Quintessence, or the Nature of Fetters

Photo: Grant Galbraith

File No. 496

Interviews with Vincent Usen, Graduate Student.

Location: Underground Complex, Uyo, NGA

12-02-27

VINCENT USEN:

My father broke the world. I’m here to tell you how.

Wait, is my microphone on?

Okay. I verify that my statement today was given of my free will. My name is Vincent Usen, and when I’m not dancing my nights away at raves, I am a Grad student in the Faculty of Psychi-Engineering, at the University of Uyo. The date is the twelfth of February 2027, I think. The time is ten minutes past five p.m. We are in—I don’t know where we are because the Central Government covered my face with a mask when they brought me in, which is very old-fashioned if you ask me…

Should I skip all that? 

File No. 004

Interview with Dr David Usen, PhD, Senior Scientist, Quintessence Foundation.

Location: University of Uyo, NGA.

22-12-21

DAVID USEN:

Where do you want me? Over here? 

The date is the twenty-second of December 2021. I verify that my statement today was given without coercion and of my free will. 

My name is David Usen. I am a preacher, as my father was before me. I am a husband and father to two wonderful boys. I have many other passions, and I would like to think God drove me to them, because why else would a pastor’s son from a small town in Akwa-Ibom choose to learn about blockchain engineering? 

The book of Mark says, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” All my knowledge, every endeavour in my life, led me to this project. It was always about saving souls, every soul. 

The concept of the soul is almost as old as humanity itself, but we never had any definitive proof of its existence. Is it merely our consciousness? Or the impulses that travel after the action potential in neurons cascade and form thoughts and personalities? 

After the pandemic, my consortium saw the benefit of global collaboration in solving problems and diverted  resources to numerous global endeavours, including funding our search for the human soul. Quintessence’s departments all held tiny pieces of the map for centuries and stumbled around in the dark, but that has changed. It has been a remarkable global effort. Neuroscience laboratories around the world have linked up with seminaries, monasteries and other religious institutions. Scientists, theologians and philosophers have pored over neural scans and centuries of sacred texts. After several months of research, we have found it. Right under our noses all this time.

File No. 496

Interviews with Vincent Usen, Graduate Student.

Location: Underground Complex, Uyo, NGA

12-02-27

VINCENT USEN:

David Usen was a hard man to hate. A brilliant preacher and scientist who stepped up when all the other Nigerian pastors cowered from the future, joining the early iteration of the Quintessence Foundation. With each part of the research consortium providing pieces of the puzzle, Quintessence found more than just “proof” that the soul exists. 

The Quintessence Project’s first short docuseries, “Soul in a Pressurised Tube”, sent social media into meltdown. WhatsApp broadcasts looped endlessly, shared millions of times, as billions around the world flooded the foundation with the same urgent questions:

Who is Quintessence to play God?

What does this mean for me? For my faith? 

That is where Pastor Usen—my father—came in. As part of the religious arm of the project, he assured the world that the results were valid and had the church’s backing; actions influenced where our souls would end up: paradise, the singularity of bliss, or the primordial void, for people whose actions had tainted their souls beyond redemption. Pastor Usen and the other religious leaders reassured people that Quintessence was for them; the church was, after all, in the business of saving souls.

With the backing of well-funded lobbyists, Pastor Usen and the Quintessence Foundation pushed for the Nigerian government to relax the legislation around the incorporation of new technology required to sustain soul chains  nationwide. Quintessence and Nigeria entered Public-Private Partnership that started with developing vast energy infrastructure, and this collaboration heralded a quantum leap in tech, unlike anything a country has ever experienced. Many called him a visionary, and with his leadership, the Quintessence Foundation commissioned QTSSMN1, the first of what we now call soul mines.

Can I get some water?

Thank you.

File No. 004

Interviews with Dr David Usen, PhD, Senior Scientist, Quintessence Foundation.

Location: University of Uyo, NGA.

04-10-22

 DAVID USEN:

Since we launched QTSSMN1 earlier in the year, the term “soul mines” has been on countless TV screens, tweets, Facebook posts, and TikToks. I do not like it o, but it caught on, and as long as we know our goal, I am okay with whatever they want to call it. 

We now understand how souls work. Though my faith colleagues and I within the project are still conflicted about what this means for our beliefs and its challenges to the philosophies of our religions and our “afterlives”, we remain resolute in our newfound cause: to accelerate the next generation of soul-saving, utilising cutting-edge blockchain technology.

My earliest contribution to the Quintessence project’s quest to study and fully understand the soul was the incorporation of blockchain engineering and its infrastructure. Gone are the days when blockchain was just about crypto. With over three billion dollars in seed funding, we’ve recruited elite talent across the tech, engineering, and faith sectors.

The soul-blockchain ledger is unlike any technological innovation before it. First the soul, in its ether-like state is temporarily drawn into specially pressurised tubes—as shown in the video you’ve undoubtedly seen—and from there, the QTSSMN computer translates each soul into a unique data string stored on the blockchain. Once your soul has been mined, it will be preserved on the blockchain for all eternity.

The first soul mine will be built on land in my hometown, Ikot Ekpene, purchased from the Akwa-Ibom state government; tens of thousands of acres of high-density hardware will take souls and translate them to algorithmically derived strings of letters and numbers saved in an impenetrable ledger, a blockchain, till the day they die. Mining souls requires massive amounts of energy and cooling, so we have also constructed a vast, high-reliability solar farm that will produce gigawatts of energy. This will undoubtedly help solve my country’s power crises. Not only are we saving souls, but we are also improving, saving the planet, by stimulating new investment in clean energy.

This is a transformative level of technology, and my church is at its very heart. I am very proud. 

File No. 496

Interview with Vincent Usen, Graduate Student.

Location: Underground Complex, Uyo, NGA

13-02-27

 VINCENT USEN:

As someone who works in soul mining, I’ve had people call me a hypocrite more times than I could endure. I worked to keep the system going, yeah? Then how dare I criticize it?

Then there were those who claimed I was jealous of my father’s legacy, and the fact that I would never eclipse the man who ensured the salvation of billions.

They do not get it, and I don’t blame them; they didn’t grow up with him. My father didn’t just cast a shadow. He was a black hole, consuming everything! 

I do not seek to eclipse him; that is not what this is!

I- I’m sorry. 

The world would be better off without soulmines. I’ve said it on record, more than once. Quintessence did not invent soul mining to save anyone. They did it to own eternity, and my father enabled them. He called it grace. But this is not how souls were meant to be saved—Locked up, frozen, imprisoned forever. Did I have any choice but to work in the world he created? No. But I don’t have to pretend to like it.

Can we end here for today?

File No. 004

Interview with Dr David Usen, PhD, Senior Scientist, Quintessence Foundation.

Location: Quintessence Foundation Regional Headquarters, Ikot Ekpene, NGA

06-01-23

DAVID USEN:

I always preach about faith. Faith moves mountains, but faith without works is also dead, so someone has to leap for people to believe that their souls will be saved. I am committed to the cause, but my soul being mined will not be enough to prove salvation. 

The first volunteer from my church to go through will need to be close to death’s door so that we can assess the confidence rate of our project. When Mrs Ekanem goes through the mining process, her soul will be placed on the ledger, free from harm and tamper-resistant, to be released into the singularity when she dies. When the gathered crowds shout out in praise to God for the preservation of their souls on the blockchain, then I will know I have succeeded. 

File No. 496

Interview with Vincent Usen, Graduate Student.

Location: Underground Complex, Uyo, NGA

13-02-27 

VINCENT USEN:

This is my first memory of the mines. We’re on the stage, surrounded by a sea of faces. Mum held my brother’s hand, keeping him still for the cameras. I stood a little apart in a stiff, newly ironed suit, fourteen and trying not to fidget. The pastor raised his hands, voice ringing out over the speakers, and the screen behind him flickered. A string of numbers and letters started to scroll— Mma Ekanem’s soul, mined and recorded on the soulchain. A murmur ran through the crowd. Somewhere, someone began to cry. 

Everything changed that day. 

Within weeks, the People of New Zion International—in partnership with the Quintessence Foundation, of course—had become the one of largest churches in the world.

File No. 004

Interview with Dr David Usen, PhD, Senior Scientist, Quintessence Foundation.

Location: People of New Zion International Church, Uyo, NGA

10-08-23

DAVID USEN:

One of the beautiful things about a soul chain is its transparency. It is decentralised, meaning any network member can verify data in the soulchain. This element has fostered a sense of community among the saved souls. In our first month, over half a million committed to having their souls mined. This year, more QTSSMN mines sprang up around the world, and soon enough, we had to construct another minefield in Northern Nigeria to reduce the traffic QTSSMN1 was receiving and spread the development around the country. 

The joy was boundless in my ministry, which we now had to stream worldwide. My flock came together to share the assurance of their souls not being confined to the primordial void. 

Many of the advocacy groups campaigning against our cause allege that the soul mining is a dangerous procedure to submit your soul to, or that if you allow your souls to be mined into the chain, you submit yourself to it, and it becomes your “god”. I do not agree with them. 

I have come to see the soulmines as instruments of God’s plan; a tool to augment my faith instead of replace it. The soulmine simply ensures that however you choose salvation, your soul is no longer affected by the inflow and outflow of energy that would otherwise affect it. 

We preserve what stays within you. 

File No. 496

Interview with Vincent Usen, Graduate Student.

Location: Underground Complex, Uyo, NGA

13-02-27 

VINCENT USEN:

There are many facts about soul mining that Quintessence twisted to suit their needs. When a soul is mined, as the transaction occurs, it is recorded as a “block” of data. Each block is connected to the ones before and after it with a simple fetter code. They argue that this need for connectivity means that souls are improved by the quality of the souls mined into their ledger. In reality, the connectivity of the soulchains improves their overall stability by less than one percent. One percent was all Quintessence’s religious arm needed; the need for association with a particular institution to get your soul mined was one of the things that kept people in their churches, synagogues and temples. 

On the balance, the average human is not entirely good or evil, and morality, at least societally perceived morality,  is heavily influenced by a lot of factors, no?

These nuances did not stop Pastor David and the other religious leaders. They co-opted the mining technology, working to make it tally with ancient religious doctrine from a time when men still believed the earth was the center of the universe. They refused to mine the souls of the people they considered unworthy. The book of…Corinthians, yeah Corinthians, calls them—the fornicator, the thief, idolater and so on—unrighteous. Pastor and his colleagues preached this “truth” of exclusion and bigotry, and the world rewarded him. His church and the foundation donated to many worthy causes, brightening the already spotless image he projected to the world. 

But I knew the real David Usen.

File No. 004

Interview with Dr David Usen, PhD, Senior Scientist, Quintessence Foundation.

Location: Quintessence Foundation Regional Headquarters, Ikot Ekpene, NGA

07-11-23

DAVID USEN:

As with any transformative technology, there have been setbacks. 

One implication was that some people took on this tamper-free salvation as a carte blanche to do whatever they wanted without consequences. If your soul is saved no matter what you do, will you do good? Or just start to do anyhow? In certain countries, crime rose, as there were little to no consequences in the eternal scheme for their actions, but that all plateaued after a while; there is only so much chaos you can choose to foster, and after all, crime still has legal consequences in our world. 

Love changed, too. Many couples sought to be mined into ledgers as one so often that laws had to be enacted to ensure that all involved parties were found to be of sound mind and, legally able to consent to the marriage. When they understood their souls could not be “merged”, they settled for being mined one after the other, like Uloma and I. The marriage ceremonies in my church are now completed with the blessing of the bride and groom and the uploading of their souls into a ledger transaction to signify the union. I’d like to think our souls were most inseparable from that point on, with the choice of forever at its most transparent. Our marriage was already blessed with children…

The longest-running legal and ethical debate was the mining of the children’s souls. Soulchain technology’s tamper-resistance means it does not allow easy modification of data once recorded, and it requires rewriting the codes in all of the blocks, which is, at the scale of billions of souls, time-consuming and expensive. This means that for the soul to be “saved”,  it is preserved in the blockchain, like an insect in amber. 

We now know children’s souls are “pure”, and many argue against the mummification of their souls in that state; they would grow, but their souls wouldn’t. Confining anyone to that sort of existence before they came of age was illegal in some countries. Still, exceptions are being made for children with diseases with a high mortality likelihood.

I love my children equally. Jonathan is still a restless baby, but he will grow into a strong young man. Vincent’s strength of conviction is something he undoubtedly got from me, and I only mean well for him, but as he grows up, I find I understand him less and less. 

We often say salvation is personal, but with the mines I can guide him, do my best to ensure his soul is saved. 

File No. 496

Interview with Vincent Usen, Graduate Student.

Location: Underground Complex, Uyo, NGA

13-02-27 

VINCENT USEN: 

One day, when I was seventeen, my parents were called to my school. It was the sixth of March, and the heat this time of year was blistering, the kind that gave you a headache and made you stop walking to collect shade before it gave way to torrential rainfall. Earlier that day, my school had watched my father’s Sunday service stream. But the presence now looming over me did not seem like that same man from the stream. This wasn’t the man who had preached of present suffering, and how unworthy it was even in comparison to heavenly glories, when our unblemished souls would one day—should God will it! —ascend from the chain to rejoin the singularity. This was almost someone else entirely. Quieter, taller.

“Why me?!” my mother exclaimed, shaking uncontrollably. “God, where did I go wrong?!”  She did not even bother adjusting her wrapper as she fell back on the couch.

As cold as the room was, there I stood, sweating. I was still dressed in my school uniform, squeezed in the corner, wishing I could disappear. My muscles tensed, ready to flee. I wanted to beg her, but my voice had betrayed me, lowered to barely a whisper. 

I’m still me, mama.

My brother Jonathan was silent, watching everyone in the room. He may not have fully understood what had happened, but worry still filled his eyes.

A school prefect caught me kissing a boy in the corner of a dark classroom. We were taken to the housemaster, and the boy cried that he’d been cornered and forced; he was scared of the repercussions of feeling things the pastors and counsellors claimed would taint his chances of a position in any soul chain. 

The boy left me alone to face the storm. I don’t blame him. 

My father stood by the door, securing the exit and ensuring I could not escape. He crossed his arms, visibly annoyed by his wife’s crying. In the principal’s office, he’d remained silent as my mother made rebuttals and began to insult everyone in sight. The drive home was solemn; even my baby brother sensed the pastor’s anger throughout the drive home. 

Pastor launched forward and drove his fist into my midriff. My mother’s cries ceased.

“I was too soft on you.”

I reeled back, trying to escape, but the pastor pinned me to the wall. Eerily quiet. Elbows pumping back and driving from the legs. 

I clawed at his chest. I saw red, then nothing at all.

I still do not understand why he hit me. Maybe he thought the beating would force the “spirit” out of me. Maybe when I healed up, I would say I no longer felt these impulses. 

Praise Master Jesus! My son no longer wants to love a man!

Maybe then my soul would not taint any ledger when it was mined and recorded. 

File No. 004

Interview with Dr David Usen, PhD, Senior Scientist, Quintessence Foundation.

Location: 141 Aka Road, Uyo, NGA

07-04-24

DAVID USEN:

Ever since that day…

 I- I’m sorry. I understand that these logs are not meant for this purpose, but I don’t know if I can speak to anyone else about this. I felt a lot after that day: anger at Vincent for putting himself at risk in this way before he could be mined and saved; disappointment and confusion. If, even in knowing, he would sin this way, I must have failed as a father and preacher, right?

All these thoughts gave way to one thing when I was left with what I had just discovered. Shame. I’d found a way to save everyone else’s soul, except for my son’s. I was violent in a way I preach against. I was…

What kind of father does this make me?

Since then, our conversations have become mechanical and civil. Vincent comes into my study and asks me to sign his final examination release form or read over his youth church speeches and offers a curt ‘thank you’ when we are through. He stays in his room whenever he is home, and he is off to University in a few months. I have brought up mining his soul, but as a legal adult, he has never presented himself for the procedure. I had the resources to ensure my child’s salvation but chose not to reach out to him or draw him back to the collective, chose not to offer him a chance to see the error of his ways.

I pushed my son away, and worse, I now feel like I lost his soul. 

File No. 496

Interview with Vincent Usen, Graduate Student.

Location: Underground Complex, Uyo, NGA

15-02-27 

VINCENT USEN: 

In South Africa, the best QTSSMN mines were located in areas predominated by white South Africans, like QTSSMN-Oriana. Even worse were the reports of Zimbabweans shot in QTSSMN-Johannesburg and others driven away from the mines in recurrent xenophobic attacks when they tried to ensure their souls were saved. 

When it was revealed that the Taliban had found a way to “illegally purchase” plus install a soulmine in the Registan desert and were restricting access to the girls and women in Afghanistan, the global uproar caused Quintessence stocks to slightly dip in value, but the foundation survived.

Quintessence had become too big to fail. 

In Nigeria, QTSSMN-Lagos fell under attack after an insidious tribalistic social media campaign. #OurMineOurLagos drove the agenda that Igbo people were prohibited from using the Quintessence soulmine in Lagos and should “go back home to Anambra”. Quintessence did nothing at first, but eventually, pressure caused them to announce that they would protect “all who presented themselves for soul mining”. Unsurprisingly, things got worse; more people were denied access to the mines, and you guys —the Central Government— just covered it up, suppressing news and going after anyone who spoke against you and Quintessence.

The democratisation of technology is often preached about, but how often does it actually happen? Wall Street owns so much of the Bitcoin in circulation, rendering them effectively in charge again. Generative AI models were riddled with racial bias, and in surveillance technology,  the systems are more likely to identify black people as criminals. Biases perpetrated by humans are unfortunately inevitable.

Soul mining quickly became an ethical problem for the world. While there was a measure of peace and the technological innovations from the soulchain boom were adapted to significantly improve communication and efficiency of the global healthcare and finance sectors, our issues manifested in the usual weaknesses humanity did not fail to exhibit.

Religious groups controlled most Nigerian mines, and pastors and Imams preached against people like me. They claimed queer people were “deviants” and that mining our souls would “compromise the integrity” of ledgers they claimed were tamper-resistant. It was such a ridiculous argument, but we’re in Nigeria, so they got away with it. I watched as a committee led by my father reiterated that the soulchain was immutable and welcomed all when they, by their arguments, effectively damned so many of us; people who dared to love, people who took on their true forms against the bodies they’d been born into. 

For my final project, I chose to look into “Religious and Tribal Bias in Soul Mine Ledgers”. I knew what my topic would stir up, but I did not care, or maybe I cared too much to not try to hurt him, hurt his legacy. I worked hard to prove what I already knew to be true; many of the “sins” these people preached against did nothing to your soul. What really affected its state and damned you to the primordial void were actions which brought harm to another person or group of people— authorising the killing and maiming of your citizens? or depriving generations of a future with your corrupt practices? These are just a few things that tainted the energy of the human soul. But by all means, let’s focus on who I choose to love.

File No. 004

Interviews with Dr David Usen, PhD, Senior Scientist, Quintessence Foundation.

Session at Global Tech Innovation Forum

Location: Civic Centre, Lagos, NGA

07-11-25

DAVID USEN:

Can a soul chain fail?

I suppose that is the billion-dollar question: Can this technology, which we have entrusted with our salvation, fail us?

In earlier adaptations of blockchain technology, there were old-fashioned chinks like private keys, 51% attacks, oracle manipulation, social engineering and hard forks. Lee et al. catalogued 72 breaches reported between 2011 and 2018 in the finance sector, costing users over a billion dollars. See? Billion-dollar question indeed. With Quintessence mining, the cryptographic techniques used to encode our souls are incredibly advanced, too advanced for anyone, even wealthy nation-states, to hack.

Blockchain nodes aren’t supposed to execute data beyond their narrowly defined protocols. But the soulchain is increasingly hybrid, integrated with oracles, interfaces, and APIs, so I have a thought as to a situation with almost zero probability of occurring. A soulchain may be vulnerable to a simple factor that has plagued computing for generations: a virus. A virus designed solely for this purpose could spread through the soulchain quickly, and due to the link between souls in bodies and their ledgers, any damage to the chain would affect the hosts.

The good news is the cryptographic patterns and paradigms employed in a soul chain are not easily decrypted, and our quantum engineers tell me the language operating on the soul mine blockchain is very small, so small it is not even von Neumann complete. It is a ridiculously tiny target to hit for malware writers, and even if they succeeded, it would be detected before it could cause any real damage. 

So you see, only one way and a billion to one chance of that happening at a necessary scale.

File No. 496

Interview with Vincent Usen, Graduate Student.

Location: Underground Complex, Uyo, NGA

15-02-27 

VINCENT USEN:

It was impossible to avoid my father. 

The David Usen Building, commonly referred to as The Dub, was home to the Faculty of Psychi-Engineering in UNIUYO. Funded wholly by the Quintessence Foundation, it was the only place in Nigeria I could study soul mining. I rejected Quintessence’s scholarship to study at Dub; I knew my grades were great, but I could not shake the fact that he was behind the offer. Mumsie helped, but my decision meant I had to work to afford tuition.

In my first year, I was unpopular because even with who my father was, I refused to reckon with soul mining as it was practised. I eventually made friends who felt what I felt, who argued for building our own mines, and using the soul mining technology to subvert control and resist oppression; Quintessence’s soul mine patents and networks were not hidden, so why could we not innovate our way out of this problem? Why could we not hack our way into heaven?

Soon enough we learned that the obstacles to building our own mines to access the chains were countless. Still, we knew we had to do something, so we became activists. Videos of David Usen’s son cradling a megaphone and leading marches around QTSSMN-Ikot Ekpene were great for the cause, but they put me at odds with my father. I stopped going home, and he declined to comment on my choice to protest, as if he could pretend I did not exist. I did not speak to the pastor for my entire third year in Uni; I did not have anything to say to him, but I- I should have spoken about what he did to me, how he hurt me. Maybe I could have stopped what happened? I don’t know. I didn’t think it could dent his image; why would anyone who believed he held the key to their salvation listen to me? 

Like Quintessence, David Usen was too big to fail. 

I worked hard in school, and by my final year I was on course to be Best Graduating Student. 

I was about to defend my project when my mother called me, begging that I come home for the holidays. I’d refused for years, but once I heard what she had to say, I packed a small bag and made my way home.

It was still illegal to mine the souls of children. But my father had found a legal workaround. He planned to mine Jonathan’s soul.

DAVID USEN:

I have lost one son’s soul. I cannot lose the other. 

A parent’s first job is to protect those he brought into the world, is it not? 

 VINCENT USEN:

The court proceedings widened our rift even further. The media publicised it, Usen v Usen, for a ruling that would set a precedent in soul law. I had nothing, just a few lawyers who had chosen to side with me and work pro bono. My father brought the entire might of the Quintessence law division with him. I had one thing he did not, though: my mother.

As the court case to determine who got custody of Jonathan dragged on, she also opened up and expedited divorce proceedings against him. However, while the papers were signed, there was still the issue of her soul and the soul it was inextricably linked to—his. Now, if they were right, she would never be free of David Usen in the singular collective that would follow.  

Protests were held, and we live-streamed the court case, but even in the court of public opinion, I was taken apart. My father’s lawyers said I wanted to affect my brother with my “deviance” and keep him away from what was now salvation assured, as I’d done for myself. They argued that my mother did not have the means to provide for my brother, as she got nothing in their divorce. They argued ruthlessly, and after a year, they wore us out. I know that even if we’d won, they would have just taken us to the next court, and the one after that till my father got his chance to mummify my brother’s soul. 

I held my mother back as she cried in pain. If the pastor had his way, she would never see her child grow to his full potential; his body would grow, but his soul would remain frozen in time. 

For a brief moment in that courtroom, the pastor held my gaze. I wanted to curse at him but couldn’t bring myself to scream. He opened his mouth as if to say something. 

Then it happened.

File No. 004

Interview with Dr David Usen, PhD, Senior Scientist, Quintessence Foundation.

Location: 141 Aka Road, Uyo, NGA

14-12-26

DAVID USEN:

QTSSMN-Ikot Ekpene, formerly known as QTSSMN1, has grown since we commissioned it, becoming the largest Quintessence mining town in Africa, with tens of thousands of supercomputers mining and maintaining the soulchain spread across thousands of acres. It was so dominant a micro-economy developed around its maintenance: housing for its staff, healthcare, SMEs, and everything the people living around the mine needed to thrive. By May 2026, we logged so many smaller mines in Nigeria shedding their excess load onto the vast computers domiciled here. 

I am proud of the work, but…I have to admit the immense personal cost. 

There is a world where none of this happens. I am a pastor to a small congregation, and my family, or whatever image I have of it, remains as it was – frozen like a soul on the fetters. I am happy, and I do my duty to my people, to my family. In that world we do not need these chains to hold us together; we remember that we can choose to commune with ourselves.  

I am torn because our world demands this of me. I have brought about immense change in our world, but I always worry that if we don’t find a way to preserve our ways of life, everything will come crashing down. Can billions change without breaking the wheel? I cannot trust us to. I do not know how to. 

As this soul mine has grown, it has taken so much of my life with it. This court case will not change that, but it will affirm my belief in the cause to everyone. It will keep me going. 

I…I am bound to this path. 

We change and grow, and the mines cannot capture that flux; they cannot mimic our constant evolution. All it can do is keep us, hold our souls as they were the day we offered ourselves to it, like the links in the chain. 

It is all we have. It has to be enough.

File No. 496

Interviews with Vincent Usen, Graduate Student.

Location: Underground Complex, Uyo, NGA

15-02-27

VINCENT USEN:

In the Dub, we studied every attempt to breach soul mines and why they failed. From terrorists detonating explosives to hacktivist groups’ attempts to piggyback the mines and make it so soul mining was free for all, no one could get the better of Quintessence. 

Pastor and the other scientists were brilliant. No one could hack their way into heaven. 

The original QTSSMN software involved interacting packets with other computers in the blockchain network, a flaw they quickly eliminated in the subsequent models by integrating highly secure hardware security modules that no one person can legally access. Then mines were made even more secure, nearly impossible to crack. Those new hybrid networks were developed so no single vulnerability could affect a significant fraction of souls. Still, QTSSMN-Ikot Ekpene was one of the world’s oldest mines, and the blockchain’s immutability meant its original design could not be changed. The solution for Ikot Ekpene was more bureaucratic than technological; protect the mine more. Military personnel were deployed and that was that. 

Until last month.

You refuse to admit it, but here’s what I think happened. Someone who had no business being close to a mine, say a handful of Nigerian politicians—criminals really—tried to mine their souls. After a lifetime of stealing and killing and perpetrating so much evil, they subverted regulations and bypassed the older vulnerabilities in the mine. Once they were on the chain, their souls likely coalesced into one corrupted mass that acted like a techno-organic virus, attacking and compromising the blocks. 

The  QTSSMN minefield collapsed inwards as the computers and solar panels failed. All the mines that spread their load to Ikot Ekpene were affected, and in just under an hour, 20% of the country’s soul chains were obliterated. 

People dropped dead with no explanation nationwide —20% of the blocks. Cars crashed and planes crashed and fires raged. Fifty-two million souls linked to the affected mines were lost. Almost as many deaths as in World War II.

I saw it happen. Nearly everyone in the Akwa Ibom State High Court just…ceased. People collapsed around me, toppling as their bodies emptied of consciousness. Cries of agony rang out as the few left alive realised that death had silently come to the court. My mother was dead, her eyes hollow, her body limp as I held her in my arms. My father was lost, just another body in a sea of the soulless.

So many bodies.

|| || || 

The Quintessence Foundation cannot expand anymore. It is still too big to fail, so the governments must protect them. You can hold hearings and send people to prison, but you cannot undo what has been done, bring back souls we’ve lost. You can seize their assets, but you cannot destroy them— not when they include supercomputers, solar farms, fusion reactors, and the souls of billions of humans. 

This world is now in a prison my father helped design. 

The peace of salvation will be replaced by what will feel to many like a death sentence waiting to be served; if one mine can fail, any mine can fail. Every breath, every moment can be the last.

No one on the chain can live free. 

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