*Please continue setting up your DeaDia profile to start building the new you*
The pop-up flashed on Ember's screen. For a while she didn't remember what DeaDia was. It was something she had installed because of a segment she was researching. Just another fluff piece for the tech segment that was ultimately cut for time. Sometimes it frustrated her that all the work she did could so easily be dismissed. The work on the DeaDia piece had taken her at least a week to research and write. But then again, that was the job. Everybody kept saying to just keep putting in the hours. And who knows, you might get your lucky break in front of the camera.
Ember had installed the app in preparation for an interview with one of the DeaDia developers. The segment hadn't panned out, but the DeaDia developers had been grateful to answer her questions and even had sent her the accompanying Eratos tracker free of charge. They explained that the idea behind DeaDia was to expose people to their fears and allow them to realise their fears weren't the end of the world. An AI algorithm would cater the challenges to each individual. The idea had appealed to Ember. While she wasn't as shy as she used to be, she still had trouble standing up for herself. She didn't like to be the point of attention. And whenever she did speak her mind people would dismiss her and treat her like a child throwing a tantrum. If the exposure therapy could help people like her, she surely saw the benefits. The station manager didn't see it the same way and the segment was cut. Her work thrown in the thrash on top of a pile of other rejected scripts. The only thing reminding her of the segment were an app on her phone and a bracelet left somewhere in a drawer.
The petite brunette poured another glass of wine. The bottle was almost empty. She felt she had earned it. It had been a long week. She was looking forward to a weekend of doing nothing but the bare essentials. On the TV, the series continued with some kind of convoluted and bloody fight scene. She wondered what her colleagues would say if they knew that the prim and proper little girl loved to watch gory action series. Half paying attention to the screen, she scrolled through the social media and news apps on her phone. The DeaDia pop-up all but forgotten.
The episode was over. Her bottle of wine was empty. With a pleasant buzz she made her way to bed. Far from drunk, but surely not sober either. She brushed her teeth, drank a glass of water and got changed into her light blue cotton pyjamas. Laid down. Out of habit she grabbed her phone again. As the lock screen lighted up her face, she once again saw the innocuous DeaDia logo. What was the danger in getting a little exposure therapy? Perhaps it could even help her to get a chance in front of the screen.
The first question was easy: "Enter e-mail address and password." She entered her email address, making sure to use her private address and not the one the TV-channel provided, and used a generator to generate some string of hard to remember symbols. Next up it asked for a screen name. Her mind flipped through the several nicknames she had used for all kinds of online accounts and then landed on Silvia. It was a handle she hadn't used in a long time, and it still sounded feminine enough. Next up was the standard set of End User Agreement stuff. She scrolled to the bottom and clicked "I agree", there would be time later to read this stuff.
"Take the intake questionnaire and start earning points!"
A round icon in the top right of the screen showed a big red zero. Ember clicked the questionnaire button and was greeted by the introduction. "Welcome Silvia. To start your journey we need to get to know you a little better. These first questions are for us to find out your barriers. Are you ready?" Ember clicked the "Yes" button. This questionnaire held just two questions, age and location. She filled in her age as twenty-five, California as location. She submitted the data and a new message popped up flanked by celebratory fireworks. "You finished your first challenge! Now let's see if you were honest and you'll earn your first points!"
Her phone asked her to allow DeaDia access to her location. Ember hadn't expected the app to actually check, but allowing it access to her location wasn't that big of a deal, she could always rescind it. A zoomed out globe was shown on the app, which kept zooming in until it found her location. In green, "California" popped up.
"See how easy this is? Here are your first points!" The counter in the top right of the screen counted up to five, and two new challenges had popped up.
Curious, Ember clicked the counter at the top of her screen. A sort of XP-bar showed up and filled itself. "Congratulations! Rank 1. Avatar unlocked!" The bar disappeared to show a reward track. Most of the ranks and reward were greyed out, but she saw that the next reward was at rank 5. It was something called a points shop. Ember smiled a wry smile. This was something she should have expected, a reward track to convince people to keep playing, it wouldn't surprise her if there would also be daily login bonuses. She returned to the home page to examine her new challenges. The first one just said "Avatar". The other one said "Goals".
Whenever Ember played a game, she liked to have a cute representation of her player character, so
"Avatar"
was her first choice. A new window popped up. Instead of the sliders and selection boxes that she expected, a new text popped up. "DeaDia strives to represent your growth in a way that is as accurate as possible. To ensure a good starting image, please allow DeaDia access to your image data. Afterwards you will be able to fine-tune your avatar." As soon as Ember was done reading, a new checkbox appeared. She'd guessed it wouldn't do much harm to have an avatar modelled after herself, so she checked allow. Quickly a few new pop-ups appeared and almost just as fast disappeared. She couldn't quite make out the contents, but saw a few recognisable logo's, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. She didn't really use her Facebook any more, and she forgot she had TikTok installed. Ember wondered what kind of information the app could gather from those two sites. She saw a progress bar fill up and a little after that a pixelated version of herself twirled around on the screen. The pixel art was quite good, it showed her shoulder-length brown hair, green eyes and it even had the small half-smile Ember showed on photo's. She zoomed in, the app had even got her freckles right. The pixelated Ember twirled around, the hem of the breezy summer dress flowing upwards a bit. She took another look at the blue garment. It was a dress she'd only bought a few days ago. She couldn't remember putting it on any of her socials, but she had taken a mirror selfie of it to show to one of her friends. "Edit Avatar?". Ember pressed the button. A new option revealed itself: "Clothes". She clicked it, and most of the options were even more revealing than her breezy summer dress. There were multiple pairs of bikini's, underwear and a nighty that would just about cover her avatar's butt. She decided to press the back button and instead use the created avatar.
A small fanfare sounded. Challenge completed! Twenty points. The XP bar filled for little over half of the bar. It seemed she needed to do more challenges to actually rank up more. She decided to check out the other challenge.
"Goals"
"In this questionnaire, DeaDia will start building your profile. Fill out this questionnaire as precise as possible. Results are private and will only be used by DeaDia to help you conquer your Barriers. And who knows, we might even uncover Barriers you weren't aware of yet. First question; In your own words, what do you want to get out of the DeaDia programme?"
Ember had to think about this. She hadn't expected to answer deep questions this late at night. And surely not after polishing off a bottle of wine. She didn't expect DeaDia to have any effect, but if it had, what would she want her life to be? She decided to be as vague as possible, just to test out the magnificent algorithm that the developers had been so proud of in her interview.
"I want to be successful in front of the camera." That was vague enough. She saw that the app needed some time with her answer. Where at first it had been quick with its responses, this time it took a little more than a minute for a new text to appear.
"Thank you for your response Silvia. Now we will delve further into the Barriers that stand in the way of your goal. Please select your next challenge." Ember hadn't expected the software to actually give her anything to work with, but not even giving her an answer disappointed her a little.
