Let's get one thing straight.
My life wasn't a tragedy porn. A tragedy implies some grand fall from grace, a major flaw that undid a promising future. Mine was more of a lukewarm sitcom that got cancelled after half a pilot episode.
I was Silas, a twenty-one-year-old aspiring streamer whose digital footprint was smaller than a rat's ambition.
My channel, "SD Vlogs," had an incredible average viewership of three. One was my mom, who left the tab open but muted it. Another was a bot advertising sketchy cryptocurrency trading. The third was an actual human named 'Dih_SlayerX' who mostly just joined the chat to tell me my microphone sounded like I was broadcasting from inside an unfurnished bathroom.
But I never gave up because I wanted that sweet, sweet dopamine hit of a notification bell dinging on my computer. Instead, I had a studio apartment that smelled faintly of instant ramen and failed dreams.
My death was just as underwhelming as my life.
I decided to change the content strategies according to the mark. Vlogs weren't working since I wasn't the most handsome in my best, so I thought, "Hey, IRL cooking stream! People love watching incompetence in the kitchen, right?" I bought a toaster for five dollars from a sketchy store that looked like a front for a raccoon laundering scheme.
Slowly set up my pixelated webcam, promised my three viewers a "Toast-tacular Event," and plugged the thing in.
There was no dramatic speech at the beginning.
Just a buzzing sound that resembled an angry bee trapped in a tin can, followed by a flash of blue light that felt suspiciously like the universe punching me directly in the soul.
The last thing I saw was 'Dih_SlayerX' typing LMAO RIP GG in the chat.
Then, Boring darkness.
When I opened my eyes, I fully expected the dim light of a hospital waiting room, or maybe the fiery pits of Hell, because I illegally downloaded that one xxx movie back in 2011.
What came into my view was neither.
I was lying face down on a sidewalk that was vibrating.
It wasn't the rumble of a subway train, more like the entire place was shaking. The sidewalk was smooth, cold, and glowing with dim, shifting patterns of light.
I pushed myself up, my hands scraping against the weirdly made concrete, and took stock of my new reality.
"Okay, Silas," I muttered, my voice sounding strangely clear in the open air. "Definitely not my hometown. Definitely not the market store either."
I was on a street corner in a city that looked like someone had put ancient mythology and a cyberpunk fever dream into a blender and hit 'puree' on high speed.
The buildings were massive, with clean translucent glass that reflected a sky the colour of pale blue. There were also statues of creatures who knows what.
And the traffic.
Oh boy, the traffic.
About fifty feet above the ground, lanes of hot energy directed a flow of vehicles that defied physics.
Sleek, chrome chariots pulled by nothing but compressed air zipped past open-top cruisers that looked like flying jacuzzis navigated by bored-looking wizards.
I stumbled backwards, nearly colliding with a pedestrian. The guy was at least seven feet tall, with skin the colour of a stormy ocean and four arms.
'What the fuck?'
He was wearing an impeccably tailored suit. He gazed down at me with four black eyes, snorted in dismissal, and kept walking, tapping away on a floating holographic tablet.
A few yards away, a woman who looked suspiciously like a biblical angel, complete with three sets of wings made entirely of glowing golden fibre optics, was sipping an iced latte and yelling into a Bluetooth earpiece about stock options.
This wasn't medieval fantasy.
There were no mud huts, depressing peasants, and no smell of horse manure. The world was high-fantasy full of futuristic steroids.
It was so fucking awesome.
"Okay, deep breaths," I told myself, trying to slow a heart rate that was currently doing a dubstep remix in my chest.
I had no wallet, no phone, and was wearing the same sweatpants I died in. I was a level zero noob in a server running end-game content.
How does anyone survive here?
Are there jobs?
Do the four-armed guys need accountant?
I wandered dazed for what felt like an hour, dodging beings that looked like they walked right out of a D&D Monster Manual but dressed by Prada.
That's when it hit me. Even in a new universe, I was just background noise.
"It's just like home," I whined to an empty alleyway, leaning against a wall that was growing fungus.
"An amazing world happens around me, and nobody cares. If only I had my camera. Dih_SlayerX would lose his mind if he saw the Fibre-Optic Angel lady."
As if the universe was just waiting for me to utter that specific complaint, a sound cut through the noise of the city.
DING!
It echoed directly inside my skull. It was the exact, cheerful chime of a new follower notification.
A blue rectangular screen appeared right in front of my face. I waved my hand through it but could not touch or feel it.
Text began to scroll across it in a neat, office font.
[Welcome to the Multiversal Live Platform, User Silas.]
[Initialisation Complete. Binding Soul to Hardware...]
[Hardware Acquired: The Omniscient Lens.]
I blinked.
"The what now?"
Before I could finish the question, a small sphere, about the size of a baseball, formed out of thin air in front of me.
It was matte black with a single, glowing blue lens in the centre. It floated silently at eye level, bobbing gently.
I took a step left.
The sphere mirrored me perfectly.
The blue screen flashed again.
[System Goal: Become the Apex Content Creator.]
[Current Status: Offline. Viewers: 0]
[Unique Trait Unlocked: 'Clout Forming' - You gain Experience and Skills solely through Viewer Donations and Engagement. The bigger the spectacle, the bigger the rewards.]
[Would you like to start your first stream?]