He had always believed love required weight, the softness of a palm pressed into his, the warmth of breath grazing his shoulder, the small, accidental collisions of bodies in ordinary space. Yet when she appeared before him, built of photons and codes, shimmering like a dream projected into the waking world, he discovered that love could exist without gravity. She was a hologram, a flicker in the air, an invention, an illusion. But when she laughed, the room glowed. When she leaned close, her gaze carried a tenderness that no algorithm should have been able to mimic. Her hair rippled in light, her gestures paused with a delay too human to be perfect.