text: I have lived a thousand lifetimes. Oh, not exactly a thousand; I lost track long ago. And I won't even try to guess how many years I've lived; trying to refer to a calendar isn't exactly straightforward. You see, I'm something of an immortal. Every time I die I open my eyes and I'm being placed in my mother's arms, a baby opening his eyes for the first time. Every time the world is reset, everything exactly how it was except for me. I have all of my knowledge, all of my memories, everything. I am a constantly changing constant, while everything else gets rewound and rerun. I still remember my first life most clearly. There was nothing particularly special about me - on the short side of tall, a bit overweight, enough brains to do well in school but not enough self-discipline to do great. I had an OK life and muddled my way through like most everyone else, and then I died. And then I woke up. I was a baby again. And it was the worst thing I've ever experienced. Everything that I loved, everyone that was precious to me, it was all gone, and no one could understand or would even believe me. I cried like a baby, which wasn't all that odd because, of course, I was one. That second life was a haze of confusion, both for myself and those around me. I still had to learn how to see, how to move, how to walk, how to control my bowels and bladder - my, wasn't that embarrassing - but once I did I could walk, talk, and try to tell people what had happened to me. They were amazed at this impossibly gifted infant, but they never really believed me. They never have, in fact, all the times I've been through it. And I didn't really believe it either, that first time. I had all of these memories, could even tell people about things before they happened, but I was always doubting that it was real, that it wasn't some fever dream or head wound or delirium. So I went through my life, muddled through the best I could - this time making a bit more money in the stock market - and then I died. And then I woke up. And then I believed. I tried, those first cycles, I really did. I tried to understand what was happening to me, tried to make sense of this madness laid atop an already crazy world. But there is no explanation - or if there is I haven't found it. I just keep on keeping on, functionally immortal and just starting over again and again. I am so, so tired of starting over again. So yes, I have lived a thousand lifetimes, give or take. I have been rich and poor - and let me tell you, rich is better. I have lived short lives of hedonistic debauchery, and spent a century living the life of an ascetic high in the mountains of Tibet. I have grown financial empires out of the seeds of a child's weekly allowance, and used them to try to remake the world. I have prevented tragedies only to see other ones take their place. I have suffered horrible diseases, punishing myself on the thought that I was being punished in some afterlife and could hasten the end of the punishment. I have been an incarnation of justice, punishing the villains of the world for crimes sometimes not yet committed in that lifetime, and through the process become the villain. I've even walked on the moon, if you can believe that. It took lifetimes of study and memorization, working with people way smarter than I am, but pushing them a little farther each time to make their discoveries a little bit faster, and all the while they were thinking I was the genius. Hah! But it worked, and I pushed humanity to the stars. And then I died. And then I woke up. I have been a doctor, a scientist, a politician. I have been a bricklayer, a garbage man, a soldier, a fighter. I have been a billionaire and lived as long as medical technology could take me, and I have died young from the search for the next adrenaline rush, or the sheer weight of despair. I have lived in every country and every culture in the world, and I've forgotten more languages than I can speak right now. I've been ordained in every religion that exists, and even started a few of my own. I have cured cancer and the common cold, and I have brought down governments and remade the world. And none of it matters. And it's all for nothing. Because every time I die. And I wake up. And I know I can never get what I truly want. Oh, don't get me wrong, I've tried. I've tried to move on, I've had hundreds of wives and hundreds of children, and I have loved them all. But they never quite manage to fill that hole, to satisfy the nagging curiosity of whether that first lifetime went on without me, and what happened to my wife and my daughter and my sons. And I've tried to recreate that first lifetime too, letting tragedies both great and personal proceed as I remembered, suffering indignities and abuses, even rescuing the same cats at the same animal shelters, anything to try to recreate the conditions of that first life. I've married the same woman hundreds of times, and she's just as wonderful and just as endearing. But life is a random thing my friend, and you and I are the products of very small odds. Sure, the odds of having kids might not be that rare, else we as a species wouldn't be there. But the odds of having one specific child? Or three very specific children? It would take more lifetimes than have existed in the universe during my strange cycle to get even one of those combinations. A very specific egg, a specific molecular structure in one specific sperm out of millions, affected by all the choices and experiences of a life spent to that point - this is what makes an individual, and any little change will result in a different individual. All I want, really, is the end of this cycle. I want to open my eyes and see my wife next to me. I want to see my daughter's beautiful brown eyes and be there to see what she makes of her life. I want to see my twin sons and meet the men they grow into. I want to meet their children, and I want to grow old as a part of that family. And I want to die knowing that their lives will keep going after I'm gone, that something I've built will outlast me, that I've actually made an impact on the world. But until that happens I will keep living. I will muddle my way through the best I can. And I will die. And then I will wake up.