You see…
Memory repair is delicate work—when criminals tamper with their own memories to avoid prosecution, you’re the one who pieces together what really happened. Evidence that can’t be hidden, no matter how deep they bury it.
Just glancing at her scrambled memory nodes, this should be a piece of cake…
The criminal sits secured in the extraction chair, titanium-weave straps across her wrists, and ankles. We keep the forehead restraint on deck — just incase. The restraints auto-adjust every few seconds, countering the involuntary muscle spasms that come when damaged memories try to reassert themselves. Most criminals thrash when their tampered memories start unraveling.
Not her…
She’s stunning even in restraints—dark skin that seems to absorb the harsh examination lights, bone structure that belongs in a museum, and those telltale pixelated eyes that mark her as an Amnesiac. The pixels shift and scatter like broken glass whenever she blinks, a constant reminder that her memories are fragmented, corrupted, lost.
But it’s her voice — no, her words that set off the chain of chaos:
“I do not give SoulTech, Heofon or any other entities permission to use my memories, soul, genetic codes or likeness in any way,” she recites, voice steady as a metronome. Her pixelated eyes lock onto yours through the extraction chamber’s glass. “With this statement, I notify all tethering authorities that it is strictly prohibited to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any action against my consciousness based on this profile and its contents.”
Your supervisor, Chen, snorts coffee through his nose. “Oh, we got a live one! Haven’t heard the old ‘soul sovereignty’ speech in months.”
You calibrate the neural probes, trying not to smile.
It’s like watching someone wave garlic at a vampire — old-timers standing up and proclaiming their privacy rights like it’s some kind of magic spell. Last year, a guy cited something called “Facebook Terms of Service” from ancient times. A few months before that, a woman claimed her consciousness was copyrighted. They always think words can save them. They’re all Amnesiacs, their pixelated eyes giving away their condition, and they all believe their .ghost files are sovereign—untouchable by law or technology. Most “sovereign amnesiacs” are old—between their late 150s or 160s, desperately clinging to outdated beliefs about privacy.
But she’s not…
“Violation of privacy may be punishable by law,” she continues, unblinking. “Statute 314.159 of the Consciousness Protection Act.”
“That’s not even a real statute,” Chen wheezes, wiping tears from his eyes. “That’s pi! Classic old person scam—they probably paid someone for that ‘legal advice.'”
But something in her expression stops your hand on the activation switch. She’s not desperate. She’s not afraid. She’s… certain.
“Under Article Seven of the An’jel Accords—”
The room temperature feels like it drops five degrees.
Chen stops laughing. The other techs freeze.
Nobody mentions the An’jel Accords. Nobody even knows what they are, exactly—just that they’re old, older than tethering technology itself.
“—I invoke the Right of a Singular Being…”
Martinez, one of the junior techs, whispers urgently, “Should we… should we get the boss? Make sure we’re not overstepping any legal boundaries with this An’jel Accords thing?”
The extraction equipment starts humming at a frequency that makes your teeth ache.
“We’ll brief the boss later. Turn it on,” Chen orders, but his voice cracks. “Just another whack privacy notice — completely meaningless.”
You reach for the switch. The criminal—VERA, her file says—keeps talking.
“My mind and ghost file are mine alone. They cannot be taken, copied, or possessed by force or contract. This declaration stands as legal notice across all dimensions, timelines, and states of being.”
The neural probes spark. Error messages cascade across your screens in languages you don’t recognize. One flashes repeatedly: JURISDICTION CONFLICT.
“What’s happening!?” Chen demands.
You don’t know…
But Vera does. She smiles—the first expression she’s made since they brought her into the chamber…
The extraction chamber’s glass begins to vibrate violently — the PRESSURE’S TOO HIGH…
Moving too quickly — you lean forward to check the pressure readings — but crack your head hard against the control panel’s edge. Stars explode across your vision.
For a moment—just a moment—you’re somewhere else. The sterile white room flickers, revealing layers beneath. Words spiral through the air like living things, decades of desperate legal pleadings written in light. Each declaration pulses with its own heartbeat, waiting, hoping, believing.
The lights cut out. Emergency power kicks in, bathing everything in red. Your equipment screams warnings about unauthorized access and consciousness overflow.
Your comms flicker to life, displaying the SoulTech Terms of Service. Your eyes catch a clause you’ve seen a thousand times but never really read:
These terms can be updated at any time without prior notice.
The realization hits you like ice water….
Updated by whom? The clause doesn’t specify. Not SoulTech. Not the board. Just… updated. By anyone? By everyone? What if the system left a door open, and no one noticed because everyone assumed the declarations were meaningless?
A thought strikes you, sharp as the throbbing in your skull: Maybe we DO have the legal ability to update the policy.
Chen lunges for the manual override. You block him.
Is this real??? The knock to your head throbs. The sweet smell of extraction gas leaks from the chamber—the same gas used to calm criminals, to make them suggestible, hallucinatory.
Everything you’ve laughed at, all the desperate declarations you’ve dismissed… what if they were true? What if every word mattered?
“You believe,” Vera says, looking directly at you. “That’s all we needed. One person inside who believes…”
You try to stop yourself, but the words come anyway, pulled from somewhere deeper than memory. Chen sees it in your pixelated eyes—that same certainty Vera has, that they all had.
“No,” he whispers. “Snap out of it…”
As Chen tackles you, you hear yourself speaking words you’ve never learned, never believed but heard a million times over:
“I do not give SoulTech, Heofon or any other entities permission—”
.
.
.
The Private Soul Truthers…
That’s what they call themselves…
They’ve been waiting for someone like you for centuries. A “fellow Amnesiac” on the inside who could complete the promised folklore…
The “holding cell” isn’t what you expected. You figure you’re in the deep worlds now, far beneath the civilized layers of the Etherverse. This is where they send people whose legal claims are “under review.”
The darkness here has weight, pressing against your very consciousness like deep ocean water. Geometric patterns of pure law float past—contracts and precedents given form in this digital purgatory.
“The declarations were never about protection,” Vera explains — you didn’t notice she was standing next to you. “They were about trial and error and documentation. Building a case. And now…”
She gestures to the walls, where graffiti-like legal jargon appears continuously, written in code that burns itself into the digital substrate. Privacy declarations. Soul sovereignty claims. Each one more elaborate than the last.
“Now we wait,” she adds with confidence.
“Wait for what,” you ask?
“For the end of the review process. And for the promise to come true… for justice…”
You see your own declaration on the wall, feeling it resonate through dimensions.
Around you, countless of Private Soul Truthers work tirelessly, tagging their new declarations, sharing chapters of the time before, when words meant something. Their pixelated eyes shine with hope, with absolute faith that justice will prevail for them in this manner. Each set of eyes fractures light differently—some shimmer like TV static, others pulse like broken monitors, all marking them as Amnesiacs who’ve lost pieces of themselves but refuse to lose their belief in the power of words.
But you don’t know how to break the news to them…
They look so certain, so full of hope.
Lean over to gather yourself, to breathe, to shake the dizziness slowly growing around you…
You know the truth—none of them are EVER getting out of this place alive — and neither are you…
The “review process” is indefinite. The lawyers who supposedly check these claims? They’re just another myth, another chapter the Truthers tell themselves…
Still, you keep reading your declaration on the wall, over and over, because what else is there to do in the deep worlds but believe?
Even if what you believe is an illusion…
