DISCLAIMER: The ideas and words are mines, the characters are not... But we do spend a lot of time together...

Do holograms dream of electric sheep?

It's Las Vegas, 1962. Just after 4 AM. The sun's not up, there's no moon, and the streets are illuminated by the glimmering light of large neon signs. Tommy's at his newsstand stacking magazines. Three Clydes in suits are gathered nearby, discussing the unlikely possibility of Bo Belinsky playing for the Wranglers if they were to ever have a big come back. A few meters away, a group of navy men emerged from one of the casinos. Two or three of them have ladies at their arms, and the broads are wearing their sailors' hats. They are all more or less drunk, and the guys are probably making their way back to Orange County. It's a 4-hour drive, but spending a night in the Sin City is as good a shore leave as they're ever going to get. In the farthest corner of the street, a young man turns the pages of a magazine, staring at pictures of Marylyn in a fluttering dress. He's startled when a hopped up hottie storms across the streets, burning rubber. The night is noisy, and in the midst of all of this, only one man is silent.

Several meters above the pavement, Vic Fontaine stands alone in the balcony of his hotel suite. His elbows are leaning against the bannister and his head is tilted down, but he's not really looking at the people below.

Vic knows all of them, of course. He knows that Tommy hangs the front page of an old newspaper at the front of his stand every day because in a few hours a group of giggly girls will walk by, see that picture and say that Tommy looks like James Dean. That always makes him feel like a million bucks. Vic doesn't have to read the signs to know that three different joints in the same street claim to have the "greatest show on Earth". He also knows that only one of them has Judy Garland, and as far as Vic's concerned, that's the one that's telling the truth. In a good day, that is. Today he simply didn't care.

Because unlike the people emerging from the casinos below, Vic knows that Judy's been dead for 400 years. He knows that this is not really Nevada, and the drink in his hands is not really scotch. Most of the time he tries not to think about these things. "It's real for me, pally," he would say, and it usually worked. Not tonight, though...

His thoughts took him back to that night, several days ago, when Nog first told him of the new arrangements with Quark, so that his program would run 26 hours a day. No more vanishing away when he wasn't needed. He would go to work every day, sleep in a bed every day, play cards with the boys... That was a life. And Vic felt like singing.

In fact, he planned a special setlist for that evening, and it took him a couple of songs to realize that that was the first time he was performing for an audience made up exclusively of holograms. Funny to think that he'd put up such a special performance and there was no one actually there to listen, but he shook those thoughts away. Tonight wasn't about the audience, it was about himself. Or at least he thought it was until he saw her.

She had been there since the program was first activated, not every night but often enough so that her presence wouldn't go unnoticed. Not that Vic could ever miss a girl like that. Blonde, petit, with a timid smile and an outfit that left just enough for the imagination. Boy, he had had dreams about that neckline… It seemed as though Felix had designed her to be everything that Vic wanted in a girl - and now that he was thinking about it, Felix probably had. And Vic never failed to notice her in the audience, timidly moving to whatever tune he happened to be singing, a sparkling perry in her hands.

And yet, Vic had never talked to her. Not that he had suddenly turned into Nanook of the North or anything like that. Vic had moves. He had had a hand in helping Julian and Odo get their girls, after all… But he had never really had the time to get close to this girl. Whenever his program was on, there had always been someone from DS9 to keep him busy. They would request a few songs, maybe stay for a chat afterwards, but that was it. Once they left, the program would end. Odd as that may seem, it meant that Vic never had the time to go after his own romantic affairs.

He was no square, of course. Vic had romanced his share of girls. Gidget, who couldn't be more than 4 foot 3' and asked him for surf lessons at the beach once. Lorraine, a sweet little thing, with a pair of eyes bluer than the summer skies. Emaline, promenading hand in hand with him, leaning her head in his shoulders when they went to the movies. Valerie, who made him feel as though he'd never been with any other girl before… It was quite a list. And when he closed his eyes he could remember everything. They way they felt, the way they smelled, the taste in their lips. Deep down Vic knew he couldn't possibly have been with any of them, but the memory of all that... All the logic in the world couldn't take that away from him... And he really didn't want to think about that. "It's real for me, pally," he would say, and he would try to mean it.

Every now and again Julian would come in and ask for a night in the town, and Vic always had the best holographic gals for those adventures. It was that easy. What would take the engineers of the station hours of heavy calculations, Vic could do with the speed of a thought. Like witchcraft. Not that those engineers would know what kinda girl to design even if they could figure out the math,… That was Vic's real magic. But that timid blonde in the audience was not like that, she was more than just a broad with whom he could have a good time. She had not been programmed by him, she was just there. She was as real as real could get for him. She had to be wooed. And for the first time since he'd first been activated, Vic had the time to do that. He'd never felt so alive.

He took his time. Buy the girl a drink, play footsies under the table, make her laugh. Get her number. Take her to the circus, holding her hand tight so you won't lose her in the crowd. Place your jacket over her shoulders on a chilly autumn night. Make out with the girl in the back seat of your flip top. Taste the cherry in her lips… Make love to the girl…

They say that the world is made for young lovers, but that night, it was made for him.

They had talked. "Do you think there's going to be a third war?" She asked him, and Vic just smiled. He knew the answer, but even if that program were to run until her old age she would probably never see the war. Oh, there would be one, of course. Vic knew all about the eugenics war, the rise and fall of augmented humans, the 37 million people who died in the third world war, the post-atomic horror, Colonel Green. It was 1962, there were darker times ahead. Vic could only wonder how humans managed to survive, and he did, but it wasn't something he could discuss with his girl. And why would he want to talk about war and suffering when there was such a beautiful girl sitting by his side. It was a much better idea to just brush a strand of hair away from her eyes, sliding the back of his finger on her cheek. She was so lovely…

She asked him about his past. There was so much he could tell her. But Vic didn't want to dwell in memories now. This was happening. He was here, she was falling asleep in his arms and she was so beautiful. Right now he didn't want to talk about teenage tears he'd never actually shed or the boyhood adventures of a man who had never really been a boy. He wanted to talk about how alive he felt, how full of possibilities life seemed, how one day he might walk out of that holosuite and she might want to come along. He could set up a high-class joint at the station, and watch the ships coming through the wormhole in between sets…

Those were wild thoughts and he knew he could never really discuss that with his girl. He was aware of that. It was okay. What was not okay, what he couldn't possibly have prepared himself for, was what he found when he looked her in the eye.

Her eyes were empty. She was hollow. As hollow as,… well, as hollow as a character in the holodeck. And the the bitterness of that realization came down on Vic like a ton of bricks.

She asked him where he was going. "Go back to sleep, doll face," he said simply, and there was a note of sadness in her voice as he stood up, poured some scotch and walked to the balcony. He wouldn't be able to sleep anymore.

For starring into that girl's eyes made him wonder. Was that what Julian, and Nog, and all the others saw when they looked into his eyes? Were his eyes as empty as the eyes of the girl in the bed? Was he as devoided of emotion and soul as she was? Was it possible that he was just as hollow? There was an easy way to check, but as he walked by the window, Vic looked away from his mirrored image in the glass. He did that for the same reason he wouldn't stop shaking his drink. He didn't wanna see his own reflection. He was afraid to find out.

It was cold out here. He was shivering. But he didn't want to go back inside. In spite of the bright neon lights this world lacked color. He knew that if this were Nevada there would have been a homeless kid sleeping in a paper box in the streets below, but those kinds of details were programmed out, for the sake of 24th-century sensibilities. This was meant to be a better world. But Vic didn't want a better world right now, he wanted it real, so he tilted his head up to look at the stars, that feeble link he had with what he knew was real, but the sky was cloudy, and the stars were nowhere to be seen. It was so unfair! Because he knew that if he could step out of that illusion for just a second, the stars wouldn't just be up above. They'd be all around him.

Someone lit up a cigarette in one of the other balconies, and the smell bothered him. It reminded him that the broad in his bed would wake up eventually and ask for a light. There was bound to be a pack of cigarettes and a lighter somewhere in the room. He'd been programmed to find smoke as fashionable as anybody in the '50s would. But he was too much of a 24th-century man to ever develop that habit, and the pack had never been opened.

He supposed he could reprogram the broad. But even if he could make her more like himself, why would he? Vic wanted his girl to be real. But what kind of flesh and blood chick could ever learn to love a hologram?

He knew he could delete the broad in his bed. For that matter, he could delete the smoking man in the balcony nearby, delete the clouds in the sky above and turn that freezing wind into a warm summer breeze. He could do all that with the speed of a thought. But he didn't. Because those things were making him angry and anger was something he'd never been programmed to feel. That was something he could hold on to. It was the very worst inch of him. But it was his. It made him... real. And it was the one thing he wouldn't let go of.

A smile crossed his lips. He caught a glimpse of it on the the liquid surface of his drink and it was the saddest smile he'd ever seen.

"Crazy," Vic whispered to himself.

Author's Note: This fic was inspired by James Darren's talk at Destination Star Trek a few years ago...At some point, during his last talk, James Darren was asked something like: "If you could have an episode for your character (Vic Fontaine), an episode that was never filmed, what would it be about?" James pointed out that he would have liked Vic to have a love interest. Whenever he was singing a romantic song, he was singing to another guy! When you stop to think about it, it does sound unfair! So I knew I had write about that... James himself suggested "a holographic gal", but I believe a holographic girl would never be enough for Vic. And that's how this story was born. It's full of allusions to James' songs, if you can find them... I'm a big fan...

I am updating the story today with minor corrections to the grammar and spelling. The story is unbeta'd. I wrote this to be a oneshot but I am thinking about a longer piece where Vic falls in love for real, with a real girl from DS9. Let's see how that goes...

Reviews would be more than lovely.

LLAP