The Moment's Eternity

Like a beam of light, she passed through space and time, for just that moment, and fell into the pit of reality.

When I closed my eyes, holding her so close to me, I became lost with her. The melding of our emotions and feelings. The feeling of unity and one with her. We had become a single soul for one moment. A moment that a being made of two souls would live in forever.

The next day, I had called Kirsten to come down to the holo grid after she had rested enough in her quarters on the ship. I had hoped by now she would be feeling better after yesterdays eternity.

When she came in, I was waiting, leaning against the wall beside the integrated console.

"You called me?" she said.

I nodded, smiling. "I have something I thought youd like to see." I turned to face the console and activated the program.

At that moment, the structured beams along the walls disappeared and we were standing in the crowded cafeteria of the high school Kirsten and I had met at back on earth. She looked around her in surprise.

"What do you think?" I asked. "I was up all night working on the program. Course, you know how I am with holographic control, so there might be a wrong course on the menu or two or three people missing."

She finally stopped looking around her and smiled at me. She walked up to me and hugged me tightly. I nearly fainted at the touch of her and very nearly didnt let go.

"I did make sure to recreate all of your friends," I said pointing over to the table she always sat at with her friends. All of them were sitting over there, including Lacey who had hated my guts.

"Thank you," she said, and surprisingly, with emotion.

"Have fun," I said quietly and then left.

Kirsten looked around her some more until her eyes focused on her friends sitting over at her old table. She stared ominously over at them for what she felt must have been days. She never walked over to them though. Instead, she approached the console, the only thing real in the program. She stood over the controls and looked over at her friends again. She smiled. She smiled a smile she hadnt smiled since her last day in that cafeteria in high school.

She found the button on the controls she wanted, but before she pushed it, she looked up once again at her friends. Her eyes went from one to the other. Finally, she pushed the button that read: Delete Program, and the cafeteria was replaced with the holo grid again. Just before she left she took a look at them in her mind she had remembered taking for real the last time she saw them and, smiling, she whispered, "Goodbye."