You Receive Your Miracle in App Form

A few weeks later, you board a plane to Spain and take a ferry to a small island surrounded by azure crystal clear water and breathtaking Iberian landscape. After your ferry, you are directed to a production studio near the Island Amour Villa and then given a cellphone. They take away your personal cellphone and put it away for safekeeping to be returned once you leave the Island. As per the NDA, you weren’t allowed to contact anyone on the outside while you were on the Island. The cellphone they give you still allowed communication from the outside in, with the producers the only ones that know your number. The producers would message you when there were events, dates, or they wanted you to go to a confessional, and you could still talk and message the people on the Island but not to anyone outside world and spoil the show’s results while on the Island.

You go inside a studio owned car and are driven to the Island Amour resort from the studio. As you ride there, you open up the generic smartphone they give you. It was a standard touch screen Android phone. Upon unlocking it, the phone’s screen had five icons on it.

Messages-Phone-Photos-Internet-Apps.

You open up messages, and it was blank. No contacts. You open up the phone app, and it was empty. No contacts. You open up Internet App, and on the homepage, it shows: “This webpage has been blocked by your service provider.” You try another site. Blocked as well.

You then decide to open up the app folder. It had only one app. It was a heart shape icon. It read - The Affection Multiplier App.

You click on it.

The Affection Multiplier App

“You have received a gift. Enjoy.”

The screen goes black, and then it opens up again on a blank canvas.

“Is this your first time using the Affection Multiplier App?” A text line in the center asks, and then a slide bar of Yes/No appears underneath.

What is this? A type of dating simulation game?

You had a long drive and time to kill and decided to slide it to yes.

“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.”

The screen shows a loading sign, and then a new menu item appeared in the blank canvas showing “Island Amour.”

The showrunners must have made this app for the contestants? Is this a script for the plants? I don’t get it.

You click on the “Island Amour” icon, and it shows rows and columns of blacked-out profile shots with question marks over them. The only one that was not blacked out was the one at the very top left. It was your photo. You click on it, and it shows your profile.

Matt Jones – 23

Occupation – Store Clerk

Relationship – Single

Body – C

Looks – C

Money – D

Fame – F

Likes – Anime, Movies, Video Games, Books, Girls with Glasses, Procrastination

Dislikes – Outdoor Heat, Wearing a Bathing Suit, Being Competitive, Bimbos

Affection Multiplier Credit – 100 (Buy)

Huh? How did they know so much about you?

I’m pretty sure I didn’t fill out those dislikes on my application form. Maybe my friends told them?

You check the other profiles next to your icon, and they are all blanks. You try clicking one of the black profile pictures with a question mark on it, and you get the message, “You have not met this person yet.”

Maybe the producers who designed this will fill it out when you meet new people?

An assistant producer sitting beside you on the ride to the island resort interrupts your tinkering with the app and says, “Okay, we are here at the resort, Matt. You have to unbutton your shirt or take it off.”

“Uh, I don’t know...” You say. You grow bashful.

“Common mate, it’s Island Amour, we can’t have you wearing a sweater. We need an image of paradise. Take it off or unbutton it,”

You look at your tacky Hawaiian shirt they gave you and start unbuttoning it down the middle. You reveal your bare flesh. Only the wisp of lines appears on your bare flesh and abdomen, showing light muscles covered by a bit of fat. You wouldn’t consider yourself chubby or soft, but you weren’t going to be as toned and ripped as some of the men on this show. Quickly you feel a bit sick.

“Alright mate, you are going to head in there. This is the first coupling part, just follow the host's cue and be yourself, alright?” The assistant producers say and then begins to talk on his walkie talkie to someone else on the production crew.

This is going to be awkward.