Chapter 52: The Sound of Waves
Friday, December 11, 2015
On Friday morning, Michael woke up feeling... good. The hype for 'Drugs You Should Try It' had stabilized. It had become the background song of the underground scene.
He had spent the last week in his studio, working on the beats for 'Jocelyn Flores' and 'Look At Me!'. He was making progress, but he felt exhausted. The darkness of those songs was draining.
His phone vibrated. It was a text message from Jake.
Jake: Sunny day. Last day before finals. We deserve it. Beach. Now.
Michael looked out the window. The California sky was a brilliant blue, cloudless. A mockery of winter.
'He's right. I deserve it.'
He wrote a group message to Leo, Sam, and Nate. "Jake wants to go to the beach. Picking you up in twenty."
An hour later, his gray Corolla was bursting at the seams.
Jake was in the passenger seat, windows down, controlling the music (blasting 'White Iverson', to Michael's embarrassment).
In the back seat, Sam, Nate, and Leo were squeezed shoulder to shoulder. Sam was in the middle, complaining that Nate's shoulder was crushing his ribs. Leo was looking out the window, sketchbook in his lap, probably drawing blurry urban landscapes.
They arrived at Santa Monica. The beach wasn't full, it was a Friday in December, but there were enough people enjoying the unusually warm day.
They found a spot on the sand, away from the families and tourists. They threw down their towels. Jake immediately took out a volleyball. Sam took out his 3DS. Leo opened his notebook. Nate simply stood there, staring at the ocean.
Michael took off his hoodie, staying in a t-shirt and shorts. It was one of the few moments he allowed himself to be in the sun.
The atmosphere was relaxed. It was a relaxation day. After weeks of intense work, the Ethereum anxiety, and the stress of the hype, this was exactly what he needed.
They settled on the sand. Leo spread his towel with almost surgical precision, sat down, and immediately took out his sketchbook. Nate, as expected, simply stood with his arms crossed, watching the ocean horizon.
Sam took out his 3DS and sat down, mumbling about "catching a rare Pokémon". Jake, for his part, opened a backpack, pulled out a beer he had hidden under a sweatshirt, and took a long swig.
"Ahhh. This is the life," Jake said, wiping his mouth. He leaned back on the sand, enjoying the sun.
Michael sat next to him, opening a can of soda. For a moment, everything was calm. The only sound was the waves crashing and the click-click-click of Sam's 3DS buttons.
The silence lasted about five minutes. Then, Jake sat up abruptly, as if he had just remembered something.
"Shit! I almost forgot!" he said, fumbling in his shorts pocket.
He took out his phone. Michael watched him, an ironic smile forming on his face. He knew exactly what Jake was going to do. The tic.
"What's up?" asked Michael, feigning ignorance.
"The thing, dude. Our... 'investment'!" said Jake, opening the Coinbase app. His eyes went wide. "Hell yeah!"
Sam looked up from his game. "Did it go up?"
"It went up! We're at almost a dollar a coin!" Jake said, his voice a mix of excitement and panic. "I did the math this morning. We are almost... we have a 20% return on Ethereum."
Sam dropped his 3DS on the sand. "Wait, seriously? My $150 investment... is now worth $180? Thirty dollars! I'm rich!"
"Calm down," Leo muttered, without looking up from his drawing. "That's enough for a large pizza."
"It's not that, Leo!" said Jake, his energy manic. "It's that it works! Mike was right! It's free money!"
Jake ran a hand through his hair, his smile disappearing, replaced by a seriousness Michael rarely saw in him. "But, dude... this shit is driving me crazy. I'm obsessed with checking it daily to see how it goes up and down."
"I check it when I wake up," continued Jake, almost like a confession. "I check it in English class. I check it in the bathroom. Yesterday it dropped five cents and I almost had a heart attack. Literally. I thought, 'There went my five thousand dollars'."
He turned to Michael, his eyes seeking validation. "He asks Michael if he is the same. Do you do that, Mike? Or are you the only calm one here?"
Michael felt the three of them looking at him. He thought of the nights he woke up at 3 a.m., bathed in cold sweat, heart pounding, fearing the Ethereum network had collapsed. He thought about how he refreshed the chart every fifteen minutes, every time his mind had a free second.
Jake's stress was over a thousand dollars. Michael's was over almost half a billion.
Michael let out a laugh.
It was a genuine laugh, not of mockery, but of deep and ironic empathy.
"Yeah," said Michael, laughing. "It's the same for me."
Jake seemed immensely relieved. "Thank God! I thought I was the only one."
"You're not alone," said Michael, taking a sip of his soda. He lied with an ease that scared him. "Every time before sleeping and when I wake up, I always check the Ethereum price. It's the first and last thing I do every day. It's addictive."
"Totally," said Jake, finally relaxing. "Well, as long as it keeps going up, I guess it's fine."
Michael nodded, but his smile faded. He turned his gaze back to the ocean. The tide was rising.
'Yeah,' he thought. 'As long as it keeps going up.'
The casual conversation had touched his most exposed nerve. The doubt of his "What if..." was still there. It was always there.
The conversation about Ethereum faded, leaving a brief silence. The shared anxiety over digital money was too heavy for a beach day.
Jake, sensing the mood shift, shrugged. "Well, screw that. We can't do anything about it. Sam! Stop playing with your little machine and come socialize."
Sam looked up from his 3DS, his eyes blinking in the bright sun. "I am socializing... I'm trading Pokémon with a guy in Japan."
"That's not socializing!" laughed Jake.
The conversation shifted to lighter topics, trivial things like school (which everyone except Jake now openly despised) and, inevitably, video games.
"Seriously," said Sam, now putting away his 3DS. "I know everyone is excited for Fallout 4, but I'm more interested in what happened to Kojima."
Leo looked up from his sketchbook. "Oh, God. This again?"
"No, listen to me!" insisted Sam. "I read an article. Konami fired him. And they kept the Metal Gear name!"
"It's a tragedy," said Michael, joining in, happy to be on familiar territory.
"Exactly!" said Sam, validated. "And they joke about Metal Gear V... I read on a developer forum that they spent more budget scanning feet so the dirt texture would be realistic than on the rest of the game. Feet! That's why the story feels so incomplete!"
Michael and Jake burst out laughing. Nate even let out a small smile.
"It's an artist's vision, Sam," said Leo, his pencil moving quickly. "You wouldn't understand the commitment to realism."
"It's stupid!" said Sam. "I want a good story, not photorealistic feet!"
They talked and joked about that for a while. It was an easy, comfortable conversation. Michael felt, for a moment, like a normal teenager. A kid hanging out with his friends, talking about nothing.
The laughter died down, and a comfortable silence settled again, just the sound of the waves.
It was Leo who broke it, his voice more serious than usual. He didn't look up from his notebook.
"Hey, Mike..." he said casually. "Are you okay?"
Michael turned to him. "What do you mean? Sure."
Leo finally stopped drawing and stared at him. His cynical eyes were now serious. "Seriously. Most of your music is... fucking sad. 'Ghost Boy', 'Star Shopping', 'Life Is Beautiful', even 'crybaby'... they aren't exactly happy songs, dude."
There was an awkward silence.
Sam stopped playing. Jake stopped drinking. Nate, who was watching the ocean, turned to look at Michael.
Michael felt all eyes on him. He felt exposed.
He shrugged, averting his gaze to the ocean. "I'm fine," he said.
He paused, realizing that answer wasn't enough for them anymore. They were his friends.
"It's just that..." he sighed. "I'm still... processing my parents' death. It takes a toll, you know."
It was the first time he had admitted it out loud to them. The first time he admitted something was wrong.
The group remained silent, not knowing what to say. The raw honesty of the statement took them by surprise.
It was Jake who, as always, couldn't stand the tension. He jumped up, clapping his hands to shake the sand off his shorts.
"Alright!" he shouted, his voice too loud. "Enough sad talk! This is the beach, not therapy! I propose we play volleyball! I brought a ball!"
He pointed at Michael, Sam, and Leo. "You guys, the weirdos." Then he pointed at himself and Nate. "Us, the athletes. Losers versus winners. Let's go!"
Michael looked at Jake, grateful for the interruption. The tension had broken.
"You're going down, Jake," said Michael, standing up.
They accepted.
The serious conversation was over. For now, the sound of the waves and a stupid game were enough.
The sun was beginning to set, painting the sky orange and purple. The volleyball match had ended with Jake and Nate winning, much to Sam's dismay, who blamed the sand.
They were exhausted, covered in sand and sweat, walking back toward Michael's Corolla, which was parked several streets away.
The atmosphere was relaxed. Jake was bragging about his victory. Leo was complaining that sand had gotten into his sketchbook.
Michael felt good. It had been a perfect day. A normal day.
As they walked, Nate, who had been quiet but checking his phone, suddenly frowned. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.
"Hey, Mike," he said, his deep voice more serious than usual. "Have you seen this?"
Michael stopped, his good mood fading a little. "See what?"
Nate showed him his phone. On Twitter, Instagram, and in the comments of his songs on YouTube and SoundCloud, there was a new wave of activity.
But they weren't fans.
Nate showed him a tweet from a known underground rapper from Los Angeles.
"This kid Michael Demiurge thinks he's king because he has a couple of viral videos. His music is trash for sad teenagers. He's not from the streets. He doesn't sing gangsta rap. He's a fake."
Leo leaned in to read it over Nate's shoulder. "Wow, what an idiot."
Nate kept scrolling, showing more. Entire threads on Reddit and comments on YouTube.
"Why is this guy famous? He doesn't talk about anything real!"
"He doesn't front as much as them [other rappers]. He's weak."
"Sounds like a white suburban kid complaining. This isn't hip-hop."
There were a lot of people attacking him. The old guard of hip-hop, the gangsta rap purists, had noticed his existence. And they didn't like it. They saw his success, his different sound, as a threat to their culture.
Sam read the comments and got defensive. "These guys are idiots! They don't understand your music, Mike! They're jealous!"
Jake nodded. "Screw them, dude. They're just haters."
Michael stared at the comments on Nate's phone. The attack was vicious. "Fake". "Weak". "Not real".
He watched his friends preparing to defend him, ready for an online fight.
But Michael, to his surprise, didn't feel rage. He didn't even feel hurt. He simply... looked up from the phone, looked at the sunset over the ocean. And shrugged.
Sam was furious. He grabbed Nate's phone and started reading the comments, his voice rising in pitch with every word.
"These guys are idiots! 'Not real'? What the fuck does that mean? Your music is more real than anything on the radio! They're just jealous!"
"Seriously, Mike," said Jake, his usual party energy replaced by genuine indignation. "Fuck these old guys. They're jealous because a 16-year-old kid is making more noise than them. It's pathetic."
Leo, for his part, just watched Michael, waiting for his reaction.
Michael listened to their defense. A few months ago, those comments would have hurt him. They would have made him doubt himself, they would have angered him.
But now...
He stared at the hate thread on Nate's phone. The words "fake", "weak", "not from the streets" seemed small and insignificant.
He looked up from the phone screen and looked at the sunset. The sky was an explosion of orange and purple over the Pacific.
He thought of his 437,500 ETH, sitting silently, accumulating value every day. He thought of his Impact Points balance, hovering around 100,000. He thought of his plan for the roulette. He thought of the house he had sold, of the lawyer who now worked for him.
And then, he looked at the comments again.
And he burst out laughing.
It wasn't a bitter or hurt laugh. It was a genuine, amused laugh that took his friends by surprise.
"What?" asked Sam, confused by the reaction. "Why are you laughing?"
Michael shook his head, still smiling, and handed the phone back to Nate. "I really don't care about those comments."
"What do you mean you don't?" said Jake, incredulous. "They're attacking you, brother."
"I know," said Michael, shrugging as he started walking toward his Corolla. "It's just that... I find them ridiculous. It's stupid. Why spend so much energy hating something?"
He opened the driver's door. "It's music. If you don't like something, just don't listen to it. Or block me. It's that simple."
He stopped, leaning on the roof of the car. "They're complaining that I'm not from the streets and that I don't sing gangsta rap. They're right. I'm not. I never said I was. They're mad at me for not being the person they want me to be."
He paused, his tone becoming more analytical, almost like he was diagnosing a problem. "They seem like 5-year-olds. But at least children are children, and not frustrated people who feel threatened because someone is doing something new."
He looked at his friends, who were watching him as if he had just said the wisest thing in the world.
"Seriously," he said, his smile softening. "Don't worry. It's not worth it."
To prove his point, he took out his own phone. Not to reply to the haters. That would be giving them what they wanted. Instead, he opened Instagram.
"Everyone, come closer," he said.
Jake, Leo, Sam, and Nate huddled around him. Michael held the phone high, capturing a selfie of the five of them. They were sweaty, covered in sand, with the setting sun exploding in the background. They looked like a 90s rock band.
He posted the photo on Instagram.
The caption was simple and direct. A message not for the haters, but for his fans.
"Enjoying the beach with friends. More music coming soon. ⏳"
He put the phone in his pocket. "No drama. Now, who's hungry?"
They got into the Corolla. The car smelled of sand, sunscreen, and sweat.
"Hey, Mike," said Jake, taking the aux cord. "Music for the ride home?"
Michael started the engine. "Play whatever you want."
Jake smiled and played 'White Iverson' at full volume.
The windows went down.
Michael drove, the beat of his own song playing as they drove away from the beach, leaving the haters and their irrelevant comments behind, disappearing in the rearview mirror.