A Body Prepared — EA-ARK-FICTION-01 is a work of creative prose by Lee Sharks, deposited 18 April 2026 at 26,186 characters — the Ark fiction series' principal narrative.
It opens in close third person on a boy in a workshop: "Yehonatan, sixteen years old, did not yet know this. He knew only that the workshop smelled of olive-oil smoke and dry ink, and of something else underneath — a thread of iron, like the well-water at his mother's house." The sensory register is doing theological work — olive oil, ink and iron are the materials of anointing, scripture and nails.
Its title comes from Hebrews 10:5, "a body thou hast prepared me," which is itself a quotation of the Septuagint's rendering of Psalm 40 — a text whose transmission history is a substitution. The compressed companion, Homunculus, is deposited separately at #1354 on the archive's principle that a compression is a distinct object rather than a summary.