Speaker 1: The cafeteria was alive with the soundscape of youth, laughter, chatter,
and the clattering of trays. I sat alone, eyes fixed
on my phone, doomscrolling endless social media feeds. It was
a routine I had ingrained in me an escape from
high school life. I was a high school junior, and
I liked to think of myself as a bright, quiet
kid who chose not to socialize to keep a mysterious facade. However,
that wasn't the case in reality. My introverted nature often
kept me in the shadows, crippling me in the few
chances I had to prove my status in the social hierarchy.
My harbies in interests didn't help. Rather than sports or
pop culture, I was passionate about technology, coding, niche simulation games.
I felt like a ghost slipping between the social cracks,
and time was ticking on, making lasting connections that would
span a lifetime. The cafeteria being the microcosm of high
school society, everyone was grouped into their familiar clicks. The
athletes in one section, loud as always. The other side
housed the theater kids animatedly discussing their latest production. And
there I was a lone figure amidst the people having fun.
My phone a comforting barrier between me and the world.
I wished I could be like them, but self doubt
clung to me like a shadow and oozed out of
me when I tried. I couldn't help comparing myself to
the others, measuring my worth against them. It was a
constant habit that reminded myself from status. As I scrolled
through my feed, half listening to the conversations around me,
something caught my attention. A group of students at the
next table over. We're animatedly discussing some new app. It
shows you but from the future, one of them said,
her voice bubbling with excitement. It's like looking into a
crystal ball. Another chimed in, I saw myself in Paris
working at some big fashion company. I mean, it's probably nonsense,
but it's fun, right. Their words piqued my interest an
app that could show the future. It sounded crazy, but
also fun. The future was something that I often fantasized about,
Knowing how much I hated the present, I hope maybe
of better times ahead. It was what I needed to
cope with how things were a glimpse of a successful future,
something to hold onto amidst uncertainty. The thought lingered throughout
the day, at tempting whisper that refused to fade. As
the final bell rang and the corridors entered, I found
myself excited to go home and try it. Even if
it turned out to be some benign prediction, it could
inspire some hope that I desperately needed. And luckily for me,
I caught the name of it from when I heard
those girls talking about it, Mirror Me. Later that evening,
as the sun dipped, I sat at my bed staring
at the app store on my phone. There it was
Mirror Me. The icon glowed a simple mirror with an
infinity symbol etched in the center. The reviews were glowing,
filled with people claiming it had changed their lives. It
seemed like an exaggeration, but the prospect was too tempting.
A siren called to a future I desperately wanted to believe.
My thumb hovered over the download button, excitement mingling with anticipation.
Taking a deep breath, I tapped the screen and watched
as the app downloaded. Downloading the app, my mind jumped
into a realm of possibilities, and yet I still carried
a sense of skepticism. It promised to show an accurate
prediction of my future self that updated in real time,
but the realist in me was always grounded to my
true expectations. The description was futuristic, almost too good to
be true, and the reviews were overwhelmingly positive. People claimed
it had given them a glimpse into the future, some
miraculous peak that had changed their lives. However, it's not
hard to question the intelligence of the general populace. I
took a deep breath, a bit more dramatic than I'd liked,
and opened the app. The screen flickered to life, the
load in nikon spinning for a moment before asking if
i'd allow the app to use my camera, which I've
course accepted. When it came on, it snapped a picture
of me, then revealed an image of what looked like me,
but different. I blinked, and there I was. It looked
like I was a successful software developer, standing in a sleek,
modern office wearing a tailored suit that exuded confidence. My
future self looked assured and happy, a stark contrast to
how I had often felt. My heart raised with excitement
and disbelief. Is this really me? I whispered, reaching out
to touch the screen, half expecting the image to vanish
like a mirage, but it remained solid and enticing a
vision of a life I desperately wanted to believe was possible.
This vision filled me with a surge of motivation I
hadn't felt in a long time. The next day, I
walked into school with renewed energy, eager to take small
steps towards making that future her reality. I raised my
hand in class, giving answers, confidently, feeling a thrill every
time I contributed. I've enjoyed the school's coding club, something
I'd always wanted to do, but it never had the
courage to try. My parents noticed the change almost immediately.
At dinner. My mum smiled at me, a glint of
pride in her eyes. You've been really engaged lately, she remarked.
It's great to see you out of your shell. I
couldn't help but being with pride, feeling for the first
time that my future might indeed be as bright and
promising as I'd imagined. The app had given me a
glimpse of a life I wanted, and I was determined
to work toward it, each day, bringing me a step
closer to that vision. It was as if the world
had shifted, opening up new possibilities I'd never dared to
dream of. I finally understood the hype of this app.
The doubt that had lingered before was fading, replaced by
a newfound belief in my potential. The initial excitement from
using the Mirror Me app started to become a routine.
Every morning, I would check it to see if my
future self had changed, hoping to catch some new info
on the life I was working toward. For the most part,
the image remained mostly the same, me successful and confident,
socially navigating a world I had only dreamed of. But
soon I began to notice small discrepancies in the reflections.
It started subtly, a small bruise and my future self's
arm that I didn't remember having. I shrugged it off,
thinking it was just adding details to create a narrative.
In the following days, however, the discrepancies became harder to ignore.
A faint scratch appeared in my future self's cheek, then
another bruise, this time more pronounced. I felt a knot
of anxiety seeing this and fold, I tried to shake
off the feeling, thinking it was just an error, but
the nagging sense that something was wrong wouldn't leave me.
During a coding club meeting, I was working on some hardware,
swapping around some parts. The edges of an io shield
are quite sharp, and while shifting something around, I caught
my hand on it. It was a minor injury, nothing
more than a sting and a bit of blood. This
comes with the territory, so I thought nothing of it. However,
later that night, I checked the app like I usually did,
and there it was the same cut, mirrored on my
future self's hand. Panic set in. I stared at the
cut of my hand, feeling cold, dread rising in me.
I was simply using the app for a boosting confidence,
but this led the fantasy into the realm of reality.
The thought of this sent my mind spiraling. If the
app was accurately predicting these events, then what else could
it foresee? I mustard as much doubt as I could,
but I still became anxious, unable to shake the feeling
that the future was closing in on me, as if
it was already written and waiting to unfold. I became
obsessed with finding answers and checked the app constantly, my
fingers itching to unlock the screen every spare moment. Every
so often, a new scar or injury would appear on
my future visage, and each time this happened, my mind raised,
trying to figure out how to prevent these future misapps.
Sleepless nights became routine as I lay awake, staring at
the ceiling, replaying every decision I'd made. Each day, I
grew more paranoid about each decision I'd make. Though the
road is clear, should I cross? I need to reach
something off the top shelf? But is it safe? Is
what I'm eating? Within date, the app, once a lifeline,
was now a tormentor a mirror, reflecting my fears, a
ticking clock to a future I couldn't ignore. In quiet
moments alone with my thoughts, I began to realize the
cost of seeing the future. The blissful ignorance gone as
I spiraled and panic trying to avoid this future. I
was getting darker and darker by the day, but I
was still hooked, addicted to trying to right the wrongs
that came in droves. As the days turned into weeks,
my obsession with a mirror me app grew, and it
started to take a toll on my life. After every
decision I'd make during the day, I would check to
see if the future image got better or worse. Sometimes
I'd do something which improved it slightly, but it always
seemed to be on a slow decline. The confident, accomplished
man which inspired me was debilitating. I found myself withdrawing
from my friends and family, each interaction tinged with a
silent fear that something might happen to me because of it.
The idea of causing some unseen ripple effect terrified me.
Social gatherings became minefields of potential disasters. Starting a friendship
with someone be the catalyst for disaster, would cut in
ties with someone save me. These thoughts plagued my mind.
Each time I interacted with someone, I started canceling plans,
making excuses to avoid any outings. I told myself it
was for my future that I needed to focus on
my studies and success to try to get the image
back on track, but deep down I knew it was
because I feared what the app might reveal. Next, sitting
alone at lunch, I watched my friends or future acquaintances
from afar. Feeling a pang of longing as they laughed
and joked together, I wanted to join them, but untold
fear held me back. I'm doing this for my future,
I reminded myself, like a mantra, though the loneliness hung
around my shoulders like a heavy cloak. I buried myself
in my schoolwork, hoping that academic success would somehow counterbalance
the growing isolation. But no matter how well I performed
in class, the app continued to show me visions of
a future that seemed increasingly bleak. What made things worse
was that sometimes I'd be delivered a glimmer of hope,
drip fed improvement in the picture. Yet it was always
hard to pinpoint what exactly made the change. Was it
something I ate, something I said, or was it a
thought that would inspire improvement in the far future. It
was near impossible to tell. But these moments were far
and few between. Despite coping with a few times I
saw things improve, there was no doubt that it was
always in a steady decline. Slowly, my future self looked
increasingly isolated and unhappy. The cheerful surroundings around him, dwindling.
The once confident figure now appeared hollow eyes shaded with
the weight of solitude. My heart sank each time I
saw this, feeling the walls closing in around me. The
image of my future success fell like a cruel joke,
now a taunting specter of what I was sacrificing everything for.
I was becoming a prisoner of my own ambition, stuck
in a cycle that spiraled downward, getting worse no matter
what I did. Desperate to change this grim future, I
decided to take matters into my own hands. I began
spending hours trying to reverse engineer the app, hoping to
find a way to alter the predictions. I scoured online forums,
down unloaded tools, and immersed myself in lines of code,
convinced that if I could understand how the app worked,
I could somehow change its course. But the deeper I delved,
the more elusive the solution became. Surrounded by error messages
and unyielding lines of code. I felt her creeping sense
of futility. This was beyond my capability. I was losing
myself in this, feeling more lost than ever each failed
attempt to crack the app's secrets only heightened my paranoia
and fed my obsession. The line between past, present and
future blurred, leaving me trapped in a cycle of endless uncertainty,
fueled by the image still degrading. Even when I changed
my tact, it was well and truly her curse, but
I couldn't bring myself to stop. The day came when
I could no longer ignore this cycle of doom I
was in. I spent too many sleepless nights trying to
untangle the mystery, too many days lost in anxiety, Yet
I still came crawling back in desperation. I opened the app,
always hoping it would be the last time, looking for
a glimmer of hope or some reassurance that the future
wasn't as bleak as it predicted. As the app loaded,
I braced myself for what might appear. The screen flickered
and my heart sank. There I was a future version
of myself, sitting alone in a dimly lit room. The
walls were lined with old tech equipment screens, casting an
eerie glow over piles of empty take out containers, yet
seemed heavy, stagnant with the weight of solitude. My future
self looked utterly defeated, eyes hollow and filled with a
quiet despair. I could feel the loneliness emanating from the screen.
Tears welled open my eyes as I stared, Regret and
sorrow washed over me. The app showed me the consequences
of my obsession, a future stripped of joy. All my
attempts to control the future, to shape it into something
I thought I wanted, had only led me down a
path of isolation. I had sacrificed friendships, family, and happiness
in pursuit of a vision that had slowly become an nightmare.
Overwhelmed by the weight of this understanding, I knew what
I had to do. With a trembling hand, I hovered
over the app icon on my phone, hesitating for just
a moment. Checking the app was an addiction, one that
was hard to shake. I had tried to control my
time looking at it to no avail. So this was
the ultimate solution I could think of, erasing it permanently.
As the app vanished from my screen, I felt a
mixture of relief and fear. What now, I wondered. I
felt blind now, stepping into the unknown without the app's guidance.
It was terrifying. And deliberating, all at once, a strange
mix of emotions. The future now a blank slate, open
to possibilities I couldn't see. I was free from the
apse predictions, but faced with the daunting task of rebuilding
my life from the fragments I had left behind. Slowly,
I began to reconnect with the world I had pushed away.
I reached out to friends, rejoining their conversations and gatherings
with a tentative hope that things could be different. I
feared that my road to isolation was one eyed manifested
forever to follow me to war relationships. But to my surprise,
I was met with warmth and acceptance, the bonds of
friendships slowly mending. I've missed this, I admitted during lunch
with friends, the words spilling out with unexpected ease. They nodded, smiling,
and I felt as spark of joy that I had
almost forgotten. I also re engaged with my hobbies, picking
up interests I had long neglected in my pursuit of
the future. I spent hours tinkering with code, not out
of desperation for success, but from a genuine love for
creating the passion that had once been clouded by anxiety,
now felt pure and unencumbered. Reconnecting with my family was harder,
but each conversation brought a sense of relief and healing.
The world seemed brighter now. It felt as if I
pulled my head out of a barrel of water. Suffocating
in a world I trapped myself in, but losing the
visions of the future, I realized I was able to
create new ones reflecting my journey. I felt a sense
of purpose. I didn't need to see the future to
know what was important. I found myself staring into a mirror,
a real mirror, not muddled with technology. I smiled at
my reflection, seeing myself for who I was, not for
what I was forcing myself to be. Over time, I
even found an appreciation for the app. Though it was
a cause for so many issues, it instilled a sense
of appreciation for the now, living in the present, not
the past or future, and for that I left a
five star glowing review on the app page. This