Talk To a Movie Star. Stars and Guitars, #1

Talk to a Movie Star is an online subscription service that allows fans to have conversations with a vast stable of Hollywood's best and brightest. It's not real, of course. An operator wearing a facial motion capture device sits in front of a console, and after the subscriber chooses a character or actor, the operator then appears onscreen as that celebrity. What these fans choose to discuss with the simulations is their own business.
There is often a romantic element to it, but subscribers can talk to their idols about anything. There are movie buffs who enjoy asking the stars of yesteryear about what it was like being in showbiz back then, and film students who query directors as a creative exercise. TTAMS is different, thought-provoking, and, as the saying goes, all in good fun. When Joyce met Valerie in college, she seemed to be just another code-monkey, roughing it in the dorm.
Joyce soon discovered that Valerie lived in the world of cinema, where happily-ever-afters never failed to occur, but Joyce could see right way that the vivacious, fun-loving tech would go far. So what if she was a little strange, always quoting movies to get her point across in conversation? Valerie was brilliant, and genius is allowed such eccentricity. When they first met, Joyce would've termed her friend's imagination as staggering.
But since they've launched Talk To a Movie Star, Joyce has learned that there could be another term for her friend's imagination. Delusional, perhaps. Talking to her favorite actor is something that Valerie does frequently, and she doesn't need a computer interface to accomplish it. Reality collides harshly with fantasy when an old lover suddenly reappears. There had been no romantic storybook ending for Valerie and Brett.
Valerie is distraught, and Joyce vows to shield her friend from the kind of messy, real-life details that don't always resolve themselves pleasantly before the scene fades to black and the credits roll. Joyce figures that she owes it to her best friend - Valerie's fragile mental health might just be at stake, not to mention the future of the world's hottest infotainment service.