My Clocking In System

Chapter 2: App?

"Declined. Sorry."

He pulled out the backup card, the one he kept for exactly this, and it went through with the margin of a held breath. Thirty-seven pounds, then twenty-seven, and that was the whole of him, the entire sum of twenty-eight years.

He did not look at the line of people on his way out, because if he looked at them he would have to see whatever was on their faces, and he did not have the room for it tonight.

The last drop was Battersea. Pembury Heights, one of the new builds, two streets from where he grew up. He buzzed flat 4B and held the parcel up to the camera.

"Yeah?"

"Courier. Delivery for you."

The door buzzed open. The lobby was warm, and the warmth was the part that nearly finished him, more than the lobby or the card, the simple animal relief of heat after four hours in the sleet.

He stood in it a beat too long. The lift carried him up. A tired woman in 4B signed without looking at his face, took her parcel, and shut the door.

Back down.

Back out.

The cold took the warmth off him in the doorway like it had been lent, not given.

He was wheeling the moped around when he saw her across the road, under the light outside the shop, laughing at something on her phone, hood half up. Jodie Carter.

Two years since he had seen her. She had gotten out, everyone said, council work or a charity, something that mattered. She looked warm. She looked like someone going somewhere.

And for one stupid second he wanted to cross the road, and then he thought about what he would say. Still a courier, Jode. Still broke. Just got accused of smashing a decanter I never touched and ate it because I couldn’t afford not to. Lovely to see you.

He got on the moped before she looked up. Some mercies you gave yourself.

He did not go straight home. He sat at the lights on Battersea Park Road through two greens, because home was the part he had spent all night not thinking about.

The letter had come that morning. He had left it on the counter, face down, as if that made it less real. Second notice. Fourteen days.

The landlord wanted the arrears or he wanted Danny out, and Danny did not have the arrears, did not have a tenth of them, and in fourteen days the one room with the broken radiator and the half-pint of milk would stop being his.

Twenty-eight years old. Twenty-seven pounds. Fourteen days.

That was just the way it was. He had said it to himself so many times the words had worn smooth, lost their edges, stopped meaning anything except the sound a person made instead of screaming.

It was not the world’s fault. It was not Halloran’s fault, not really, or the concierge’s, or the woman who would one-star him by morning.

It was just that some people were born inside the lobby and some were born holding the parcel, and he knew which he was, and you did not get to swap. You only got to keep your head down and keep moving and not lie down in the road.

You’re not in here. You were never going to be in here.

He pulled the moped over by the office block, the last address that was barely an address, and went to check the app for the next job, and that was when he saw it.

His phone was installing something. He had not told it to.

A little bar was crawling across the screen under an icon he did not recognise, a plain dark square with a single line of gold across it, like a door seen edge-on, and under it two words.

Clocking In.

"No," Danny said, the way you say it to a kettle that has just broken. "No, no, no."

He knew what this was. You did enough dodgy free wifi and you picked things up, and the last thing he needed was some virus chewing through what was left of his phone.

He pressed and held the icon to drag it to the bin. The bar finished.

Installed. He pressed and held again.

The little menu came up, the one that always had Uninstall on it, except this time it did not. Open. Share. And where Uninstall should have been, nothing. A gap where the uninstall button was supposed to be.

"Right."

He went into the settings, into the list of apps, scrolled to it. There was a button to force-stop it and a button to disable it, and he jabbed the disable one with a wet thumb, and the screen did not so much as flicker. He jabbed it again.

Nothing. The app sat in the list like it had been there for years, like it had come with the phone, like it was more sure of belonging there than Danny had ever been sure of belonging anywhere.

He should have just turned the phone off. But he was tired, and cold, and a small mean curious part of him wanted to see what it was after. Let it try. Steal what, exactly.

He had twenty-seven pounds and a maxed card and a fortnight before he was on the street. A thief who picked Danny Flynn had picked the emptiest pocket in London. Go on. Open up. Show me what you’re selling.

He opened it.

No login. No sign-up, no card details, no terms of service four thousand words long. Just a black screen, and then text writing itself across it, slow, one letter at a time, in a font he had never seen on a phone, all curls and fine lines, the kind that belonged on an invitation to somewhere he would never be invited.

[ Good evening. ]

[ You have signed in at one (1) new address today. ]

[ Pembury Heights, Battersea. ]

[ A reward is pending. ]

[ - The Concierge ]

Danny stared at it, and then he laughed, the empty one, because of course. Of course this was the night for it. Some app wanted to play butler with him. A reward is pending. He knew this game. Tap here, claim your prize, congratulations valued customer, just enter your card to cover the postage.

"Yeah, course I have," he said. "And I’ve won a cruise. Get off my phone."

[ The Concierge does not give cruises. ]

His thumb stopped over the glass.

He had not typed anything.

There was no box to type in, no button to press, nothing on the screen but the words and the dark behind them. He had said it out loud, to a phone, on a wet street, and the phone had answered him.

Not a menu. Not a canned reply. Him.

"Okay," Danny said slowly, the laugh gone. "That’s new."

He should have deleted it. A bad app, tired eyes, a scam after the details of a man who had no details worth taking.

He had seen a hundred of them. But this did not read like a scam. A scam wanted something, asked for something, rushed you. This sat there, patient, as if it had all the time in the world and knew that he did not.

Signed in, it said. He had not signed into anything. He had carried a box to a fourth floor and watched a stranger fail to see him, the same as every other door tonight, the same as every door for two years.

"What are you, then," he said to it.

The box pulsed. Once. A new line wrote itself underneath, slow, one letter at a time, the way a man writes who has never once been kept waiting in his life.

[ Ready to claim your reward, sir? ]

Danny stared at the last word until the rain blurred it.

Sir.

No one had called him sir tonight.

Not Halloran, not the concierge who could not have a scene, not the kid at the till watching his card decline, not the city, not once, not ever.

He was the refused delivery. The docked rating. The smashed decanter that was never smashed. The twenty-seven pounds. The fourteen days.

His heart was going now, properly, the way it had not all night, not in the lobby, not at the pump, not at the lights.

He looked at the screen, at the dark and the gold line and the patient curling words, and he felt mad for even answering, mad for standing in the sleet talking to his phone like it could hear him.

But it had heard him. Twice now.

"Go on, then," Danny said. "Claim it."