CHAPTER 7 – Workin’ for a Livin’ (2)

Three days later, she was back in the leaden silence of the room within a room.

Inches from her pampered lips sat a vintage Telefunken ELAM 251 from Mueller’s private collection, wrapped in a spider-web shock mount. To prevent her from kissing the ionised grill, a circular mesh sat between her and the phallic cylinder, ready to catch any stray plosives. Below the mount, a pair of fresh MDR-7506s awaited her eager ears.

Prior to her second session, Yaleena Cass had taken her to a private studio downtown where she tutored girls for three-figure sums per hour, tuning Eppie’s voice until she was satisfied.

“You have incredible natural potential,” the Voice Coach had informed her. “You have somehow completed every request without me asking twice. I do not understand how this is possible, and I am not going to question it.”

“That said,” Yaleena had also taken her aside, honey-lemon tea in hand, and confided something that Eppie already knew. “There are many, many talented singers in Sony, and more outside of it. From the stars I’ve coached, you won’t even make the top fifty, but remember, you are young. Most have tapped their potential, but you… I don’t know. Maybe that’s what Director Curon was hearing.”

Eppie could only be impressed. She had only known Yaleena for a few days, and the woman was already realising her talent could be “levelled up”.

With Yaleena’s help, Eppie had also spent the last few days drawing up sheet scores as a gift for her deck pilot. They were crude, imprecise, at the level of a high-school enthusiast recalling tunes from memory, but they were legitimate. Her lack of knowledge limited her transcription, but Mueller said he would create something just as authentic, just as moving.

For now, however, none of that mattered.

All she could do was show Mueller the way.

The headphones were heavy, more so with the thick, braided cord. She watched her tiny hands lift the cups out of her field of view, sliding them over her hair and onto her ears, making an already silent room even quieter.

Click-click—click—

The metal adjusters sounded like thunder.

“Check sound.” Mueller’s voice really did sound like an airline pilot’s mid-journey spiel. “Scale, please.”

This time, she did it perfectly. Yaleena’s classes were free, but they were not cheap.

“There’s no track, so it’s all you,” the voice of God hovered in her head. “Watch my fingers, follow the metronome, dropping on four—and we’re rolling!”

Eppie watched the countdown. She could hear the sound of her own heartbeat.

Tock. Tock. Tock. Tock.

The material world faded.

She was in a womb. A watery, warm womb of sound.

She was in St Marten’s again, and she was being pushed from the boat. She was falling from a building. The water was cold, and she couldn’t feel her limbs. Everything she had built was gone, and she fell into a wormhole, going down, down, down into the depthless dark.

The first verse of innocence.

The second verse of Forlorn Hope.

The third verse of fatalistic optimism.

The chorus. “Whatever will be, will be.”

“Incredible, well done!” Mueller was on his feet. “Amazing take!”

Eppie beamed. This was her very first time, and figuring out how the [Potential] of the [System] bisected the real world meant everything to her new life, career, and, as it were, continued existence.

“Now, just keep doing that for the next hour. I’ll take the best one, or I can stitch what’s best in post.”

Whatever Will Be took two sessions, and Deer-re-mi took four. The song was just… too peculiar, and neither Lana nor Eppie was particularly… joyous.

What her latter song demonstrated was the limit of Eppie’s [Songstress] in expressing a timeless classic by one of the greatest female vocalists of the 20th century. Her potential was providential, but experience was experience, skill was skill, and mastery was needed to channel both.

In the final session, her deck captain had to whisper, “Think of the Otoro… The Otoro is melting in your mouth!” To create a take that had enough mirth and joy to krump together a Master worthy of being passed on.

“Ah, well,” Mueller shrugged after playing it back a dozen times to the crew, including Director Curon. “The good news is that Deer-re-mi isn’t a song composed with the purpose of belonging to a particular singer. We’ll score it differently as well, with strings, percussion, and woodwinds… Anyway, well done, future generations may literally be in your debt.”

Eppie wholeheartedly agreed. She couldn’t believe she was giving it away either.

The contract that Sony ultimately drafted for Deer-re-mi was for the absorption of production and distribution. 15% of all gross music revenue would be contributed to the “Fontaine Foundation Trust”, which would absorb the costs of its accounting and audit reviews. Until she was old enough, the power of attorney would default to Green Hasson Jank, a firm that Sony trusted enough to audit the corporation’s various philanthropic endeavours. Sony remained the capitalist monolith, raking in at least 75% of total revenue, with a contractual obligation to spend 18% of that revenue on select charities under Sony’s corporate umbrella. Her personal cut of all this, effectively speaking, was whatever her Coogan account accrued.

It was a fair deal, not great, but amazing for a nobody.

For Eppie, a former M&A specialist, the tax-minimalisation structure didn’t matter, as her singular goal was [Causality]. Logically, if the system merely wished to do “good”, it should allow her to game the stock market, after which she could probably end Cholera in Africa.

Alas, her cardinal sin was both particular and quirky; her penance was creative potential, but did not allow for creative accounting.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Her final weekend at Sony’s was spent with Frederick Curon, feat Trent Davis.

Eric was there for legal reasons. Curon was the host, and Davis was his guest. Johan Mueller and Yaleena Cass were not invited, despite her growing sentiment for the pair, which affirmed the obvious—that corporate hierarchy was immutable.

C-Suites were C-Suites.

Employees were employees.