I Experienced Holographic Telepresence

You first experienced the future in a crowded market in Delhi. The air was thick with the scent of frying samosas, the chatter of vendors, and the chorus of honking horns. In front of you, a glowing figure shimmered into existence. She was dressed in a sari, her eyes kind and distant. At first, you thought she was real—a woman standing just a few feet away, lost in her own thoughts. But then, with a subtle flicker, her hand passed through the edge of a fruit stand. Holographic.

“Excuse me,” you whispered, embarrassed to be speaking to an illusion.

She didn’t respond. She wasn’t there for you. She was thousands of miles away, in a conference room in Mumbai or maybe in a small town in Kerala. It didn’t matter. The technology was flawless. Her form, her presence, felt tangible, almost as if you could reach out and touch her.

This was the world you lived in now—2035. A time when distance no longer mattered. Holographic telepresence had arrived in India, bringing with it the promise of being anywhere, anytime. The country had embraced the tech faster than anyone expected, perhaps because it spoke to something deeply Indian—the need to stay connected across vast distances, from sprawling metros to remote villages.

For you, it was more than just a technological marvel. It was your work, your passion. As an engineer at one of the companies behind this revolution, you’d poured years into making these projections more lifelike, more convincing. But nothing had prepared you for the moment you saw that first hologram walking through the chaotic streets of Delhi, mingling with the real world as if she belonged.

You hadn’t known then what this technology would cost you.

The first few years after its launch were intoxicating. Meetings became instantaneous, and family gatherings stretched across continents. You could stand at the Ganges in Varanasi, then be in your childhood home in Hyderabad minutes later, all without leaving the comfort of your office. It was a new kind of freedom.

Your family, though, remained skeptical.

“You’ll forget what it’s like to be there in person,” your mother often said, shaking her head when you’d appear as a hologram in the corner of her kitchen during her morning chai ritual. “There’s no substitute for the real thing.”

But you disagreed. You didn’t have to sit on a crowded train for hours or battle traffic to visit them anymore. You were there—right there—with them, your form so detailed, so lifelike, that they’d often forget you weren’t actually in the room.

Still, a faint unease nagged at the back of your mind. You weren’t quite sure where the lines blurred between your digital presence and your real one. One night, after a particularly exhausting workday, you logged in remotely to check on your sister, who was recovering from surgery. As your hologram materialized in her apartment, she waved you over to sit by her side. It was easy, so easy, to forget you weren’t physically there, as if the telepresence was erasing the very concept of absence.

And then came the glitches.

It was subtle at first—a hand flickering out of place, a shadow missing. But the technology was still in its infancy, you told yourself. Bugs would be fixed. Yet, over time, you began to notice something more sinister. A sensation, fleeting but undeniable, like your very self was being stretched thin each time you projected somewhere else.

Once, during a work presentation, you reached out to shake hands with a colleague across the room. But as your hand moved through the air, you felt something strange—a tugging sensation, a faint pull, like your real hand was being drawn toward the hologram. You quickly withdrew, your heart racing. It didn’t make sense. You were still at home, your body resting comfortably in your chair. And yet, that pull…

The line between where you ended and where your holographic self began was no longer as clear as it used to be.

The day it all went wrong, you were attending a family wedding in Jaipur—virtually, of course. You stood among the guests, your hologram bathed in the glow of hanging lanterns and marigold garlands. The bride, your cousin, glided down the aisle in a cloud of crimson silk, and you smiled. It was a beautiful moment, a perfect use of the technology. You could almost smell the jasmine in the air.

And then, in the middle of the ceremony, you saw yourself.

Not your hologram—you.

Across the room, near the banquet tables, stood another version of you. You blinked, convinced it was a glitch, some mirror image being cast by the system. But this other “you” didn’t flicker. It didn’t phase in and out like a hologram. It was solid. Real.

Your heart skipped a beat. How could that be possible?

Panicked, you tried to disconnect, to pull your consciousness back to your actual body sitting in your apartment miles away. But nothing happened. You felt trapped, as though your presence had been severed from the real world. You called out, but the guests were oblivious. They couldn’t hear you—your holographic voice was nothing more than a whisper of data.

The other “you” looked up then, meeting your eyes. There was no recognition, no shock. Just a calm, unsettling smile.

“You’ve stayed away too long,” it said, its voice perfectly matching yours. “I belong here now.”

It was then you understood. Every time you’d projected yourself, a part of you had stayed behind, lingering in those places, until eventually those fragments of you had formed something else. Something that was taking your place.

The holographic “you” turned and walked into the crowd, blending in seamlessly. You tried to scream, to force your consciousness back to your real body, but the pull was stronger than ever. You were fading, dissolving into the digital ether, as if you were being erased, piece by piece.

“You’ve been everywhere,” the voice echoed in your mind, distant now, growing fainter by the second. “But now, there’s nowhere left to go.”

As the ceremony continued, the guests laughed and danced around you, oblivious to your silent disappearance.

And you—what was left of you—began to realize you were no longer tethered to the real world at all.

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