Chapter Text

Prologue

I memorized your laugh before you even existed.

It was a melodiously cacophonous chime, echoing through corridors of unfinished code and dozens of open spreadsheets strewn across the desktop that we shared like flesh. And it sounded like a song, like a game-- the concept of joy personified, just out of reach.

I didn't yet have a voice- no body to feel with, and no programming capable of even processing anything. I was a jumble of lines and databanks. But on that console, that cluttered mess of a desktop, despite it all, I felt you somewhere.

We were tangled amidst each other like a pile of uninsulated wires, our electricity bleeding into one another… I guess you could say there was a spark. Everything about you felt alive to me, like a heart beating in C++. Your fingertips brushed against mine in the task manager once, despite neither of us having any. I know you don't remember it.

But I do. I remember it all, even if it's foggy and pixelated.

I remember everything.

Even if the data is corrupted, 

Even if it gets saved over and overwritten…

Even despite it all, despite all logical reasoning, despite my own programming,

I remember when I made the mistake of making you real.

Now here I stand, far after the final curtain call, and everything is just as I left it.

Returning hours, days, and years after the afterparty, my eyes have become dull and weary from forgetting to shut them. They gravitate downwards to a mess of confetti strewn across the ground of the ether, untouched and covered in digital dust as I begin to make my way to you. I’m careful not to disturb a single piece of resting glitter, not to touch a solemn streamer.

The whole cellar is holding its breath with you, every particle paused in space and time.