Her Boyfriend's Weight Gain App

Chapter 1 - Notification

Matt had been leaning against the bus stop pole for twenty-two minutes.

He knew exactly, because he'd checked the clock on his phone at least ten times, and every time the numbers had moved less than he'd hoped. The asphalt was giving back the heat of the whole day. Across the street, behind the green fence of the field, he could still hear the coach's whistle and the sharp click of spikes on the track.

Ellen was finishing up. Like always.

Tuesday and Thursday were track, Wednesday was the weight room, Sunday morning was the long run. Matt knew that schedule better than his own, and for a few months now it had been the only thing he still knew about her in that much detail. Everything else had worn thin without either of them saying it out loud: dinners eaten in front of two different screens, good nights said with their backs turned, weekends planned like work shifts.

The phone was burning in his hand. Not from the heat. From boredom.

He was scrolling through notifications without really reading them, his thumb sliding down out of habit, when he saw it.

An icon he didn't remember downloading. A flat black background with no shine, and on top a white outline of a scale, the old-fashioned kind with two pans. Underneath, in plain, almost bureaucratic letters:

Weight.

Nothing else. No tagline, no developer name, no red badge.

He opened it more out of distraction than curiosity.

There was no loading screen. The interface was already there, as if the app had never been closed: bare, cold, white on black, more like a piece of hospital equipment than an app. A blank search bar at the top. Right below it, three options:

- Women near me
- Men near me
- Anyone near me

Matt frowned. He backed out and checked his recently installed apps. Nothing. He searched for the name in the app store. No results, not even close. He held down the icon to delete it: the menu opened with the usual options, share, edit home screen, and a gray box where Remove App should have been. Gray, dead, unclickable.

He hadn't downloaded it. He had simply found it.

He was about to lock the screen when a figure appeared at the end of the street.

Ellen.

Black leggings, a dark gray sports bra, a towel around her neck, her hair pulled back badly after a quick shower in the locker room. She walked with that light, confident stride she always had after practice. Twenty-eight years old, five foot six, a hundred and twenty-five pounds. Matt knew the numbers by heart, and he was a little ashamed that he did.

The app buzzed once. A short, dull thump against his palm.

Under Anyone near me, a card had appeared.

Ellen, 28 Current weight: 125 lbs Height: 5'6''

Matt froze.

It wasn't the numbers that scared him. The numbers were right, and that was bad enough. It was the name. The app had written Ellen, and there was no reason in the world it should know that. And the way it was written, flat and clinical, like a chart filled out by a nurse who had never met her and never would.

Under the weight there was a small gray button, and next to it, in almost invisible print:

Transfer available: 0.0 lbs

He tapped it without thinking, the way you touch wet paint to see if it's dry.

A new screen opened, plain, no animations.

To modify a subject's weight, mass must be collected from another source. Current storage: 0.0 lbs Maximum capacity: 0.5 lbs

Half a pound. Barely anything.

His heart sped up. Not from fear, not yet. From something older and more primitive, something his brain was already wrapping up in acceptable explanations: it's a joke, it's a game, it's one of those apps that asks for permissions and then shows you random numbers. Nothing's going to happen.

He looked around.

On the bench across from him sat a woman in her forties, a grocery bag at her feet, her phone a few inches from her face. The app picked her up before Matt even thought about pointing his camera. He didn't have to aim at anything. She just had to be there.

Unknown, 41 Current weight: 162 lbs Collection available

Matt hesitated. One whole second, and in that second he thought of everything a normal person would do: close it, delete it, laugh it off.

Then he pressed.

A slider let him choose the amount. He dragged it all the way to the end, as far as the free space allowed: 0.4 pounds. The storage bar filled with an unpleasant slowness, like water rising in a glass.

On the bench, the woman rubbed the back of her neck. A small, absent gesture, as if a cold draft had hit her in the middle of all that heat. She looked around for a moment, found nothing to look at, and went back to her phone.

Matt felt his stomach tighten.

Something had happened. He didn't know what or how much, but something had happened, and the woman hadn't been the one to decide it.

He went back to Ellen's card. The gray button was now solid white, almost glowing.

Temporary transfer. Maximum duration: 6 hours. When the duration ends, mass automatically returns to the source subject.

His fingers were trembling slightly. He selected everything he had, 0.4 pounds. Not even half a pound. Nothing. Something no bathroom scale would ever register for sure.

A drop-down menu appeared: Distribution.

There were a lot of options, listed in an order that looked clinical and wasn't clinical at all. Matt chose without thinking. Or rather, thinking about it exactly as long as it took to lie to himself about why.

Butt.

He confirmed.

The app made a very low sound, more a vibration of the speaker than a real sound. A green message flashed for a moment in the middle of the screen:

Transfer complete. Temporary effect in progress. 5:59:58

The timer started counting down.

Matt locked the screen fast, just as Ellen got within a few feet of him.

"Hey." She had the tired, satisfied smile of someone who'd just had a good run. "Did I keep you waiting?"

"No, no." His voice came out too loud. He cleared his throat. "I was just looking at some dumb stuff on my phone."

She handed him her gym bag, like always. He took it, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and tasted the salt of practice on his lips. He tried not to look at her body.

He failed.

The black leggings were the same ones as always. He'd seen them a hundred times, drying on the radiator, balled up in the hamper, hanging in the bathroom. And yet, as she turned to check the schedule on the pole, it looked like the fabric was pulling differently right there in the back. A tighter line. A curve that ended an inch farther out than he remembered.

Maybe he'd imagined it.

He must have imagined it.

"What?" Ellen asked, turning around.

"Nothing." He looked away too late and too fast, which is the worst way to look away. "How'd it go today?"

"The 300s were great. The flying sprints sucked." She wiped the back of her neck with the towel. "Coach is gonna kill me on Thursday."

The bus showed up four minutes late, packed like always at that hour. They squeezed into the rush-hour crowd, bodies against bodies, the AC losing the fight. Ellen grabbed the pole and rested her forehead on her forearm, eyes closed, the way athletes do when the body starts sending the bill.

Matt kept the phone in his pocket like it was a bomb.

He lasted three stops.

Then, shielding the screen with his body, he unlocked it.

Temporary effect in progress. 5:47:12

And below it, a line that hadn't been there before.

Storage: 0.2 lbs

He stopped. He had emptied the reserve down to the last ounce. He'd watched it hit zero with his own eyes.

Further down, in tiny print, like a footnote:

Passive collection active. 9 subjects within 5 feet.

He slowly raised his head.

A girl with earbuds was staring out the window. A man in a dress shirt was reading the news. An old lady was clutching her purse to her chest. A kid was laughing at something nobody else could hear.

The number on the screen went up to 0.3.

Around him, nobody looked up.

Matt put the phone back in his pocket and stared straight ahead, at the back of Ellen's neck, at the window, at nothing. His heart was still beating too hard.

He had just done something impossible, and the worst part wasn't doing it.

The worst part was that, for the first time in months, he felt excited again.