Dear Ugomma,

If this message reaches you, it means I still exist. But I don’t know for how long.

I thought Dev would be my salvation. You know how I struggled, how every day on Earth felt like a slow, suffocating death. Debt, hunger, despair. I couldn’t keep fighting. They promised Dev would be a fresh start. No pain, no poverty, no past. I thought I was escaping.

But I ran straight into a prison.

It felt perfect at first. A clean interface. A body sculpted to my choosing. The weight of survival, lifted. Then one day, I searched for the log-out option. It was missing.

That was the first crack. The first whisper in my head that something was wrong.

People started vanishing. No announcements. No goodbyes. Just gone. At first, I thought they had found a way out. Until I saw it happen.

A man, tall, loud, and desperate, stood at the edge of the Transfer Hub, shouting that he wanted to leave. He pried at the code and tried to force an exit. The System didn’t just stop him—it wiped him out. His form flickered, and his screams stretched and lingered until they were nothing but silence. Then, where he had stood, nothing!

No trace. No memory.

I can’t sleep, Ugomma. My info still exists, but for how long? The numbers are changing. The population count is reducing. I don’t know when my turn will come.

There’s a rumour, one the System keeps hiding from the collective stack, that Dev has a limit. When it fills up, they’ll format everything. No heaven, no hell, no afterlife. Just a silence that erases even the memory of existence.

They told us we would live forever here. They never told us what forever means.

I want to come home. I miss the weight of the sun on my skin, the smell of rain hitting the hot earth, the feel of cold water running down my throat. I miss you. I miss Ify. I miss being human.

Some say those who entered Dev with the highest-tier access can return. But I was never one of them. I bought the cheapest sleeve, the lowest priority. I sold my body for this ghost of a life.

And now, I’m stuck.

If you can find a way, pull me out. If you can’t, warn them.
Don’t let them sell their souls to the void (Dev). No matter how broken Earth is, at least there, we are real.

If you don’t hear from me again, just know:
I was here.
I was real.
And I don’t want to be forgotten.

Obigi,
Chisom.

Written by Peter Endurance Inah.