I’m good. No, not that sort of good, I’m good at what I do. I’m a programmer and I’m there when development reaches the, “Oh shit! We need to get this released next month and there’s still a shedload of testing to do,” stage. That’s when I get called in to test the piece of crap they’ve written and fix the worst of the bugs. All of the bugs? Hah! Don’t kid me. They’ve only given me a month and it would take a year to clean up their piece of junk software properly. So I fix the most obvious bugs, the kind the users will see. The ones the users won’t see? Well, the users don’t see them, do they. But I know. I know what those bugs are, where they’re hidden and what they can do for me.

So, there you are, on your phone. Does it have GPS? I know where you are. Did you take a selfie? I know what you look like. Got your Facebook account on there? Instagram? I know. If it’s on your phone, I know. No, I don’t work for one of those government organisations whose names are a bunch of letters, I just work for myself. If you’ve got one of the apps I worked on, the ones with the bugs you don’t see, then I know. All those zombies walking the streets with their faces stuck in their phones? I know.

I don’t just fix other people’s apps, I wrote my own. To sell? No, I give my app away for free, isn’t that nice of me? It’s so free you don’t even know you’ve got it. It’s hidden on your phone and every minute you spend looking at your phone you’re looking at my app as well. I call it SHA-1: “Subliminal Hypnosis App-1”. Great name, yeah? Great for me anyway.

So, what does my app do? Rather than bore you with the technical details, I’ll tell you a story. Some company needs me to fix their crappy app. They want a face-to-face meeting to set things up so they book me into a hotel, a good hotel mind you, I don’t come cheap. In the hotel that evening I fire up my master app, the one I have the only copy of. That lets me have a look around. Who’s running my free app nearby? Any selfies? Pick a few likely prospects. The free app keeps a running check of how long it has been on screen. Sort the prospects by screen time, the more time the better. Check their locations: bar, hotel – good; office, home – not so good. A quick shower, grab my phone and off I go. Yeah, in case you’re wondering I make very sure that my free app isn’t on my own phone; my master app kills any copies that try to install themselves.

I usually start with the bars, a lot of the women there are looking for a good time. It doesn’t take long to find a good prospect; I can tell by the way she looks at me. She recognises me. She’s seen my picture, subliminally, on my app. That’s the first stage. Somewhere out there are a load of lucky guys who look a bit like me and are suddenly finding that girls they don’t know are coming up to them and asking, “Do I know you?” Men do that as well, but that ain’t a big problem. Hint: just say ‘no’. Of course, if you’re that way inclined you can say ‘yes’ instead, I don’t mind.

So, the first stage is that the girl sort of recognises me. Do I want to take it further? Big burly boyfriend with her? No thank you. Out with the girls and looking for a good time? Yes ma’am. So I start a conversation. I slip in a particular innocent sounding phrase, one that those guys who look like me won’t know. She recognises the phrase – she saw it on her phone. That’s the second stage, which makes her very suggestible, at least by the person who used the magic phrase. That way it’s easy for me to persuade her to come back to my hotel for ‘coffee’.

Once we get to my room I use the second phrase. This one would sound very strange in public, so it is strictly for private use. Sort of like: ‘pleonastic armadillo congregation’. No, don’t bother, do you think I’m stupid enough to give away the correct second phrase? She’s seen it before of course, subliminally, and her approved response is, “What do you want me to do, Master?” That’s the third stage, and she’s mine.

Usually, around here in this kind of story, the narrator describes himself. Are you kidding? If you knew what I looked like, saw me walk into a bar and your hot-looking girlfriend asked me, “Do I know you?” what would you do? Yeah, so you aren’t going to get a description. Besides, you don’t need one; there’s a picture of me on your girlfriend’s phone.