If by chance we hadn't met at the library, I never would have made that connection.

If by chance this hadn't happened at the library, I never would have lost my virginity.

I met her one more time, and it was only one more time, but it changed my life - forever.

Most weekends I'll make my way the local Studio City library to rent one physical book. Most books are ebooks these days and I use my Kindle all the time, but having an actual book in my hand reminds me of my youth.

When I was a child, maybe 5 or 6 years old, I went to the library with my mother and sister. I was big into science-fiction. I'm not sure what they were into, but I was always in my own world anyway. This was before we had made contact with extraterrestrials. I always noticed a girl who was about my age and also in the science-fiction section. We made eye contact but I was too shy to say hello. Heck, I don't know if I really ever talked to anyone. What I did notice was her eyes were rather large. Like one of those anime dolls. Maybe that was my fascination with her. So this went on for what I can only assume was a year because I don't have a good recollection of time as a child. Everything kind of blurs together of all my memories of back then. For those of you that know I'm 180 years old next month. Since the adoption of brain storage nanobytes in the 21st century, I've been able to collect way more memories than I'd ever thought. Details such as the feeling of the carpet I'd walked on in my mid 60s, when I theoretically should've died of natural causes. 

So here I am at the library today. Humans no longer look like the humans I categorized myself as in the 20th and early 21st century. Most of my body is cybernetic and I spend a portion of my day in the virtual world researching. See, the only thing that was lost, much like when a hard drive crashes, are fragments of data that was unsavable in between the data backups. And I lost a day. I've probably lost a month's or two worth of day's memories in my lifetime. Sure, the technology is better and they lose less but they still lose it.

The day I lost was the day I saw the same girl in the library but now she was a grown woman and still beautiful. I recognized her by her eyes. They say the eyes are the window to the soul, and I just thought that was something romantic people said before making out. But I saw into her eyes that day in the library of the future - the library of today.. and I knew it was her. 

How do I know this? Like I said - fragments are still there in memory. I remember seeing her. I remember walking up to her. I remember saying hello. And that's all I have. 

I don't know what I said, and I don't know if we set a coffee date, or if I scared her off and never heard from her again. I come back every weekend to hold the last of the paper books, relics really. But they remind me of who I used to be. 

Some kid. Some kid with hopes and dreams of a better future. Not knowing that I'd be part of that future. A future where I now research and work with scientists all day working to fix corrupted or lost data that might be just as important... because to me it's all important. Nothing means more.

I did meet her once again, but never again since. And I'll keep searching for the missing data in my research, because I need to know what happened. Was it awkward social interaction between us? Was that day her last day on Earth and she moved to Mars or even out of the galaxy? I hope not. Was it lost love? Friendship? Soulmates? I may never know.