Very Viral App

Looney lit up a cigarette using one incandescent - that was laying on top of a cemetary of cigarette butts. He remembered what a californian girl he had met during a trip to San Francisco once wrote on his Facebook wall. " I miss seeing you in Paul's living, chain smoking like a very cool French writer". It was the time - not so long ago yet so distant - when technology was a benine part of our everyday's life. This was before Very Viral App.

Outside, there was the night. The bunker had no window or some type of access with the outside world that coul tell its inhabitants what time of the day it was. Only a clock connected to an old Unix server of the National Institute of Standards and Technology would keep them updated.

Inside, there was the silence. Scarcely disturbed by the snoring sound of the coffee machine and the tiles of the parquet that the consistent pacing of Johnson would make squeak like piano keys. Looney missed life before - the warm winter sun gently heating up the skin, cafes' terraces. Subway entrances swallowing and spitting up people in a hurry or with no hurry at all. Nutella's creps. The graphic novels floor at the Fnac... All that was before Very Viral App.

Looney took a trip to memory lane, remeniscing about the first time he heard about Very Viral App.

***

Very Viral App described itself as the "most viral app of the App Store!" What was it doing exactly? Nobody could really tell. What was for sure is that its download rate was going through the roof. In little time, the app became a phenomena. On the web, everybody talked about it. #veryviralapp became Twitter's top trending topic. The fact that the app's main feature was its virality instead of its applicative content contributed to make it even more famous. Experts would predict that its growth rate would eventually reach a stage of decline, as described by the fifth level of the circle of life - but the normal law of Gaussian distribution never occurred -- Everett Roger and Geoffrey Moore's theories had to be revised.

From phase 1, called by Johnson super-growth, we moved to phase 2 - dependancy. People were buying iPhones just to download Very Viral App.The app, once launched, would broadcast sequences of hypnotic patterns of lights. People would stay hours subjugated in front of the LCD screen of their iPhones. They wouldn't go to work anymore and their social life would be solely spent converting into users people who hadn't downloaded it yet.

Phase 3. Proselytism. The users became as warriors, hunting down people who had not yet sided up with them. Once you would have downloaded and launched the app, you became addicted to it.

Phase 4. Chaos. The users, like zombies, slowly invaded the face of earth. Resistants had taken refuge into old Nazis bunkers in Normandy. Resistance was in its way. The enemy had to be known. A team of researchers was working for that. Among them, Looney.

***

Looney lit up another cigarette. Inside, Johnson was humming Julie London's Cry Me A River. Outside, a new kind of virus had contaminated mankind. Looney closed his eyes and rolled his head over. Nutella's creps never seemed so far away.