LifeNet: The Price of Immortality

Chapter 7: Seeking Answers

“Elara, are you still up?”

Nyx’s message popped onto her screen, startling her out of her thoughts. She’d been staring at her terminal for what felt like ages, trying to make sense of the odd encounters from the past few days.

She sighed, typing back quickly, “Yeah, still up. Been thinking about all this… whatever this is. It’s too much.”

A few seconds later, his response flashed back. “I get it. Just… don’t dive too deep alone, okay?”

She smiled to herself, finding comfort in his words. “I’ll be fine. I’m just… looking through some of my mom’s old journals. Hoping there’s something here.”

“Your mom’s journals?” he replied, adding a thoughtful pause. “Do you think she knew something back then?”

Elara stared at the message, her thoughts swirling. “Honestly, I don’t know. But I can’t shake the feeling that she might’ve had some idea about LifeNet’s real agenda.”

Nyx sent back a simple, “Good luck,” and then signed off, leaving her alone with the journal that lay open on her desk.

Elara took a deep breath and turned the page, feeling the slightly yellowed paper crinkle under her fingertips. Her mother’s handwriting filled the page, looping and flowing in her careful script. So many times she had read these words, back when they were just musings from a mother she had lost too soon. But now, each line seemed to carry a hidden weight, a truth Elara was only beginning to grasp.

Her mother’s words seemed to leap off the page, charged with a strange intensity: “LifeNet is a prison made to look like paradise.”

Elara’s fingers froze over the sentence. A prison made to look like paradise. She couldn’t help but murmur it aloud, as if saying it would help her understand. “But why, Mom? What were you trying to tell me?”

Determined, Elara started skimming through more pages, and slowly, more cryptic phrases began to stand out.

“LifeNet’s control is subtle, but it’s there,” her mother had written. “One day, people will notice—maybe not today, but soon enough. We all felt the pull, the allure of something that makes life easier. But at what cost?”

Elara’s eyes lingered on each sentence. The hints her mother had left behind suddenly seemed like a guide, pointing her to a hidden path she’d never noticed before.

But then, her mother’s handwriting changed. It became shakier, less composed, as if she had been rushed, or worse—afraid.

“People forget things,” she read aloud. “Memories slip through the cracks in their minds. Moments vanish. How many of my friends have looked me in the eye and told me stories they’ve told me a dozen times already? It’s as if LifeNet rewires them, slowly, gradually. But why?”

Elara leaned back in her chair, the pieces starting to come together in her mind. Those glitches, the repeated phrases—could her mother have noticed the same things she was seeing now?

But the journals didn’t stop there.

“When I asked questions, they called me paranoid,” her mother had written. “They warned me not to look too closely.”

A chill ran through Elara. Her mother’s suspicions had clearly reached dangerous levels, even back then. She was starting to understand why her mother had kept these thoughts hidden.

As Elara continued flipping through the journal, she began to wonder how she could investigate further. Her mother’s notes seemed to hint that the truth was buried somewhere in LifeNet’s earliest days. She’d need to access old archives—documents that were, in all likelihood, tightly secured.

She took a deep breath, typing a search command into her terminal. Access restricted archives…

Her fingers paused over the keys. She’d be diving into a hidden part of LifeNet, somewhere she wasn’t meant to be.

With a hesitant click, she began scanning through files, her heart pounding with every restricted notice that popped up. But then, to her surprise, she stumbled across a few entries from the early days of LifeNet. They weren’t heavily secured—almost as if they’d been forgotten.

She opened one, and a few scattered posts appeared, written by users who had experienced small, strange memory lapses. Her pulse quickened as she read.

“Has anyone else had this… weird experience?” one post read. “I swear I told my wife something yesterday, but she acted like she’d never heard it before.”

Another user replied, “Thought it was just me! I keep forgetting things… or maybe I just think I do?”

And another: “Can LifeNet actually do something to our minds? I heard about people ‘resetting,’ but isn’t that just a myth?”

The posts trailed off, abruptly cut short as if they’d been erased mid-conversation. Elara’s gut twisted as she scanned further, looking for any sign of what had happened to those users.

“Is anyone still here?” she muttered, clicking through more records. But the posts were abruptly cut off, as if someone—or something—had silenced these voices before they could speak further.

A message popped up on her screen, and she almost jumped.

“Still with me?” Nyx had written.

Elara sighed, grateful for the reminder that she wasn’t entirely alone in this.

“Nyx, you wouldn’t believe what I’m finding. I just accessed some old LifeNet records. There were people… back then, there were people who noticed the same things I’m seeing now.”

“People back then?” he replied quickly. “What did they say?”

“Little things—glitches, memory lapses. But all the posts just… stopped. Like they were erased or something.”

He typed back slowly. “Sounds like LifeNet has been covering its tracks for a long time. Do you think those users were… silenced?”

The question hung heavily in the air, a frightening possibility that Elara couldn’t ignore. “It’s like they were erased,” she typed back. “It’s almost as if LifeNet makes people forget.”

Nyx was quiet for a moment, then he wrote, “Be careful, Elara. If they silenced people back then, they won’t hesitate to do it now.”

She stared at his words, feeling a rush of determination wash over her. “Then we have to find out why.”

Turning back to the journal, Elara noticed something else. A name, buried deep in her mother’s notes: Dr. Salomon Aster.

Her pulse quickened as she read it. Dr. Aster had been one of the original scientists who’d worked on LifeNet’s development. Her mother’s words hinted that he had doubts, suspicions about the project’s direction. But there were few details, only vague mentions of his “warnings” and “ethical concerns.”

Elara tried searching his name in the archives, but everything about him seemed restricted or heavily redacted. She found only brief, sanitized mentions of his contributions to LifeNet’s development. Nothing that hinted at the concerns her mother had hinted at.

She bit her lip, feeling the frustration build. “Mom, what did you know?”

Her mother’s voice seemed to echo back at her from the pages. “Elara, you’re smarter than you think. The truth is hidden in plain sight.”

The phrase seemed like a clue, a breadcrumb left just for her.

Just then, her screen flickered, and for a moment, Elara thought LifeNet might be kicking her out of the archives.

But instead, a new window appeared—an encrypted message, one she didn’t recognize. She hesitated, her heart pounding as she hovered over the open button. After a moment, she clicked.

A single line appeared:

“Dr. Salomon Aster. If you want answers, start with him.”

Elara’s blood ran cold. She hadn’t mentioned his name to anyone. The words stared back at her, simple yet haunting.

She quickly typed back, “Who are you?”

But there was no response, only the blank screen and her own reflection staring back.

Her mind was spinning. Dr. Aster, the glitches, her mother’s warnings—it was all connected. She could feel it. But someone else knew she was looking, someone who seemed intent on nudging her in the right direction, even as LifeNet loomed like a shadow over her every move.

She closed the message and glanced back at her mother’s journal, the words seeming almost alive under her gaze.

“A prison made to look like paradise,” her mother had written, over and over again.

The thought chilled her to the core. If LifeNet was a prison, she’d need to understand every part of its structure, from the foundation to the hidden flaws, if she was ever going to break free.

And that meant finding Dr. Salomon Aster, whatever it took.