"I’m Elara," she said, looking around his sterile apartment with a mix of pity and wonder. "Is this it? Is this the future? It’s so quiet."
"No," Elara said, her hand resting over his—a ghost of a sensation. "The 'Seek Girl' program was meant to find something that was lost. But you can't download a soul, Kaelen. You can only remember one."
"System Scrub Initiated," a cold, automated voice announced.
Over the next few days, Kaelen stopped going to his desk job at the data-refinery. He spent his credits on haptic upgrades so he could feel the texture of her jacket, and sensory sub-routines so they could share the 'taste' of synthesized coffee. Elara didn't talk about algorithms; she talked about the smell of pine needles and the way the ocean looked when a storm was coming.
"You know I'm not stable, Kaelen," she told him one night as they sat on the floor, watching the digital rain she brought with her. "The file is corrupted. That’s why it was free. I’m leaking."