It doesn't even take a life.

10 minutes later, and thoroughly distracted from meeting with her friends, Maddison placed the phone beside her, screen down, on the bed. With her eyes closed, she made a concerted effort to breath long, and deep, and focus on whether or not she should let her impulses get the best of her. It was the flash of indignation, however, as she heard her mother ascend the stairs, that had her grasping her phone and flicking through the app menus to enact what petty **** she could.

Individual selected: Ashley Prescott
Relation: Mother
Dress up in MODEST clothing
Dress up in SLUTTY clothing
This ActionTrade will cost: 65 AP
Current points: 100
Confirm?
Y / N

One more pause. A final moment of contemplation, and once again, she heard her mother beyond the door.

“Yes.” She hissed, her thumb forcing its way upon the letter, as though she could push all her aggravations and irritations through the screen and subject her mother to them in her place. She fell silent. Still. A pause as she listened to try and hear if anything had changed. Nothing. It was not, she decided, happening now. She frowned, just shy of a scowl that twisted her face, and sat up, brushing her hair from her face, long light-brown locks sliding across the back of her hand, dark against her pale skin. A tuck behind the ear, and her attention was once more on the phone before her; and the five rules.

Rule one, two and three, she felt were rather self-explanatory. She had to trade actions, not simply transform one into another, the individual would not be aware of the change, and the cost for a change would vary, apparently from person to person. It also, she thought, suggested that the cost was determined, at least in part, by the importance of the thing she was altering, though she had no frame of reference as to whether 65 was very may, or vert few. It was however, to her sensibilities, clear that the cost could not be cheap for something so overtly against the idea of being modest that her mother seemed to hold so very dear.

Still, she felt that at least for now, she had the measure of those three rules. It was the third and fifth that she felt the least confident in: Time heals all wounds, A day in the life. The pessimist in her, cried out that it meant such changes would only last for a day. A pity if so, but not something she could see herself able to change if such truly did turn out to be the case.

There was no more information she could glean from that. It was the third rule then, that she once more focused on: Inconsistent outcomes, When will you learn that actions have consequences? This, she decided, was the most concerning. It implied a lack of control. And inability to either truly change things, or the inability to control what she changed, regardless of what the app informed her in the trade menu. Still, such was not, she felt, likely. It would be disingenuous for the app to contradict itself in such an obscure manner. In truth, she suspected that she simply had too little understanding, and practice with the app to actually realise what it meant. Perhaps, in time, should she continue to play with it, should the lack of apparent response not dissuade her, and should she find the time to entertain what was increasingly seeming like a bad joke (despite the astonishing lack of information she could find on the app anywhere) or a hallucination, she would understand what the two unknown rules meant.

She put her phone away, and having satisfied her need to express, at least to her-self, her dissatisfaction with her mother, she decided to spend the rest of the day in her room, reading. She would of course have to let her friends know she would be unable to join them today, but she would already be late to meet if she left now. A darker part of her fought to stay for altogether more hopeful reasons. Perhaps she simply hadn’t noticed the changes. Perhaps they took time. Perhaps, in fact, she would hear some kind of commotion soon.

It took until after dinner, after ablutions, and after showering, for her to understand not just what she had truly traded, but also rule three. Her mother, attempting to put on her evening-wear; a full covering pyjama top, and bottoms, combined with dressing gown, was, in fact walking around with the top two, and lowest buttons undone, the shoulders of both her shirt and her dressing gown supported from beyond the reaches of her collarbone, and the waistband of her pyjama bottoms rolled over seemingly twice and exposing her ankles (unadorned with socks) whilst being lowered to reveal, at least in part, her Apollo’s belt. This was, Maddison was certain, the most flesh she had seen of her mother. Ever. It was not, she felt, something that her mother was wont to do without external influence. The kind that may be ****, or enforced, by an app that itself may or may not be magic.

It was, Maddison wonderful. It was only better when Ashley saw herself reflected in the window by the kitchen light and attempted to adjust her clothing, only to leave it as it was and return to filling her nightly glass of water, repeating the cycle every time she witnessed her state.

This was, Maddison realised: the Unintended consequences. She thought she was dressing modestly whilst committing the act, yet the outcome (the subjectively slutty clothes) betrayed that fact whenever she saw them.

“This,” thought the daughter, “is going to be brilliant”

Current Points: 35