Micheal Cross, a goth loner with a strange cellphone app

Micheal Cross had been subtly into computers for more than half his life, since he managed to disassemble a broken game console and rebuild it so it ran faster and better than a next generation console from the same company. Even now at 20 he was still obsessed with technology upgrades and making things better.

In high school he embraced the goth aesthetic, filling his closet with black clothes and his playlist with mostly unintelligible music with very questionable lyrics. His new look, matched with his piercing black eyes and straight ebony hair ensured that most people kept their distance, which ensured that his interest in technology flew under the proverbial radar. A few like minded souls knew the truth and discretely hired him to fix their problems. His work was good and his loyalty was absolute, and no one knew of his virtual identity.

The morning after his encounter with Deus found him frowning angrily at his smartphone.

“Hey bro.” His adopted sister Fyre vaulted over a couch to land in a chair nearby. “What's with your phone?”

“There's this weird app. I didn't buy it or download it. I can't uninstall it because my phone says it doesn't exist. And the weirdest thing is it's not doing anything!”

“That is weird.” Fyre murmured. “Nothing at all?”

“Nope.” Micheal answered. “I can navigate my phone like normal, but the screen for this mystery app just turns the display this like burgundy wine shade. See for yourself.” Fyre leaned over as her brother tilted the display toward her when suddenly everything changed. The phone screen glowed brighter than it should have been capable of and began flashing various shades of red into Fyre's transfixed face. After sixty seconds the display settled back on the darker shade it started as, Fyre herself leaned over flipping on the TV and completely disregarding the phone extended in her direction, and the screen, formerly a solid dried blood red, now displayed a sort of profile and a pop up notification.

“Initial scan complete. 500 experience points rewarded. Close this message to claim your reward.” Michael frowned as he read aloud. “Experience for what?”

The screen blinked twice before displaying a new message and causing a tab at the top of the screen to pulse in response to the query. “Experience is used as an innate currency within this app. As you perform various actions, you accumulate experience points, which can be spent through the market tab which is itself unlocked for 1000 experience points. Experience can be used to purchase new abilities, personalization options, enhance existing powers and functions, and more. Points will build up without limit to be spent at your leisure, so there is no reason to rush to use them or hoard them. However once invested, experience points are nonrefundable. Experience points can only be earned through the app, and there is no monetary connection, making ‘pay to win’ an impossibility. These ones and zeroes are fully self contained so there’s no way anyone could access the inner code and manipulate the ones and zeroes to do anything more.” Clearly Deus was being a bit of a troll, giving Michael a none too subtle reminder that hacking was an acceptable option to any problem he may encounter.

Michael cleared both messages, noting that accepting the offered reward triggered an animation of clear gems zipping up into the flashing tab, and leaned back to examine the data on his phone. It was all about Fyre, which was unsurprising since the phone had brain scanned her with the strobing colors somehow. On the left hand side was a small model of her reduced to scale. At the top were a series of tabs labeled in an unfamiliar symbology, although the tab he sat on was labeled “Profile” in tidy English. The center tab had a half filled yellow line at the base, and holding the tab generated a floating balance display, currently sitting at 500 experience points as expected. Tapping the other tabs elicited a quiet thunking noise from the app, but no further navigation.

He paused and then watched his sister from the corner of his eye as he drummed the tab, filling the room a repetitive and annoying drumming sound. Fyre didn't blink or even adjust the volume to drown out the noise when Michael started obnoxiously sliding his own volume up and down. Finally dropping the volume back to a reasonable level, he switched over to his social media and brought up a short video a friend sent him.

Fyre's eyes flicked over in surprise. “Is that cat... singing along to Metallica?” She said leaning over to see the screen as Michael restarted the video. Halfway through, he switched back to the app and Fyre immediately lost interest in his phone, snapping back to her program.

Fascinating. He thought. She seems to have no interest in the app whatsoever. It's like the phone doesn't even exist while I'm using it. Clearly the flashing colors were a two way street, taking information out and writing certain behaviors in at the same time. Michael found this more than a little concerning, and resolved to edit some settings as soon as he was able.

But for now he had a direction to work towards. Obtain 500 more experience points minimum and open the shop, hopefully with enough leftover to actually get something useful out of said store. The most surefire way was to let the strange app scan someone else for an established 500 points. He could play around with Fyre and the app to get a better idea of it’s capabilities and see what he earned that way. Or he could take Deus’ trolling bait and try to hack the program. Of course Deus had also said that hacking could cause unforeseen events, so maybe better to hold off on that idea.