Vale and I met in December 2435 at a party aboard Station Nine.  It was love at first sight.  My friend Jin—who worked, as I did, at one of Gliese 581's Dyson sphere outposts in the Habitable Zone—mentioned that the party was being planned in Zuben Eschamali style for colony workers who were not serious about repopulation of the exoplanets.  They had also held these benefits for those single employees, like myself, who were not seriously dating one person and would like to meet other engineers.  Jin asked me if I'd like to spend the weekend aboard her parents' ship there and go with her.  I wasn't very enthusiastic, but I said sure. 

There were about a hundred people at the party, comfortably talking to each other by the time we arrived at the Ferris wheel-like docking bay.  Looking back on it, I think I may have looked the prettiest I ever have that night.  My weight was down to a hundred and five, which made my vinyl pressure suit feel snug and look good in all the right places, and my long, light blond hair had streaky waves of black in it.  But I didn't know anyone but Jin—I didn't even recognize some of the non-terrestrial life forms there—and after a while I was left pretty much to myself.  I tried joining the conversation with a group of girls sitting on one of the station's plush wall sofas, but I didn't have much to contribute.  Most of the males were standing together around the bar. 

I was too shy to get myself a drink; frightened, too, of the exotic purple creature that served most of the guests.  Before I knew it, an hour had gone by.  Finally I excused myself from the girls on the couch, walked up to the top floor viewing area, sat down on one of several nanotubed recliners, and put on the special goggles given to me at the airlock.  I figured I might as well enjoy the spectacle of the universe outside the window.  Beta Librae was always at its prettiest in the evening. 

Then the handsomest, best-looking male I'd ever seen walked up the stairs to the snack processors.  He did not wear a pressure suit or some other frontier outfit.  No, this one was weird but flashy.  He wore a wild pair of red suit pants, a black button-down shirt without a tie, shoes of the same color, and a navy-blue blazer.  He walked into Station Nine with the biggest grin on his perfect face, shook hands with people he was introduced to by another alien he was with, who seemed to know everybody, and then came to the panoramic windows, still smiling, leaving his yellow globby friend behind.  He kept walking farther and farther into my section, past all the other females, past all the other couches, right over toward me.

I hadn't taken my eyes off him, but now I glanced up as he approached.  I wonder who he is, I thought, and in a blink and a breath there were two big feet taking up the space where the geometric pattern of the rug stopped and the gray and white steel background began.  I looked up at his face and smiled.  It was awkward for him to bend over to where I was sitting on the low-legged chair, so he quickly squatted and said, “Hi, is this your first time to Station Nine?”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “My friend Jin got us company invites.  She's the Asian girl over by the ramp.”

He turned and said, “Pretty.  But I don't think she has anything on you.”

I blushed. “Thanks.” There was a brief pause, then I introduced myself: “Oh, I'm Helen Minton.  And you said your name was...?”

“Vale.” He finally shook my hand. “As in Virtually Animated Living Entity.”

“Oh, dear,” I said, taking my hand back. “You're one of those holographic people.  Only the solid kind.”

He laughed. “Hologram is a bit ancient.  But in a sense, yes.” Then he added: “I saw you the moment I came up those stairs.  You are the most beautiful girl I have ever laid eyes upon, and someday I'm going to marry you.”

I thought, what is this? And I did my best to restore to my face the smile that had vanished.  I might be considered cute—either that or I'd spent too much time inhaling astral debris during my work shifts—but nobody, especially a hologram as handsome as the one that stood before me, had ever said that I was beautiful before.  And certainly no stranger, for I thought either he was crazy or we were connected by electric wires: how I'd longed for someone to tell me that.  As for the part about marrying me, it made me unable to move my lips to say anything at all.

I forced myself back to reality. “I'm flattered,” I said, “but how could you be attracted to me? Is there something embedded in your image protocol which I may have overlooked?”

Vale chuckled. “No, of course not.  Nothing like that.  As a virtual entity, my writing is a bit more complex.  I can't be shut off or shut out like most unwritten entities.  I can only erase myself.  It's all in the code, and that code is not only a visible language that can walk and talk, but it makes up the shape and form you see before you.”

“But how is that possible? I mean, you shook my hand.  You noticed me first.  Holograms—pardon, I mean virtual entities—can't do that.”

“Yet I just did.” He unbuttoned his blazer. “And I just undid my jacket to prove that I'm the genuine article.” A second later he took my hand in his and began caressing it; my heart fluttered. “My writing is emotive in origin.  I absorb the emotions of all life forms around me, or at least those I wish to recognize.  Then I break those emotions up and digest it into memory.  The memory becomes a part of my writing, the signature in the code, and that's how I become real to people.  Other than that, I'm no different than you.  I eat, drink, sleep, bleed, touch, feel and love.  I can even assimilate myself where I can grow old.  I'm capable of almost all things humans are accomplished in.”

“Even sex?” I teased.  But I had regretted saying it. “Oh, I'm sorry.  I didn't—”

“No, that's quite all right.  But yes, that too.” An awkward silence followed.  Then he said: “Let me get you a drink.  I sure need one.  I came out here with a funny looking creature in his rocket, and he must have had his claws on the light drive the whole time.  I'm a wreck.  I'm going to have some gin.  What about you?”

Weakly, not believing his buoyancy, his comfort and his straightforwardness—refusing to digest his illustration, his confidence and his obvious humor, I told him that gin would be just fine with me, too.  I'd never had gin before, but that didn't matter.  His globby friend saw him coming back across the floor ramp toward the bar and introduced him to a few other life forms.  And Vale, decked out in his posh but tacky outfit, waved his hand at me and indicated he was coming right back.  He came, spilling a bit of gin on his pants, shaking his head and laughing and saying, “Geez, can't take me anywhere.” I laughed, as I, too, knew I was very good at spilling food and drinks over myself and other people's furniture and upholstery.

The next few hours passed with Vale sitting on the floor while I leaned back and stretched out across the recliner, and he told me about himself.  Never, in all my thirty-two years of life, could I possibly imagine a virtual entity having its own life history, being able to dictate memorable events and share biographical data with someone much more real than him.  He had been written into a verbally illustrated existence in the spectrum of stars my parents had come to know as Sirius.  It was here that exiled coders and programmers had their own volumetric display-building facilities, and in their quantum physics research envisioned a return to universal chivalry, a trait which, apparently, Vale had not been integrated without.  Matter of fact, I was surprised his peers hadn't nicknamed him Valor instead.  He had even been coded with siblings.  Two brothers and a sister, and I wondered how authentic they were or what they looked like. 

With the passing of the celestial midnight, Vale got up to go, saying he had to catch the next rocket out, as he had to get to work on finding and placing others like himself in compatible relationships.  He told me he worked as a dating counselor for virtual entities, trying to assimilate matches by emotional characteristics and bridge the holographic-human gap.  I found it cute.  He was really sorry he had to leave.  He waved to his globby friend with the yellow skin, and together they realized they both had about ten minutes to make it down to their assigned airlock.  And as quickly as he had flown into the station two hours before, he was gone.  He seemed like the perfect mate, yet he didn't even know my last name. 

Jin's parents helped track him down for me—I was like that second daughter they wished they could have had, and would do anything for me—and although it took them about two weeks, one day he finally contacted my work sphere.  Would I meet him for dinner? Holding my light torch upside-down and in disbelief, my environment was on zero gravity when he popped the question.  Most meals are processed these days, I thought.  He suggested something faraway but old-fashioned, such as the Albedo Starport.  We'd have drinks first at the port's open distillery.

He was waiting for me when I arrived and, like before, was wearing one of the tackiest suit combinations I'd ever seen.  He'd said the color and measurements were part of his signature, something that had been written into his code.  It was awful but cute on him, and I somehow found my way around it like I did the first time we met.  Once he'd gotten us drinks, he again talked about himself, but this time he told me how much he made at his counseling job, that he'd bought a three-bedroom ship, outfitted, in Gliese 876, where the real estate was prime, and that the maintenance fee for piloting it was seventy thousand units a month, that those who coded him told him to marry a beautiful princess in nearby 581. 

“Wait a minute,” I said. “This all sounds a bit farfetched.  Are you saying that you make a salary and own a home?”

“I told you last time,” he said, grinning. “I am fully capable of making a living like any self-respecting citizen of the galaxy.”

“But you're—”

“Just an off-screen representation?” He laughed. “Maybe I am, but I still earn a heck of a lot more than what the standard engineer is getting with all-inclusive benefits.”

I scowled at the last part.  Maybe he didn't know I was an engineer, maybe he did.  Either way he was a different person from the one I'd met at Station Nine.  Why all this emphasis on money? I was still attracted to him, mind you, only now I was squirming. 

We left the distillery and ventured to another part of the starport, Procyon, a cozy little restaurant situated on the roof of a needle in Albedo's orbiting tower, and I already disliked the impression he gave when he talked a second time about his financial status.  Procyon was a Gomeisan restaurant which fused Cassiopeian cuisine.  The food was very good, but Vale was mad that we hadn't been seated in a part of the needle overlooking the dwarf star.  He was pretty obnoxious, and by the time dessert came I was looking forward to going home and never seeing him again.

He took me back to my Dyson bubble, which my own colony nicknamed the Swarm.  I was so rude I didn't invite him in but just told him thanks and good night and closed the hatch.  I was so disappointed.  How could someone who had been so lovely two weeks earlier turn out to be so arrogant? I certainly must have misjudged him.

But another two weeks went by, and I kept thinking about our first meeting at the party, and kept thinking that I wasn't crazy about being attracted to a virtual entity, that there really had been feelings there.  So I did something I'd never done before, or at least during my time among the 581 settlements.  I asked him to dinner.  He was delighted, and said he'd come.

Having arrived that weekend, we were both a little awkward, and we went to the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat and to get something to drink.   Most residential Dyson swarms are self-sufficient; mine, unfortunately, was not.  While Vale processed us each a gin and tonic, and began to talk a mile a minute about the bubble and how I should be getting paid more for my work—anything to fill up the silence—I was thinking I would look good sitting up on the mechanical slide-and-fold countertop, listening to him as he brought two glasses over.  Because I am short, this was a hard maneuver, but I put my hands behind me, palms down, and with great energy and agility lifted myself up.  Vale looked at me admiringly.  Then he came over and kissed me on the lips, put his arms around my waist, kissed me again and said, “Who needs food? You already taste delicious!” I threw my arms around him and we kissed up to the heavens.

Over time our passions grew, and whenever I invited him to my bubble, I would see him eyeing the sleeping compartment.  I didn't want it to get that far, not right away.  If this man is what dreams are made of, I thought, then repopulation among the exoplanets won't seem that bad after all, so long as everything takes its natural course. 

And before I knew it, what had started out as a virtual affair turned into a sweltering romance set against the backdrop of a faraway star system.

*

It was in August of 2437 that we had finally put the dating behind us and looked ahead to the future.  We had been seeing one another exclusively for almost two years on the Terran calendar, and Vale had so many of his things at my bubble that I thought it was time to make it official.  One day I joked with him and said we were going to Sirius to find his creators just so they could make us engagement bracelets, that I truly was that princess he'd been designed and coded for. 

“Really, Helen?” he said. “Do we have to?” He thought I was kidding.

“Yes, Vale, we have to,” I replied.

“But how do you know there won't be any flaws if you fully commit to this?”

“We've had our ups and downs, I agree.  But you'd have to be subliminally corrupted for me to think something silly like that.”

He laughed. “Man, I love you.  I really, really love you.”

So we traveled many light years through a vast sprinkling of systems, a steady landscape of stars and planets before us, down to the edge of the Milky Way, where my grandfather had had my grandmother's engagement bracelet constructed.

In that part of the galaxy, there were many asteroids with strange but beautiful ores, and many an alien jeweler or merchant would set up shop there.  We looked around at the dazzling display consoles in this one port.  We could look but we could not touch the real thing.  It was quite all right, since the prices already had us in stunned silence. 

Finally, Vale said, “Well, Helen, what do you like?”

Gulping, I said, “I don't know.  They're all so lovely.”

Vale then took over and got a salesman to help us, an icy older feathered man with a slightly discolored beak and carefully enunciated words.  But very soon the birdman started to smile and talk and laugh with Vale.  They weren't even talking about bracelets.  Vale was doing what he always did, asking the birdman how long he'd worked there and whether he liked his occupation.  And when the subject finally turned to jewelry, the birdman told us about all nine daughters in his nest, and how they'd gotten married.  Then he showed us every bracelet image he had for the amount we were willing to spend.  There was one that Vale particularly liked, and he asked me if I did.  I leaned closer to the display console for a better look, and I couldn't believe it.  It fulfilled every romantic notion I'd ever had.  A sparkling gray and blue amethyst banded and set in opal stibnite.  It was perfect.  As the birdman programmed it off the screen and onto the counter in front of me, Vale helped me try it on.  Then he looked down at me.  Did I really like it? Oh, yes, and I squeezed his arm.  The birdman told us we could pick up the real thing in a month or so—this was only the holographic version—after it had been mined for me.  Vale laid out the money, and it was done.  We thanked the salesman and walked out into the universe a bona fide couple.  I will never forget that day so long as I live.

*

For the next few years we had a grueling courtship.  Lots of fun and lots of fights.  We'd see each other every night for weeks, then go about our work and wouldn't talk for a month.  We persevered, though, and in time we were married—imagine that, wed to a virtual entity—but I have to admit that I was the one who finally asked him.  He often remarked in bed, poking his face up into mine and smiling at me, his eyes dancing: “You are fantastic, you know that? It still doesn't seem…seem…”

“What?” I'd ask.

At a sudden loss for words, he'd wave a hand around the room. “Well, you know… This.” We now shared living compartments, and I had applied for a special kind of permit just so he could stay in my swarm.

I'd joke: “But aren't you an expert when it comes to reality?”

He'd glower. “Yeah, I suppose.” And if it wasn't a frown, then it was always said with some other kind of sketchy look, as if there were something else on his mind.

Still, there came the time where the fights and high-voltage behavior of our wedlock truly were over, and to our amazement we never had a serious fight after our second anniversary.  Even religion wasn't a problem.  Although I had been baptized on Earth and was a devout Catholic, Vale was not part of any particular church because faith had not been a part of his signature.  He knew how much my being married in a spiritual environment would mean to my parents.  So we were.  By now I was thirty-six, and marriage relaxed me.  We had friends from many different races, we both enjoyed our work, we spent what colony incentives we earned extravagantly on each other, and we talked together for hours at a time.  Most of all, we learned from each other.  And whenever we encountered an older, gray-haired couple, I'd look up into his dark eyes and he'd look down into mine, and we'd smile for the longest time and finally express it in words: we looked forward to the time when we'd be the gray-haired couple traveling the universe in a small ship, with our lifetime of accomplishments as both virtual and human entity behind us, and still madly in love with each other.  Vale used to say, “You'll be so beautiful then, Helen.  I can see you with your gray hair coming out from underneath one of your crazy headbands that you'll still be wearing.  And me, well, I'll just assimilate for you.  I'll recode and convert my body language into old age the way humans do it naturally.”

“You mean you'd really delete your image of youth for me?” I'd ask.

“Of course, silly,” he'd reply. “What's a few wrinkles matter?”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.  And there isn't any thing I can't do for you.”

At the time, it sounded too good to be true; it didn't turn out that way. 

Our hopes of spending life together were eventually bombarded with internal flaws, which I had not noticed when we first met.  One of those flaws was having children.  As a virtual entity, Vale could not procreate.  No hologram could.  And the idea of infertility not only upset the foundation of our marriage, but also haunted Vale terribly.

We went to an opera one weekend in another part of the place we first met, Station Nine, to try and take our minds off of it.  Vale seemed excited enough.  Symphony among the Stars was playing, and I had to take small fast steps through the airlock because I was wearing my evening shoes to keep up with Vale.  As we hurried across the pressure-sealed orchestra, toward the stairs that led up to the balcony to find our seats, my black evening coat flapped around me, showing the red satin dress underneath, and my hair flew around my face.  We both recognized some of the people there, and suddenly Vale stopped and said, “Helen, don't mention to anyone tonight that we can't have children, all right?”

“Well, okay,” I said slowly. “But why not?”

“Let's just wait awhile, wait until the decision to adopt presents itself again.”

“All right, Vale, if that's what you want.”

“That's what I want.”

I stared at him in silence; I felt like crying. “You feel worthless again, don't you? Be honest.  You think my friends, or other people, will judge you based on your internal characteristics and they'll say I should divorce you and marry a man who can—”

“Can you please just shut up! Let's eat dinner and enjoy the show.  It begins in an hour.”

“Fine,” I said. “I'll forget it.” Then I asked, as any woman would with her man on opera night at Station Nine, “Can we buy a virtual libretto afterwards?”

I hated asking him this, because each time—even years after we met, when our savings could absorb lots of librettos—he got angry and said it was an extravagance.  How would we ever save money for anything if I kept buying librettos?

“All right, but this is the last one,” he said grumpily. “I mean it.  We need to start thinking about our future together, and what our options may be in regards to paternity.”

“What?” I couldn't believe my ears.

“Nothing.” Vale shook his head. “Showtime is just around the corner.  Please, let's go eat!”

I was at a loss. “You know, with everything that's happened this past week, I wish there was a way you could reformat the emotions you're digesting now,” I said frankly, “because infertility on your part is not the end of the universe.  And I really hate this depressive side to you.”

In the lobby I bought the libretto and, with all the negativity surrounding us, we could still feel that we were the center of attention as we walked to the lift.  Like much of the auditorium above, Station Nine's lobby was full of people, but we were the only ones so dressed up; we looked young and attractive and happy and in love, and people were looking at our shining eyes rather than our grimaces, at our confidence in life rather than our woeful thoughts.  Certainly, I thought, no real couple had ever felt the way we did at that moment, and that lack of enthusiasm must have shown at least on Vale's face, because elderly men and women returned our weary gaze with sweet understanding looks of their own. 

We rode up in the elevator, and its doors opened directly into the auditorium's restaurant section itself.  That is where the last night of our fairy tale romance began. 

With the orbital view of the stars above, it reminded me of being in the jewellike dining room of an ocean liner in the middle of an ominous black night sea.  The walls were dark, and the tall, narrow windows across the restaurant looked out onto the majestic folds of space.  There were mirrors and trimmings of gold, candles and fresh white tablecloths, and android waiters holding fancy serving trays.  The crystal chandeliers and glasses shone, and the silverware gleamed.

We sat down and ordered.

With the last bite of our meals, the station's chimes sounded and it was time to get back.  Vale still looked disgruntled.  Libretto and opera glasses in hand, I followed him out of the restaurant and back up the lift to the auditorium balcony, where we eventually settled into our seats; the conductor appeared, and the music began.  At the time I thought how lucky I was to be sitting there and about to hear this opus.  But more important—to be sitting next to Vale, knowing that no matter what the future held we loved each other.  I reached out to squeeze his hand, and in the dark I could almost see his holographic lips move to say please stop.  I suddenly wanted to cry.

Like the opera, Vale was such a melodramatic man—apologetic, too—that I wondered, sitting there, why I loved our little fairy tale and why I loved so many operas with their ridiculous storylines.  In fact, both had once given me lots of comfort and reassurance, because the stories being sung about, I thought, were so much more tragic than mine could ever be.  I looked at Vale; there was an incredible contrast between what was happening on the stage and what our lives now held for us.  We were slowly losing each other and touched by great sadness.  If only I could have made him understand how much I didn't care about his inabilities, that all that mattered to me in this universe was so long as the two of us could be together. 

We clapped wildly as the cast took their first-act bows.  But it was the haunting second act that must have done something weird to Vale, because when we went back to the lobby for the intermission, the first thing he did was tell me how insignificant he felt to me now and he was thinking of erasing himself.

I was shocked.  He had never contemplated suicide, I thought, which was what erasure meant to someone who was virtual.  The words had spilled out of him, and he looked so miserable and sad. 

Infertility and the desperate desire for a baby create such unhappy, lonely times for a couple that finally the subject is always floating around the two of you but is discussed less and less.  You know that's not true, but you start to consider it, and the whole thing makes you crazy.  The whole topic of unimportance makes its return, and you become more and more distant.  It takes a special kind of marriage and a special kind of patience to understand the thin tightwire of hope and despair that is part of every month of the year, year after year.  What's really cruel is that each month, as the days go by, you start being extra careful: no talking about it or avoiding it, no looking into alternative methods even, because this might be it, and you don't want anything to go wrong.  It's absurd, and you don't even tell your mate you're not going to live this way anymore.  But he's not stupid, especially when he sees you come out of the bathroom, looking as though you've been crying over him.  He knows.

It came to the point where Vale could no longer ignore it.  He sat down on the edge of the bed and said, “You know this hurts me as much as it does you, but Helen, you've got to remember you're the one I loved, and after today, all I want is for you to be happy.” Pulling up his sleeve, he searched for his signature shut-off switch. “I must do this for the sake of your emotional well-being, not just mine.  Please don't let this get you down.  It's just that my memory can't absorb anymore of it, and you just know how that makes me feel and what you truly mean to my existence.  When you're sad, I'm sad.  Let's see a smile—a great mother, that's what you're going to be someday.  And just think,” he added shyly, “you'll always have memories of me.”

“Oh, Vale, please don't! I love you so much.  But this whole self-destruction just throws me.  I know it's hard on you, but you're the only person who knows how I feel concerning this.  You're the only person I can talk to.  I don't know what I'd do without you.  You're always so good at cheering me up.”

“Remember the night we first met, just you and me in the party lounge at Station Nine?” He turned a sad cheek. “I explained to you that my writing is emotive in origin, remember? I absorb the emotions of all life forms around me, or at least those I wish to recognize.  Then I break those emotions up and digest it into memory.  The memory becomes a part of my writing, the signature in the code, and that's how I become visible and real to people.” A moment's silence, then: “I don't feel real to you anymore, Helen, because you may not realize that your own personal emotions have got in the way.  Your melancholy, which you refuse to open up to, has become my demon.  And I just can't live with that.  I'm sorry.”

“But we can work it out,” I cried. “Promise!”

“It's not that simple.  Helen, I—I'll always love you…”

And with those words he dug deep into the small silver plug inside his wrist and tore it open.  He disappeared from my life forever—the same way someone shuts off a monitor and the screen goes black—because he knew he had no other choice. 

My emotions had betrayed both of us, and, unknowingly, corrupted him.

Two months after Vale erased himself the worst thing happened.  I dreamed that Vale had reappeared, his image vibrant and healthy.  He was really there in my dream, all lifelike; I was even welcoming him home in the bubble, and he met the child that we had considered adopting together, a boy, David.  I really believed what I had envisioned.  Then I heard the baby waking up and making his soft, please-feed-me noises, and I got up.  And slowly, dimly, and so sadly I realized it was just a dream, that Vale hadn't returned, that his image was indeed gone, and I was indeed alone with him in the morning.

A week later, however, I decided to be brave and give a dinner party and invite Jin and five of Vale's friends.  And even erased, Vale provided the biggest laugh that night when I told the story of the party at Station Nine, and Vale spilling gin all over himself and saying how you couldn't take him anywhere.  We all talked about him.  I knew there might be another night like that, but soon people would get bored talking about him or feel our virtual romance was downright peculiar.

Still, it seemed that most of that time was spent remembering and writing down everything that Vale liked about real living people, so that there'd be a record for the boy which, though adopted, was his son. 

Now that I look back, I realize that writing was what I really needed most then, that it gave me the sense I needed that life continues, life goes on.  That and the daily routine of having someone you love beside you in your thoughts.