LOSR

by theidiotmachine

'I got my LOSR account last night,' said Brin through a mouthful of crisps.

Liam, barely able to hear over the thudding music, leant over the table.

'What? A loser got your account?' he shouted.

'No I got my LOSR account,' repeated Brin, swilling his crisps down with a swig of his pint. 'It came with an invite. You want it?'

'Brin, I have no idea what you're talking about,' replied Liam. 'Shall we go outside? I could do with a smoke.'

'What's that?' shouted back Brin. 'Let's go outside, they're starting to dance.'

He pointed at a tipsy couple who were starting to sway to the hammering beat.

Liam shrugged, and the two of them stepped out of the bar, and out onto the street outside, beer glasses in hand.

The warm summer evening was cooling to night, and there was nearly as many people out here as there were inside, laughing, shouting, and drinking. Someone dropped a glass, which smashed; and everyone cheered. Brin and Liam pushed their way to the edge of the crowd, and leaned against the stone wall of the bar, bags at their feet, holding their pints.

'What were you saying, bro?' asked Liam. 'What's all this loser stuff? And, can you hold my drink for a sec?'

He pulled out his vape, pressed a button on it, and then took a long draw. The grey smoke curled around and into him, the hot gasses seeping their relaxants into his blood. He blew out, satisfied, and everything smelt of lavender.

Brin waited for him to finish, and passed him his glass back, and then replied.

'It's an app. LOSR. No "e". It's like a new social media thing. It's invite only, I'd applied ages ago and forgotten about it. They sent me the details today, along with a second invite. I'm gonna try it when I get home. You want my free invite?'

'Uh, sure. What is it?' asked Liam.

'Who cares? It'll be shit, but if we're both there maybe it'll be funny,' said Brin. Then he looked down at his phone. 'Oh bollocks, sorry bro, gotta go. Got a thing. Have a good weekend.'

'Have a good one,' said Liam.

Brin downed his drink, picked up his bag, and hurried off, up the road, towards the train station. A police drone car screamed down the road, and the crowds of office workers kept laughing and drinking.

#

Liam had nothing else to do that evening, so he walked to the train station to get home. He'd been vaguely hoping that Brin would be up for some kind of shenanigans, but he wasn't hugely surprised that the man had other plans. Since breaking up with his girlfriend a month ago, time seemed to hang heavily on his hands in a way that it didn't for other people.

Liam lived in in a tiny room, in a flat in the old docklands, sharing with two other people. He suspected that his room had once been part of a larger one, split into two; but it didn't matter, because he only ever used it to sleep. One of his flatmates did nothing but play videogames and so he never saw him; the other was in the throes of some lurid breakup, and seemed to do nothing other than drink and sob. This had been great the first few times, but now he found the whole thing boring, and he was staying out to avoid meeting her.

So, sitting on the platform with nothing else to do, he opened the invite from Brin, tapped on it, and downloaded the LOSR app.

It felt half-finished; the icon was just a plain grey square, the app store had no screenshots or details or reviews. When the app first came up, it was just grey with a black and white spinner. That wasn't so surprising. Liam worked in algorithmic employment law, and he was pretty used to beta apps where the graphic design hadn't been done yet. This was rough though, even by those standards.

It finally finished loading, the grey fading away to a black silhouette of a person against a white background. At the same time, his train screeched into the station, so he stood, and squeezed into the carriage, phone a few inches from his face.

'Hello,' said the silhouette, into his earbuds. Its voice was female, bored.

Not about to talk in a crowded train, Liam typed Hi.

'Welcome to LOSR. My name's Grey. I'm the chat interface to the game. I'm going to get everything set up, and I'll need some permissions on your phone. What's your name?'

Liam thought for a second, and then typed Bob.

'Fine, OK,' replied Grey, sounding more uninterested than ever. 'Hi Bob. You need to tap here, here, and here, so I can access your contacts, camera and microphone, get at location services, and find devices on the network. If you don't, the game won't work.'

Are you a real person? he typed, curious. He couldn't believe that this curt persona had been designed this way.

'Does it matter?' replied Grey. 'I'm not going on a date with you. Now tap the fucking buttons so we can get on with it. Oh, and you need to agree to take ownership of the device.'

Startled and then amused, he pressed the buttons. He'd used a lot of user interfaces, but one that was designed to be actively hostile was new to him. Unless you count Outlook, he mused.

The app went back into spinning mode while the train rattled along underground. In a minute or so, it shuddered to a halt at his stop. He filed out of the carriage, surrounded by commuters, the press of humanity both comforting and oppressive. As he stood on the escalator, slowly rising past the lurid flashing adverts, the app played music in his earbuds. It sounded like a human, humming tunelessly.

'Are you singing?' he asked out loud.

'Yes. Now shut up, I'm busy.'

He smiled at the grumpy app. Its testers clearly hadn't done their work.

Back above ground, the sun was still setting; and the stink of the hot drains jostled with the smells from food trucks, sweaty office workers, and scents puffed from perfume adverts. A hologram of a pouting model glowered at him and walked away, a shampoo brand above her head, projected from a drone above him. A man was being sick nearby, and a woman was holding his hair back, laughing. There were more police drones, ambulances, takeaway deliveries, negotiating the pulsing crowds. The city was unwinding on a Friday evening, and it wasn't going to stop for anything.

He got to his flat. He scanned his face and finger, entered the passcode, and found himself in the tiny hallway; then he walked up the stairs as quickly and as quietly as he could to avoid his housemates, and let himself into his room.

Liam had a bottle of whisky in a cupboard. He poured himself a shot, kicked his shoes off, and sat on his bed.

When the app had finished doing whatever it had been doing, Grey flashed back up.

'Right, you're nearly done,' she said, briskly. 'The device is on its way. It'll be there in fifteen minutes. I'll speak to you later. Try not to fuck up.'

'Thanks,' said Liam. 'Wait, what device?'

'You accepted ownership of it, earlier. We took a payment. Don't worry, you can send it back and get your money back. Well, most of it. There's a drone on the way now, so get outside and accept delivery, there's a good boy.'

Surprised, Liam checked his account; a chunk of money had indeed been deducted. Not huge, the cost of a cheap phone, but still. He flicked back to the LOSR app, but Grey had gone, and was replaced with a 'waiting for device' message. With nothing better to do, he put his shoes back on, and went outside to vape and collect whatever he'd ordered.

#

Blue smoke lazily collected around Liam in the warm evening air, as he stood on the pavement outside his flat, vaping and thinking.

The drone arrived on time, aluminium cradle carrying a plain cardboard box. It scanned his face, and then landed in front of him on the pavement. He bent down, took out the cardboard box, pushed the cradle back and stood back, and the drone whirred up into the sky, back to whatever distribution centre it had come from. On the other side of the pavement a homeless man watched, and then shook his head, and walked away, pushing a shopping trolley.

The box was not big or heavy; it was completely unmarked, just like everything else associated with this mysterious app. He took it back into his room, and tore it open.

It looked like a mid-20s VR headset, back from the last VR craze, when people thought that sweaty haptic suits and eye strain was cool. It was light, and cold, presumably from the flight. There was no screens or speakers in there, just a set of small metal studs all around the rim, along with mesh that you could pull up over your head with more studs.

Liam frowned. This was a neural interface of some sort. He'd heard of these: you used it to plug your brain directly into a computer. He hadn't realised that they were commercially available, or even legal. He turned it around. It needed a power cable, and a wire to connect to his phone. Yep, they were all in the box.

In the street outside there were shouts, men chanting some football chant. A car alarm briefly went off before being silenced.

He shrugged. What the hell. He had nothing else to do this evening. How bad could it be?

He plugged it all in, and slipped it on.

The world faded to the same grey as the LOSR app.

'Hang on,' said Grey's familiar voice. 'I need to calibrate you to the device.'

He was just a disembodied observer, a single point of awareness in an empty grey universe. He could both feel his hands and legs, and yet was aware that he didn't have any. It was oddly soothing, a place of calm and contentment that he couldn't remember feeling since... well, ever.

He carefully lay back on his bed, and the feeling of the duvet under his body was oddly muted by the device. He wondered if his eyes were open or closed. It didn't seem to matter.

Then, a single point of white light, that grew until it filled his vision. From it walked a woman, silhouetted by the light so that she was entirely flat black.

'Hello, Liam,' she said. 'Are you ready?'

She sounded less bored, more flirty.

'Sure,' he said, his mind still fuzzy from the sensory deprivation. 'Sure.'

'You have a body now,' said Grey. 'There's a ground beneath you. You can walk. Follow me.'

He looked down. Sure enough, he saw legs and feet, clothed in plain grey trousers and shoes. He lifted up his hands; they were grey too, the skin smooth and matt. He looked at his arms; more grey clothes. He wondered what his face looked like.

'This is weird,' he said.

'You get used to it. Now, let's try walking.'

It was tricky; it was like having two pairs of legs, one in this world, and one in the real one that he'd left. Nevertheless, he was eventually able to move. His grey virtual persona was good at balancing and stopping him from plummeting over. He wondered if he was twitching on the bed.

'Where are we going?' he asked.

Grey looked behind her. 'Once you can walk, into this door.'

A grey rectangle floated from her hand. It landed on the ground near her feet, and grew until it became door sized; then it opened. Beyond was a room, furnished with simple sofas and tables, all various shades of grey. On each table was a vase, and in the vase were flowers. Unlike the rest of this monochrome world they were bright explosions of colours, brilliant reds and yellows and purples.

Grey walked in; Liam followed her, cautiously. Even in the muted room, she was just a silhouette, perfectly black. It was like following a cut out of a person, a hole where a woman had been.

She sat on one of the sofas; he sat opposite her. The flowers in the vase were a bright orange, some species that he didn't recognise, with long, pointed petals.

'So what happens now?' he asked.

'Do you like being alone, Liam?' she asked. 'Do you miss Brigitte?'

'What?' he said, startled to hear her mention his ex so casually. 'Hang on. How do you know about Brigitte. Hell, how do you know my name?'

'Of course I know your name. Your face is in a thousand places across the internet, on the photos you post on social media, on leaked security camera footage, on your college and work websites. I can look at your contacts, and see what they say about you; I can skim the poorly protected data on endless servers. You're in algorithmic law, Liam. You write code to figure out who to fire, based on their social media profiles. You know all this. I was cross with you that you lied to me about your name before; I'm glad that you decided to be genuine with me. It makes my job easier. It's OK. This is just the reality of your generation: no one has any privacy. But I'm not going to abuse this. So, relax. Now, answer my question. Do you like being alone?'

He remembered all the permissions he'd stupidly given the app when he'd installed it. Well, this is your fault, he thought. You're here now. As soon as you get out, you should look at their data retention policies. For the moment, though, the only way out is through.

He breathed out, slowly, trying to regain the calm of that still, grey place.

'No. I don't like being alone,' he said. 'Did you know that, too?'

'I guessed it,' said Grey. 'A city of fifteen million people, and you are alone. A city where everyone seems to be doing something without you. I think a lot of humanity thinks that.'

'And you? Do you think that?' he asked, still curious about this human-shaped void that that he was talking to.

'I don't think anything,' said Grey. 'I'm an app on your phone. This isn't about me. It's about you.'

Unsatisfied, he looked away, across the grey room. Maybe it had grown since he'd arrived; maybe it had always been this size. It seemed to stretch forever, empty, just boring furniture and bright flowers. He looked towards where he'd come in; there was no wall, or door. He turned back to Grey.

'OK, so, I'm alone, and I don't like it,' he said. 'If this is some weird therapy session, yeah, I don't like my job much, either. Mostly the people I find to fire are stupid and deserve it; they shouldn't have hassled people on social media, shouldn't have launched endless campaigns of hate. But, yeah, some people seemed like they just posted pictures of their cat, but one day, they got mad because of the unending shit of life, and they lashed out and said something stupid, and we fire them too. Or the companies that subcontract us do, anyway. I've never met any of these people, the ones I snoop on. Is that what you wanted me to say?'

Grey tilted her head at him. 'No, but it's interesting. Come with me.'

Another door opened, and she walked though it. He got up and followed her.

#

Suddenly he was on a train, underground, sitting down. The familiar roar of the engine and the rattle of metal filled his ears, partly muffled by his ear buds. He looked up, and to his surprise, he saw himself, standing, staring into his phone.

Looking down at this new body he inhabited, he discovered that he was female, bag between his knees. He was holding a phone, and it felt strangely large in his smaller – her smaller? – hands. His face felt hot, and he realised that the woman he inhabited was crying.

He wiped his nose, with the back of his hand, and blinked away the tears. What had made her cry? He stared at the phone screen.

It was a message, from a friend. Relative? Partner? He had no context. The message was simple: the disease had reached a new stage, and this other person had months rather than years, left to live. He closed his eyes.

He remembered the train journey home, when he'd installed the LOSR app. He had seen this woman, briefly. He might even have remembered her tears. His phone camera must have been pointing directly at her.

'This is recreated from my phone, isn't it?' he said, eyes still closed.

'Yes,' said Grey. 'This young woman was sitting, reading this message. We use AI to fill in the gaps, so that the experience is complete. Open your eyes.'

When he opened them, he was in a different place again. He was holding a man's hair. The man was being sick into the gutter. He was laughing, and he didn't know why; judging by the way the man was standing, he wasn't drunk, so maybe this was food poisoning. Although she was laughing, but he could sense the despair in her laughter; she had wanted something, something important, and it was going down the drain, literally; and all there was left was helplessness.

'I saw these two, earlier. My phone must have been out,' he said.

'Of course it was. No one ever has their phone in their pocket. You can capture anything, this way.'

Grey was standing behind him.

He shifted position slightly, while the man retched again.

'Who are these people?' asked Liam.

'I'm not going to tell you,' said Grey. 'Remember how I said I won't abuse your privacy? I won't abuse theirs, either.'

The man wiped his mouth, and coughed. He straightened, looked at Liam, and opened his mouth to speak.

And suddenly Liam was gone again. He had a pain in his chest, an old ache. His hands itched, and his left shoe rubbed. He was pushing a shopping trolley along a street. A drone was landing on the pavement opposite; he could see himself, blue smoke rolling round him like a dirty halo, while the drone scanned his face, his phone at his side.

'I'm the homeless guy I saw earlier,' said Liam.

He could feel an urge for... something. It was distant, an emptiness that he couldn't understand, separated by the gulf between minds. But it was a complicated mix of need and regret, and Liam recognised the taste of both. He saw the cardboard box being left by the drone, watched himself picking it up; and he wondered where he was going to sleep that night, and he shook his head.

Then he was back in the grey room.

He couldn't speak. The wondered if he was going to be sick.

'That's it,' said Grey. 'We're done. We'll send a drone to pick up the device. The app won't work any more. At least, not for a while. If you need it, you can always try.'

'What?' he said. 'I don't understand.'

'You've forgotten your connection with humanity,' said Grey. 'You're too trapped in your little hamster wheel. Your contact was broken, and I've just reconnected it. Go to the countryside. Volunteer. Work at a soup kitchen. Teach kids to play sport. Learn to dance. Get a job that fulfils you. I don't care what you do, just do it. Humanity is alone because it's chosen to be, not because it needs to be. Goodbye, Liam.'

Suddenly he was lying on his bed again, the headset blocking his vision. His cheeks were wet with tears, running down the side of his head, soaking onto his pillow.

He took off the headset, sat on his bed, and wept.