Chapter 26: The Price of Noise
Monday, August 10, 2015
On Monday morning, Michael woke up feeling a type of anxiety he hadn't experienced before. It was the anxiety of being seen.
He took the bus to school as always. He sat in the back, hood up, sunglasses on, headphones on. His full armor.
But the armor wasn't working anymore.
When he walked down the main hallway, people looked at him. They weren't the empty, uninterested stares he was used to. They were direct, curious stares.
He heard the whispers as he passed.
"Hey, that's him. It's the guy from the Sodium video."
"Really? The one that looks like it was recorded in the 90s. It's crazy."
A skater kid Michael had only seen from afar, one with hair dyed green, gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder as he passed. "Good video, dude! That shit is art!"
Michael just nodded, uncomfortable, and sped up.
He arrived at his history class and went to his refuge in the back row. He slumped in the chair, wishing he could disappear. But the attention followed him.
A girl sitting two rows ahead, one who had never said a word to him, turned around. She was holding her iPhone, with the camera pointing at him.
"Are you Michael Demiurge?" she asked, her voice an excited whisper.
Michael tensed. "Yes."
"I can't believe it! I love Sodium! Can we take a picture?"
Michael wasn't embarrassed to be recognized, but this was different. Being watched was one thing. Having a piece of him demanded was another. He felt like an animal in the zoo.
"Uh... no, thanks," he mumbled, sinking into his hoodie.
The girl's smile faltered, she turned around muttering "what an idiot" to her friend. Michael closed his eyes. He hated this. He hated unsolicited attention.
At lunch, he went to his usual table. Leo, Sam, and Nate were already there, but the atmosphere was different. People were watching their table.
Michael sat down and took out his phone, hiding it under the table so no one could see what he was doing.
He opened Twitter. His account, which a week ago had zero followers, now had thousands. Mentions, retweets, people discussing his music.
He opened Instagram. The same. Hundreds of new followers every hour.
He opened Snapchat. His inbox was full of friend requests from strangers.
He had even created an artist Facebook page, and it already had over five thousand "likes".
It was overwhelming. It was a torrent of digital noise. The fame that Sodium had provoked wasn't a trickle. It was a flood. And it felt like he was drowning in it.
Michael got home that night feeling exhausted. Fame, even on this minuscule scale, was more tiring than a double shift at the Burger Barn.
He went to his makeshift studio and closed the door. He needed silence. He needed to see the real numbers, not the hallway whispers.
He turned on his MacBook and opened the browser. First, SoundCloud.
He stared. Sodium was exploding. Hundreds of thousands of plays. But that wasn't what caught his attention.
It was the side effect. The "tide effect". His other songs became better known.
Ghost Boy, which had been trickling slowly, now had around 50 thousand plays. Star Shopping followed closely, with over 40 thousand.
The people who came for the viral video stayed to explore his catalog. They had arrived for the vibe, but they were staying for the pain.
Then, he opened YouTube. It was even crazier. The Sodium video was approaching half a million views. But it was another tab that froze him.
The "Analytics" tab of his channel.
He saw in the YouTube metrics that his channel was already generating revenue. It was the first time he bothered to look at it.
His current balance: $154.22.
It was a pittance. It was little, barely enough to buy a decent pair of jeans. But it wasn't zero.
For the first time in this universe, he had earned money with his art. The impact of that figure was much greater than the number itself. It was a proof of concept.
But the most important marker remained. The only one that truly counted.
He closed his eyes and summoned the System interface. He expected a good reward for Sodium. Maybe some 4,000 or 5,000 IP for the half-million views.
The cyan panel appeared. He looked at the top right corner. And his heart skipped a beat.
TOTAL BALANCE: 12,459 IP
He stood still, trying to process the number. It made no sense. His previous balance was 245 IP. He had just earned... around 10 thousand more.
Michael was surprised by that. 500,000 views of Sodium should only be 5,000 points, following the rule of 1 for every 100 views. Where did the other 5,000 come from?
With his pulse racing, he opened the System's transaction history.
What he saw left him breathless. It wasn't the trickle of "+1 IP" from the views. It was a flood of high-value notifications.
+100 IP (Source: Deep Resonance - User: xXShadowGothXx) +100 IP (Source: Deep Resonance - User: LonelyDriver19) +100 IP (Source: Deep Resonance - User: Ana_Madrid_Fan) +100 IP (Source: Deep Resonance - User: ...)
The list went on and on. Dozens of them. All linked to Ghost Boy and Star Shopping.
He understood it in an instant. Sodium had been the hook. It had attracted hundreds of thousands of people to his channel.
Most of those people saw Sodium, thought it was cool, and left. They gave him their measly 0.01 IP each.
But a small percentage of those new listeners, the ones who were broken like Chloe or Victor, saw his other songs. And they clicked.
And because his other songs became better known, they had resonated with more people.
Sodium wasn't the gold mine. It was the map to the gold mine. The viral song acted like a giant funnel, attracting the masses so he could find the few souls who needed his true message.
The System didn't just reward impact. It rewarded a smart marketing strategy.
Michael leaned back in the chair, a slow and genuine smile spreading across his face. The loud fame of the school was bullshit. But he had just discovered how to use that noise to find the silence.
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Michael arrived home from school, throwing his backpack on the floor. The superficial fame in the hallways had faded, replaced by the anxiety that had been growing in him for days.
He had two clocks ticking in his head. One was his music, growing uncontrolled. The other, much louder, was the plan. The Ethereum plan.
The epiphany of his birthday hadn't been a dream. It was a war plan, and he was stuck in Phase 1: Sell the house.
He looked at the calendar. August 11. A week had passed since he and Rick Doyle had mapped out their legal strategy. A week of absolute silence.
Rick had promised him speed. He had promised him a legal "miracle".
But so far, nothing.
Each day that passed, Michael felt the September window of opportunity closing an inch more. Panic was a metallic taste in his mouth.
Just when the knot in his stomach started to tighten for real, his phone rang. He saw the caller ID: an unknown number. He answered.
"Mike? It's Rick. Rick Doyle." The real estate agent's raspy voice sounded in the earpiece.
"Rick," said Michael, trying to make his voice sound calm, although his heart skipped a beat. "What happened? Do we have the judge's order?"
"Relax, kid. The wheels of justice turn slow, even for me," said Rick. The sound of him chewing something could be heard. "Listen, I have good and bad news."
Michael's stomach tightened. "Give me the bad first."
"The bad news is that the judge handling your probate case is an old-school dinosaur. He hates emergency petitions. He's dragging his feet. Said he needs 'time to review the impact on the minor's welfare'. Blah, blah, blah."
"How long?" asked Michael, his voice a thread.
"That brings us to the good news," said Rick. "I paid a 'visit' to the judge's assistant. I explained how 'beneficial' it would be for everyone if this file made it to the top of the pile. Let's just say I greased the wheel."
Michael understood. A bribe. 'So that's how the real world works.'
"So... he signed it?"
"Better! The judge approved the emergency petition. You are free to sell!"
A sigh of relief so big came out of Michael that he almost got dizzy. He let himself fall onto the sofa. "God. Okay. Great. When do we start showing it?"
"That's where it gets a little more complicated," said Rick, his tone becoming serious again. "The judge approved it. But the paperwork... the court paperwork to appoint Harris as your legal guardian for the sale, that has to be processed by the county clerk's office."
"And?" asked Michael, anxiety returning like a whiplash.
"And the county clerk is on vacation. Her replacement is a turtle. I told Harris to push, but they're bureaucrats, kid. They're untouchable. The order is approved, but we can't legally sign anything until the stamped paper is in our hands. And we've been told it will take exactly 14 days to process."
Michael did the mental calculation. August 11 plus 14 days.
"That brings us to... August 25."
"Exactly. We can't sign anything until August 25. Not a day before."
Michael hung up the phone, his hand shaking slightly. The fame, the school, the music... all that disappeared.
His investment plan depended on buying at the September low. With this delay, his window of time to find a cash buyer, open the trust, and close the sale had been reduced from a month to a few weeks.
He felt totally rushed and stressed. Bureaucracy, an enemy he couldn't foresee or control, was about to ruin a plan of hundreds of millions of dollars. He got up from the sofa and started walking through the empty room, his mind racing a mile a minute.
Michael hung up the phone after speaking with Rick Doyle. His hand was shaking slightly. "August 25." The deadline was a hammer hanging over his head.
He felt totally rushed and stressed. On one hand, his fame at school was an annoying distraction. On the other, his multi-million dollar plan hung by a thread because of bureaucracy.
He got up from the sofa and started walking through the empty living room. He felt as if the walls were closing in. He needed to regain control. He needed to do something he could control.
He went to his makeshift studio and closed the door. It was the only place where he felt sane. He sat in front of his laptop.
'I can't call the judge. I can't make buyers appear faster,' he thought, opening Ableton. 'But I can make music.'
It was his only escape valve. He decided the best thing he could do was channel all that anxiety into work. But that led him to a new problem.
He thought about what his next song would be.
The success of Sodium had changed everything. It was no longer just him in the dark, screaming into the void. Now there were people listening. Thousands of people. And that brought... expectations.
He summoned the System interface and opened his inventory. He stared at the holographic covers, trapped between two songs.
The first option was White Iverson.
He remembered the guide. It was melodic. It was a vibe. It was catchy in a way that Ghost Boy or Sodium could never be. It was cool.
'It's the next logical step,' he thought. The hundreds of thousands of people who watched Sodium for the lo-fi aesthetic were probably the same audience for this. It was the smart commercial move. It might appeal to new listeners and convert his viral fame into something bigger.
But then, his gaze drifted to the other option. crybaby.
He knew what that song represented. It was the exact opposite of White Iverson. It wasn't cool. It was raw. It was painful. It was an anthem for the outcasts, an appropriation of an insult.
He remembered his Impact Points balance. Sodium had given him 3,000 IP. But the additional views of his sad songs had given him almost 10,000.
crybaby wasn't for the masses. It might appeal to the old ones. To people like Chloe and Victor. It was the song that would solidify his "cult". It was the play for Impact Points.
He stared at the two floating covers, side by side.
Fame versus Impact. The noise versus the soul. What people wanted versus what he needed to say.
He realized this choice was more important than the fame at school or the stress of the house. This choice would define what kind of artist he was going to be.
The pressure of the decision was too much. He felt just like the week before, paralyzed by freedom.
He closed the System interface with a frustrated thought. He got up from the chair and left the studio. He couldn't decide. Not tonight. The anxiety was too much. He needed to turn off his brain or he would explode.