Chapter 1

Delete

They took apart my carbon copy and reassembled me inside of a computer hologram. That's what I am now. A hologram. I have no internal organs, no blood, no heart. I would complain and say I'm always cold, lifeless, alone, but that's not true. The cold is comfortable. And if I was any warmer I'd be worried my grid was overheating. As for being alone, I'm not alone. I live in the city. There's always someone to talk to, even if we are just databases now.

"I dare you to delete it," I taunted Milos (pronounced: Me-Los) that afternoon. Milos looked at me with a raised eyebrow as he scratched his scruffy head.

"Why would I delete it?" he asked. "That makes no sense."

"Just delete it. I like the little sound it makes."

"So we're going to purposefully destroy a blank holo-disk and send its pieces off into the black holes of cyberspace because you like the sound it makes?" he clarified. I nodded, passing him a smile.

"Yeah, do it."

"Okay," he laughed and punched in the holo-disk's code. I watched his hand hover over the red 'enter' key before he pressed down. My grid swelled at the noise. I pretended I could feel the wind, the little draft of air that accompanied the green beam of light as the disk was deleted. Even though I looked like my original carbon copy – skin in all – I couldn't feel anything anymore except what my grid wanted me to feel.

"Whoosh," I giggled, trying to replicate the noise.

"Whoosh," Milos agreed passing me his own lopsided grin. As Milos reached for another blank disk to do it again he froze, his figure locking up.

"Milos?" I cocked my head, reaching out to touch him when the blue sheen traveled over his body giving me a momentary glance into his cybernetic copy. I knew what this meant, and so I stepped back to take a seat on the rusty bed and shredded mattress. I didn't want to watch him 'eat'. It always reminded me that I was no longer human. The hunger pains I used to have – they didn't exist. I couldn't chew or swallow real food anymore. I mean, I guess I could, but it would just sink through me and fall on the ground, more than likely fried or frozen from traveling through my system. Sometimes I'd pretend I could feel that. I pretended I could feel the crunch as my teeth bit down, or the juice spilling over my tongue.

See, we had no feeling receptors. Why would you need them when you're a computer anyway? I think that was the only thing the Technists forgot to add when they were building the first grid.

I waited in the cramped basement room for an hour until at last Milos let out a sigh, but he didn't really need that either. We don't need to breathe. Usually we just replicated the things that humans do because it's a force of habit from when we were once humans as well.

"Sorry, that came at the worst time, didn't it?" Milos grinned. I nodded with a sad smile.

"Yeah, Milos. It did. Now let's delete more –"

I stopped short when I realized I could no longer work my mouth. I couldn't move. I was trapped. Stuck. Frozen in time. I wanted to roll my eyes. I didn't have much time left in the day to hang out with my best friend, did this really have to happen now? I felt a tingling sensation deep within my core as a familiar blue sheen of light washed over me, darkening my sight.

It was time to feed.

A/N: Yay! Guys! I'm back! I'm off of writer's block with a new story idea I'll probably never finish, but was in the spur of the moment!

Anyway, if this first chapter made absolutely no sense to you, that's okay, it was supposed to be really weird. It will all be explained in time.

Basically Valkyrie - the main character who is a girl - and Milos - her best guy friend - are holograms.

They're not normal holograms, though. They look like regular humans with skin and everything, but underneath their fake images lies a transparent mass of floating numbers and latitude and longitude lines along with their grid - which is like their heart, a giant computer database type thing that stores all their information about themselves as a human being and how to destroy them or how to replicate them, etc.

Well, I think that's about it, I hope you guys like it! :D

Hologram © Me