Chapter 4: Welcome, Creator
Michael remained motionless in the study chair. The world around him seemed to fade, everything reduced to the black glass window floating in the air in front of him, the neon cyan letters glowing in the room's darkness.
[WELCOME, CREATOR.]
His first thought was simple and direct.
'Okay, I've gone crazy. It's official.'
He closed his eyes tightly, counting to five. He rubbed them with his palms until he saw stars. When he opened them again, the window was still there, unchanged, silent.
With his heart pounding in his throat, he extended a trembling hand. He tried to touch it. His fingers passed through the image as if it were smoke, meeting no resistance at all. It was not an object. It was a projection.
Instinctively, he turned his head to look at the room's wall. The window disappeared. He looked back at the empty space in front of the computer monitor. The window instantly reappeared, exactly in the same place in his field of view.
'It's not in the room,' he realized, a chill running down his spine. 'It's... in my eyes. Or in my head.'
He forced his breathing to calm down. Panic would do him no good. He had to understand it. He began to examine the interface in more detail. It was elegant, minimalist. In the top left corner, he saw his name, but not his own.
User: Demiurge
'Demiurge?' he thought. He remembered the word from some philosophy book he had read. The creator of an imperfect world. A strange and ominous choice of name.
In the top right corner, he read:
Impact Points (IP): 0
And in the center, floating in space, were four simple icons, all glowing with the same cyan light: a spinning wheel, an open book, a storage box, and a question mark. The interface hummed with an almost inaudible sound, a pulse of energy he felt more than heard.
He decided to try something. He concentrated, focusing all his attention on the first icon, the spinning wheel. The icon glowed more intensely and he heard a soft digital chime in his head. He looked away, and the glow dimmed.
'Okay. That's how it works. Focus. Intention.'
He didn't dare to "press" anything yet. He leaned back in the chair, his mind racing a thousand miles an hour, trying to process the madness. He had lost his universe, his parents were dead, the music he loved didn't exist... and now this. A video game interface implanted in his brain.
The initial shock began to give way to a cold, analytical curiosity. He no longer felt like a victim. He felt like a scientist who had just discovered a new and terrifying law of physics.
He stared at the floating window, the reflection of the cyan light on his sunglasses. The fear was still there, an icy knot in his stomach. But beneath the fear, a new sensation was beginning to form. One he hadn't felt since waking up in this wrong world.
Purpose.
'Okay,' he thought, his internal voice was firm, determined. 'This is real. Now... what the hell does all this mean?'
...
Michael leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the floating interface. Curiosity overcame fear. He decided to explore. He focused on the question mark icon, the universal symbol for "help."
The icon glowed and the main screen faded, replaced by a wall of cyan text that scrolled slowly upward, like the credits of a movie. It was a silent tutorial. Michael began to read.
[POINT SYSTEM: The Demiurge System does not operate with money. Its only currency is Impact Points (IP).]
'Impact Points. Okay, like experience points in a game.'
[IP GENERATION: IP is generated based on plays, cultural repercussion, and the emotional impact of the music you create.]
Michael frowned. 'Emotional impact?'
[IMPACT FORMULA: Resonance is more valuable than reach. A significant comment from a fan can generate more IP than a thousand passive plays. The System analyzes the intent and emotion behind the human interaction with your art.]
A strange sensation ran through him. It wasn't just about going viral. It was about connecting. The System didn't want him to be famous; it wanted him to be important.
The text continued, moving to the next section.
[TIMELINE ANALYSIS (2B-G): Stagnation detected in the "Hip-Hop" music genre post-2010. Other genres have evolved, but Rap has stagnated in "Gangsta Rap" and "Fronting" themes. Key subgenres are missing for cultural evolution.]
Michael nodded slowly. It was exactly what he had discovered that same afternoon. The cultural void was not his imagination; it was a real anomaly that this... thing... had also detected.
[YOUR ROLE: You are a catalyst. Your knowledge of an alternate timeline allows you to introduce these lost concepts.]
'A catalyst,' he thought. He liked the word. He was not a chosen one, he was not a hero. He was an agent of change. A variable in the equation.
And then, the last and most important rule appeared. It was in red, gently blinking.
[WARNING: The System is a tool, not a master. It gives no missions. It will never force you to do anything. If you want, you can forget about the System forever and absolutely nothing would happen. The control is 100% yours.]
Michael read that last part three times. The knot of tension in his stomach loosened. He was not a prisoner. He was not bound to a destiny he had not chosen. He had a choice.
He could ignore this, proceed with his plan to learn programming, live a normal, solitary life in a world that was not his own.
Or he could accept this strange and crazy opportunity. He could take the pain, the loneliness, and the memories of a lost future and turn them into something. He could bring back the music he loved. He could fill the silence of this world with the songs that lived in his head.
The choice was obvious. It wasn't even a choice. For the first time in weeks, he felt a surge of purpose so strong it almost took his breath away.
He closed the help window with a thought. The main screen, with its four icons, reappeared. His gaze fell on the spinning wheel icon.
'Okay,' he thought, his internal voice was firm, decided. 'Let's see what you have for me.'
...
Michael took a deep breath. His gaze fixed on the spinning wheel icon. His heart pounded hard, a mix of fear and a strange, stimulating excitement. This was the first step.
As he concentrated on the icon, the world around him dimmed. The walls of his room, the monitor's glare, the clutter of his desk... everything dissolved into a soft black fog. He didn't feel fear; he felt... calm.
In front of him, a giant ring of cyan light materialized in the darkness. It spun slowly, silently. On its surface, words flickered and vanished, names of music genres passing before his eyes: 'PROGRESSIVE ROCK', 'K-POP', 'COUNTRY', 'HOUSE'. It was both beautiful and intimidating.
A new text appeared, floating inside the ring.
[WELCOME PACKAGE: To begin your journey, you will receive a package of at least 10 song guides. The theme of this package will be determined by a single spin on the Genre Roulette.]
'Only one spin,' Michael thought.
He concentrated all his intention, all his hope for a new beginning, on the wheel. He propelled it with his will.
The ring exploded into motion. It spun at a dizzying speed, the genre names blurring into a single, continuous band of light. Flashes of cyan burst in the darkness, and the only sound was a sharp digital hum in his head. He held his breath, his eyes glued to the vortex of possibilities.
Slowly, agonizingly, the wheel began to lose speed. He saw the word 'FUNK' pass by. Then, 'METAL'. He felt a strange sense of detachment, the certainty that he would accept whatever came up. It was his new destiny.
The wheel stopped. The flickering ceased. The hum faded into silence. And in the center of the ring, two phrases pulsed with a soft, melancholic light.
[SAD TRAP / EMO TRAP]
Michael stared at the words. He didn't feel surprised. He felt... recognized. Of all the infinite possibilities in the universe of music, the System had chosen the only one that perfectly described the broken landscape of his own heart.
A somber, conscious smile spread across his lips for the first time in weeks. 'Of course,' he thought. 'What else could it have been?'
...
The cyan light ring vanished, but the darkness did not return. Instead, ten bright rectangles materialized in front of Michael, floating in the air like holographic album covers. They were the guides for his Welcome Package.
His heart raced. He mentally approached them, reading the titles one by one.
Runaway - Kanye WestStar Shopping - Lil PeepGhost Girl - Lil PeepLife Is Beautiful - Lil Peepcrybaby - Lil Peepghost boy - Lil PeepI spoke to the devil in miami, he said everything would be fine - XXXTENTACIONlet's pretend we're numb - XXXTENTACIONSodium - BonesParis - SuicideboysDrugs You Should Try It - Travis ScottWhite Iverson - Post Malone
A wave of relief and familiarity washed over him as he saw the names. 'Peep... X... Bones... Travis Scott.' They were the architects of the sound that had just fallen to him, the pillars of a genre this world did not know.
'Okay,' he thought, a clear purpose forming in his mind for the first time. 'I understand this. I can work with this.'
But then, his gaze fell on one of the album covers. It shone with a different light from the others, not the melancholic blue, but with an intense, complex golden aura. The artist's name froze him. Kanye West. And the song title...
Runaway.
A chill ran down his spine. 'Why this one? It doesn't fit.'
As if reading his mind, a small text box appeared next to the glowing album cover.
[CLARIFICATION: Selecting a genre on the roulette only drastically increases the probability of songs of that style appearing. It does not guarantee exclusivity. High rarity anomalies may appear on any spin.]
Michael barely read the explanation. His mind was fixed on the song. The others were about sadness, loneliness, rage... feelings he knew intimately at that moment. They were a mirror.
But "Runaway"...
"Runaway" was different. It was a song about regret, about arrogance, about being a "douchebag" and knowing it. It was a public apology wrapped in a work of art.
'I can't do this,' he realized instantly. 'I haven't lived this. I haven't done anything I need to apologize for in this way.'
He stared at the complete list floating in front of him. The first nine songs were a map for his present, a toolkit to build his identity from scratch. They were his beginning.
The tenth was a map for a terrifying future. It was the soundtrack to the mistakes he hadn't yet made, to the person fame would inevitably turn him into. It was not a gift. It was a prophecy.
The interface slowly vanished, leaving Michael alone again in the darkness of his room. He stared at the list of the twelve songs he obtained, now burned into his memory. The initial excitement of having a plan had evaporated, replaced by a solemn weight.
His journey, he now understood, would not just be about recreating music. It would be about living the life necessary to, one day, earn the right to tell the story of his own downfall.