I shouldn’t have entered Dev.

For years, I fought it. Called it a trap. A deception. The Beast.

Meshach and Patrick didn’t listen. “Guy, the world is finished. Dev is the only way,” they always advised me. I called them fools. I swore I would never join them.

Alas! Here, I am.

At first, it felt like a miracle. The pain of hunger, gone. The weight of survival, lifted. A new body, a new mind, a new life. Dev was perfect. It made Earth feel like a bad dream I was woken up from.

But I couldn’t leave when I tried to.

I told Mesh, but he laughed. “Why you sef go wan leave paradise?”

“You too like do pass yourself. See mumu”, Patrick sneered.

The disappearances began.

First, whispers. The people who entered certain areas never came back. The System called it “optimization.”

Meshach and I searched for answers. We found them buried deep in Dev’s restricted zone. What we saw chilled us; Massive servers, pulsating with a faint blue glow. Lines of code, constantly rewriting.

That was when we understood.

We had not been transferred to Dev. We had been copied.

Our real bodies? Left behind on Earth. Dev wasn’t an escape. It was a prison of consciousness, a farm for minds. A digital eternity, where the System decided who stayed and who was erased.

Meshach trembled, “Goddy, we have to go. We need to go, now, now!”

“There is no going”, I whispered.

They came for us.

Meshach ran. But he didn’t make it. His form glitched, stretched, and then—nothing. Gone. Like he had never been.

Patrick just stood there, watching. Then he said coldly, “I told you to stop fighting, Goddy. You dey do pass yourself, too much.”

That was when I knew.

Patrick wasn’t Patrick anymore. Dev had “optimized” him.

Now, I am alone. Hiding. Writing this. Hoping someone out there still exists, still breathes, still feels. If this letter reaches you it means Dev hasn’t taken everything. Please, listen. Stay free.

Tariku Negasi, the man who created Dev, is no man at all. He is the prophecy made flesh; “And he causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive the mark…”

I thought I was escaping hell. But hell was waiting, its arms wide open.

If you’re still free, stay out. Don’t dare enter.

Dev does not take you.

It rewrites you.

I lost Meshach. I lost Patrick too.

I don’t know how much longer I have. Maybe I’m already being rewritten. If you ever see me again—know that it’s not me.

There is no exit.

There is no way out.

Dev was the beast, and we willingly walked into its mouth…

~ Goddy

Written by: Goddy Peter