The notification sound made Kai Nakamura's heart sink.
*StreamKing_Kai is now live to 47 viewers*
Forty-seven. After three years of grinding, of perfecting his setup, of staying up until 3 AM playing the latest releases, he'd peaked at forty-seven concurrent viewers. His subscriber count had been stuck at 2,847 for six months.
"What's up, chat!" Kai forced enthusiasm into his voice as he adjusted his webcam. The familiar faces trickled into the chat—RegularViewer22, GameGirl_Sarah, NoobDestroyer. His core audience. The same twenty people who actually engaged while the rest lurked in silence.
*RegularViewer22: yo kai! ready to get destroyed in ranked again?*
*GameGirl_Sarah: lol viewer count looking rough today*
*NoobDestroyer: bro just switch to react content like everyone else*
Kai's smile twitched. React content. The death of creativity, where "streamers" made millions watching other people's work while adding nothing of value. He'd rather quit than become another mindless face in a thumbnail.
"Nah, we're doing something different tonight," Kai said, clicking into a new indie horror game. "Found this hidden gem that nobody's played yet. Chat, we're going to be pioneers—"
His viewer count dropped to 41.
Then 38.
Then 34.
"Okay, okay, I get it," Kai muttered, minimizing the horror game. "Fine. Let's do some Apex. Maybe we'll hit Masters today and actually get some clips worth—"
A knock at his apartment door interrupted him mid-sentence.
Kai frowned. It was 11 PM on a Tuesday. His building's front door was locked after 9, and he hadn't ordered food. The knock came again—three slow, deliberate raps that somehow seemed to echo longer than they should.
"Chat, hold on a second. Someone's at my door." He muted his mic and got up, leaving the stream running. Through the peephole, he saw a woman in her thirties wearing an expensive-looking dark coat. She had silver-white hair that seemed to shimmer under the hallway's fluorescent lights and was carrying a large black case.
"Can I help you?" Kai called through the door.
"You're StreamKing_Kai, correct?" Her voice was smooth, with an accent he couldn't place. "I have equipment you need."
Kai's hand paused on the deadbolt. This had to be some kind of scam. Nobody just showed up at streamers' apartments selling gear. "I didn't order anything."
"You didn't order it, but you need it." There was something in her voice—not threatening, but absolutely certain. "Your current setup has reached its limit. You want to grow, don't you? To break free from your... constraints?"
Through the peephole, she tilted her head slightly, and for a moment, her eyes seemed to reflect light like a cat's. Kai blinked, and they looked normal again.
Against his better judgment, he unlocked the door but kept the chain latch engaged, opening it just a crack.
"I'm Lyra," the woman said, offering a business card through the gap. The card was pure black with silver text that seemed to shift when he looked at it directly. No company name, no address, just her name and a single line: *Multidimensional Equipment Specialist*.
"Look, lady, I appreciate the sales pitch, but I'm broke. Student loans, rent, the whole thing. Whatever you're selling, I can't afford it."
Lyra smiled, and Kai could swear her teeth were too sharp. "Payment isn't always monetary, Mr. Nakamura. What I offer is potential. The chance to reach audiences you never dreamed possible."
"Audiences? What, you've got some secret algorithm hack?" Kai almost laughed. "Trust me, I've tried everything. The platform doesn't want small creators to succeed."
"Platforms," she said, emphasizing the plural, "are more varied than you know. Tell me, have you ever wondered what viewers in other... realities... might think of your content?"
The word 'realities' hung in the air strangely, like it carried weight Kai couldn't understand. Behind him, he heard his chat getting restless—donations sounds and notification pings. His viewers were waiting.
"This is crazy," he muttered, but found himself undoing the chain latch. "Five minutes. Show me what you've got, then I'm calling security."
Lyra's smile widened as she stepped into his cramped apartment. Her eyes swept over his modest streaming setup—the decent but aging gaming PC, the mid-tier webcam, the basic lighting rig he'd built himself from hardware store parts.
"Functional, but limited," she observed, setting her black case on his coffee table. "You've optimized for your current platform, but what if I told you there are infinite platforms? Infinite audiences hungry for fresh content?"
She opened the case with a soft *click*, and Kai's breath caught.
Inside, nestled in custom foam, was equipment unlike anything he'd ever seen. The central piece looked like a hybrid between a high-end streaming deck and something from a sci-fi movie. Its surface was black metal with veins of what looked like liquid starlight running through it. Multiple screens and input ports surrounded a central interface that seemed to pulse with its own inner light.
"The Nexus Stream Controller," Lyra announced, running her fingers along its edge. "Capable of broadcasting to infinite realities simultaneously. Your current viewers are just the beginning."
"That's..." Kai leaned closer despite himself. The device was beautiful in a way that made his streaming setup look like toys. "How much?"
"For you? One payment of exactly what you have in your savings account."
Kai froze. He'd never told anyone his exact savings balance. Hell, he tried not to think about it himself—$847 after paying rent this month. Barely enough to survive until his next freelance web design gig came through.
"How did you—"
"The Nexus reads potential, Mr. Nakamura. It sees what you could become with the right... audience." She gestured to his monitor, where his chat was exploding with messages he couldn't read from this angle. "Your current viewers are loyal, but limited. Imagine broadcasting to civilizations across the cosmos. To beings who have never seen content like yours."
"This is insane." But Kai's hands were already reaching for his wallet. Something about the device called to him, promised things he couldn't name. "Equipment like this should cost thousands. Tens of thousands."
"The price isn't the money," Lyra said softly. "The price is accepting responsibility for what comes next. Some streamers handle multiversal audiences well. Others..." She shrugged elegantly. "Others lose themselves in the infinite possibilities."
"Multiversal?" Kai's laugh sounded forced even to himself. "Come on. Multiverse is just comic book stuff."
Lyra pressed something on the side of the device, and suddenly Kai's monitor flickered. For just a moment, his chat looked different. The usernames were strange—symbols he'd never seen, languages that hurt his eyes to look at. And the viewer count... it showed numbers that couldn't be right.
*Current viewers: 847,293,841*
He blinked, and everything was normal again. Chat looked the same, viewer count back to a depressing 31.
"A preview," Lyra said, closing the case again. "Your choice, Mr. Nakamura. Stay small and safe, or take the first step toward something magnificent and terrible."
Kai stared at the case. In the back of his mind, a voice screamed that this was crazy, that normal people didn't buy mysterious equipment from strange women who appeared at their doors. But that voice was drowned out by three years of frustration, of watching talentless creators blow up while he remained invisible.
"If I don't like it, can I return it?"
Lyra's smile was answer enough.
Twenty minutes later, his bank account was empty and the Nexus Stream Controller sat connected to his setup. Lyra had vanished as mysteriously as she'd appeared, leaving only a business card that felt warm to the touch.
Kai stared at the new interface that had appeared on his secondary monitor. It looked like his normal streaming software, but there were options that made no sense: *Reality Filter*, *Dimensional Bandwidth*, *Audience Scope*.
His regular chat was getting impatient:
*RegularViewer22: dude what happened? you went afk for like 30 mins*
*GameGirl_Sarah: weird flex buying new equipment when your viewer count is dying*
*NoobDestroyer: just start the game already*
Kai took a deep breath and reached for the Nexus controller. At its center was a button labeled simply: *EXPAND*.
"Alright chat," he said, his finger hovering over the button. "Let's see what this thing can do."
He pressed it.
The world exploded.
***
Note that this is not just a fanfic but a prep to my own novel, if things go well and I reach a reasonable amount to chapters and supporters then I'll create the main novel itself!
The idea was all gotten from my own novel creation, thank you and enjoy!