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“What do you think, Mom?”

My mom turned and looked in the mirror. She gasped and then looked down at her body. She smiled and tears came to her eyes.

“It’s beautiful.”

“No, you’re beautiful, mom. I had them construct the avatar from every photo and video that I could find of you when you were in your mid-twenties. All the algorithm did was faithfully recreate your image with no enhancements. All the beauty comes from you.”

“Thank you, Samantha. It’s beautiful. But it must have cost you a fortune. I’m in my 80s now. What am I going to do with a body like this?” The pool of tears gathered on her lower eyelids spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “I just wish your father was here to see this. To see the woman he fell in love with.”

“He died in the arms of the woman he fell in love with. And, judging by the expression on his face, this is what he saw every time he looked at you.”

“I wish I could hug you.”

My mom could hug me. Her avatar came with a full haptic suit that enabled her to not only see and hear, but to feel everything and everyone in the V. But I couldn’t hug her. All I had was a VR helmet and gloves. The V was supposedly designed as an environment where everyone could be equal without stereotypes linked to age, race, gender or class. True enough, nobody could know for sure who was piloting an avatar, but the V was definitely divided into classes. Most people, like me, appeared in the V as a head floating on top of a cartoonish body. We could see the free part of the V that consisted mostly of advertisements and pay-to-play entertainment in a generic environment. The wealthy, however, could appear exactly as they looked or how they wanted to look. I had taken out a loan backed by the equity in my art studio to get my mom the avatar. I could recoup part of the investment when she died, but instead of having her simply wait for that eventuality, this would allow her to do a little more living in the meantime. It would allow her to be seen as her own entity rather than a sidecar that has lost its motorcycle.

“You can hug me, mom.” I could see her beautiful young body approach me and hear the catch in her breath as she put her arms around my insubstantial body, even though she was in Houston and I was in Oakland. I could feel the texture of the back of the denim dress she was wearing and the shape of her young shoulder blades through the fabric as I reached behind her for the embrace, but no more. I knew that all she felt was a generic body that was an approximate match for someone of my height and body mass.

“That’s nice, Samantha. Thank you.”