Shake 'n Shift - Part One

I watch as the tiny blue bar slowly creeps across the phone screen, reaching slowly from left to right as the data is slowly downloaded to the slender little device in my hand.

My heart races, both with anticipation and fear at the thought of what may be coming once the download completed. While the forum I had found this thing on seemed to take it entirely seriously there wasn't a single person who could verify it worked, or more importantly wasn't some kind of malware that would rip all my personal information from my phone the second I opened the app.

However, the thought of it was too intriguing to not try out. I had no real thought that it would work as stated, more believing that it was some sort of photo shifting app or role playing aid, something found only in this one little forum on the far side of the internet.

A slight vibration snaps me from my thought, a small line at the top of my screen reading:

Download Complete: Shake n' Shift

There was a reason the Shake n' Shift app wasn't on any app store on the web, existing solely on one archived forum post that no one would ever find. It was because the app itself was not of our reality, having been brought across from another and drunkenly posted years ago.

In its home reality the app wasn't all that too revolutionary, that reality having already known of the neighboring timelines and universes in the infinite cosmos around them. Some other innovations had even allowed for holidays and visits to those other realities to the rich and wealthy seeking true adventures into the unknown of novel.

These trips and visits required an immense amount of effort, the moving to another universe requiring an equal amount of metaphysical mass to be removed. In essence, for each person entering the new world something akin to their equivalent needed to be brought back through which required immense planning visit

The Shake n' Shift app however allowed for a more immediate experience, allowing for users to visit these other worlds with a simple tap of their screen. Through entangling the user with their equivalent in another reality the app could simply 'shift' the two around, placing them into each other's world's without any need to plan any kind of delicate exchange.

Worried about the reaction from bystanders and the suddenly transported person from another world the app developers slowly designed several additional failsafes that made the experience seamless and entirely at the users control, though with devastating results.

As the two individuals are shifted through their respective realities their bodies are twisted and warped, leaving them fitting perfectly into the shoes of their universal neighbor. Their minds are also tweaked and altered, the user having the brain toyed with to more neatly fit into their new world while the target is wiped clean completely as to leave them believing they were always the user but mentally unable to use the app.

The app itself travels across as well, in theory allowing the user to swap back when they so wished.

However, in their first tests of the app the servers seeking to reach across realities were simply unable to keep up with demand as thousands of users searched and searched for a new life to steal or vacation in. A new model was needed, something less taxing in terms of searching and finding partners across the multiverse.

It was at that point the Shake n' Shift model was born. Each day, each user would get a single shake of their phone to shuffle their options for the day. After a playful little rattle and vibration two descriptors would pop up on screen. These would be chosen by the app, a rough explanation of the life in the other side of the name. These would be all the user would get for the day, forcing them to pick an option, or merely wait for the next day as to allow for another shake.

Of course, users could simply pay for another shake. However, all these new ideas immediately began to fall apart the moment the app was released.

Thousands of users downloaded the app at launch, shaking and shifting across the multiverse the moment they could. However, once across and in their new body they found the app missing any sort of 'Return' function, merely the same to options they had to choose from in the first place.

Some waited for the next day, only to find themselves shaking their phone for another random selection of two names that almost never resembled the technologically advanced lives they had left behind.

Paying users soon also came up against a wall. Unless they had memorized their credit card number they were simply stuck using whatever payment options were available to them in their new body, nearly all of which the server failed to recognize as a valid for of payment.

The app itself was soon taken off the market, the extremely rare few who found their way home slamming the developers for their mistakes. Despite this, there was always a server for the remaining apps to connect to, this failed idea having been followed through with countless times across the infinite sea of the multiverse.

Those left traveling, searching for a life to settle down into if they could not find their own, would on occasion share the app in their new reality. Some doing it benevolently, wanting those they liked to find a better life, pthers did so as some cruel devils baragin. However, most simple let it slip as a drunken mistake as they tried to forget their predicament or simply vent.

The last option was how I had stumbled the app, from a young banking intern turned stay-at-home mom enjoying a night away from 'her' kids and wife with some wine as she shook her phone whenever she could in order to escape this relatively stable life to return to her own.

I tentatively tap at the alert, watching as the screen goes black and my heart sinks. My phone grows almost burning hot, the poor little device desperately trying to handle the impossible processing power required to run the impossibly complex app.

I move to turn it off, to rip the battery from the back. However, the heat soon begins to die down as my phone begins to rumble and vibrate like the spinning of a roulette wheel. The rattling grows in volume, clacking and clicking as the light gray logo of Shake n' Shift spins across the screen before snapping into place.

For a moment nothing happens, the screen freezing on the image of the odd logo as my phone rapidly begins to heat up once again. After a few moments the logo begins to pulse slightly, the frame rate moving exceedingly slowly as text pops up beneath the bold logo.

Shake Now

With a deep breath I give my phone a little shake, only for nothing to happen. I continue to shake my phone, the action growing more violent as I try to make the damn thing work. After a few seconds I feel it begin to vibrate as the unseen wheel begins to click and clack with its digitized spinning.

I stop shaking my little phone, hazing at the screen as waves of white text spin past. On the left the words race past few top to bottom while on the right they speed along in the opposite direction, bold white text reading 'OR' acting to divide the two yet to be chosen words.

After a few seconds the vibrations begin to die down, turning to slower thuds as though something was tapping against the mock wheel I had spun. The words to rapidly begin to slow, the blur and haze becoming more and more legible by the second.

Finally, after nearly half a minute the app begins to chug once again as the server makes its connections across the multiverse. I watch as two words click into place, a happy little fanfare playing as I'm left looking down at...