Read by Gloria Sanders
I’d genuinely decided there were no nice men left in London, possibly the world, before I met Mark: that they’d all been snapped up or kidnapped or something. And then Mark happened.
Full disclosure: I’d been stood up the night we met. It was Friday and the pub was heaving: I was glaring into my phone, thinking about hunting down Johnny No-Show from Tinder and possibly killing him with an axe, when Mark asked if he could join me. I didn’t really want company, not even Johnny No-Show – in fact, especially not that prick – but I mumbled OK and he sat down.
And boom! We both felt it. Two humans, in a pub, at a table, and what were the chances: a miracle happened.
Don’t ask me what we talked about (I do know, I have notes on my phone, it’s just really banal) but we talked for hours. He felt like a new friend I’d known forever. And then they called last orders and he got my number and when I got home we WhatsApped till 1am. Because when it’s right, it’s right.
So: Mark. He was 34, he lived in Hackney, and he was an entrepreneur, but an ethical one. (He actually did PR for Waitrose by day, but he hated his boss and planned to leave as soon as his app took off). He’d designed an app which alerted people when they behaved unethically – buying non-fairtrade coffee, investing in oil companies, fiddling their expenses, etc. He wanted to call it Conscience but eventually settled for Cricket, after Jiminy Cricket, the little guy who tries to stop Pinocchio lying. Apparently it had got a lot of one-stars from spin-bowling fans and haters so I immediately downloaded it to redress the balance with a glowing review.
“Allow full access?” it asked, so I speed-scrolled the T&Cs and pressed OK. Like Mark had said, if you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to fear.
Anyway, I was buzzing after our WhatsApp flirting and couldn’t sleep so I went on Twitter, and followed Mark and @CricketApp of course. And I couldn’t help but see that some idiot troll had been slagging off Cricket, saying it was more irritating than chickenpox, worst app ever, yada yada. And that really upset me; I couldn’t imagine how it must make Mark feel. So I stood up for him.
Not as myself, obviously, I’m not stupid. I logged into an old account and crafted a vicious put-down and defence of the app in 280 characters which I was quite proud of. Essentially I called the guy an incel Nazi sociopath but all’s fair in love and Twitter, right?
I pressed Tweet and sat back, glowing with righteous satisfaction. But nothing happened.
“Is that kind?”
“Jesus Christ!” I leaped up violently and nearly fell out of bed. The tiny voice had come from my phone. A notification bubble appeared: “It looks like you are about to abuse and/or shame someone on a social media platform. Why not take a moment to step back and think how they might feel before posting?”
So that was how Cricket worked. Interesting. Annoying, but interesting. Obviously the app didn’t realise that this was an exception to the rules.
“Come on Jiminy,” I said aloud. “I’m defending your honour! This fuckwit just said you were ‘killjoy nanny-state nagging’. Did he consider Mark’s feelings? Is that kind?”
Jiminy didn’t reply. But two options appeared at the bottom of the message: You’re Right! and Dismiss.
Reader, I dismissed him. Because when you’re fighting for the man you love, you’re gonna break a few eggs.
*
We had our first proper date a few days later. We just couldn’t wait to see each other again, and I’d spent most of the intervening time hunting down and slaying his trolls under various different identities so I was feeling pretty upbeat. There’s nothing like doing someone a good turn to make you feel great. And I was pretty fast on Jiminy’s Dismiss button by now. It was all worth it when I saw Mark again; he was just as sweet as I remembered, so considerate and funny and generally perfect that I just wanted to stuff him in a sack and drag him home. But I didn’t.
We chatted for a bit, and he said the app had started doing really well: “Twitter seems to love it now.” I said it was definitely an idea that had found its time and agreed that the annoyingness was the point: Jiminy stopped people doing bad things.
“My mum always taught me to speak up if I saw injustice,” Mark confessed shyly. My heart, already a sticky puddle in my chest, melted a bit more.
“She must be so proud of you,” I said, imagining what kind of hat she might wear at our wedding. Maybe she’d lend me her dress? Much more ethical than buying new.
“When someone acts badly,” Mark continued, “they should feel bad, right? I mean, that’s how morality works.”
It was so simple and so true, I just had to kiss him. We did that for a while.
Eventually Mark untangled himself and gazed at me with a soulful, puppyish sadness I found almost unbearable.
“What is it?” I said in a sudden panic.
He sighed. “I wish I could invite you back to mine …”
“Oh my God,” I said, “you’ve got a girlfriend haven’t you? I knew it was too good to be true. A girlfriend or a wife? Or both? And a kid, probably. Twins! Or maybe it’s a fridge full of severed heads? You’re a serial killer? Is that why you can’t invite me back? It’s OK, just tell me, I can handle it. I’ve been on OKCupid.”
He stared at me in bewilderment, then laughed nervously.
“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just the flat’s a mess. The roof’s been leaking for months and the landlord won’t fix it. I’m sorry, I’m trying to find somewhere else. Next time, eh?”
“Oh thank God!” I said, hugging him so tight he coughed a bit, “is that all? I thought it was something serious. You’ll have that sorted in no time.”
“That’s what I love about you, Saff,” he said gratefully. “You’re so understanding.”
*
Back home I decided that since I wasn’t having any sex tonight, I might as well use my time productively. I got Mark’s address from the electoral register, then looked up the management company which represented the landlord, found a firm of lawyers with a hi-res downloadable header, set up a fake masking address and carefully composed an email on my phone.
It has come to the attention of … my client has been significantly inconvenienced … dereliction of duty … Landlords and Tenants Act etc.
I added a suggested compensation sum, a deadline, and a note to the effect that a number of other clients in other properties also had complaints.
Tired but fulfilled, I pressed Send. But instead of the customary electronic whoosh, a familiar voice piped up.
“Is that honest?”
Oh for fuck’s sake …
“It looks like you are about to misrepresent your identity for the purposes of financial gain. Why not take a moment to consider the implications of this action?”
I confess, I had deleted and re-downloaded the app several times. It was, to be fair to the guy I destroyed on Twitter, really irritating. But as every time I re-bought it and gave it another five-star review, Mark benefited, it was a sacrifice I was willing to make.
“Tell me this Jiminy,” I said aloud, “is Mark’s landlord honest? Charging tenants full rent to live in a sieve? Threatening to take their deposits if they break contract?”
But Jiminy couldn’t be argued with. That was the beauty, said Mark, of Cricket. It didn’t debate with the user. It just forced them to look at their own behaviour by asking ethical questions.
Two options appeared at the bottom of the message: You’re Right! and Dismiss.
“It’s not revenge,” I muttered as I hit Dismiss. “It’s recompense.”
*
Mark always tells people that his life just seemed to get better and better as soon as he met me. He’ll never know how much effort went into making that happen. First, the landlord fixed the roof, and I started spending more time at Mark’s place. Then his bitch of an ex-girlfriend finally came round to pick up all the shit she’d left at his flat: as I mentioned in my email from one of his old accounts, Mark wasn’t a storage facility for abandoned mountain-bikes or unresolved daddy issues.
A few weeks later, after Mark had to work an overnight shift on Valentine’s Day due to the Waitrose Salmon Mousse scandal, his awful boss somehow found out his much younger wife was having a secret TikTok affair (which is apparently a thing) and had to take several weeks off with stress. They asked Mark to step up, but Cricket was doing so well by then that he resigned instead.
It seemed that a lot of people actually liked being nagged to do the right thing, and soon the tiny chirp of “Is that ethical? Is that fair?” could be heard as Cricket-users were publicly shamed in supermarkets, restaurants and a thousand other venues up and down the country. It didn’t matter whether you were attempting to watch illegally-streamed content, purchase non-free range eggs, or transgress in a thousand other minute but morally significant ways, Jiminy and his all-access omniscience would catch you at it.
Cricket exploded. It got so that if you didn’t have the app, people would look at you a bit weirdly, like you were some sort of criminal. Through the life-changing magic of passive-aggression, Mark was achieving his dream of making the world a better place, one act at a time, and I was so proud of him.
Meanwhile, I kept protecting my darling from a world he was too good for. His hyper-critical sister, who was so horrible about his vegan duck-roast, had to be hospitalised after getting food-poisoning from a contaminated takeaway – the same night I’d had to “borrow” Mark’s ex’s mountain-bike from outside her house. “Is that yours?” squeaked Jiminy as I silently wheeled it away – “Trespass is a crime!” – I’d had to use the maps app to find her place. After that, I started strategically leaving my phone at home, especially when I was out with Mark.
There were ups and downs, of course: not least the far-reaching privacy issues of giving Jiminy full access to everything you did online. But social pressure is a powerful force. And somehow Mark sailed through it all, unsullied. Although several investors who deserted Cricket when some recently-divorced users tried to sue, found themselves jailed for financial misconduct a few months later.
And because Mark was happy, I was happy too. Though Jiminy, that whiny little twat, was not happy with me at all.
One night as we lay in bed discussing plans for Christmas, Mark asked if I wanted to come with him this year to spend it with his mum. I nearly exploded with joy. The Christmas invite, only six months in! I’d hit the jackpot. Next stop: engagement party.
“Oh Mark, that would be wonderful! I’d love to!”
“Only thing is …”
“Yes?”
“Mum can be a little bit judgmental. A bit … harsh, you know: on everyone, me too. So don’t take anything she says to heart. But you’re so amazing, Saff, I’m sure she’ll love you.”
“Oh, I’m sure she will.” I smiled into the darkness. “Or I don’t know what I’ll do."
(c) Sophie Bloom, 2022
Sophie Bloom studied English at Leeds University, and creative writing in various evening classes. She lives in York and previous Liars’ League stories include: “Never Goes Out”, in which the damned soul of Morrissey inhabits a depressed woman’s bedside lamp, and “Baggage”, about a girl haunted by her undead exes.
Gloria returns to the cast of Time Will Tell’s Dracula at Whitby Abbey in 2022. She has enjoyed narrating audiobooks for over a decade and has worked as an historical interpreter at heritage sites around the country, training in clowning and historic fooling. She is a qualified Spanish Interpreter, working with Crowded Room on the co-created documentary La Lucha. She produced Deepfakes, by Sarah Blake for Cabinets of Curiosity. See more at www.gloriasanders.com
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