The App Trap
Chapter 1
Chapter
One
Of course, everybody knew there was no shame in opting for comfort over extortionately priced squalor.
I wasn't about to move in with five strangers from the opposite hemisphere, just so that I could tell the ‘proper’ grown-ups I dated that I didn't live with my mum.
Besides, my mum was a pretty cool roomie.
Finn had split up with his wife for reasons that he was not prepared to discuss with me at this time. I decided to respect his privacy for now, but I knew that an anecdote of stratospheric proportion would leak from his lips sooner or later.
For some months, Finn had been living a separate life from his now ex-wife Naomi––despite them residing in the same flat and squinting suspiciously at one another if either were to return home past 10pm.
Now that they’d thankfully sold up, Finn had decided to return home until he found a decent flat to rent and an equally decent flatmate.
Even though this was just a temporary measure, Finn took it upon himself to bring the family house up to date.
He was crackers about technology. He always had the latest smartphone on day one of its release, and was the first idiot to upgrade operating systems on his laptop, due to his exceptionally high level of impatience.
I was the complete opposite. It was 2025 and I didn't even own a smartphone, much to my brother’s frustration, not to mention everyone else involved in my social life.
I still carry a pocket edition London A to Z in my man-bag.
When was the last time you had a 1% battery meltdown trying to locate a swanky wine bar with one of those? Exactly.
There was only one obscure company making mobile-phones with an ‘old-school’ flavour these days, and I had somehow managed to sniff it out, singlehandedly keeping their meagre display stand viable at the local phone emporium.
I didn’t choose that phone ironically, I just didn't want to end up being one of those people scrolling hopelessly into their phone screens that I’d purposely bump into just to make a point.
Finn took up residence in the spare room at the opposite end of the house from me.
The first thing that he did was set up his desktop computer on a figure hugging, wrap-around desk, accompanied by a plush looking office chair that happened to have beautifully musical hydraulics.
My only quibble was that it was somehow stuck in that annoying ‘rocking’ mode, so when you landed into it, you needed to have your wits about you.
Finn would intermittently snarl to himself about our slow internet connection, which had actually been more than adequate for Mum’s mild online auction site addiction and my heavy interest in erotic European cinema.
Anyway, he decided it was time to bring the house up to speed on all matters technological. Within 48 hours there was a 200meg broadband connection, a Smart TV and, for some reason, a Bluetooth-controlled toaster.
One evening, I flounced into Finn’s room. As the door was ajar almost three inches, I made an executive decision not to knock. At a young age, we had always agreed that an ajar door is fair game to forfeit privacy.
Bowling into his room, I caught the familiar sight of a minimising window being whirl-pooled into the bottom corner of the screen.
Stealth window-minimisation was something that I was no stranger to in the workplace.
In fact, it was a skill that pretty much every office employee in the modern age had locked down.
Unfortunately, Finn’s furtiveness was not up to my exalted standards, as I saw a stray and prospectively incriminating window left out on display.
Finn span around with a disgruntled, and what could only be described as a ‘Wanking? Why would I be wanking?’ expression on his face.
“You’ll go blind, you know?” I said, watching him as he unironically put on his glasses.
“Is there something you need, Daniel?” snapped Finn, loudly, in that same ‘Wanking? Why would I be wanking?’ way.
“Yeah, I just came to tell you that your fly was undone.” I gestured toward the yawning abyss between his legs.
Finn pointed a single finger gun at his head and fired it with all of the gusto of an ex-Deer Hunter trying to scrape a living in the Far East.
“Anyhow… just wondered if you fancied a sly beverage or five at The Chubby’s? We can grab a bit of scran an’ all,” I asked.
The Chubby’s was our nickname for the local pub––The Chequers. Obviously.
“Bullseye. I’ve just got a couple of work things to sort out, and a pair of trousers to do up, then I’m in like um… Finn,” said Finn, crossing his legs in a sort of ‘hands-free’ attempt to kiss the lips of his flies together.
He looked up at me through his round glasses with a ‘please leave my room’ squint, and after about five seconds of progressively awkward dead air, I decided to just leave him to it.
But as I approached the bedroom door, an intriguing ‘ping’ sounded. The sort of tantalising ‘ping’ that sounded like online stranger chat could be afoot. Also, a flashing icon had appeared on the bottom taskbar.
“Are you talking to a… gi rl?”
“Erm… huh?” He fumbled, frantically circling his wireless mouse like a Karate Kid learning how to wax a fence. He squinted at the screen innocently and started clicking in random areas, no doubt hoping that I would just evaporate and leave him to it.
“It’s a girl, isn’t it? Are you… online-dating? Well, welcome to Loserville; Population: One.”
“Well, two actually, if you count him. I mean her. I mean… shit,” said Finn, punching his fist downwards like an apprehended Scooby Doo villain.
“You said ‘him’?”
“Yeah, but I meant ‘her’.”
“But you said ‘him’.”
“Indeed. And then I rectified it immediately.”
After a brief stare-out, I sprang into action, ruthlessly maximising the incriminating app, ruffling all of the papers on his desk and making them float everywhere as if they’d just been in a 70s car chase.
A multitude of chat windows peppered the screen, like bullets from a paintball gun.
My mouth slowly dropped open as I surveyed what was in front of me.
“Knob_Lowe, Lewis_Vuitton. These are all men,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s kind of why Naomi and I… well, one of the reasons-”
“Oh no you don’t,” I interrupted.
“What?”
“I’m the only gay in Mimosa Street. You don’t get to come home and be… all gay as well.”
“I’m bisexual, actually.”
“Well, that’s gay enough. Does Mum know?”
Finn hoisted an eyebrow––a trick that I had always been wildly jealous of since we were knee-high to our mother’s knees .
“Well, welcome to the club, I guess?” I mumbled.
“Club? Do I get a ‘Bi-card’?” he quipped.
After unsuccessfully attempting to hoist my eyebrow by raising my head and subsequently banging it really hard on one of Finn’s shelves, I scanned the multiple chat windows, still trying to take in what a hussy my brother had just been revealed to be.
“I mean I’m sure you’ve got plenty of questions,” said Finn.
“Just a few,” I jumped in, scratching my nose with a speedy rhythm.
“Go on then, shoot.”
“Okay. First question,” I said, nodding to a window half-hidden behind Knob_Lowe’s chat box. “What’s BDSM chat?”
Finn jumped and recklessly turned off the computer, neglecting any sort of shutdown procedure. “Didn’t you say you were hungry?” he said. “Dinner’s on me.”
“Righto. Three courses. That should be plenty of time for you to tell me where on earth my straight, nerdy brother is really at. Deal?”
“Deal,” he said.