Mel bit her lip and tapped her phone nervously on her leg, completely unsure of what she wanted to do. Ten minutes ago she had finally beaten the final matching level on "Randmr Go", and she had been ecstatic, the other bus riders startled by her jumping up from her seat and pumping her arms in the air in celebration. Randmr Go was her and all her friend's favorite mobile game, and as far as she knew only Tori had gotten anywhere near as far along as she had. This was some serious bragging rights.
Randmr Go had been the talk of all the girls in the office for weeks now. The rumor was that it had been a joke when it launched, and the app developer was just some horny geek that was trying to prove to his friends that people would play any kind of terrible matching game, as long as there was a unique hook. He had, though, accidentally created a fantastic game. Sure it was mostly a rip off of other popular games from several different mobile genres, but every little game feature it cloned, it cloned very well, and it had found a unique gameplay hook that had made it the talk of the mobile gaming crowd. In order to get more plays, you had to track down other players of your gender or sexual preference and trade tokens. So what started as a silly bubble popping game, quickly turned into a scavenger hunt across the city for other players who would leave an Augmented Reality trail to their location. After a quick interaction, you would rate the encounter, trade tokens, and then you'd have another week's worth of play time and you would move on to the next phase in the game.
Mel was nervous now because she knew she had just beaten all of the core game modes. She had popped all of the bubbles, she had matched all of the muffins, and she had saved all of the puffins. She had served the diner patrons, organized the candy, and now she had finished the hardest part: one hundred levels of matching body parts based on various skin tones. Trying to distinguish a Spanish dick from a Colombian or a Brazilian on level 100 had been hard, but after dozens of tries this last week on her bus ride home from work she had finally done it. Now she knew that the final content, the last section that promised to be even more engrossing and addicting than any of the previous others was going to be locked behind the most extreme of the scavenger interactions. Even Tori, the only other girl she knew who had gotten close, and who was even more addicted to the game than her, had sounded hesitant about moving forward.
The first set of scavenger meetups had been pretty simple. She got location clues, and she would wander around the designated area while watching her phone, following the AR paths that would pop up until she ran into a guy who was also playing the game. Then they would move their phones close together, and the game would make a chiming sound and award them both tokens for further play. The next couple of rounds slowly increased the difficulty. After the first few rounds you now needed first silver, and then gold tokens, and those required a successful interaction with the other player and a rating from them. The higher the rating, the more regular tokens, and then you could convert bunches of the regular tokens into silver or gold. The locations would also change, moving from a park or a public library to a bar or a club. Then you had to actually talk with the person the first time, and then let them another buy you a drink the second, and then eventually you had to dance together.
At one of the final hunts Mel had gone in with Tori to a club, and she was pretty sure she saw Tori give her scavenger partner a handjob back behind the pool tables, just to ensure that she got her 5-stars and a maximum rating. That was what was making Mel nervous now. She knew it was escalating, and she had enjoyed it all so far, but she wasn't sure she could keep going. She also wasn't sure she wouldn't, though, because to her surprise she had already gone further than she had ever imagined she would. She hadn't done anything totally crazy, but at one of her meetups she had traded numbers with the really cute guy the game had matched her with, and the next night she had met him again on her own and ended up going home with him. He was hot, and he was fun, and the pretext of the hookup being all about the game had been perfect. They had gotten drunk, danced, and then enjoyed each other all over his tiny apartment, but the premise had kept it casual and fun and let them both let their hair down.
Mel reluctantly set her phone down and decided she needed to be done, though. The dates were fun, but she'd seen the escalations coming and she'd heard rumors. The final phase of the game required 5 platinum tokens to reach. Every player started with one, but they were impossible to get in any of the early modes. This made them valuable. Very valuable. Nobody was going to part with one for just a quick drink, or even a quick kiss. Even trading a phone number wasn't going to cut it. So Mel put her phone away and stared out of the window of the bus, wishing she didn't live 90 minutes and two transfers away from her job.
Ten minutes later her phone dinged. She had planned on leaving it in her bag for the entire rest of the trip, but she still had 30 minutes to go, and she was going crazy with boredom already. So she pulled the phone out, hoping for some message that would let her engage and pass the time, but it was the game. Randmr Go had a mission for her, one that would open up access to the first of the three platinum tokens she needed to reach the end-game, and unlimited play in the Randmr Go+ mode. She hesitated again for a second, and looked back out the window of the bus. That sealed it for her, she couldn't just sit here looking at industrial parks and highway barriers any longer. So she opened the prompt.
Randmr Go launched and immediately presented her with a consent form. The next encounters would involve acts that would require her full buy-in and consent to continue. Her heart raced, and her mind spun with a thousand different scenarios. What was she getting herself into? She looked up from her phone again just in time to see a sports car blow past the bus, the top down, and two occupants laughing as they drove past, obviously having fun. She looked back down and immediately pressed "Accept" on the consent form. The game then sent her a map location, and some simple directions. She would be going to a nature trail near her apartment.