Day 74

[from GodMode]

Jun still couldn't quite speak, but this gave him a little time to decide which of his many questions he wanted answered first. Eventually he settled on, "What the hell is this app?"

The girl's answer was simple. "It is a miracle."

"What kind of answer is that?" asked Jun.

"It's the only answer I can give you," said the girl.

"Well… who made it?" asked Jun. "How does it work?"

"We don't know either of those things," said the girl. "The uploader's name is blank, and we haven't been able to decipher its source code."

"So what do you know about it?" asked Jun, a little desperately.

"We know that the app contains immense power, comparable to that of the gods themselves," said the girl. "Anyone who wields that app is capable of changing the world as we know it. That is what we intend to do: use the app's power to make the world around us a better place."

"Who's 'we'?" asked Jun. "Who exactly are you?"

"My name is Kurumi Kojima," said the girl. "I am a member of an organization known as the White Cloaks. As I explained, it is our goal to make the world a better place by using the power of the GodMode app."

"What about those two who attacked us?" asked Jun. "Who were they?"

"They were members of the Church of the Holy Binary," said Kurumi. "They believe that the GodMode app contains the power of God himself, and worship it like a deity. They also believe that they are the only ones worthy of wielding the app, and that anyone else who uses it is guilty of heresy and must be killed. That includes us, and now you as well."

"So they don't care that you're trying to make the world a better place?" asked Jun.

"No," said Kurumi. "They are selfish murderers who care only about themselves." She glanced back contemptfully at the impaled corpse of the female. "The world is a better place without them."

On that note, there was a beep from Kurumi's phone, and suddenly Jun realized that he felt much better. His body still ached, but he was not in pain, and could move freely again. "You are healed," said Kurumi. "Give me your hand."

 Jun offered her his hand, and she pulled him gently to his feet. "Thank you," he said. "I owe you my life."

"It is no problem," said Kurumi. "However, since you are now involved in this whether you want to be or not, I have one request to make of you: that you join the White Cloaks, and help us in our mission to improve the world. Do not worry about the Church of the Holy Binary: we will protect you from them. They won't be able to hurt you anymore."

This didn't take much thinking about for Jun. "I'd very much like to," he said. "I can help mankind and get protection from those psychos; it's a win-win, right?"

"Indeed," said Kurumi. "Now, there is only one thing left to do. We need to clean up a little." Kurumi began manipulating her phone's touchscreen once more, and the spike impaling the female assassin sank back into the ground. The asphalt beneath her continued to sink, forming an impromptu grave, then closed up again, hiding the corpse from view. The blood spatter from where the other assassin had been crushed was then promptly washed away by a localized rainstorm.

As this was going on, Jun remembered the other question he had to ask. "That reminds me," he said, "where is everyone? This was a really busy street, and then suddenly everyone just vanished."

"That is the app's "HIDE_ALL" function," said Kurumi. "It hides the user, and any other GodMode users nearby, within a pocket dimension, hiding them from the general populace. Not only does this allow us to identify any hostile GodMode users in the vicinity, it also allows us to battle them without hurting innocent bystanders or causing any collateral damage. To the outside world, you are the one who has disappeared, and everything has continued as normal. Once the pocket dimension is folded back into the real world, however, any changes made here will be merged back into reality, so we must clean up the mess first before returning."

"I see," said Jun, not sure what else to say. After a moment or two, however, he decided to ask a question that had been playing on his mind. "Was it… really necessary to kill them?"

Kurumi's answer was as blunt and straightforward as ever. "Yes," she said. "Otherwise they would have killed us."

"So if any Holy Binary members attack me again, and you're not here to save me… I'm going to have to kill them?" said Jun.

"Yes," said Kurumi. "Unless they kill you first."

The rainstorm subsided, and with the bodies disposed of, it looked for all the world as though nothing had actually happened, and everything had carried on as normal. "Everything has been taken care of," said Kurumi. "Now I will merge us back into the world."

A moment later, the world around them suddenly exploded back into life. The road beside them was full of cars once more, driving unwittingly over the resting places of the two dead assassins. The sidewalks filled with people, going about their daily business as usual, none of them having any inkling that something terrible and amazing had just happened right where they were walking. Somehow, Jun found the sudden reappearances even more disconcerting than the sudden disappearances.

Kurumi cared not for his confusion. "If you're going to be joining the White Cloaks," she said, "then you should meet with them. Our leaders would be interested in speaking with you. I'll take you to them."

"Hey, wait," said Jun, "I have to get home, my parents will be wondering where-"

Then something even more disconcerting happened, causing Jun to fall silent with astonishment. In an instant, the entire world around him, which had only reappeared a moment before, suddenly froze completely still. People stood frozen in mid-step, the cars on the road beside him as silent and unmoving as the ones parked on the curb. Jun did a double-take. "N-now what did you do?" he asked.

"I froze time," replied Kurumi, as though doing though was a trivial matter. "Now we can go and see the White Cloaks, and then you can go home without any time having passed." She looked back at him. "Is this acceptable?"

"Uhh… I guess," said Jun.

"Good," said Kurumi. "Follow me." She pulled her hood back up over her head, and started making her way through the frozen crowd, with Jun, still slightly overwhelmed by it all, tagging along behind.

Day 48

[from GodMode]

For the next couple of days, Jun continued to ponder the meaning of his brief encounter with the strange hooded girl. What reason could there be for him to have to delete the GodMode app? And furthermore, why would he even want to? In spite of the girl's cryptic warnings, he had continued to make liberal use of the app, and it had only served to improve his life, with no apparent drawbacks. It didn't even seem to drain his phone's battery. Whatever this app was, and whoever had made it, it was truly a miracle, and Jun was not willing to give it up just because a stranger had told him to. He had, however, abstained from telling anyone about the app. It was his own little secret.

As he walked home from school on Friday evening, Jun was once again experimenting with the app. He had discovered a "BARO_SHIFT" function that created localized weather conditions within a 200-yard radius, and as it was raining heavily that day, he was using it to create a localized dry patch that moved with him as he walked. It was even better than having an umbrella, and since it affected entire streets rather than just himself, he didn't get odd looks from passers-by who might otherwise notice that he was the only bone-dry person in the vicinity.

Speaking of which… Jun suddenly noticed that the street around him was suddenly deserted. The cars driving past, and the people on the sidewalk around him, had all completely vanished. This was very strange indeed. Jun navigated to the main menu to open another function, "VISION_SHIFT", which he had found allowed him to look around the entire city without physically moving, like a ghost. He wanted to see just how far this sudden desertion extended to, but before he could, he was interrupted by a voice.

"So you're the heretic who's been abusing the powers of God," said a sneering voice from behind him. Turning round, Jun found himself confronted by two people, a man and a woman, wearing strange black-and-green robes. Both of them were staring at him with visible contempt on their faces.

Before Jun could ask who they were, and what they were talking about, he suddenly felt a great weight pressing down upon him. As the pressure intensified, he was dragged to the ground by it, lying flat on his back with his arms spread. He clutched tightly onto his phone, but the force pushing down on him was now so intense he could barely lift a finger to tap the screen, let alone raise his arm up so he could see it. It took him only a moment to realize what was happening: whoever these people were, they were using GodMode to manipulate gravity. They were trying to crush him to death.

The woman stepped over him, holding up her phone and sneering down at him. "Only we, the chosen few, are worthy of wielding this divine power," she said. "You, who are not, shall be put to death for your heresy."

The pressure crushing down on Jun grew even greater, and he felt the air start to squeeze out of his lungs. As he gasped for breath, Jun finally realized why the strange hooded girl had warned him to delete the app. She had known that this would happen, that these people would come for him, whoever they were. She had tried to save him. If only I'd listened to her, he thought desperately.

"Leave him."

Could it be…? Jun could not see, as he could not move his head, but that voice sounded just like the girl in the white cloak. Had she come to save him? If she had, she would have to be quick about it; as Jun continued to struggle for breath, it was starting to become hard for him to stay conscious.

The robed woman grinned. "So the false shepherd has come for her stray lamb," she said mockingly. "You are too late. In a few moments, this heretic will be history, and then you will be next!"

A moment later, Jun heard a sickening sound, and found himself being showered in a thick red liquid. At the same time, the crushing pressure lifted completely  from him, and though his body ached too much to move yet, he could finally breathe again. Managing to lift his head, a horrifying sight met his eyes. A large spike had suddenly shot up from the ground at an angle and speared the robed woman straight through the chest, killing her instantly; the liquid he had been showered in was her own blood, pulled towards him in the instant before gravity returned to normal. Had the strange hooded girl done this? It had to have been her: there wasn't anyone else it could have been.

"You bitch!" cried the male, his attention now focused on the murderer of his companion. "Burn in the flames of hell!" Navigating to "TEMP_SHIFT", he swiftly began raising the temperature around the girl to unbearable degrees. A second before the tarmac beneath her spontaneously ignited, the girl activated "USER_SHIFT", dodging well out of the way, before activating "GROUND_SHIFT". A large hole opened up in the ground beneath the man, sending him plummeting downwards, then before he could react, the chasm slammed shut again. A fountain of blood squirted up from the ground as the man was instantaneously crushed.

Jun did not move, remaining on the ground as he tried to come to terms with whatever had just happened. Two people, seemingly religiously-motivated, had attempted to kill him, only for the girl who had confronted him two days ago to viciously murder them before they could do so. And now she was walking towards him. In his present state of shock, Jun immediately began to panic that she might kill him next.

The girl did not attempt to kill him. Instead, she knelt down beside him. For the first time, Jun could see her face, and he noticed that she was rather beautiful, though her face was cold and expressionless. "I told you to uninstall the app," she said.

Jun forced himself to try and calm down, but it was hard, given the circumstances. "If you'd told me that people were going to try and kill me, then I would have!" he retorted.

"I wanted to keep you out of this entirely," said the girl, "but that is no longer possible."

"What is "this", anyway?" asked Jun. "Who were those people, and-" Jun felt a sudden stabbing pain in his side and fell silent, gasping in pain. The crushing had taken its toll on his body.

"Hold still," said the girl. "I will heal you. And since you are now part of this, whether you want to be or not, I shall explain everything to you." Navigating to "HEAL_OTHER", the girl activated the app's healing effect and held her phone close to Jun. Gradually, he felt the pain in his body begin to fade away.

With her other hand, the girl swept back her hood, fully exposing her face and head. She was about the same age as Jun, and even with her blank expression she was rather beautiful. She had long white hair that complimented both her cloak and her expressionless demeanour. "What would you like to know first?" she asked him.

Jun still couldn't quite speak, but this gave him a little time to decide which of his many questions he wanted answered first. Eventually he settled on, "What the hell is this app?"

The girl's answer was simple. "It is a miracle."

Day 6

[from GodMode]

After twenty minutes of downloading various apps that might come in handy, Jun was about to stop when he noticed a curious app named "GodMode". It had no picture icon, and checking the app page, there was no description, no reviews, no ratings...nothing that said anything about the app at all. Yet this secrecy intrigued Jun. He was curious to find out exactly what kind of an app this "GodMode" was.

Activating one of the apps he had downloaded earlier - a scanner app - he scanned to see if GodMode contained any viruses or malware. When the scan came back clean, a satisfied Jun pressed the download button. A moment later, his mother called him down to dinner, and he left his phone lying on the bed while the app installed.

***

When Jun came back, the app had fully installed. A new icon had appeared on the phone's menu, the letters "GM" spelled out in foreboding black letters. Time to see what kind of app this is, he thought to himself.

Opening it, Jun was confronted with a long list of buttons, that ran past the bottom of the screen. Each button had a label; there were "GRAVITY_HACK", "OBJECT_SHIFT", "VISION_SHIFT", "BARO_SHIFT", and scrolling down, there were at least a dozen more. They all had similar names, like the names of programs. At the top of the list was a simple command: "CHOOSE A FUNCTION". His curiosity intensifying, Jun pressed "OBJECT_SHIFT".

Upon pressing the button, the app appeared to activate his phone's camera, for the screen changed to show part of Jun's room. Jun didn't recall the app asking for any permissions when he installed it, and it would need permission to access his camera, so this was the first sign that there was something strange about this app. At the top of the screen was another simple command: "DRAG ON TOUCH SCREEN TO MOVE OBJECTS".

"A virtual-reality app?" remarked Jun. "Interesting...so if I just..." Jun moved the phone to face his bedside cabinet, so that his lamp was displayed on the touch-screen. Placing a finger on it, Jun slowly dragged upwards, and sure enough, the lamp on the touch-screen moved with his finger. Even the shadows it cast seemed to shift slightly as he moved it; for a VR app this was remarkably detailed. He set the lamp back down on the desk and, out of curiosity, decided to see what would happen if he tried to open one of the cabinet drawers.

Placing his finger on the top drawer and sliding, the drawer opened, and it was at this point that Jun realized something was seriously off. Inside the drawer on the screen were all his clothes, just where he had left them...but they shouldn't have been there. Not on the app, which couldn't possibly have known what was inside the drawer. Unless...

With a growing sense of foreboding, Jun lowered the phone to look at the bedside cabinet.

The top drawer was open.

Jun reeled back with a cry of surprise. That's...not possible...it can't be... With a shaking hand, Jun raised the phone back up to the drawer and, with another slow swipe, closed the drawer on the screen. He moved the phone away again. The actual drawer was now shut.

"Jun?" His mother called from downstairs. "Are you alright? I heard a shout just now."

"I'm fine, mom," said Jun quickly, "I just accidentally hit my toe on something, that's all."

***

While on his way to school the following morning, it occurred to Jun that others could make use of this app. The applications were boundless; OBJECT_SHIFT alone must have a dozen uses. And so as he walked, he began to compose a message on his social networking profile, telling people about the app.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Turning round, startled, Jun saw a girl leaning against a lamppost several feet behind him. She was wearing a white cloak, with a hood pulled over her face so he could not make out the features. "Huh?" said Jun. "What do you mean? Who are you?"

"If you had any sense," the strange cloaked girl continued, "you'd uninstall that app and forget all about it. You have no idea how much trouble you're about to get into."

"What? What trouble? What are you talking about?" asked Jun. "Who are you?"

"Uninstall that app." the girl repeated. "That is all you need to know."

Before Jun could ask her any more questions, and to his great surprise, the hooded girl turned and suddenly vanished, leaving no trace that she had ever been there. In his shock, it took Jun a moment to realize that perhaps this was yet another function of the GodMode app. She certainly seemed to know about it, so it was reasonable to assume that she had it. But what did she mean by trouble? Why did she want him to uninstall it? What was this app...?