]