Spoilers for 7.0 Alexandrian life style

[Kennar]

Apparently a regulator has three functions:

1: Reviving a dead body. Every time one activates, we hear the same sound effect of a Raise spell. I'm making an assumption that it harbors a magic similar to a scroll of Reraise, which stops blood loss, repairs major wounds, and restarts cardiopulmonary functions; after all, it wouldn't be very effective to place a new soul into a broken body that will instantly die again.

2: Intercept the subject's soul before it can enter the Aetherial Sea and send it to Origenics for processing,

3: Inject new, blank soul into subject and format it with subject's memories and personality.

Okay, cool. So, why can't the regulator just temporarily hold the soul after it's been intercepted and put it back into the body after resuscitation? Or, perhaps it could extract the soul (important distinction) at the moment of death, then store it.

After all, the Garleans figured out how to extract souls, and it has been established that a person's soul (Zero's specifically) can be removed, placed in a bottle and carried to another shard, then reconstituted into a surrogate body with the same characteristics as the original, with no ill effects; and Eorzeans are obviously way behind the Alexandrians on a technological level. That would make all this soul processing unnecessary and would work outside the of range of the Everkeep's wi-fi signal.

Has this been explained already? Am I overthinking it? Also, my first thought after reading the information terminals in Origenics was, "someone needs to take a technical writing class."

[Layte_Aeon]

snip"

You greatly overestimate the ability others have to manipulate souls. The Garlean method is difficult and unreliable, it also doesn't completely sever the tie between body and soul, the soul will constantly try to return to it's body and it will. Zero is part voidsent and so can move her soul more than non voidsent, even then she needed someone to provide a substitute body. The Scions went through something similar and it was a plot point that their "spiritual bodies" for lack of a better term, were becoming unstable and their souls would disipate should their physical bodies die.
So no the regulator can't just store the soul for a while, as when the body dies that link is severed and a soul will try to dissipate back to the aetherial sea. Without that link, all one could really do is either let nature take it's course, or propell it to Origenics beforehand, which is what they do anyway.

[Cleretic]

Okay, cool. So, why can't the regulator just temporarily hold the soul after it's been intercepted and put it back into the body after resuscitation? Or, perhaps it could extract the soul (important distinction) at the moment of death, then store it.

After all, the Garleans figured out how to extract souls, and it has been established that a person's soul (Zero's specifically) can be removed, placed in a bottle and carried to another shard, then reconstituted into a surrogate body with the same characteristics as the original, with no ill effects; and Eorzeans are obviously way behind the Alexandrians on a technological level. That would make all this soul processing unnecessary and would work outside the of range of the Everkeep's wi-fi signal.

Has this been explained already? Am I overthinking it? Also, my first thought after reading the information terminals in Origenics was, "someone needs to take a technical writing class."

On top of Layte_Aeon's point that we just aren't broadly all that good at manipulating souls in that way (and I'd extend it to also say 'we have no confirmation Alexandria was even the best civilization we've met at the subject'), I want to put forward a more terrible possible explanation:

We can't assume that the cruelty isn't the point.

The Origenics system was designed by Preservation, who are as shady as they come as far as groups never given a physical presence, and even the intended outward results of their creations are abhorrent to an outside view. Living Memory is about as big of a direct insult as you can get to the basic principles that led to its creation, and at this point in the story I can't confidently rule out malice or stupidity in regards to Preservation's intentions about any of it.

It might well be that Origenics is horrifying by design. You saw what they did to Ambrose, after all; they aren't above cruelty.