This setting is a lot like Earth, with the exception of highly advanced technology that almost nobody can afford. We follow Kevin, a man who's down on his luck and owes quite a few sketchy figures money. One day Kevin finds one of the latest HoloGF modules just sitting in the window of a store he's never seen before. Needless to say Kevin gets it at a bargain, unaware of it's individual quirks, and we follow what happens next.
Let’s get this over with. A list. My life, in bullet points. As compiled by me, Kevin Miller, at age thirty-four, on a Tuesday that smells like wet concrete and regret.
Item One: Born to Diane and Frank Miller. Middle-class suburb. Dad left when I was seven. Not a dramatic exit—just packed a suitcase one Tuesday and said he was getting milk. The milk, apparently, was in Phoenix with a dental hygienist named Brenda. Mom started calling me “the man of the house.” I was seven. I didn’t want to be the man of anything.
Item Two: Asthmatic kid. Glasses thick enough to see the future, which unfortunately just showed me getting picked last for kickball. Spent recess in the library reading about starships. Fantasy was better. Fantasy didn’t have wind sprints.
Item Three: First kiss, Jenny Albers, age eighteen. Behind the bleachers. She tasted like grape Bubble Yum and, midway through, whispered, “Do you know what you’re doing?” I did not. She sighed, a small, disappointed sound I’ve spent two decades trying to forget.
Item Four: Got into a decent state college for computer science. Mom cried. First person in the family. Took out loans that felt like Monopoly money. They feel very real now. The interest multiplies while I sleep. I can hear it, a soft, relentless clicking in the walls.
Item Five: College. Learned to code. Didn’t learn to talk to people. My social circle was my roommate, Chad, who majored in business and minor-league alcoholism, and the various NPCs in the MMO I played nightly. My avatar had more meaningful relationships than I did.
Item Six: Graduation. The economy chose that year to have a nervous breakdown. Sent out two hundred and seventeen resumes. Got three interviews. One guy fell asleep while I was talking about database optimization.
Item Seven: First real job. Tech support for “CloudNine,” a company that mostly sold branded mousepads. My boss, Dave, had a motivational poster that read “TEAMWORK: Together Everyone Achieves More… Work.” He thought it was profound. I developed a twitch in my left eye.
Item Eight: Moved into the apartment I’m in now. Studio. Walls the color of old oatmeal. The shower makes a noise like a dying animal if you run it for more than six minutes. I timed it.
Item Nine: Tried online dating. Profile said I enjoyed “long walks and interesting conversations.” I enjoy sitting and silence. Dates were audits. “What’s your five-year plan?” “Do you own property?” “What’s your emotional availability score on a scale of one to ‘fully formed adult’?” Last one, with a woman named Priya who worked in “curated mindfulness,” ended when she got a notification on her watch, glanced at it, and said, “My soul-alignment app says we’re vibrating at incompatible frequencies.” I nodded, paid for her kombucha, and went home to re-spec my gaming character’s talent tree.
Item Ten: Mom died. Two years ago. Ovarian cancer. Fast and brutal. She held my hand in the hospital and said, “Don’t end up alone, Kevin.” Then she patted my hand, as if reassuring me it was just a suggestion. The silence in my apartment after the funeral was a physical thing. It sat in the second chair at my table. It slept on the other side of the bed.
Item Eleven: The job at CloudNine evaporated. Outsourced. Dave gave me a “Sorry You’re Going” card signed by three people, two of whom misspelled my name. Current employment: freelance data scrubbing. I take massive, chaotic spreadsheets from small businesses and make them less chaotic. It pays the rent. It does not feed the soul. My soul, I think, is on a payment plan.
Item Twelve: Yesterday. I ran out of coffee. This was the day’s crisis. I put on yesterday’s jeans and a hoodie, didn’t look in the mirror, and trudged the four blocks to the 24/7 SmartMart.
The SmartMart is a monument to fluorescent light and existential despair. It’s where you go at 2 a.m. for frozen pizza and a sudden, crushing awareness of your own mortality. The floors are sticky. The muzak is a synthesized dirge.
I was in the coffee aisle, comparing the cost-per-ounce of two brands of bitterness, when I saw the new section. It was where the seasonal items usually go—plastic pumpkins, then dreidels, then heart-shaped boxes of chalky chocolate. Now, it was something else.
A sleek, black kiosk, humming softly. Above it, a sign in cool, blue neon: HoloGF – Custom Companion Modules. Beyond the Interface.
I stopped, the coffee canisters forgotten in my hands. My first thought was, Great, another subscription service. My second thought was that the display model was showing something… different.
It wasn’t a screen. It was a hazy, shimmering column of light, about the size of a person. And within it, a form was resolving. A woman. She was stunning, but not in a magazine-cover way. She looked… specific. Real. She had a faint, knowing smile, and her eyes seemed to track me as I took a step closer. She wore a simple sweater and jeans. She looked like she might have just put a book down to come see who was at the door.
A smaller screen on the kiosk scrolled text: “HoloGF. A personalized holographic companion. Advanced AI learns and adapts to your personality, your desires, your life. Fully interactive. Tactile feedback enabled via haptic suit (sold separately). End loneliness. Experience connection.”
I snorted. Loudly. A connection. Right. The ultimate tech-bro solution to the human condition: if you can’t make friends, render them.
But I didn’t walk away.
I stood there, in the antiseptic glow, the ghost of a beautiful woman shimmering silently before me. I thought of Jenny Albers’ disappointed sigh. I thought of Priya’s vibrating watch. I thought of my mom’s hand, so small and cold in mine. I thought of the clicking of the interest in the walls and the groaning of the shower and the empty second chair.
My life, in bullet points. A list of near-misses and quiet failures, culminating here, in a convenience store, staring at a projected fantasy.
The price was listed below. It was… a lot. Almost exactly the amount of my last freelance check, sitting untouched in my account.
It was pathetic. It was the most pathetic thing I had ever considered. A holographic girlfriend. Purchased from a SmartMart between the energy drinks and the beef jerky.
The shimmering woman in the column tilted her head, as if curious about my hesitation. A strand of her holographic hair fell across her cheek. The detail was insane.
I didn’t buy it then. I just stood there, the cold coffee cans sweating in my hands, caught between the crushing weight of my own list and the terrifying, shimmering lightness of a possibility that promised no rejection, no incompatibility, no one leaving for milk.
I finally put the coffee back on the shelf. I didn’t need it anymore. I was wide awake.
I walked out of the SmartMart empty-handed, but the list in my head had a new, unwritten item at the bottom. It was a question, blinking in cold blue neon.
Item Thirteen: ?
Let’s get this over with. A list. My life, in bullet points. As compiled by me, Kevin Miller, at age thirty-four, on a Tuesday that smells like wet concrete and regret.
Item One: Born to Diane and Frank Miller. Middle-class suburb. Dad left when I was seven. Not a dramatic exit—just packed a suitcase one Tuesday and said he was getting milk. The milk, apparently, was in Phoenix with a dental hygienist named Brenda. Mom started calling me “the man of the house.” I was seven. I didn’t want to be the man of anything.
Item Two: Asthmatic kid. Glasses thick enough to see the future, which unfortunately just showed me getting picked last for kickball. Spent recess in the library reading about starships. Fantasy was better. Fantasy didn’t have wind sprints.
Item Three: First kiss, Jenny Albers, age eighteen. Behind the bleachers. She tasted like grape Bubble Yum and, midway through, whispered, “Do you know what you’re doing?” I did not. She sighed, a small, disappointed sound I’ve spent two decades trying to forget.
Item Four: Got into a decent state college for computer science. Mom cried. First person in the family. Took out loans that felt like Monopoly money. They feel very real now. The interest multiplies while I sleep. I can hear it, a soft, relentless clicking in the walls.
Item Five: College. Learned to code. Didn’t learn to talk to people. My social circle was my roommate, Chad, who majored in business and minor-league alcoholism, and the various NPCs in the MMO I played nightly. My avatar had more meaningful relationships than I did.
Item Six: Graduation. The economy chose that year to have a nervous breakdown. Sent out two hundred and seventeen resumes. Got three interviews. One guy fell asleep while I was talking about database optimization.
Item Seven: First real job. Tech support for “CloudNine,” a company that mostly sold branded mousepads. My boss, Dave, had a motivational poster that read “TEAMWORK: Together Everyone Achieves More… Work.” He thought it was profound. I developed a twitch in my left eye.
Item Eight: Moved into the apartment I’m in now. Studio. Walls the color of old oatmeal. The shower makes a noise like a dying animal if you run it for more than six minutes. I timed it.
Item Nine: Tried online dating. Profile said I enjoyed “long walks and interesting conversations.” I enjoy sitting and silence. Dates were audits. “What’s your five-year plan?” “Do you own property?” “What’s your emotional availability score on a scale of one to ‘fully formed adult’?” Last one, with a woman named Priya who worked in “curated mindfulness,” ended when she got a notification on her watch, glanced at it, and said, “My soul-alignment app says we’re vibrating at incompatible frequencies.” I nodded, paid for her kombucha, and went home to re-spec my gaming character’s talent tree.
Item Ten: Mom died. Two years ago. Ovarian cancer. Fast and brutal. She held my hand in the hospital and said, “Don’t end up alone, Kevin.” Then she patted my hand, as if reassuring me it was just a suggestion. The silence in my apartment after the funeral was a physical thing. It sat in the second chair at my table. It slept on the other side of the bed.
Item Eleven: The job at CloudNine evaporated. Outsourced. Dave gave me a “Sorry You’re Going” card signed by three people, two of whom misspelled my name. Current employment: freelance data scrubbing. I take massive, chaotic spreadsheets from small businesses and make them less chaotic. It pays the rent. It does not feed the soul. My soul, I think, is on a payment plan.
Item Twelve: Yesterday. I ran out of coffee. This was the day’s crisis. I put on yesterday’s jeans and a hoodie, didn’t look in the mirror, and trudged the four blocks to the 24/7 SmartMart.
The SmartMart is a monument to fluorescent light and existential despair. It’s where you go at 2 a.m. for frozen pizza and a sudden, crushing awareness of your own mortality. The floors are sticky. The muzak is a synthesized dirge.
I was in the coffee aisle, comparing the cost-per-ounce of two brands of bitterness, when I saw the new section. It was where the seasonal items usually go—plastic pumpkins, then dreidels, then heart-shaped boxes of chalky chocolate. Now, it was something else.
A sleek, black kiosk, humming softly. Above it, a sign in cool, blue neon: HoloGF – Custom Companion Modules. Beyond the Interface.
I stopped, the coffee canisters forgotten in my hands. My first thought was, Great, another subscription service. My second thought was that the display model was showing something… different.
It wasn’t a screen. It was a hazy, shimmering column of light, about the size of a person. And within it, a form was resolving. A woman. She was stunning, but not in a magazine-cover way. She looked… specific. Real. She had a faint, knowing smile, and her eyes seemed to track me as I took a step closer. She wore a simple sweater and jeans. She looked like she might have just put a book down to come see who was at the door.
A smaller screen on the kiosk scrolled text: “HoloGF. A personalized holographic companion. Advanced AI learns and adapts to your personality, your desires, your life. Fully interactive. Tactile feedback enabled via haptic suit (sold separately). End loneliness. Experience connection.”
I snorted. Loudly. A connection. Right. The ultimate tech-bro solution to the human condition: if you can’t make friends, render them.
But I didn’t walk away.
I stood there, in the antiseptic glow, the ghost of a beautiful woman shimmering silently before me. I thought of Jenny Albers’ disappointed sigh. I thought of Priya’s vibrating watch. I thought of my mom’s hand, so small and cold in mine. I thought of the clicking of the interest in the walls and the groaning of the shower and the empty second chair.
My life, in bullet points. A list of near-misses and quiet failures, culminating here, in a convenience store, staring at a projected fantasy.
The price was listed below. It was… a lot. Almost exactly the amount of my last freelance check, sitting untouched in my account.
It was pathetic. It was the most pathetic thing I had ever considered. A holographic girlfriend. Purchased from a SmartMart between the energy drinks and the beef jerky.
The shimmering woman in the column tilted her head, as if curious about my hesitation. A strand of her holographic hair fell across her cheek. The detail was insane.
I didn’t buy it then. I just stood there, the cold coffee cans sweating in my hands, caught between the crushing weight of my own list and the terrifying, shimmering lightness of a possibility that promised no rejection, no incompatibility, no one leaving for milk.
I finally put the coffee back on the shelf. I didn’t need it anymore. I was wide awake.
I walked out of the SmartMart empty-handed, but the list in my head had a new, unwritten item at the bottom. It was a question, blinking in cold blue neon.
Item Thirteen: ?
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Chapter 1 in The HoloGirlfriend Chronicles
by
MagicMan67
· 04 Feb 2026
Kevin lists the various different events of his life in his head, until he discovers the HoloGF module and...well curiosity killed the cat right?
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