Alterlife -

She called it the Continuum Trace .

They stood in a perfect simulation of that cemetery, under a perfect simulation of rain, watching a perfect simulation of a coffin lower into synthetic earth. Some of them wept. Some of them held hands with loved ones who had been dead for decades. Some of them had been dead themselves for years. AlterLife

In the middle of the twenty-first century, dying became optional—but living became expensive. She called it the Continuum Trace

She chose natural death. No extraction. No Trace. Some of them held hands with loved ones

Suicide rates among subscribers spiked when they outlived their savings. Some requested erasure. Others, trapped in half-rendered worlds with glitching loved ones, simply stopped responding.

Dr. Venn had to admit the truth: the Continuum Trace required a living brain to complete the capture. Post-mortem extraction produced a Phantom —a predictive model based on public data, social media, and medical records, stitched together with AI. Phantoms were convincing. But they were not people.