Jay Duncan was a little angry. He had the highest marks possible in most of his classes and from a much earlier age had made a habit of enumerating out all the major points in his school textbooks before the year even started. School was almost fundamentally boring to him; he did his learning on his own and then almost robotically applied it to his school work. The only exciting part about school was waiting on which arbitrary questions and pages of the textbooks the particular curriculum and teacher happened to focus on and assign. Because of all of this, he was overcome with a sense of lost time. There were always more things to learn, but getting credit for learning them was the hard part. So he had talked with the school counselor about moving him up to the school's highest ranked classes, or even just one of them, and see what it had to offer.
The school counselor had pretty handily denied him that. He didn't really know anything about her job, if her hands were tied or not, but he did know that this year of school was going to be purgatorial. Learning subjects was the only ability he even had, and not being in the best ones made him feel like he was actively becoming one of the stupids. It didn't help that this year he had been gifted a smart phone by his family as a birthday present; he had made it a point to not distract himself with these carcinogenic crappy pop-computers up until this year. But now he was just like any other teen, boredly flicking through his chats and browsing the app store for some free distraction.
CAMERA TRIPLE PLUS (BETA): THE FREE UNIVERSAL CAMERA UPGRADE FROM SRU
The logo of the app was pretty interesting. What was more interesting is that it had 0 downloads but had appeared at the top of his store page. Apparently had just been released today, but then what was it doing at the top of the store? It was free so he decided to just install it. If it broke his phone, all the better. The file was absurdly small, way smaller than he knew a camera app could be, but the app opening displayed the following rules.
Welcome to the beta test run of our software. There are several rules that govern the nature of this app, but also there is undoubtedly going to be a few performance hick ups.
1. This app can not be used to inherently harm someone; pictures can severely alter subject's lives, but any negative alterations will be made up for in some way. By methods beyond your comprehension, we guarantee that this device is incapable of lowering the quality of a subject's or photographer's life.
2. If you do not like a picture, deleting it will rectify the problem.
3. There are currently 3000 different filters in this app; all of these are usable but using a variety of them can eat up phone storage space. To free up space, delete the photo.
4. The app only works on persons and animals or things that used to be persons or animals; the filters are purely cosmetic for other objects.
5. Sending videos or photos to people you've met will apply the changes of the pictured subject to the receiver, but only when the receiver views the photo or watches any of the video.
6. Videos recorded with this app are still in beta; if you use playback you will not see the change but rather the target as they have now retroactively behaved during the recording. This applies even if the subject is moved elsewhere: you will see a video of their lives during those seconds.
7. Uninstalling this app will not remove your pictures or videos from your device.
8. This app has enhanced the durability of your device; however, if it becomes visibly damaged or waterlogged, uninstall the app. At this time we aren't able to break enough phones to accurately find out what's going on there.
9. Horizontal pictures and videos will impact more targets, while vertical pictures and videos will cause more drastic changes.
10. The first change you do to a target will be the most significant. Other changes can happen but they will be secondary, tertiary, and so on the more pictures or videos you take.
11. Because this is a beta, there is no option for target awareness. Retroactive logic will apply to all of reality, excepting the photographer's memories.
12. You can edit your old photos and videos of subjects to change them, but you must have personally shared a room or space with them at some point.
13. All major filter changes to a subject are permanent.
Jay wasn't angry anymore, he was confused. These rules seemed supernatural and the size of the file implied that the text here took up the entirety of the file's size. But after the message the camera app seemed entirely genuine. There really were thousands of filters on his phone now, and while he had no old photos or videos to use them on, he was really curious just how much of the rules were a prank. They definitely couldn't all be real. Simple logic says that rule 2 and rule 13 are incompatible; how could deletion rectify a change if that change is permanent?
Jay took an X-Files attitude to life: weird things happen and it's stupid to think even smart people could predict everything. After all, he never would have predicted how weird this app's rules would be. He had read somewhere once that science only applies under certain thermodynamic conditions allowing for normal causality. He didn't fully get what that meant but it sounded smart enough.
The phone was operating on its selfie cam, showing Jay his own average, badly-lit face. One of the filters: Normal (Match Subject to Area/Situation) sounded decent enough. He wasn't about to start snapping photos in ugly negatives just yet. His problem was that he was more or less alone in the school. Today he'd stayed after to use the library and it seemed like everyone had gone home. Walking through the empty halls toward the exit, he found the highest level world history class. He felt a strange sense of longing. It occurred to him that this moment felt very important to him. He exhaustively groaned and put the phone away, snapping a photo as it went into her purse. Ms. Jaleh Torkan couldn't believe how long she had to stay after grading papers. She was always a very bright and bookish person, but these students were something else. Going over maximum limits on essays was technically something to ding them for but she couldn't bring herself to. They were really young and thought a lot of stupid things but genuinely believed all of them. She'd enjoy it more if--
She heard a phone notification and took it back out:
NEW MESSAGE: 14. Don't use the selfie cam!!!
