Chapter 31: The Outcast's Anthem
Friday, August 28, 2015
Michael woke up on Friday with a sense of clarity. The paralysis of the previous days, the doubt between fame and impact, had evaporated.
He had spent the previous night mixing 'crybaby'. Unlike 'White Iverson', which had been an exercise in technical perfection, mixing 'crybaby' was an act of aggression.
He kept the drums high in the mix, making the kick and snare hit hard. He left the vocals raw, with the "breath" between lines, allowing the imperfections and cracks in his voice to be the focus. He didn't drown it in reverb. He wanted it to sound close, like a scream in the listener's face.
He exported the file. crybaby_final.mp3.
This time, there were no doubts. He knew exactly what he had to do.
He opened SoundCloud. Uploaded the file. For the cover, he didn't use a dark photo. He used simple white text on a black background, with a typewriter font: crybaby.
Then, he opened Twitter. The day before, he would have worried about what to say. Today, the cold rage he felt from the "loser" comment was still burning.
His fingers typed a message that wasn't a promotion. It was a declaration of war.
"They called me a crybaby. They told me my music was for losers. So I wrote their anthem. If you've ever felt like this, this is for you. Fuck everyone else."
He added the SoundCloud link. And tweeted.
He did the same on Instagram, posting the simple text cover with the same defiant caption.
He didn't stay to see the reactions. He didn't refresh the page.
He closed the laptop. He had thrown the grenade. Now he just had to wait for the world to hear the explosion.
He got up from the chair. He had to go to work.
Friday, August 28, 2015 (Night)
Chloe was in her room, in Ohio, the door closed, her only refuge against the world. She was drawing in her notebook, listening to 'Ghost Boy' on a loop. It was her song, her secret anthem of loneliness.
She saw the 'Sodium' video when it came out. She thought it was cool. The aesthetic was great, dark and grainy. But she didn't feel it. It was a song about being apathetic, and she didn't feel apathetic. She felt... too much.
Just when she was about to put 'Ghost Boy' back on for the umpteenth time, her phone vibrated on the bed.
It was a Twitter notification. @michaeldemiurge.
She leaned in to read it. It wasn't just a link. It was a message. A tweet.
"They called me a crybaby. They told me my music was for losers. So I wrote their anthem. If you've ever felt like this, this is for you. Fuck everyone else."
Chloe stared at the words. "Crybaby". "Losers".
Her heart started beating faster. Those were the words. The same words she heard in the hallways of her own school. "Emo". "Crybaby". "Weirdo".
She clicked the SoundCloud link. The cover was simple: crybaby.
She put on her headphones, turned up the volume until the outside world disappeared, and hit play.
The acoustic guitar started, melancholic, familiar. 'Okay, this is what I know.'
But then, the drums hit. It wasn't the soft beat of 'Ghost Boy'. It wasn't the narcotic rhythm of 'Sodium'. It was blunt. Aggressive.
And then, the voice.
It wasn't a whisper. It wasn't an apathetic mumble. It was... angry. His voice was tense, defiant, almost a growl.
'She said I'm a crybaby, I can't be up lately...'
'Girl, you drive me crazy, AMG Mercedes...'
Chloe felt a shiver. He was using the insult. He was throwing it back. And he was mixing it with superficial bragging, as if saying: "Yeah, I'm a crybaby, so what? I'm still cooler than you."
She listened to the lyrics, every word hitting her.
'Knowin' I hurt you, I don't deserve you...'
'I shoulda curved you, I know I'm the worst, boo...'
It was the same vulnerability as 'Star Shopping', the same guilt, but now it was wrapped in this hard new energy.
'But I could be cool too, and you got them dance moves...'
'And I got this vibe, I swear it's perfect to ride to...'
It was a contradiction. Sadness and arrogance. And then, the line that changed everything.
'I wanna die too, we all wanna die too...'
He didn't say it like a whispered secret, like in 'Ghost Boy'. He said it like a fact. Like a statement of a shared truth. The brotherhood of despair.
'I'll be inside, I'm makin' music to cry to...'
He admitted it. He turned it into his job. Into his power. It wasn't something to be ashamed of.
The chorus hit her with full force.
'Oh, it's a lonely world, I know...'
'Gon' get a lonely girl, that's fo' sho'...'
'Oh, I'm a lonely boy, she made a lonely boy, yeah, I know...'
This time, Chloe didn't hear it as a lament. She heard it as an accusation. As if Michael were pointing at the world and saying: "You did this to us. You made us the lonely kids."
The song ended. Chloe sat motionless.
Her cheeks were wet. She had been crying without realizing it. But she didn't feel sad. She didn't feel pathetic.
She felt... furious.
She felt angry.
She felt powerful.
Michael wasn't apologizing for being a "crybaby". He was turning it into a weapon.
He was telling her, and all the other "losers", that it was okay to feel this way. More than okay. It was a badge of honor.
The song wasn't a complaint; it was a fucking war cry.
[In Michael's vision, somewhere in California, the System interface flickered, registering a new metric he had never seen before: Impact (Empowerment). And the Impact Points generated by that single listen were triple the normal amount.]
Saturday, August 29, 2015 (Morning)
In Madrid, Victor woke up with the morning sun hitting his face. His head throbbed with a terrible hangover, the result of a bottle of cheap wine he had drunk alone the night before after a bad Skype call with Ana.
The fight had been the same as always. She cried, he got defensive. She asked him why he was so distant, and he didn't know what to tell her. The call had ended with her hanging up.
He sat on the bed, feeling like shit. Guilty, angry, and alone.
He grabbed his laptop, looking for a distraction, something to drown out the hum of his own self-pity. He opened SoundCloud. 'Star Shopping' was his anthem of loneliness, the song he played when he missed home.
He saw the notification. Michael Demiurge had uploaded a new track: crybaby.
'What a name,' he thought with a bitter smile. 'Just what I need.'
He pressed play, expecting another soft guitar ballad like 'Star Shopping'.
What he got was a punch. The acoustic guitar was there, but the drums were hard, aggressive. The beat pounded against his headache. And Michael's voice... it wasn't a whisper. It was tense, full of an energy he didn't recognize.
'She said I'm a crybaby, I can't be up lately...'
'Girl, you drive me crazy, AMG Mercedes...'
Victor frowned. It was... arrogant. But the arrogance was mixed with the same melancholy.
And then, the next lines hit him.
'Knowin' I hurt you, I don't deserve you...'
'I shoulda curved you, I know I'm the worst, boo...'
Victor sat still. The guilt from the night before, from making Ana cry, invaded him. It was his own confession. He was the worst. He felt like an idiot for leaving her alone, for chasing this dream in another country.
'But I could be cool too, and you got them dance moves...'
'And I got this vibe, I swear it's perfect to ride to...'
He felt the duality. The bad boy and the sad boy, all in one. He remembered the parties he had been going to, trying to forget, trying to be "cool".
'I wanna die too, we all wanna die too...'
The line shook him. The brutal honesty of admitting that, of saying it so casually...
'I got this vibe, I swear she love gettin' high too...'
'I love gettin' high too, I wanna hide you...'
'How did I find you? I'll be inside, I'm makin' music to cry to...'
It was the chaotic energy of his own relationship. He loved her, but they fought. He wanted to be alone, but he needed her. The music to cry to. It was exactly what he was doing.
The chorus summed it all up.
'Oh, it's a lonely world, I know...'
'Gon' get a lonely girl, that's fo' sho'...'
'Oh, I'm a lonely boy, she made a lonely boy, yeah, I know...'
For Victor, this was different. 'Star Shopping' was about pure longing, about distance. It was a clean song.
'crybaby' was... dirty. It was chaotic. It was the complexity of pain. It was guilt, rage, desire, and self-destruction, all mixed into a beat.
It wasn't the sadness of being alone. It was the sadness of being with someone and still feeling alone. Of knowing you're the one causing the problem.
It resonated with the most chaotic part of his life. It didn't make him feel better, like 'Star Shopping'. It made him feel... understood. It gave him permission to be the villain of his own story.
He "liked" the song. His hand was shaking a little. This kid, Michael, didn't just understand loneliness. He understood guilt. And that was much scarier.
Friday, August 28, 2015 (Night)
Michael finished his shift at the Burger Barn at ten o'clock at night. He was exhausted, his hands ached from the hot dishwasher water, and he smelled of grease. The tweet he had sent that morning felt like a lifetime ago.
He hadn't checked his phone all day. He was afraid of what he would find. He expected more insults, more people calling him a "loser".
He sat in his Corolla, engine off, in the deserted parking lot. Finally, he took out his phone.
The screen lit up with an avalanche of notifications that nearly crashed the device. Twitter, SoundCloud, Instagram... a flood.
His tweet, the one he had written with such rage, had become a war cry. It had been retweeted thousands of times.
The SoundCloud link was everywhere.
But it wasn't the fame that hit him. It was the comments. The world wasn't just listening. It was responding.
Point of View: Marcus (Austin, Texas)
Marcus was in the high school locker room, alone. It was 6 PM. He had just been cut from the football team. The coach had told him he "didn't have the killer instinct." He felt humiliated, weak.
He opened Twitter to distract himself. He saw Michael's tweet, whom he had been following since 'Sodium'. "They called me a crybaby... music for losers."
Marcus felt a pang of recognition.
He pressed play. The acoustic guitar started, sad. But then, the drums hit. It was aggressive.
And the voice:
'She said I'm a crybaby, I can't be up lately...'
Marcus stood still. The song mocked the very toxic masculinity that had just destroyed him. The coach, his father, his former teammates... they all saw him as a "crybaby" because he wasn't "tough" enough.
'Girl, you drive me crazy, AMG Mercedes...'
'Speedin' down the highway, lookin' at the street lights...'
He felt the desire to escape. Get into his dad's old truck and drive aimlessly.
'Geekin' on a Friday, I can never sleep right...'
It was him. Every Friday, while the team went partying, he stayed home, too anxious to sleep, feeling like a fraud.
'Knowin' I hurt you, I don't deserve you...'
'I shoulda curved you, I know I'm the worst, boo...'
He thought of his girlfriend, how he had pushed her away because he felt like shit.
'But I could be cool too, and you got them dance moves...'
'And I got this vibe, I swear it's perfect to ride to...'
A flash of confidence. 'Yeah. Fuck them. I am cool.'
'I wanna die too, we all wanna die too...'
The honesty of the line hit him. He had been in that dark place. And this artist, this Michael Demiurge guy, was saying it out loud.
'I got this vibe, I swear she love gettin' high too...'
'I love gettin' high too, I wanna hide you...'
'How did I find you? I'll be inside, I'm makin' music to cry to...'
The final chorus sealed it. "Oh, I'm a lonely boy, she made a lonely boy...".
Marcus realized it wasn't a love song. It was about the world making you feel like an outcast.
He got up from the bench. He didn't feel humiliated anymore. He felt angry. He felt validated.
He shared the song with a single comment: "For everyone told they weren't tough enough. Fuck you."
Point of View: Raven (Portland, Oregon)
Raven was in her room, drawing in her sketchbook. She had been listening to 'Ghost Boy' and 'Star Shopping' non-stop. They were the only songs that understood her sadness.
She saw the notification for 'crybaby'. She saw the tweet.
'Angry? Is Michael angry?'
She pressed play. The energy surprised her. She went through the first verse, feeling the same sad arrogance she loved about him.
'She said I'm a crybaby, I can't be up lately...'
'Girl, you drive me crazy, AMG Mercedes...'
'Speedin' down the highway, lookin' at the street lights...'
'Geekin' on a Friday, I can never sleep right...'
She understood that. The insomnia. The feeling of "geekin'", too deep in her own head.
'Knowin' I hurt you, I don't deserve you...'
'I shoulda curved you, I know I'm the worst, boo...'
She liked the self-awareness. The admission that he was broken too, that he made mistakes too.
'But I could be cool too, and you got them dance moves...'
'And I got this vibe, I swear it's perfect to ride to...'
But it was the other chorus, the darker one, that made her stop. The one that made her pencil fall from her hand.
'I wanna die too, we all wanna die too...'
A tear rolled down her cheek. Not from sadness. From relief.
He had said it. Someone had finally said it. Not as a cry for help, not as something to be ashamed of. He said it as a fact. As an acknowledgment of a dark truth that millions of people felt and no one dared to admit.
'We all wanna die too.' It was a dark camaraderie. The feeling of not being alone in her most nihilistic thoughts.
'I got this vibe, I swear she love gettin' high too...'
'I love gettin' high too, I wanna hide you...'
'How did I find you? I'll be inside, I'm makin' music to cry to...'
"Music to cry to". He was turning it into a genre. Into a movement. Into something to be proud of.
The main chorus returned.
'Oh, it's a lonely world, I know...'
'Gon' get a lonely girl, that's fo' sho'...'
'Oh, I'm a lonely boy, she made a lonely boy, yeah, I know...'
Raven closed her sketchbook. She opened her own SoundCloud and reposted the song. "This guy gets it. This is our anthem."
Point of View: Michael (Midnight)
Michael was still in his car, in the Burger Barn parking lot. He had driven home and was now sitting in his makeshift studio, watching the numbers climb in real-time.
crybaby - 1.2M plays.
He refreshed.
crybaby - 1.3M plays.
It was insane. It was faster than 'Sodium'. But it wasn't the views. It was the comments. They weren't "nice beat". They were confessions. They were testimonies.
"They called me a loser for crying when my dog died. Thank you for this."
"I'm literally listening to this on loop in my car, crying. Thought I was the only one."
"I WANNA DIE TOO. HE SAID IT. SOMEONE FINALLY SAID IT."
"It's not a song, it's a movement. #CrybabyGang"
Twitter notifications were hell. His tweet had been retweeted thousands of times.
He felt a surge of power so intense it scared him. He closed his eyes.
He summoned the System interface. He prepared himself for a few thousand IP.
Instead, he saw a deluge.
The interface was overloaded, almost glitching, numbers climbing so fast they were a blur.
[IMPACT ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
Source: 'crybaby' Release
Multiple Sources.
Resonance Level: Critical (Identity Anthem).
WARNING: MASSIVE RESONANCE DETECTED!!!
New Soul Connections detected: 124... 156... 219...
(The number was climbing endlessly)
Impact Points generated: +25,700 IP (And rising)
TOTAL BALANCE: 40,945 IP
Michael stared at the number, stunned. 25,000 Impact Points. In one day.
He realized that 'crybaby' wasn't just a song. It was a flag.
He had just called his army of outcasts. And they, from every corner of the world, had answered the war cry.