Chapter 6: The App That Looked Real

Tuesday Night, Week 11

For almost two weeks after the bonus window, Marcus and I talked about nothing except our experiments. Today he showed me his app. We were waiting for our yeast cultures in the incubator, which is a warm cabinet that keeps cells at the right temperature. He took out his phone, looked around to make sure the lab technician was busy, and turned the screen towards me. He was smiling in a way I had not seen since the first week of term.

The screen was dark blue with thin gold lines, very clean and calm, like the app a bank would make if the bank had excellent taste. At the top were his name and a small picture of a shield. Under that was a number, his balance, which is the amount the app says he has. Under the number, a green line climbed from left to right across a little chart, with small dips here and there that made it look honest. "That's one month," Marcus said. "Look at it. It goes up while I sleep."

I will be honest in this diary, because that is what it is for: the first thing I felt was not worry. It was a small, sharp pinch of envy. The number was bigger than everything I earned at my summer job. For a second I felt slow and a little stupid, as if everyone else had found a door that I was too careful to open.

Then the second feeling came, the one Grandma would call counting twice. Two weeks ago, Marcus was urging me to put "just a little" into a "bonus window" that closed at midnight, and I made my 24-hour rule and said no. The window closed, and nothing bad happened to me. I reminded myself of that while the green line glowed between us.

"How do you know the money is really there?" I asked. Marcus had his answer ready, as if he had been waiting for someone to ask.

"Because I took some out," he said. A few weeks ago he asked to withdraw a small amount, which means taking money out, about the price of a dinner for two. Two days later it arrived in his ordinary bank account. He showed me that too, on his banking app: a real line with a real date. "A scam doesn't give you money back," he said. "That's the whole point of a scam."

I said nothing, and Marcus took my silence as agreement. After the money arrived, he told me, he felt so relieved that he put in more. Then the platform's "account manager", a woman who writes to him every morning, told him that accounts above a certain size move up to a "gold level" with faster growth. He is "nearly there," he said. He wants to reach it before the long break, so that the money can "work over the holidays" while he is at home with his mum.

When I got in, I told Lina about the blue and gold app. "A balance on a screen is a picture of a number," she said. "Whoever owns the app decides what the picture shows. It's the same as the screenshots in week 3, only it moves."

She said she wasn't going to explain how such things are made, because how doesn't matter. "You don't need to know how a magic trick works to know that the coin didn't really vanish." Then she asked, "When did we last check the platform outside the app?"

In week 7, at my desk, we had found that the platform was not on the official register. Marcus was told it was "registered in another country", and then the bonus window happened, and I stopped thinking about it. "Lists change," Lina said. "Check again." Tomorrow, after my café shift, I will. I have written it at the top of tomorrow's page so that I cannot pretend I forgot.

Thursday Night, Week 11

I did the check last night at the kitchen table, with a cup of tea and Grandma's three questions. Who says so? The app, the "account manager", and Marcus, because the app told him. How can I check it myself? Through a source I choose, not through anything the app gives me. Who gains if I believe it? I left that one empty for the moment.

Here is exactly what I did. I did not use any link from the app or from Marcus's messages. I typed the name of the official office that supervises banks and investment firms in our country into a search myself, and I made sure the page I opened was the office's own website and not an advertisement sitting on top of the results. Then I found its official register and its warning list.

This time I also used the app's "About" page, which Marcus sent me last month. At the bottom, in tiny grey letters, there was a company name and a registration number. I searched the register for the name. Nothing. I searched for the registration number. Nothing again.

Then I searched the warning list, and there it was: the same name as the app, with a short note saying that the firm was not allowed to offer investment services and that people should be careful. The note was new. In week 7, when Lina and I looked, it had not been there.

I sat there for a long time, and the tea went cold. It did not feel like winning an argument. It felt like finding out that a friend's house has no floor under the carpet while he is standing on it.

I asked Marcus if we could talk after lab today. I did not send him a screenshot of the warning list. A screenshot was how all of this started, and I didn't want him to choose between my picture and theirs. I wanted him to look it up with his own hands.

It did not go well. We sat on the low wall outside the science building. It was cold, and the light was already going. I told him that I had looked the platform up on the official register, that it was not there, and that its name was on the office's warning list. I said it as gently as I could. I said he wasn't stupid, and that the app was made by people whose whole job is to make it look real. I asked him to look it up himself, on his own phone, without me watching.

Marcus was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "They warned us about this." The "account manager" had told the group weeks ago that false warnings appear about every successful platform, that jealous people and big old banks put them there, and that members should ignore them. I felt cold, and not because of the wall. Someone had already stood between Marcus and the warning list before I ever got there.

"And I took money out," he said again, louder. "You saw it. It's in my real account." I said that I believed him, that the small payment was real, and that a small payment that works proves only that a small payment worked. It doesn't prove that the rest of the number on the screen exists. That was when he got annoyed.

"You just don't like that I found something that works," Marcus said. "You've been careful your whole life, and that's fine for you. Some of us have to send money home."

He stood up and picked up his bag. Then he said, more quietly, "Sorry. I didn't mean that. I just need it to be true, Tess." He walked away towards the bus stop, and I stayed on the cold wall.

He needs it to be true. His mum works long hours, he sends her a little money every month, and for a whole month a blue and gold screen has been telling him that he doesn't have to worry any more. Of course he needs it to be true. Anyone would. I am not angry with Marcus. I am angry with whoever drew that green line.

Lina made me toast. She said I had done the right thing, and that the right thing does not always feel good on the same day. What I could do now, she said, was stay Marcus's friend, so that when he is ready to look, someone is standing next to him who isn't the "account manager".

Sunday Evening, Week 11

I told Grandma all of it on our Sunday call: the app, the register, the warning list, the wall. She listened without interrupting, as she always does, and when I had finished, she asked whether Marcus was eating properly. Then she said, "I have a story about a mouse. I made it up long ago, when one of my children wanted to buy a bicycle from a boy who wanted all the money first." She asked if I had my pen. I always have my pen.

Grandma's Fable: The Mouse and the Painted Cheese

At the edge of a wheat field there lived a young mouse called Pip. One autumn, a stoat opened a store in a hollow oak beside the field. On the wall inside, he had painted a great round cheese, yellow as butter. "Bring me your seeds," said the stoat, "and I will keep them in my cellar, where they slowly turn into cheese. Every week I will paint your share of the cheese a little bigger, so that you can watch it grow."

Pip brought a small bag of seeds. Beside the great cheese, the stoat painted a thin slice with Pip's name on it. Each week Pip came back, and each week the slice was a little wider. Other mice came too, and soon the wall was covered with slices, and in the evenings the mice stood admiring them.

One day Pip asked, "May I take a crumb of my cheese home, to taste it?" The stoat smiled and went down into the cellar. He came back with a real crumb of real cheese, small and soft and salty. Pip carried it home and ate it slowly, and that night he could not sleep for happiness. The next morning, Pip brought the stoat every seed he had saved for the winter.

Now, an old mouse called Hazel lived under the same hedge. She had watched the wall for many weeks and had brought nothing. "Show me," Hazel said to Pip, and Pip took her to the hollow oak.

Then she walked up to the wall and put her nose against Pip's slice. It smelled of paint. She put her paw on it. It felt like wood. She scratched it gently with one claw, and a thin yellow curl of paint came away. Underneath there was only bark.

"But the crumb was real," said Pip. "I ate it." "Yes," said Hazel. "One crumb was real. Now, can you smell the cellar?"

Pip sniffed. There was no smell of cheese anywhere, and a store full of cheese would have smelled for the whole field. Pip went to the cellar door and found it bolted from the inside.

Pip walked home slowly that evening, without speaking. Hazel walked beside him the whole way. When they reached the hedge, she shared her own seeds with him. In the morning, the two of them went from burrow to burrow to tell the other mice what the wall smelled like. Some of the mice were angry with Hazel. Some went to the oak to smell it for themselves. By the first frost, the stoat and his painted cheese were gone, and the hollow oak smelled only of rain.

The painted slice is the balance on Marcus's screen. The real crumb is the small withdrawal. It was real, and it was the most dangerous thing in the whole store, because it made Pip bring the rest. And Hazel did not argue with the wall. She went up close and checked it with her own nose and her own paw. Count twice. The second time, count with your own paws.

And Hazel did not leave Pip alone on the way home. She did not say that she had known all along. She shared her seeds. I think that was the part Grandma most wanted me to hear.

Wednesday Night, Week 12

Marcus is talking to me again, which is a relief, but he talks about everything except the app. In lab today he joked about our professor's ties and lent me his good pen, being extra kind, the way people are when they are sorry and don't want to say so. At the end, while we were washing glassware, he told me without looking at me that he had reached the "gold level" on Sunday night.

I asked, carefully, how much he had put in altogether. He said, "Most of it." Most of his savings, which is about two months of his rent. He said the "account manager" sent him a message full of gold stars when his transfer arrived and called him one of the "serious members". I dried a beaker for much longer than any beaker needs.

I did not mention the warning list again. I had said it once, clearly, and saying it again would only have pushed him closer to the woman who sends gold stars. Instead I said, "If you ever want to look at it together, the register or anything else, I'm here. No speeches. I'll bring biscuits." He laughed a little and said, "I'll remember." That is something.

Tonight I tried Grandma's third question properly, the one I left empty last week. Who gains if Marcus believes the screen? Not Marcus. The people behind the app gain every time he looks at the green line instead of at his own bank account. And I think what they fear is the moment when he asks to take everything out, or tells his mum, or opens the warning list himself. Every "gold level", every gold star, every warning about "jealous" lists is there to keep that moment from coming.

The long break starts on Friday. Marcus is going home to his mum, and I am going home to mine. I hope he tells her about the app. Before I turned off the light, I wrote one more line in Grandma's notebook, under this week's date: I checked the platform on the official register myself. It was not there. It was on the warning list.

What I Checked This Week

Numbers on a screen are not money in your hands. A balance in an app is whatever the app shows. If the people who own the app are honest and allowed to do this work, the number may match real money that is kept safely. If they are not, the number is only paint. From the outside, the two look exactly the same, so the screen itself can never be the proof.

A polished app or website proves nothing either. Clean colours, a shield, charts with little dips, a friendly "account manager" who writes every morning: none of these say anything about whether a firm is allowed to look after anyone's money. I used to think that a scam would look cheap. Now I think the most dangerous ones may look better than my real bank's app.

The real check happens outside the app. I found the official office that supervises banks and investment firms in our country by typing its name myself, I made sure I was on its own website, and I searched for the platform's exact company name and registration number on the official register and on the warning list. The only things I took from the app were the name and number I wanted to check; the way to the register was my own: no link, no phone number, no "verification page". If a firm is not on the register, or is on the warning list, that is my answer, whatever the screen says. Lists change, so one check is not enough for a whole term; when I checked again, the warning list had something new to say. And if the group has been told in advance that warnings are "fake" or "jealous", that is one more warning sign, not a reason to relax.

A first small withdrawal can be part of the trap. Getting a little money back once proves only that a little money came back once. It does not prove that the rest exists or that anyone will let you take it out. It is the real crumb in the painted store: real enough to taste, and given so that you will bring the rest.

Things to Talk About as a Family

Tess's diary goes quiet here for the week, just as Marcus has put most of his savings into a screen. From the outside, it is easy to wonder why he didn't stop. But a number that grows every day, and one small payment that really arrived, can make almost anyone feel sure. The people behind such apps work very hard to create exactly that feeling, and the responsibility for it is theirs, not Marcus's.

Here are a few things you might talk about together. Have you ever trusted something mainly because it looked professional, such as a website, a letter or an app? What would you need to see, from a source you find yourselves, before you believed that a firm was really keeping someone's money safe? And if a friend told you excitedly about money they had made, how could you ask a question without making them feel attacked?

One small thing to try together: sit down with one phone or computer and find the official office that supervises banks and investment firms where you live, without clicking any advertisement or any link someone has sent you. Find its register and, if it has one, its warning list. Just learn where they are, so that one day, when someone shows you a beautiful screen, you already know how to check it with your own paws.