Chapter 122: The Distribution Chokehold Hack

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: IMPORTANT!]Dear readers, due to Inkstone’s strict system restrictions on updating Premium Chapters (the 100-word deletion limit bug), I had to use a technical workaround by pasting a previous Chapter here just to bypass the system error.

Please SCROLL DOWN past the old text to read the actual, newly rewritten Chapter 122 at the bottom! I rewrote this Chapter to give you a much better reading experience. Thank you so much for your patience, understanding, and continued support!

Chapter 51: THE CYBER SQUATTER

The smog over Los Angeles was thick enough to chew, but as Elias van Kempen walked out of the Bank of America branch on Sunset Boulevard, the air tasted like vintage champagne.

He paused on the sidewalk, holding a small, dark blue leather folder. Inside was the certified deposit slip for Sovereign Media’s new corporate account.

$150,235.00.

It was an impossible number for a sixteen-year-old walk-in who had been eating garbage bread a week ago.

Paul Rudd practically danced out of the bank behind him, clutching the lapels of his oversized vintage blazer, his face flushed with sheer, unadulterated ecstasy. Owen Wilson trailed out last, looking at the sky and nodding slowly, as if mentally agreeing with the clouds.

"A hundred and fifty thousand dollars," Paul gasped, jumping up and clicking his heels together in a terrible display of physical coordination. He grabbed Elias’s shoulders, shaking him violently. "Elias! We are rich! We are literally Hollywood royalty! Do you understand what we can do with this?!"

Elias didn’t shake. He allowed Paul to jolt his torso for exactly two seconds before smoothly stepping back, fixing his roommate with an exasperated, deeply theatrical scowl.

"Okay! Okay, I’ve got the itinerary!" Paul shrieked, pacing the pavement, his hands flying wildly. "First, we buy a Porsche! A red one! A 911 Carrera, because we need to arrive at castings looking like money! Then, we rent a mansion in the Hollywood Hills! Nothing crazy, just like, six bedrooms and a pool with a waterfall! And tonight? Tonight we eat lobster, Elias! I want a lobster so big it has its own zip code!"

Elias stared at Paul. He slowly raised a hand to his forehead, clutching his temples as if Paul’s words were actively, physically causing his brain to hemorrhage. He let out a loud, dramatic groan, swaying slightly on his feet.

"Elias? Are you okay?" Paul asked, pausing his real estate fantasies. "Did the Harvey Weinstein adrenaline crash finally hit you?"

"No, Paul," Elias winced, rubbing his eyes aggressively. "I am suffering from a severe allergic reaction to your complete lack of financial literacy."

Elias dropped his hand and glared at his roommate, his voice rising in an expressive, exasperated crescendo.

"A Porsche?! A rented mansion?!" Elias shouted, throwing his hands in the air, drawing curious looks from passing pedestrians. "Paul, what is wrong with you?! Do you think a hundred and fifty grand makes you a billionaire?! If we buy a Porsche, the insurance premiums and maintenance will bleed us dry! If we rent a mansion, we are setting our capital on fire just to impress people who don’t care if we live or die!"

Elias pointed a vicious finger at the blue leather folder.

"Cash is not a trophy, Paul!" Elias practically preached, his eyes wide and manic with capitalist fervor. "Money that sits in a bank account is money that is actively being eaten alive by inflation! It’s losing value every second! And worse, if the System catches me holding idle liquidity, it will tax me for breathing too heavily near a supermodel! I need to park this money in an asset vehicle before it evaporates!"

"An asset vehicle?" Owen mumbled, scratching his chin. "Like... a bus?"

Elias let out another theatrical groan, looking toward the heavens for patience. "Follow me. We are going to UCLA."

Forty-five minutes later, the glamour of Hollywood felt like a distant fever dream.

Elias had dragged a highly reluctant Paul and a bewildered Owen deep into the subterranean bowels of the UCLA computer science building. The room they entered was a stark, depressing crypt of early 1990s technology. The air conditioning hummed aggressively, battling the heat generated by rows of massive, beige IBM desktop computers. The harsh fluorescent lighting made everyone look slightly jaundiced.

The sound in the room was excruciating. It was a cacophony of clacking mechanical keyboards and the screeching, agonizingly slow wail of 56k dial-up modems connecting to the primitive, text-based precursor of the World Wide Web.

Paul clutched his blazer tightly, looking around the room in absolute horror. The only other people in the lab were a few hyper-focused engineering students wearing faded flannels and thick glasses.

"Elias," Paul whimpered, his voice trembling. "What is this place? It smells like ozone and virginity. Why aren’t we at a Porsche dealership?"

"Because Porsches depreciate the second you drive them off the lot," Elias grunted, marching toward an empty terminal in the back corner.

He dropped into the cheap plastic chair and stared at the bulky, convex CRT monitor. The screen was black, filled with blinking green text. To Elias, who vividly remembered the sleek, instantaneous, glass-paneled smartphones of 2025, looking at this machine was physically painful. He actually shuddered, an expression of profound, comical disgust crossing his flawless face as he touched the chunky, beige keyboard.

"It’s like operating a toaster," Elias complained loudly, typing in a series of commands. "A very slow, very stupid toaster."

He navigated through the primitive network protocols. In 1992, the internet was not a commercial space. There were no graphic web browsers, no search engines, and certainly no e-commerce. It was an insular, academic network used primarily by universities and government agencies to share research papers.

But Elias knew the timeline. He knew that in a few short years, the dot-com bubble would inflate, and the digital land grab would begin. Corporations would realize they needed a web presence, and they would pay astronomical sums for the right domain names.

And right now, in 1992, registering a domain name through the central authority—the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and its early registrars—cost almost nothing. It was essentially an administrative fee.

Elias began to type. He didn’t type like a sixteen-year-old taking a computer class. His fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard with brutal, punishing speed, sounding like a machine gun in the quiet lab.

Business.comSex.comCars.comLoans.comInsurance.com

He didn’t stop. He pulled the digital real estate into his cart with the ruthless, sociopathic efficiency of a corporate raider liquidating a rival’s assets.

"Elias, what are you doing?" Owen asked, leaning over Elias’s shoulder, squinting at the green text scrolling rapidly down the black screen. "Are you hacking the Pentagon? Because I really don’t want to go to federal prison today."

"I am securing our retirement, Owen," Elias muttered, not breaking his typing rhythm. Pizza.com. Toys.com. Vodka.com. "I am buying the digital equivalent of oceanfront property in Malibu before anyone realizes the ocean exists."

A loud, obnoxious, incredibly condescending snort suddenly interrupted the clacking of the keyboard.

Elias paused. He didn’t turn around. He slowly closed his eyes, an expression of pure, theatrical exasperation washing over his face.

Standing right behind Paul was a senior computer science student. The guy was a perfect archetype of the early 90s Tech-Bro. He wore a faded plaid shirt tucked into high-waisted jeans, thick wire-rimmed glasses, and a smug, greasy smile. He had a lanyard around his neck with a handful of floppy disks attached to it, and he was staring at Elias’s screen as if he were watching a monkey try to do algebra.

"Hey, pretty boy," the Tech-Bro sneered, his voice loud and incredibly grating. He pushed his glasses up his nose, looking at Elias’s scuffed denim jacket and ridiculously handsome face. "You lost? The drama department is three buildings over. I think you wandered into the wrong lab."

Paul instantly panicked, taking a defensive step back. "Hey man, we’re just using the computer. We have an account."

The Tech-Bro ignored Paul. He leaned closer to Elias’s monitor, reading the massive list of domains Elias had queued up for registration. The total fee at the bottom of the primitive screen was calculating upward, approaching fifteen thousand dollars.

The Tech-Bro burst into a loud, braying laugh. It echoed through the quiet lab, drawing the attention of several other students.

"Oh my god, you’re actually doing it!" the Tech-Bro wheezed, pointing a finger at the screen. He turned to his lab mates across the room, shouting for maximum public humiliation. "Hey guys! Check out the Hollwood reject! He’s trying to register commercial domain names! He thinks the internet is a shopping mall!"

A few of the other students chuckled, shaking their heads in pity.

"Listen, kid," the Tech-Bro said, turning back to Elias, crossing his arms and adopting the tone of a wise, benevolent genius talking to a particularly stupid child. "I don’t know what kind of scam someone sold you on the street, but you are literally burning your money. The NSFNET Acceptable Use Policy strictly forbids commercial activity on the internet. It’s for academic research. Sending emails to scientists. Nobody is ever going to use a computer to buy a pizza, you absolute moron. You’re registering text on a screen that literally no one will ever type in."

The Tech-Bro leaned in, his smug grin widening. "If you actually have that kind of cash, you should buy a sports car. At least you’ll look cool before you go bankrupt."

The silence in the lab was palpable. The Tech-Bro had clearly established his intellectual dominance over the ’dumb actor’.

Elias didn’t get angry. He didn’t blush with embarrassment.

He let out a slow, deliberate breath. Then, he stood up from the plastic chair.

Elias turned around, facing the Tech-Bro. And then, Elias threw his head back and unleashed a loud, rich, absolutely theatrical villain laugh. It was a laugh so full of arrogant, unapologetic amusement that it actually startled the Tech-Bro, causing him to take a subconscious step backward.

"Oh, this is brilliant," Elias declared loudly, wiping a fake tear of mirth from his eye. He stepped forward and aggressively threw his arm around the Tech-Bro’s stiff, uncomfortable shoulders, hugging him close like they were old war buddies.

"Guys, look at him," Elias announced to the entire computer lab, his baritone voice booming with performative joy. He gestured to the sweating student trapped in his grip. "We are standing in the presence of a visionary! A true pioneer of the digital frontier! He thinks the internet is going to be used exclusively to send PDFs of botany research between professors until the end of time!"

The Tech-Bro tried to squirm out of Elias’s grip, his face flushing a bright, angry red. "Get your hands off me, you arrogant—"

"Thank you!" Elias interrupted loudly, slapping the Tech-Bro on the back with enough force to make his glasses slide down his nose. "Thank you for your incredible, ground-breaking insight! I was almost worried I was making a bad investment, but your absolute, unwavering confidence that this is a terrible idea has completely validated my entire business strategy!"

Elias released the stunned student, letting him stumble backward.

Elias’s smile vanished instantly. His expression morphed into the cold, dead-eyed mask of a ruthless corporate predator. He leaned over the keyboard, his fingers hovering above the enter key.

"Now step aside," Elias ordered softly, the venom in his voice causing the air temperature to drop. "I need to buy the word ’Pizza’ and the word ’Porn’ before idiots like you realize what a modem is actually capable of."

The Tech-Bro stood paralyzed, his mouth opening and closing like a stranded fish. The sheer, overwhelming force of Elias’s personality had completely crushed his intellectual superiority complex. He wasn’t dealing with a dumb actor; he was dealing with a psychopath.

Elias turned his attention back to the screen.

Total Registration Fees: $15,000.00.

He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t wince. He didn’t even use a System skill to soften the blow. He manually inputted the newly acquired corporate routing numbers for Sovereign Media’s Pierson, Heldring & Pierson account.

With a loud, decisive THWACK, Elias hit the ’Enter’ key.

The green text blinked.

Transaction Processing...Authorization Confirmed.500 Top-Level Domains Registered to Sovereign Media.

Paul, who had been reading the total on the screen over Elias’s shoulder, let out a high-pitched, strangled sound that sounded like a dying tea kettle.

"Fifteen... fifteen thousand dollars," Paul wheezed, his legs actually giving out. He slumped against a row of humming servers, sliding down to the floor, clutching his chest. "You just spent fifteen thousand dollars on words. Not even real words! Words on a screen! Elias, we could have bought a Porsche! We could have bought a house! You just bought ’Sex.com’ for the price of a luxury sedan!"

"I didn’t buy a word, Paul," Elias said, standing up and grabbing his scuffed denim jacket off the back of the chair. He looked incredibly, profoundly satisfied. "I bought the future of global advertising."

The Tech-Bro was staring at the confirmed transaction screen, his face completely pale, sweat pouring down his forehead. He couldn’t comprehend it. Someone had just dropped a fortune on digital nothingness.

Elias walked right past him, giving the frozen student a mock, two-finger salute.

"Enjoy the academic research, buddy," Elias smirked. "I’ll make sure to send you a postcard from my private island when the ban on commercial internet lifts."

Elias strolled out of the dingy, noisy computer lab, leaving behind a room full of stunned nerds and a roommate who was currently hyperventilating on the linoleum floor.

As the heavy doors to the basement swung shut, the System interface detonated in his vision.

Cha-Ching!

[HUSTLE QUEST COMPLETE: THE DIGITAL LAND GRAB.][EVALUATION: UNBELIEVABLE. YOU JUST LAUGHED IN THE FACE OF 1990S CONVENTIONAL WISDOM AND DUMPED YOUR HARD-EARNED EXTORTION MONEY INTO THE GREATEST CYBER-SQUATTING HEIST IN HUMAN HISTORY. YOU ARE OFFICIALLY A DIGITAL WARLORD. CAPITALISM BOWS TO YOUR FORESIGHT.][REWARD: 10 SHAMELESS POINTS (CP) DEPOSITED.]

Elias stepped out of the building and back into the harsh, smoggy Los Angeles sunlight.

He was broke again. His physical cash reserve was practically nonexistent. He was going back to sleep on a saggy motel mattress in a room guarded by giant roaches.

But as he looked up at the sky, Elias couldn’t stop smiling. He owned the words. He owned the real estate of the future. The world just didn’t know it yet.

Chapter 122: The Distribution Chokehold Hack

Early April of 1993 bathed Los Angeles in a warm, golden haze, a stark contrast to the freezing, miserable apocalypse Elias and his team had just escaped in Amsterdam. They were back in the administrative heart of Sovereign Media on Sunset Boulevard—a repurposed, slightly drafty 1920s Hollywood production lot that Elias had aggressively hijacked a few months prior.

Inside his spacious, sunlit corner office, Elias van Kempen sat behind a massive mahogany desk, his dark, impossibly handsome features locked in an expression of clinical, predatory focus. He was not admiring his newfound success. He was dissecting his ledgers.

The twenty-five thousand dollars of physical cash he had extorted from the European fast-fashion agency was currently keeping the lights on. It was funding their daily operations, Paul and Owen’s meager logistics budget, and shielding Elias from the relentless extortion of his internal system.

But it was not enough.

Elias looked at the thick stack of financial printouts in front of him. "Creep" was currently a sonic virus infecting the globe. It was dominating the Billboard Hot 100, heavily rotated on MTV, and requested endlessly on every major radio station in the country. The physical CD and cassette singles were flying off the shelves.

Yet, the royalty checks from their primary retail distributor, Tower Records, were practically nonexistent.

Elias picked up the latest fax from the Tower Records regional accounting department. He read the corporate jargon with a cold, unforgiving sneer.

Due to unforeseen retail inventory logistics and regional warehousing delays, all vendor payouts for Sovereign Media are hereby deferred to a Net-120 billing cycle. We apologize for the inconvenience.

"They are choking us," Elias murmured, his baritone voice sending a chill through the warm office.

Paul Rudd, who was currently trying to organize a mountain of unpaid utility bills, looked up, his eyes wide. "Choking us? Elias, ’Creep’ is the biggest song in the country! Everyone is buying it! How can Tower Records not have the money?"

"They have the money, Paul," Elias stated smoothly, leaning back in his leather executive chair. "They are executing an artificial scarcity maneuver. They are intentionally hoarding forty thousand physical units of our single in their regional distribution center. By starving the retail shelves, they drive up consumer desperation. Once demand peaks, they will quietly hike the shelf price by three dollars and pocket the entire margin difference, while legally withholding my capital for a hundred and twenty days to earn interest on my money."

Owen Wilson blinked from the vintage sofa in the corner. "Wow. That is deeply un-chill. They’re basically using our music as a free, interest-bearing savings account. That’s bad karma for their corporate aura, man."

Deep inside Elias’s neural architecture, the digital loan shark awoke, absolutely indifferent to the retail embargo.

[CHA-CHING!][SYSTEM WARNING: DAILY MAINTENANCE FEE DEDUCTION INITIATED.][DEDUCTING -$50.00 USD FROM LIQUID CASH RESERVE.]

Elias didn’t flinch as his cash reserve dropped. He stood up, grabbing his vintage leather jacket. He wasn’t an artist waiting for a handout; he was a capitalist parasite, and someone was currently trying to steal his blood.

"Get up," Elias commanded, his dark eyes flashing with a highly concentrated, shameless intent. "We are going to conduct a physical audit of the supply chain."

An hour later, Elias, Paul, and Owen were parked two blocks away from the massive, heavily guarded Tower Records West Coast Distribution Center in the San Fernando Valley.

Elias reached into his pocket and handed Paul a plastic shopping bag containing two brightly colored, incredibly cheap fluorescent safety vests and two plastic clipboards.

[DEDUCTING -$15.00 USD FOR TACTICAL DECEPTION APPAREL.]

"Put these on," Elias instructed flawlessly. "You are no longer my executive assistants. You are Senior Logistics Inspectors for the California Teamsters Union. You are here to conduct a random, mandatory audit of outbound freight."

Paul held up the cheap, wrinkly yellow vest. His hands began to shake. "Elias... this is a crime. This is a felony! You are asking me to impersonate a union official to hijack corporate freight! If we go to prison, I will not survive the yard! I have delicate bone structure!"

"You are an actor, Paul. Act," Elias dismissed, completely unbothered by his friend’s impending panic attack. "Corporate logistics are entirely fueled by the apathy of minimum-wage employees. If you walk with enough unearned confidence and hold a clipboard, no one will question you. Reroute the two outbound trucks scheduled for Sunset Boulevard directly to the Sovereign Studios lot. Go."

Owen slid the vest over his flannel shirt, nodding slowly. "Alright. I’m channeling the vibe of a deeply stressed bureaucratic enforcer. Let’s go seize the means of distribution, Paul."

Paul whimpered, but the terrifying authority radiating from Elias left him no choice.

From the safety of his parked car, Elias watched as his two mascots approached the loading docks. It was a masterclass in chaotic, slapstick comedy. Paul puffed out his chest, attempting a bizarre, aggressive New York mobster accent that sounded like a 1930s cartoon character. He pointed his clipboard aggressively at a confused truck driver, shouting about "freight violations" and "immediate jurisdictional rerouting."

Owen simply stood next to him, nodding solemnly and telling the loading dock manager that the trucks’ tires were "energetically misaligned" and needed to be impounded at a secure facility on Sunset Boulevard.

It was utterly absurd. It was an insult to the intelligence of any functioning adult.

But Elias’s psychological calculation was flawless. The underpaid drivers didn’t care enough to argue with men in high-vis vests screaming about union codes. Within fifteen minutes, two massive eighteen-wheeler trucks, completely loaded with thousands of units of Sovereign Media CDs and cassettes, pulled out of the distribution center and drove straight toward Elias’s Hollywood lot.

Elias smiled. The trap was set. Now, he just had to wait for the prey.

Three hours later, the heavy wooden doors to Elias’s office at Sovereign Media violently slammed open.

Marcus, the Regional Distribution Manager for Tower Records, stormed into the room. He was a red-faced, heavily sweating executive in his late thirties, radiating the kind of furious, inflated ego common to middlemen who thought they controlled the industry.

"You stole my trucks, Van Kempen!" Marcus roared, his face a terrifying shade of magenta, pointing a trembling finger at Elias. "That is illegal asset seizure! That is grand theft auto! I have my lawyers on speed dial, and I can report you to the police right now!"

Elias van Kempen did not stand up. He did not look intimidated. He sat perfectly relaxed behind his mahogany desk, taking a slow, elegant sip of a deeply cheap, bitter coffee.

He mentally engaged the system, sacrificing his hard-earned points to completely disarm the executive.

[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: CORPORATE X-RAY SCAN][COST: -10 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 185 CP]

[CHA-CHING!]

The red, radioactive grid snapped over Marcus, penetrating the leather briefcase he was clutching. The system bypassed the combination lock, scanning the internal inventory manifests and private executive emails hidden within.

[SCAN COMPLETE. THREAT ANALYSIS: RETAIL MARKET MANIPULATION.][VULNERABILITY: THE MANAGER HAS PERSONALLY AUTHORIZED THE WITHHOLDING OF 40,000 UNITS OF "CREEP". THE INVENTORY IS BEING HOARDED TO JUSTIFY A $3.00 ’HIGH DEMAND’ RETAIL MARKUP THIS WEEKEND. THE MANAGER’S QUARTERLY BONUS IS DIRECTLY TIED TO THIS ILLICIT MARGIN SPREAD.]

Elias let the scan fade. He lowered his coffee cup, his lips curving into a smile so dark, so flawlessly shameless and predatory, that Marcus instinctively stopped shouting and took a half-step back.

"Technically, I didn’t steal your trucks, Marcus," Elias purred, his voice a lethal, perfectly modulated rumble that commanded the absolute authority of the room. "I merely conducted a ’Physical Inventory Audit’ because you are hoarding forty thousand physical copies of my song to manipulate the market price."

Marcus froze. The color drained from his face so fast he looked like he might pass out. A massive, highly visible bead of sweat formed on his temple—a classic, comedic sweatdrop of a man whose entire illicit operation had just been surgically exposed.

"I... I have no idea what you’re talking about," Marcus stammered, his bravado collapsing into a pathetic squeak. "That is a baseless accusation!"

"Your trucks are free to leave anytime," Elias continued smoothly, leaning forward and sliding a newly drafted contract across his desk. "As soon as you sign this ninety-ten consignment split in my favor."

Marcus stared at the paper as if it were a live grenade. "Ninety-ten?! Standard industry rate is sixty-forty! We had an eighty-twenty agreement! If I sign a ninety-ten split, Tower Records makes pennies on the dollar! I’ll be fired!"

"If you call the police, Marcus," Elias countered, his tone hardening into absolute, unbreakable steel, "I will call Walmart and Target. I will offer them an exclusive, heavily discounted, direct-to-retail pipeline for my entire catalog. And Tower Records will never sell another one of my songs on the West Coast ever again. Your executives won’t just fire you; they will personally crucify you for losing the biggest sonic asset of the decade."

Marcus looked at Elias. The teenager wasn’t a naive, starry-eyed musician. He was a ruthless, unfeeling corporate raider who was holding a knife directly to the throat of Tower Record’s regional profit margin.

The silence in the room was deafening. Paul Rudd, hiding behind a filing cabinet, peeked out with wide, terrified eyes.

With a tragic, defeated whimper, Marcus pulled a pen from his pocket. He leaned over the desk, his hand shaking violently, and signed the ninety-ten consignment contract. He had just surrendered total retail dominance to a sixteen-year-old.

"Excellent," Elias smiled smoothly, pulling the contract back. "Now, regarding the royalties you deferred to a Net-120 cycle. I believe you brought your corporate checkbook."

Marcus looked like he wanted to cry. He popped open his briefcase, pulled out the corporate ledger, and hastily scribbled out a check, tearing it off and practically throwing it onto Elias’s desk before turning and sprinting out of the office to retrieve his hijacked trucks.

Elias picked up the check. It was a beautiful, crisp piece of paper made out to Sovereign Media for exactly forty-five thousand dollars.

Deep within his mind, the digital loan shark let out a thunderous, triumphant roar of approval.

[CHA-CHING!][SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: LOGISTICS HIJACKING MISSION EXECUTED WITH FLAWLESS, PREDATORY GRACE!][EVALUATION: YOU UTILIZED YOUR TERRIFIED ENTOURAGE TO HIJACK COMMERCIAL FREIGHT, EXPOSED A CORRUPT MIDDLEMAN, AND EXTORTED A 90/10 RETAIL MONOPOLY. YOU ARE THE APEX PARASITE OF THE SUPPLY CHAIN. THE SYSTEM APPLAUDS YOUR RUTHLESSNESS.][REWARD: +20 SHAMELESS POINTS (CP) DEPOSITED.]

Elias allowed himself a genuine, terrifying smile of pure satisfaction. He looked up at Paul, who was slowly emerging from behind the filing cabinet, looking completely traumatized but undeniably impressed.

"You see, Paul?" Elias murmured, tapping the forty-five-thousand-dollar check against the mahogany desk. "The supply chain is merely a suggestion. Liquidity always flows to those who are willing to redirect the pipes."