You WAKE UP. Is that strange? It feels like a moment ago, life was very different; you probably weren't lying horizontal for one, and now when you open your eyes there's nothing familiar at all. Where once there was chaos and pain, real or perceived, now there is just quiet. Calm. A gentle mottled light and the sense of time having passed somehow, slipped between your fingers.

Welcome to Station 72, everyone. You'll have a day to acquaint yourself with the Station, introduce yourselves to each other, and ask any questions of the Station's strange keepers, The Prince and Cathaway, that you might want wish to. Explore. Be curious. Flex your new mental muscles. Just try not to set anything on fire (and ignore the weird burned out patch in the circle gardens...; it's fine. Everything's fine.).

While there's plenty to look at explore in the vast labyrinth of Station 72, your instructors will tell you that you won't be here long; tomorrow you're schedule to travel to Concordia. You'll join the others there, they say. Sure enough, roughly a day after hatching you're all called to the Flight Deck. There's a svelte looking transport ship there and though you won't know it, this scene plays out almost the same way it did for the other hosts. There is a young woman - strangely familiar, though you've definitely never met her before - who introduces herself as Carata. She'll be your right down to the planet and cheerfully answer any additional questions you might have. Equipment is doled out, all of it relatively straight forward though Cathaway and The Prince are insistent on making sure everyone knows to keep their databanks carrying their mission briefing in offline mode.

Once gear is distributed, everyone's loaded on the transport and harnesses are buckled, the transport departs the Station by way of the deck platform it's on rotating down. It drops the ship into a launch tube. A moment of quiet and then-- it jerks. The starship flies free of the Station, free of the nexus point, and arrives with a nauseating tilt of reality above the multi-colored marble of a planet, Opia.

Again they fly under the cover of night. Again, their landing zone is a remote location: some kind of practice sporting field at the edge of Concordia, the chalky substrate a fair substitution for tarmac. Once everyone's off the ship, the stealth transport lifts off on its own accord and blinks out of sight. "Don't worry," says Carata. "It will be back when we need it." She leads the way to the parking lot surrounding the field. A few moments later, a van - that's definitely what it is - pulls up. Everyone pile in!

"There you are," says the man in the passenger seat. The android driver greets everyone by the names on their IDs (real or otherwise). The man twists to look at the new hosts. "Good. We need you. We've already gotten nowhere."

"Oh Nirad, do not be so negative. You will exhaust them."

The drive lasts a few hours, but eventually the van arrives at Bearings. Take the lift to the LEVEL NUMBER EIGHTEEN. You'll find the source to that strange, persistent itch - that compulsive, instinctive longing for something familiar - waiting for you there: all the other young hosts of Station 72, elbow deep in the work they've been given.