Inmates of the Flesh by Alina Udrea - HTML preview

CHAPTER 3- The Digital Veil

The desert before Eryn rippled like a mirage, but her implant told

her otherwise. This was not the heat. This was the Veil itself- an artificial skin of reality. Every soul on Earth was wrapped in it, sealed like data behind a thousand locked doors.

The Warden’s words echoed in her mind: ”Immerse them”. Basically,

take an eternal being, wipe its history and bind it in flesh. Layer hunger, fear, reproduction, work, grief and fleeting joy over it like chains in

9

disguise. What better way to tame a criminal than to cage infinity inside limitation?

But the implant was letting her see fragments not meant for her. She

Page | 10 could feel the masks of past lives rattling behind her own face.

A warrior queen bleeding on her throne.

A drunk farmer drowning his family’s fortune in ale.

A scholar who discovered truths he was ordered to destroy.

Each one an avatar of her, each one a different sentence.

The implant hissed static in her mind:” The Earth is not organic. Time itself is the cell”

Suddenly she understood the cruelty of the system more clearly:

reincarnation wasn’t mystical, it was protocol. Whenever a soul “died”, its data packet was forced to reboot, scrubbed, then dropped back into the simulation. Lives were deliberate scripts, trials, each one shaping the soul like a blacksmith hammering molten metal.

Some souls broke early, lost in madness. Others grew over

centuries. And some, like her, were caught in between, fragmented by too many resets.

Her implant flared again: “Recalibration required. Shard instability

critical”

She staggered, almost on her knees. The Nexus pulsed faintly on the

horizon like a lighthouse staring right back at her.

A laugh escaped her throat: ”A prison with a recycling bin. Elegant.”

10

Then she could swear she heard whispers from the spires: “Don’t fight

the Veil…”, “It only hurts if you resist…”

Eryn clenched her fists. No, she wouldn’t go down the rabbit hole

Page | 11 again!

For the first time she discovered the truth that made the Overseer’s

system most fragile. If every prisoner discovered the Veil was only a program… the prison could collapse from the inside. And maybe that was what the Nexus really offered… not just judgment. But a door.