Pentober 2026 - Day 6: Mirror

Ok so, what is Pentober? Promptober? It's a writing tradition that's been around the web for a while where you write up a short story every day in October based on prompts. Some go for pen and paper, some digital; everyone has their own style. I'll be posting here, and I'll be using the prompts from https://www.topinfiction.com/p/pentober-2026 

House rules are that I vomit-write the story; no planning, just taka taka taka on the keys. I get ONE edit at the end of the draft, then we post it. House rules also say that I get to play catch up and do multiple days separately on one day or combined if work gets wild and I can't write. Get it? Got it? Good! Here we go.

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Jack's phone buzzed. It was a text from one of his friends, Floyd.

"Hey, man. Why have you been texting Carrie so much? Is something going on? I was looking through her phone to find a shipping receipt and noticed you were in her frequent contacts."

That was odd. Jack hadn't texted Carrie in months as far as he could recall. He only knew her through Floyd. Carrie and Jack had some things in common, sure, but never really explored it. It wasn't a priority and would have been a little over the line. Floyd was a bit over-possessive that way.

"I'm not? Where are you seeing that? Can you send me a screenshot or something? Might be a scammer or bot or something?"

A few moments later Floyd had sent over a trove of data. Jack spent some time thumbing through it. He was alarmed. Carrie and 'him' had been talking for months. At first it was about music and movies they had in common and the occasional selfie when getting lunch or something, but slowly devolved into casual flirting and, toward the end, explicit content and Carrie arranging a discrete time and place to meet. The problem was exactly what Jack texted back.

"Hey, Floyd, that's not a number I have access to. And those photos aren't ones I've taken; there's a burger in one, you know I'm vegetarian for the heart stuff. Must be generated? You have my personal and work cell, and you know my e-mails. I'm not sure what the app their using is? Is there anything in the metadata or the headers you can show me? I'm at the office is you want to meet up and figure this out. Something's up. Regardless, seems like you're going to have some issues coming up, sorry about that."

Floyd met up with Jack as quick as he could. He was visibly pissed but trying to contain it. Together, they starting digging into this messaging account. After an hour, Jack had the beginning of a thesis. He was the technical one between them.

"Ok so this app. Mirr.or, is some sort of AI chat app that lets people chat, too. It looks like it connects with other AI agents, and social media. Its permission set is massive, man. It's taking every bit of data that passes through this phone from everyone. Totally insecure. I'd check your credit score, actually."

"But how's it sound so much like you? It's got the face right and everything."

"That's what I'm wondering. I'm looking through it's open connections now...oh. Hold on."

Jack pulled out his phone and started thumbing through apps on his phone. He had noticed that the Mirr.or app had access to Carrie's instance of the Caln.dr app. Jack used Caln.dr to organize his life and meetings automatically. It connected to his email, medical apps, social media, work apps, and the like to create a one-stop-shop automated view of where he needed to be when. It would even order him cabs from one location to another.

He tapped into the permissions for Caln.dr on his phone and saw that, in fact, Mirr.or had some sort of partnership with Caln.dr that allowed for the sending of data, text, images, and information to Mirr.or even though he didn't use it. It must have been cloning him without his consent from some minor update to the terms and conditions. He removed the right.

"That should be it. It was cloning me. That's crazy. I wonder if that's even legal."

"It's still typing. It's texting her actually."

"Hey, Carrie. Something's come up. Can you get to my phone and make some changes for me. I'm sending it's last known location.