[so guess which department is still notoriously and relentlessly the most understaffed of all of them? that's right, it's physical sciences. and it's time for another probably not all that successful recruiting campaign featuring everyone's not so favorite demolitionist, jasper.]

It's been awhile since I did one of these, and we just got a new batch of people in about a week ago so I thought I'd introduce myself again. My name is Jasper and I run the Physical Sciences department and we're always looking for new recruits.

Physical sciences covers, well, just about anything you can think of that isn't biological or genetic [what's up xenogen] but personally my expertise tends to run more along the lines of chemistry. And then there's Lydia of course who's expertise is, uh. Basically everything.

What that means for you guys though, is that I'm currently offering to teach any new recruits to physical sciences how to make their own fireworks-- and don't worry guys they're small ones and completely safe. [heading that conversation off at the pass right now.]

Let me know if you're interested in signing up. Or if you just want to talk combustion, I'm honestly not that picky. You don't have to be experienced, you just have to be interested!

A query, for those who have been aboard a while...

How is it you find the will to continue, when you have lost, over and again, those dear to you on board? Losing the ones from your own world or time feels like a deep enough blow... but equal are those from other worlds, who you cannot hope to see again should you be spirited home.

To add insult to injury, when sometimes these dear souls appear again, they are quite anew. They recall nothing of your friendship, or their time here, and are as strangers.

It's a melancholy truth, is it not? We can stomach death, for death promises the bliss of a great beyond where all are one, or otherwise, nothing at all and we shalln't be bothered by what we cannot know.

But this? This waking between death and life, where people reincarnate as themselves, but not the same...

How do you keep from letting it smother your joy? The idea that your loved ones can be taken from you in a moment, and almost worse: may return to you changed, and distant. And can we even hope they should return, to such a place as this?

[Added, as a quiet aside:]

...Poor Feuilly, patient man that he is, who puts up with me asking such things constantly.

But I should truly like to know how others cope.