The lens was greasy.
Miles wiped his thumb across it, leaving a smear of sweat and dead skin behind, and opened the camera app.
There he was — pale, twitching, the ugly yellow bulb overhead making him look sick.
Not like a guy whose life was about to change.
Like someone waiting for something to happen to him.
The blue text pulsed at the edge of his sight.
EMOTIONAL VULNERABILITY = +250% ENGAGEMENT
“Okay.” His voice cracked on the word.
He hit record.
00:01.
00:02.
The red timer started climbing and he stared into the tiny black dot of the camera, chest tight, breath stalling somewhere around 80% full no matter how hard he pulled it in.
He needed to cry.
How did people even do that on command?
He thought about his bank account — $4.12.
He thought about his aunt sending him a heart emoji under a video she probably didn’t understand.
He thought about being nineteen and knowing exactly what the floor of a cheap apartment smelled like after you’d spent weeks staring at it.
Something hot and metallic hit the back of his throat.
He forced a breath through his teeth and pressed his fingers into his forehead — skin greasy, hot under his own hands.
“I don’t…
I don’t even know what to say, man.” Small.
Broken.
“I’ve been in this room for six hours.
Just tweaking the 808s.
Eating garbage.
My hands are shaking, look —” He held up his right hand and it really was shaking, fingers going like a plucked string, no acting required at that point.
“I put everything into this track.
Everything.”
A laugh came out of him that was really more of a cough.
He squeezed his eyes shut and felt one tear cut a clean line through the dust on his cheek.
“And you guys are actually listening.
I can’t—”
He cut the video there.
The phone was hot in his palm, his heart going too fast, some manic hum underneath it that didn’t feel like fear so much as too much caffeine at 3 a.m.
He uploaded it straight to the platform.
The system flashed purple.
QUEST COMPLETE.
ENGAGEMENT MULTIPLIER APPLIED: 3.5x
The phone didn’t buzz so much as convulse — rattling against his knuckles hard enough that it nearly jumped out of his hand.
Notifications stopped sliding down the screen and started jamming into each other, a wall of glitching text.
User4492: Bro is crying omgg
Aesthetic_Sounds: This is real art right here
Diyat_x: Miles??
Tell me this is a joke
Just_Dami: I knew you had it in you babe!!
He didn’t read past the first two names.
His eyes were already locked on the corner of the screen where a number was rolling over like a car odometer.
$42.10.
$118.55.
$390.20.
The room felt thicker suddenly — dried ramen broth, unwashed laundry, the sharp tang of his own sweat, all of it pressing in at once.
He stood up too fast, the bad wheel on his chair shrieking against the floor, and staggered back into the wall, right against the water stain shaped like a weeping face.
$712.00.
Seven hundred and twelve dollars.
He let a breath out and it tasted like bile going the wrong way.
His hands were still calloused from the tile work — cement dust ground into his nails that never fully scrubbed out.
That had been the plan.
Grout and a trade certificate.
Not this.
The blue interface shifted.
LEVEL UP: CREATOR v1.1
Trend Prediction: ONLINE (Cooldown: 24h)
Skill Amplification: HIGH
Influence Meter: RISING
NEW DIRECTIVES AVAILABLE.
SELECT ONE:
Two paths lit up.
One red, one blue.
RED: Pick a fight with someone bigger than you.
Let the internet watch you bleed.
BLUE: Cut the dead weight.
Friends who don’t move the needle are just anchors.
The red one pulsed faster, like the system had a preference and wasn’t hiding it.
Miles stared at the text, the glow washing everything in that sick blue — the crusty rim of his ramen cup, the peeling foam on his cheap headphones.
His screen lit up.
A call.
Just Dami.
The phone buzzed against the desk, hard plastic on wood, and his thumb hung in the air over it.
If he picked up, he was just Miles again — the guy with the broken chair, the guy whose laptop hinge flickered green when you moved it wrong.
If he let it ring out, the meter kept climbing.
The refrigerator hummed somewhere behind him.
He could hear his own breathing over it.
The system screen blinked red.
CHOOSE WITHIN 60 SECONDS OR SYSTEM WILL DEFAULT TO HIGHEST PROFIT MARGIN.
00:59.
00:58.
His hand moved toward the phone.
His fingers brushed warm glass.
00:52.
It kept rattling.
Just Dami, in white block letters — she’d have seen the crying video by now, would want to know if he was actually losing it.
If he answered, she’d talk him down.
Tell him to take a walk, switch off the laptop, come back to the world where he owed rent and his equipment was falling apart and he was just another nineteen-year-old trying to make it to the next month.
00:41.
His jaw tightened.
SYSTEM WILL DEFAULT TO HIGHEST PROFIT MARGIN IN 35 SECONDS.
He didn’t swipe to answer.
He pressed the power button down instead, held it, and watched the screen go black.
The buzzing cut off mid-ring.
Nothing left but the fridge.
He set the phone back on the desk.
DIRECTIVE COMPLIED.
USER CHOSE REGISTRATION OF OPTION B: THE SACRIFICE.
Processing connection severed: Just_Dami.
Branding Index updated: +15% reach multiplier applied.
Something cold moved down his spine, like an ice cube dragged slow along the back of his neck.
His hands had gone still.
His heart wasn’t calm exactly — it was more like a switch flipped off to save power somewhere he couldn’t see.
On the laptop, the SoundCloud page refreshed itself.
2,405 plays.
The number wasn’t climbing anymore — it was jumping.
A new notification.
An email.
Subject: Direct Message Inquiry – Licensing / Exclusive Rights
From: VertexAudio_Management
Miles, saw the reaction clip.
The emotional weight behind the track is hitting the right demographics.
We want to discuss buying the exclusive rights to the master file of this beat.
We’re prepared to offer an upfront advance of $1,500.
One thousand five hundred dollars.
He stared at the zeroes until his mouth went dry, doing the math without meaning to — over two million naira, more money than he’d ever seen in one place, enough to cover rent for a year, fix his equipment, take care of the people who mattered.
He reached for the phone to turn it back on.
To call his aunt.
To tell her it was finally going to be okay.
Before he touched it, a sharp beep sounded — not in the room, inside his own skull.
The blue interface swallowed the laptop screen whole.
WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED EXTERNAL NEGOTIATION DETECTED.
The Creator System retains 100% intellectual property rights of all amplified content.
Accepting outside contracts will violate terms of service.
CURRENT LIQUID BALANCE: $1,104.32
SYSTEM DEMAND:
Reject the VertexAudio offer publicly on your social feed.
Accuse their A&R representative of attempting to exploit independent creators.
Expected engagement yield: +600%.
PENALTY FOR COMPLIANCE FAILURE:
Immediate revocation of Skill Amplification.
Production level will revert to baseline (40/100).
Miles froze, his hand hanging inches above the dead phone.
The system wasn’t a tool.
It was a partner that didn’t know how to share.
Take the guaranteed fifteen hundred, and he went back to being a mediocre producer with a busted laptop.
Stay with the system, and he had to torch a bridge with a major label before he’d even gotten a foot in the door.
The laptop screen flickered green, casting a sickly tint over the email still sitting open.