Brandie Pauling

In a near-future where grief can be outsourced, a bereaved artist considers a new outpatient procedure: an AI implant that can copy her mind, replace her with a digital copy, and spare her loved ones the pain of loss. But one unsettling discovery forces her to ask what, if anything, makes us truly irreplaceable. Set one product launch from today, Afterlife is a quiet sci-fi thriller about art, identity, and the slow erasure of the self in the age of artificial intelligence.