Harem Protocol

The app was called Ember, and I downloaded it because Priya Nair told me to.

Not told me, exactly. She said it in that way she has, where a suggestion arrives dressed as a fact. We were standing outside the humanities building at 4:40 on a Thursday, and she was holding her phone up to show me her own profile, the little orange flame icon pulsing at the bottom of the screen like a heartbeat.

"You should get on it," she said. "Everyone's on it."

I looked at her phone. A grid of faces, each one with a number underneath. Priya's number was 812.

"What's the number?"

"Your glow." She shrugged like it was obvious. "How much people like you."

I didn't download it that night. I downloaded it the next morning, in bed, before my alarm went off, which tells you something about me that I'd rather not examine too closely. My name is Daniel Osei. I'm twenty-two. I study economics because my father thinks it's practical and I think it's a way to postpone deciding what I actually want. I'm not ugly. I'm not handsome in a way that stops traffic. I'm the kind of person who gets described as "nice" by people who can't think of anything else to say, and I've spent most of my life assuming that was enough.

The app asked for permissions. Camera, microphone, location, contacts, "nearby devices." I granted all of them because I wanted to see what happened. That's the honest version. I was curious, and I was bored, and I was tired of being the guy who watches from the edge of the room.

When the profile finished loading, my glow was 41.

Forty-one. Out of what, I didn't know yet. Out of a thousand, I assumed, because that's how these things work. Priya had 812. I had 41. The number sat there on the screen, small and orange and patient, and I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time. Not anger. Not quite shame. A kind of cold clarity, like stepping into a walk-in freezer and realizing you've been standing in the heat your whole life without noticing.

I went to class. I sat in the back. I watched the numbers.

That was the thing about Ember. Once you had it, you could see everyone's glow, floating above their heads like a halo no one else could see. The professor, a tired man in his sixties with a paunch and a PhD, glowed at 203. The girl two rows down who always answered questions glowed at 588. The guy next to me, asleep with his mouth open, glowed at 97.

I couldn't stop looking. I couldn't stop comparing.

By the end of the week, I understood the math. Glow wasn't about being good or kind or smart. It was about being wanted. Every like, every message, every lingering look translated into points. The app tracked attention the way a fitness tracker counts steps. And attention, I realized, could be manufactured.

The first time I used it, I didn't even mean to. I was in the library, and a girl I'd never spoken to was sitting across from me, chewing on the end of a pen. Her glow was 340. I opened the app, tapped her profile, and saw a button I hadn't noticed before. It said Nudge.

I tapped it.

She looked up. Not at me, exactly. Through me, at first, and then at me, and then her eyes did something strange. They softened. Her mouth opened a little, like she was about to say something, and then she closed it and looked back down at her book. But she kept glancing up. Three times in the next ten minutes. Each time, her glow ticked up by one.

Mine went from 41 to 44.

I sat there with my heart pounding and my palms damp and a feeling in my chest like I'd just gotten away with something. Which, I suppose, I had.

I nudged her again the next day. And the day after that. Her glow climbed. Mine climbed faster. By Friday, she'd sent me a message. Nothing much. Just a question about a class we didn't share. But it was a door, and I walked through it.

Her name was Elena. She had a laugh that made people turn around. She kissed me on the second date, in the stairwell of her apartment building, and I felt her glow press against mine like a warm hand. 612. 189. The numbers were getting closer. I didn't know yet what happened when they met.

I found out three weeks later.

We were in her bed, and she was asleep, and I was staring at the ceiling, and I opened the app out of habit. Her profile had a new option. It said Merge.

I tapped it.

The screen went white. Then orange. Then a message appeared, in small, clean letters:

*Connection established. Glow transfer complete.*

Her number dropped to 412. Mine jumped to 389.

I sat up. The sheets pooled around my waist. Elena didn't move. She slept with her mouth slightly open, and I watched her breathe, and I felt something I couldn't name. Not guilt. Not yet. Something closer to wonder. I had taken two hundred points from her, and she hadn't felt a thing.

The next morning, she made coffee. She kissed my forehead. She said she'd had a strange dream, that she'd been walking through a house that kept shrinking, and she couldn't find the door.

"It's just a dream," I said.

"I know." She smiled. "It's just a dream."

I didn't merge with her again. I told myself it was because I didn't need to. The truth is I was afraid. Not of hurting her. Of getting caught.

But I kept nudging. I nudged the barista at the coffee shop on campus. I nudged a girl in my statistics class. I nudged a woman on the bus, a man in line at the bank, a kid selling magazines outside the grocery store. Each nudge was small. A flicker of attention. A moment of warmth. I told myself it didn't mean anything. I told myself I was just being friendly.

My glow hit 500 by the end of the month. Then 700. Then 900.

People started noticing me. Not in the way I'd always wanted, with admiration or envy. They noticed me the way you notice a fire. They wanted to be near it. They wanted to know what it felt like.

Priya found me at a party in November. She was drunk and glowing at 850, and she grabbed my arm and pulled me into a corner.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"Nothing."

"You're doing something." Her eyes were bright and hard. "Your number's been climbing. Fast. Faster than anyone's."

"So?"

"So nobody climbs that fast." She leaned closer. Her breath smelled like vodka and mint. "What's your secret?"

I looked at her. Her glow pulsed above her head, steady and warm. I could feel it, the way you feel a heater in a cold room. I could take it. I knew I could. One merge, and I'd be past a thousand. Past everyone.

But I didn't. Not yet.

"I don't have a secret," I said.

She didn't believe me. I could see it in her face. But she let go of my arm, and she smiled, and she said, "Okay. Keep your secrets."

I walked home that night with my hands in my pockets and my glow trailing behind me like a comet. The streets were empty. The sky was black. And I thought about Elena, asleep in her shrinking house, and I thought about the number above my head, and I thought about what it would feel like to have a thousand. Ten thousand. A number so big no one could ignore it.

I thought about what I'd have to do to get there.

And I kept walking.