Rewind With A Superstar System-Chapter 76: Emote Consumer

<🎧 Song Recommendation: Secondhand by Don Toliver ft Rema>

...

"Whoa," Von whispered after the expensive beat finished.

Patch laughed heartily, spinning in his chair. "Yeah, I’m good with my stuff. I don’t touch a board unless I know I can make the speakers bleed. Now it’s up to you to deliver... You ready?"

Von nodded, shaking out his arms to loosen the tension in his shoulders. He walked toward the heavy glass door Patch was pointing to, the entrance to the isolation booth.

"It’s going in with you?" Patch looked at Loki, his eyebrows knitting together in a skeptical frown.

"She won’t make a sound," Von reassured him, stepping into the booth. "She’s... trained. Very calm."

He had originally planned to leave Loki in the control room to ensure his own concentration, but the Void Lynx had made her stance very clear via a telepathic image of her shredding his new leather jacket. She was coming.

Von closed the heavy door, sealing himself inside. The silence was instant. The acoustic foam on the walls sucked the air out of the room, leaving only the sound of his own breathing.

He approached the Neumann microphone stand, adjusting the height, and pulled the heavy headphones over his ears. Loki shifted her weight, gripping his shoulder with her claws just enough to stay steady, her violet eyes scanning the pop filter with curiosity.

"Can you hear me?" Patch’s voice came through the cans.

"Loud and clear," Von replied, leaning into the mic.

"Alright. We’re doing a scratch track first. Just get a feel for the new beat. Don’t overthink it. Give me a level check."

The beat dropped.

Humm...

Von closed his eyes. He let the rhythm wash over him. It was his song, so there was no need to look at a sheet.

The synth melody crept in, eerie and low. Von waited for the pocket, then began with the slow, melodic intro.

♪ You put the weight on my back... and I let you... ♪

His voice was calm. In the sterile silence of the booth, stripped of the screaming audience and the stage lights, he could hear every nuance. It was clearer than the live session. He played with the cadence, dragging out the vowels on the emotional lines, letting the rasp in his voice catch naturally.

Then came the switch-up. The beat accelerated and he began delivering the rap verses flawlessly.

As he finished the last verse, a sudden notification chimed in his peripheral vision.

[Passive Activated: Emotional Reasonance]

[Loki has absorbed excess ambient focus.]

[Resonance Bar: 1% / 100%]

Von blinked, looking at the cat on his shoulder. 1%?

He looked through the glass. In the control room, Emily was leaning forward staring intently at him. Patch had his eyes glued to the waveform monitor, analyzing the peaks and valleys of the audio.

<Concentration is a dry flavor, but it sustains me. Do it again. Make them feel something stronger. I want the spicy stuff.>

Von shook his head slightly, amused and bewildered. So she really did eat the vibe of the room.

"Okay, cut," Patch’s voice interrupted his thoughts. The music cut out.

Von looked through the glass. "How was it?"

Patch spun his chair around, pressing the talkback button. "Technically? It was clean. You hit the notes, your timing is good. But it’s... polite. You sound like a guy who’s annoyed, not a guy who just got robbed of a million dollars."

Patch paused, scratching his dreadlocks. "Your vocal range sits comfortably in the mid-tones. It’s not bad actually, for a rookie, it’s solid. We can work with this. We’ll layer it, add some reverb, maybe double-track the chorus to give it weight."

It was a professional way of saying: You’re good, but you’re not great.

Von frowned. "So it’s average."

"It’s industry standard," Patch corrected. "But if you want a hit we need more."

Von nodded slowly. He hadn’t used [Emote] when singing after all. He grabbed the bottle of water on the stool next to him and took a long swig. He looked at the microphone. He looked at his reflection in the glass.

He knew he had more in him. But his stats were the bottleneck. His [Vocals] were sitting at B-.

"Can I try again?" Von asked. "I think I can push it."

Patch raised an eyebrow. He had just heard the kid’s range. Physiology didn’t change in five minutes. But he shrugged. "Sure. Take five. Reset."

Von turned away from the glass, facing the back wall of the booth. He closed his eyes and spent his hard earned EXP.

Previously, he wasn’t sure if he should pump his [Charm] or save it for a rainy day. But standing here, in a real studio with a real producer, he realized that saving EXP was stupid. The song was the weapon. The weapon needed to be sharp.

[Vocals: B]

[EXP: 860]

"I’m ready," Von finally said, turning back to the mic.

Patch looked at him, surprised he was done so quickly. "You sure? You didn’t even rest."

"I don’t need rest," Von said, his voice sounding richer even in speech. "Run the track."

Patch shrugged and hit the spacebar.

Humm...

The intro started again.

This time, Von first used his [Emote] and [Reasonance] to portray the right emotion.

He poured the betrayal of the finale, the drive across the country, and the fear of the empty apartment into the mic.

♪ You put the weight on my back... AND I LET YOU... ♪

The difference was immediate. He hit the high note in the pre-chorus with a clarity that rang through the booth like a bell.

In the control room, Patch stopped looking at the screen. Emily, who had been checking her emails on her phone also gave him attention.

Von zoom transitioned into the rap verse, he managed to sing the whole piece masterfully than he had done in the previous take.

[System Pet: Loki]

[Resonance Bar: 3% / 100%]

Von opened his eyes, breathing hard. The booth felt smaller now, filled with the energy he had just released.

"How was that?" Von asked, wiping sweat from his forehead.

For a solid five seconds, nobody spoke.

Then, Patch pressed the talkback button. "What the hell did you just do?"

"I just tried better this time..."

Emily ignored Von’s lies and turned to Patch with a smug, triumphant smile spreading across her face. "I told you he’s special. The kid adapts."

Patch looked back at Von through the glass with newfound respect in his eyes. "He is indeed. That was... yeah. We’re working with this one. I hope this voice isn’t a one-time fluke, because you’re going to have to match that energy for the ad-libs." 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Von smiled, the lingering warmth of the upgrade still humming in his chest. "I’ll be fine. Let’s work."

***

For the next six hours, the glamour of the music industry evaporated. It was replaced by the grind.

Recording a hit song wasn’t just singing it once and going home. It was repetitive labor. Patch was a perfectionist, and now that he knew what Von was capable of, he refused to accept anything less than the standard he saw.

They stacked vocals, recording the same lines over and over to layer them, creating a chorus effect that sounded huge. They recorded whispers to sit in the background of the mix. They recorded shouts and grunts for texture.

Loki slept through most of it, occasionally waking up to critique or demand a snack, but mostly she sat on the top of the acoustic panel, absorbing the ambient frustration and determination in the room.

By 4:00 PM, Von’s voice was raspy and his legs were tired from standing, and his head was pounding.

"Alright," Patch announced, swiveling his chair around. "That’s a wrap."

He played back the rough mix. Even without the final mastering, it sounded massive. The layers of vocals created a wall of sound that hit hard.

"The bones are good," Patch nodded, rubbing his eyes. "I’ll clean up the frequencies, add the compression, and balance the levels. I should be done with the final master by the end of the week, hopefully. Friday morning at the latest."

"That’s fine by us," Emily said, standing up and stretching. She looked exhausted but happy. "Thanks for all your help, Patch. Seriously."

Patch laughed dryly. "No big deal. I should be thanking you for letting me produce this. Trust me, Emily... this song will be a banger. The industry needs this kind of grit right now."

Emily nodded with gleaming eyes. "We really hope so."

Von grabbed his water bottle, stepping out of the booth. He felt drained, but a good kind of drained. He remembered something and walked close to the massive mixing console, handing his phone to Emily.

"Hey, can you take a picture?" Von asked. "I should have done it earlier when I wasn’t sweating this way, but this is the reality."

Emily took the phone and Von went to sit on the edge of the console, the massive wall of buttons and knobs behind him. He didn’t smile. He looked at the camera with tired, intense eyes, one hand adjusting his leather jacket, with Loki perched on his shoulder.

Emily took a quick photo and handed the phone back. "You going to post it on your Photogram?"

"Yeah," Von said, looking at the photo. It was grainy, dark, and looked authentic. "I figured I’d try to build some hype before the drop."

"Smart move," Emily said, gathering her bag. "Tease the content. Make them wonder where you are."

***

The drive back to Queens was quieter than the morning trip.

"I’ll drop you off," Emily said, merging onto the highway. "Go home... rest your voice. Get enough sleep this time."

"I plan on sleeping for twelve hours," Von replied to the last sentence in particular.

"Not bad" Emily glanced at him with a laugh. "Because the hard part starts soon. Recording is easy. Making people care is the war. I’m going to spend the night contacting some groups, so we can go ahead with creating awareness as soon as possible."

When the van pulled up to the curb on Ditmars Boulevard, Von thanked her and hopped out.

He trudged up the stairs to apartment 2B. When he unlocked the door, he was greeted by a sight that made him groan and smile at the same time.

Three large cardboard boxes sat in the middle of the empty living room.

"Right," Von muttered. "Furniture."

He spent the next two hours wrestling with a memory foam mattress, shoving it into the bedroom and unrolling it until it puffed up into a usable shape. He assembled the simple black desk in the corner of the living room and sorted all the kitchen ware.

By 8:00 PM, the apartment was still sparse, but it had all G3 needed.

"Food," Von said aloud.

<Tuna> Loki’s voice echoed instantly from his wrist. She transformed back into her cat form, landing on the newly assembled desk.

<I require the fish!>

"I haven’t gone grocery shopping yet," Von apologized, pulling out his phone. "It’s pizza tonight, Loki. Deal with it."

<You are a terrible provider> Loki sniffed, but she didn’t argue.

Von ordered two large pepperoni pizzas for the two of them, and sat on the floor while he waited.

He opened Photogram.

His account, which had been dormant since the finale, was doing pretty well. He had gained 2,000 followers already, and his only post (the apology video) had racked up over 21,000 likes and thousands of comments already.

Strike while the iron is hot.

Von selected the photo Emily had taken in the studio. The lighting was moody, the mixing board illuminated in the background, and Von looked focused and gritty.

He typed the caption

Back at work. 😎 🔜 #music #new

Then he posted.