Maddison Prescott 19 year old University student living at home.

“Maddison! You are not going out like that!” The sound scraped up the stairs, shrill and piercing. She winced. She had known it would be a risk. A challenge certainly, trying to get out without her mother seeing, but being caught with the entire height of the stairs to depress her mother’s perspective, there would be no way she would be allowed out with anything even skirting the edge of thigh height. Knee length would be barely enough on the worst of days for her mother, even standing on the same plane as each other. She sighed. Quick. Brief. An exhalation to **** herself to breath before she responded with something that set her night back further. Out. In.

“It's fine mum. I’m covered. It only looks so bad because you’re looking up the stairs, and even then, you can’t see anything.” She descended as she spoke, hoping, but far from expectant, that the combination of seeing less, and the social pressure of her actively leaving, might just be enough for this one night.

“Absolutely Not Young Lady! You are not leaving this house dressed like a Slut!” The voice, once again, pierced her ears. Almost manic, her mother stood at the bottom of the stairs screeching up at her. Dressed in a long skirt that came just shy of trailing the floor, and a long sleeve jumper that no doubt covered a long sleeve shirt, the only skin that she could seemingly bare to display was her hands, and her face. Even both wrists and much of her neck was covered. Her daughter Maddison, however, was not so completely hidden. Far from exposed, her top was tight, conforming to her shapely figure, that she could only assume came from her mother having never been able to confirm, and ending sho9rt of her elbows. Her skirt was modest by the standards of modern society. Even the standards of her mother’s society, having had her first daughter Maddison at the age of 18, she was born in 1987, and had witnessed many of the more risqué fashion trends that had arisen. The skirt, after all, fell considerably below her mid-thigh, and just short of her knee. It was not, by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, slutty.

“Back to your room! I do not care who you are meeting, you are not going out dressed like that!” Another demand came, Maddison having barely made a single step since the last declaration.

“Mum look, you can’t see anything, it’s fine. I promise I’ll be careful.” A response, almost begging, halfway down the stairs now, she spread her arms as though to try and display that yes, it was in fact, safe to wear outside.

“I Said No! I will not have my daughter traipse around like some trollop just because she doesn’t have to wear a uniform for university, I’ve been over this!”

“I don’t have Uni today, I’m just meting up with friends!” Maddison herself was staring to get irate now. The same conversation ad nauseum near every time she tried to leave the house. She could attempt a plea to sanity, or a plea to emotional connection with her friends, or a plea to modesty, but she had played the game enough times to know, that with her mother not merely standing at the bottom of the stairs, nut blocking them, there would be no going out like this. Her knees would have to be covered, and her elbows hidden, and maybe, if she was lucky, she could fold them up once she was out of her mother’s sight. A true sigh this time. Heavy. Slow. Closed eyes and deep breaths. She turned around and began to make her way upstairs.

“And throw those out! No self-respecting woman would wear something like that!” Came her mother’s final retort, hounding her back as she made her way to her room.

A thud. A pause. A muffled wail, as though a foghorn from too many miles out at sea, and such dense fog that the coast could never see. Maddison, now laying atop her bed, rolled over, staring at the ceiling through miles of closed eyelids, dreaming of words she wished she said. Wished she could say. But she never would. Her mother had trained her well enough for that. She could only hope that when she eventually moved out, when she was free of her mother’s relentless impositions, she could dress as she wanted. Speak as she wanted. Do as she wanted. A chirp from her phone heralded a notification. Maddison took a moment, dreading telling her friends that she was delayed, understanding as they might be having heard stories of her mother, and the single meeting that they all had decided to never repeat. It was not, in fact, her friends. It was, instead, an app. One she neither had heard of, nor downloaded. ActionsTrader.

Maddison was now; certainly confused, considerably concerned, and categorically curious. Random apps were not, so far as she was aware, typically good for the person that had them, and though her mind called to investigate, to wander and peruse, the more sensible side called to immediately, and with great prejudice, delete the app. A flick, a tap, and swipe a hold… and there was no option to delete. She sat up. This was not, she decided, something to take lying down. She flicked through her setting to look for the app in an attempt to delete it. Nothing. The app store. Nothing. The Internet. Nothing. This was, Maddison had decided, more than strange. With no way to delete the app, and no way to find information on it, she fought herself to not simply open it. The longer it stayed, and the fewer alternate paths she conceive of to understand it, the more her curiosity grew, and the further her concern fell.

‘Surely,’ she considered, ‘if it would do something untoward, it would be done already. It would not require, for instance, me clicking on it.’ This thought came naturally, with the sensation of thumb on glass, and a flickering of her screen, as the app opened.

!!!Congratulations!!!
You have been chosen! This is the ActionsTrader! We welcome you to the beta test, and hope that your experience is fruitful.

Rule 1: Action for action.
As above, so below.
Rule 2: They do not know.
Ignorance is bliss.
Rule 3: Inconsistent outcomes
When will you learn that actions have consequences?
Rule 4: Varied costs
One mans trash is another mans treasure
Rule 5: Time heals
A day in the life