When Mark Wang's phone rang, he was fast asleep. Groggily seeing it was Sarah calling, he felt puzzled.
But after hearing what she had to say, and then going back to check the WeChat chat history, all traces of sleepiness vanished.
It was partly his own fault.
The user manual had explicitly stated that disabling the review feature was not recommended during initial use. But his nightly chats with Sarah were getting longer and longer, eating into the time he usually spent gaming. Figuring there wouldn't be any problems, he'd taken a shortcut—and now this trouble had cropped up.
Telling Sarah the truth was out of the question. That would mean letting this nearly-cooked duck fly away, and all his effort would have been for nothing.
Fortunately, Mark quickly composed himself. He told her his WeChat had been hacked, told her not to worry, and to go back to sleep.
After finally managing to get Sarah off the phone, he immediately reinstated the review feature, then went back and re-read that chat log.
Thankfully, the conversation hadn't lasted very long before Sarah had called him. The content hadn't mentioned anything about the App—otherwise his secret would truly have been exposed.
Speaking of this App, it had been passed to him by his old classmate Alex at a reunion a while back.
Alex had started his own little company after graduation, developing Apps and mini-programs.
This app called Soul-Capture was their company's latest creation. Billed as the ultimate wingman tool, it was perfect for single homebodies like Mark Wang.
The claim was that you just needed to take a photo of a woman, and the App would search the internet for mountains of information about her, then generate a virtual persona that would chat with her on your behalf. The success rate was remarkably high.
Since the App was still new, Alex had asked Mark to be one of the first beta testers and provide feedback.
Mark had been skeptical at first, but he didn't want to turn down a friend. Once he tried it, though, he discovered the App genuinely worked.
Sarah Chen had been completely indifferent to him, but this virtual persona seemed to truly understand her. The conversation topics were exactly what interested her, and thanks to it, they'd secured tomorrow's date.
But what did these messages mean?
Mark frowned at the WeChat texts. Being locked in a dark place, asking someone to rescue her?
Could it be that the virtual persona was so good at chatting not because of big data analysis, but because there was an actual living person inside?
The thought was absurd, but it still sent a chill down his spine.
It seemed he wouldn't be getting back to sleep without asking some questions. He immediately called Alex and told him what had happened, as well as his own seemingly ridiculous theory.
Sure enough, after listening, Alex laughed for a good while, saying Mark must have watched too many horror movies.
As for the chat content, it was probably a system debugging issue. They'd been upgrading the entire system recently, so minor glitches were inevitable. But Alex promised to sort it out as quickly as possible and told him not to worry.
After hanging up with Alex, Mark felt much more reassured. Thinking back on his earlier notion, he had to admit it was pretty ridiculous.
He checked his phone—it was already past 1 AM. He yawned hugely and burrowed back under the covers.