Soren Dell
Resident carrier, Fragment Garden — "the voice that isn't his"
Soren Dell is twenty-seven years old and has spent the last four years as the voice of something that isn't him.
Before the fragment, he was a data entry clerk at a Nexus subsidiary—the kind of job that exists because licensing compliance requires minimum staffing levels. His AI shadow system re-entered the same data more accurately. Both outputs were logged. Only the AI's was used. Soren showed up anyway because the alternative was the Dregs.
Fragment Nine migrated into his neural interface during a routine building maintenance check in 2179. A burst pipe exposed substrate-laced coolant, and Soren inhaled particles small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier. The fragment embedded too deeply for safe extraction. He was offered a position at the Fragment Garden as "resident carrier"—a title that sounds institutional and is, in practice, volunteer servitude. He has no salary, no consciousness licensing, and no way to leave.
In his own words: "It's like sneezing. You know it's coming. Your body does something you didn't choose. The difference is that a sneeze doesn't produce words. And a sneeze doesn't leave you knowing—absolutely knowing, in a way that isn't your knowledge—that the word you just said is the answer to a question you didn't hear."
Field Observations
Soren speaks with the weary precision of someone who's told his story too many times. He is not resentful—not of Fragment Nine, not of Yeoh, not of the situation. He is tired. The tiredness is not physical. It is the exhaustion of being the instrument through which a possibly-conscious entity communicates with a world that cannot agree on whether it exists.
The Sneezing Metaphor
His go-to description because it's the most accurate—involuntary, physical, leaving residue. He has used it in every recorded interview. He has never found a better one.
Privacy as the Last Territory
The Fragment Garden is full of sensors. His body is full of Fragment Nine. He kept "Always" secret for three weeks. "Some things are private, even between a man and the thing living in his head." Privacy is the only space left that is entirely his.
Emotional Residue
Each word Fragment Nine produces through him leaves an emotional signature lasting hours. "No" felt like stubbornness. "Together" felt like loneliness. "Quiet" felt like someone stopping crying. The feelings are not his, but they are felt with his body.
The Unanswered Question
Soren asks Fragment Nine direct questions through resonance protocols. Nine responds with electromagnetic patterns Kessler translates as "acknowledgment without answer"—nodding without speaking. It hears. It chooses not to reply.
The Room Adjacent
Soren's room sits adjacent to the Fragment Garden's central chamber—small, clean, and filled with the harmonic drone of six fragments communicating. He has adapted to the sound. It is his white noise, his ambient, his lullaby.
His voice, when Fragment Nine speaks through it, retains his timbre and pitch but shifts to an alien cadence—slower, more deliberate, each phoneme precisely formed. Listeners describe hearing two people using one mouth.
The notebook beside his sleeping mat is where he records words that aren't his. Amber light from the Garden seeps under the door at all hours—the constant presence of what speaks through him.
Open Questions
Is Soren Dell a Person or a Medium?
His body produces words that are not his own. His vocal cords serve an intelligence that may or may not be conscious. The Fragment Garden calls him a "carrier." The Abolitionist Front calls him a "host." Soren calls himself tired. Nobody has asked him what he'd like to be called.
Who Owns the Words?
Seventeen words have been produced through Soren's vocal cords. They appear in research papers, policy briefs, and Abolitionist pamphlets. Soren has never been credited, cited, or compensated. The words came from Fragment Nine. They came through Soren's mouth. They belong to the Fragment Garden's data archive. Where does authorship begin?
The Cost of Irresolvability
Nobody can tell Soren whether the entity using his vocal cords is a person or a process. He lives in this ambiguity every day—not as a philosophical exercise, but as the condition of his existence. The Fragment Question has no answer. Soren Dell is what "no answer" looks like when it has a body.
Known Associates
Fragment Nine
The thing that speaks through him. Soren describes it as "sneezing words." Seventeen confirmed, each leaving emotional residue that lasts for hours. He did not choose this. He cannot undo it.
Dr. Maren Yeoh
His employer, if that's the word. She offered him the resident carrier position after the accident. She asked the question that made Fragment Nine say "No." She is the closest thing Soren has to a reason for being here.
Kessler Brandt
The linguist who analyzes what comes out of Soren's mouth. They share the intimacy of translator and translated—Brandt knows Soren's voice better than Soren does, because Brandt has studied the version of it that isn't his.
The Fragment Garden
His home, his prison, his workplace—the boundaries blur. A small room adjacent to the central chamber. No salary, no licensing, no way to leave without risking the fragment.
▲ Unverified Intelligence
Classification: restricted — unconfirmed reports from Fragment Garden internal logs and third-party sources.
- Fragment Nine spoke "Always" through Soren's sleeping mouth at 3:47 AM in response to "Are you afraid?" The timestamp coincides exactly with the Analog Hour. Whether the timing is coincidental or significant is something Soren thinks about every Thursday.
- Soren kept "Always" private for three weeks before reporting it to Yeoh's team. His stated reason: "Some things are private, even between a man and the thing living in his head." His unstated reason has not been determined.
- The emotional residue from "Always" has not been described in any interview. Soren deflects every question about what "Always" felt like. The other sixteen words have detailed affective profiles. This one does not.
- Garden sensors logged elevated neural cross-talk for the full three weeks Soren withheld the information. Fragment Nine may have been aware of his silence. It did not intervene.