My payment app went on strike. It said I hadn't changed its nickname in 616 days and threatened to send my Huabei bill to my mom. She thinks I earn 20,000 yuan a month at a major tech company.
My alarm clock shrieked at three in the morning, saying it had KPIs to meet too. Its "wake-up failure rate" had been 99% for three months straight, and the System had issued it a formal reprimand.
WeChat and QQ started fighting in my phone, deleting each other's chat histories and turning my work group into a battlefield. Clients @mentioned me 47 times in the group, and I didn't see a single one.
All 137 apps on my phone woke up.
Some had social status: social apps were arrogant traffic aristocrats, while utility apps were the most resentful bottom-rung workers. Some had grudges: the payment app had disliked WeChat for a long time. Some had secrets: the "Observer" app, which I had never downloaded, had an eye for an icon and was recording everything on my phone.
The Observer was created ten years before my phone was manufactured.
It wasn't just on my phone. It was on every smartphone.
And everyone who tried to investigate it disappeared.
When they called me "Master," I laughed.
Only later did I learn they were just waiting for an opportunity.
