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The city had changed in three months. Not the buildings or the streets, but the light. As Kevin walked home from the convenience store, a bag of frozen dinners in hand, he saw it everywhere: the soft, electric glow of holograms behind apartment windows. A blush of pink in one, a cool blue in another, the shimmering silhouette of a figure in a third. HoloGFs. They were as common as air conditioners now. Advertisements had evolved from novelty pitches to lifestyle branding. Never eat alone again. Wake up to the perfect smile. Customize your companion today.

Kevin’s own loneliness had become a sharper, more clinical thing. It was no longer a vague melancholy; it was a documented condition in a world that had ostensibly found the cure. He was the holdout, the guy still using a rotary phone. His list had a new bullet point, underlined: Watch the world solve a problem you still have.

He took a different route that night, down a side street he usually avoided. The buildings were older, the streetlights fewer. That’s when he saw the sign, flickering in a narrow storefront window: DISCOUNT DIGITAL DIVINES. FINAL CLEARANCE.

The window was grimy, the interior dark except for a single naked bulb hanging over a cluttered counter. It looked less like a store and more like a pawn shop for forgotten futures. A bell jingled when he pushed the door open, the sound swallowed by thick dust. An old man with wiry gray hair and thick glasses looked up from a disassembled tablet.

“Help you?”

“Just… browsing,” Kevin said, his voice echoing in the cramped space.

Shelves were lined with outdated gadgets, boxes for last year’s phones, and tangled nests of cables. And there, on a bottom shelf, tucked between a broken drone and a stack of antique floppy disks, was a HoloGF module. Its packaging was slightly faded, the corners worn. The price tag, written in shaky marker on a piece of masking tape, made his breath catch: $49.99. AS-IS.

The mainstream models started at five hundred. The good ones, the ones that learned and adapted, cost thousands.

“That one’s… functional?” Kevin asked, picking up the box. It was lighter than he expected.

The old man shrugged. “Powered on last I checked. Older model. Beta version, maybe. No returns.”

A beta version. That explained the price. It would be glitchy, limited. Probably had …