Put some pants on, and go to your daughter

You’re downstairs on the stoop of your apartment building; this was Stella’s go-to place whenever she wanted to get away from you or her mom, but she’s not here.

Shit. She may be a lot more disappointed in you than you thought.

You try to open your phone to try and call her but it won’t light up. You realize you haven’t charged it in like a week, the battery probably died after Stella had it.

Shit.

In frustration you just keep pressing the power button repeatedly knowing it won’t matter if your phone’s dead; but to your surprise, a logo of an app with a heart on it appears. It has the letters “AMA” underneath it. You don’t remember downloading a dating app, but you wouldn’t be surprised if you did in a moment of weakness and just forgot about it. What’s weirding you out is that all other apps aren’t being shown, just this one. Your phone screen is black as if it was off, except for the logo of this “AMA”, you tap on it and the app icon disappears. The words “The Affection Multiplier” pop up on your screen, and after a few seconds gets replaced by “This is a gift! Please enjoy it!”

The hell is going on? You just want to make a call.

“We recommend reading through the glossary.”

Read it? YES/NO

You try pressing the power button repeatedly again but the words remain on the screen. With no other better option you can think off, you press NO in hopes that it returns you to your home screen.

“Are you sure? New users are highly advised to read the glossary.”

Read it? YES/NO

You press NO again and the words disappear but just pop up again after a few seconds. You try pressing NO again and the same thing happens.

Yup. Your phone has a virus.

You finally just tap YES to see if it does anything different.

“Welcome. The Gift of the Affection Multiplier allows your relationships with people to build five times faster. It is an always-present gift, and will affect every aspect of your social life from now on. The Affection Multiplier App is a useful resource to check the progress of your relationships with people through the use of an intuitive scoring system.”

This is one elaborate virus. You understand what it’s trying to tell you, but you also can’t believe any of it is actually real. You skim through it and read that negative numbers mean bad relationships, while you can consider relationships with a score over 50 to be very good friends and those with a score of 100 to be loyal companions. It also says it only lists people you know and are aware of in order to keep the app’s interface from cluttering.

Once you reach the end of the introductory glossary, it shows a folder of “Recent Interactions”, you tap it since your phone doesn’t seem to allow you to do anything outside of this virus.

To your surprise, two names are in the folder. Names that mean that if this is a virus, then this is a really targeted one; as the name of your daughter Stella is in this folder, as well as the girl you’ve only had contact with for the first time in years, Cassie.

- Craig, Stella - Affection Score: 76. History: Saturday, 12:34 PM (-5)

If this thing was actually real, then you know that can’t be right. That score is too high. What bothers you is the history part though. The time indicates that her points went down after she tore you a new one. The time’s too accurate for you not to be creeped out, but a part of you also can’t believe that her outburst only lost you 5 points. Next, you open the only other profile in the folder:

- Jones, Cassandra - Affection Score: 82. History: Saturday, 12:37 PM (+41)

Love Score: 22 (+16)

Lust Score: 29 (+18)

Now you’re sure this thing is fake. The glossary did explain that scores would rise five times faster than they normally would, but those numbers are ridiculous. You had one normal conversation with the girl and her score doubled. And what’s these other two scores? You tap the small “i” next to them and their glossary explanation pops up.

Love Score: Gives a numerical value to the amount of romantic affection a person holds for you. It appears only when the person starts developing these feelings for you. For reference, most teenage couples go steady at scores of 25 to 35 and most happily married couples have scores ranging from 55 to 70 points. Should a person reach 100 points, they’ll be completely devoted to you.

Lust score: Gives a numerical value to the amount of sexual desire a person feels towards you. A person does not necessarily need to have developed romantic feelings for them to feel lust. For reference, most sexually active individuals fluctuate from 40 to 60 points. This score is the most prone to heavily fluctuate, as sexual desire rises or drops depending on the person.

So based on these numbers, you think that would mean she has a crush on you and maybe has thoughts of banging you.

Yeah, right. A hottie like her?

...

“Ugh. I was hoping it wasn’t you” you hear someone say from the bottom of the steps.

Author’s Note: The AMA’s introduction and glossary entries are from Fantasy’s David Walker branch.