Chapter 151: The Studio Sabotage

[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 151 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 151: The Studio Sabotage

Late August 1993. The Mojave Desert was a sprawling, unforgiving expanse of baked earth and shimmering heat waves. The location shoot for the final, climactic scene of Se7en had pushed the crew to their physical and psychological limits. Dust coated the camera lenses, the catering tent felt like a sauna, and the tension in the air was thick enough to snap.

Near a line of transmission towers, a canvas director’s chair was violently hurled across the dirt. It smashed into the side of a grip truck, splintering the wooden frame.

"I am not putting a golden retriever’s head in the box!" David Fincher screamed, his voice cracking with absolute, unfiltered artistic rage. He paced aggressively around the camera dolly, kicking a stray tumbleweed. "It ruins the entire psychological architecture of the film! It makes no sense! It’s a cop-out!"

Standing under the shade of a pop-up canopy, aggressively dabbing his glistening forehead with a silk handkerchief, was Michael. He was a Senior Executive from New Line Cinema, dressed in a lightweight summer suit that was completely inappropriate for the desert. He looked furious, exhausted, and utterly determined to assert corporate authority.

"David, you need to look at the data!" Michael shouted back, waving a thick stack of printed reports. "We ran the preliminary test screenings in the Midwest. The audience scores plummeted in the third act! Middle America does not want to see a severed human head in a cardboard box! It’s too bleak! They want a hero moment! They want Mills to save his wife, or at the very least, they want it to be the dog! You give them the dog, or this movie is unmarketable!"

A few yards away, leaning casually against the dusty hood of a prop police cruiser, Brad Pitt was chewing thoughtfully on a granola bar. He was wearing his bloodstained detective shirt, watching the screaming match with mild entertainment.

"I’m with David on this one, man," Brad drawled lazily, brushing a crumb off his chin. "If it’s the dog, my character’s reaction doesn’t work. I’m not shooting the scene if it’s the dog. It’s gotta be the wife."

Paul Rudd, currently designated as Sovereign Media’s on-set liaison, was hyperventilating behind a stack of apple boxes. He wore a damp towel around his neck, looking as though the desert sun was actively dissolving his will to live.

"Elias, they are going to pull the plug," Paul whispered frantically, pulling at the sleeves of his flannel shirt. "The executive is literally threatening to shut down the cameras. If New Line cuts the funding right now, the movie goes into turnaround. We lose our backend points. We lose everything. Just tell David to use the dog! People like dogs! Nobody wants to see a severed head!"

Elias van Kempen stood perfectly still under the punishing sun. He wore his faded vintage leather jacket over a crisp white t-shirt, entirely unbothered by the hundred-degree weather. He didn’t look at the screaming director or the panicked executive. He was calculating the exact monetary value of artistic integrity versus demographic pandering.

"Relax, Paul. You are wasting oxygen," Elias said, his tone casual and street-smart as he addressed his friend. "And Brad is right. If you compromise the narrative payload, the movie becomes just another forgettable police procedural. It loses its cultural permanence."

"Cultural permanence doesn’t pay the rent if the studio refuses to release the movie!" Paul hissed, pointing a trembling finger at the executive. "Look at him! He’s about to call the studio head!"

Michael, the executive, had indeed pulled a heavy brick-cellular phone from his briefcase. He pointed the antenna at Fincher like a weapon.

"I’m making the call, David!" Michael warned, his face flushed red. "You change the script today, or I freeze the production accounts. I will lock the film reels in the studio vault, and nobody will ever see this depressing garbage!"

Elias stepped out from behind the apple boxes.

He didn’t rush. He moved with the slow, deliberate grace of a predator entering a chaotic ecosystem. The casual, street-smart demeanor vanished the instant his boots crunched on the desert gravel. He locked into the chilling, hyper-analytical mindset of a corporate raider.

"Put the phone away, Michael," Elias commanded.

His voice wasn’t a shout, but the steady, unwavering cadence carried effortlessly over the desert wind. It possessed an immediate, arresting authority that forced the executive to pause.

Michael turned, his eyes narrowing as he took in the striking, sixteen-year-old teenager approaching the canopy. He knew Elias was the heavily credited shadow producer who had muscled his way into a First-Dollar Gross contract.

"Stay out of this, van Kempen," Michael scoffed, though he didn’t dial the phone. "This is a studio decision. You secured your little acting cameo and your backend points, but New Line owns the distribution rights. We dictate the final cut."

"You dictate the marketing budget," Elias corrected, stepping seamlessly into the shade of the canopy. "You do not dictate the final cut. That privilege is legally retained by Sovereign Media, as stipulated in Section Four of our amended production agreement."

Elias reached into the inner pocket of his leather jacket and withdrew a neatly folded, legal-sized document. He held it out, not to hand it over, but simply to force the executive to acknowledge its existence.

"I have the contractual authority to shoot whatever is inside that box," Elias stated, his dark eyes locking onto Michael with absolute, unyielding focus. "And we are shooting the wife."

Michael’s face hardened into a mask of pure corporate spite. He shoved his handkerchief into his pocket, leaning forward to close the distance.

"You think a piece of paper protects you from the studio machine, kid?" Michael laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "Fine. Shoot the wife. Keep your precious Final Cut. But let me explain how the real world works. If you deliver a movie that my focus groups hate, I will bury it. I will give it a zero-dollar P&A budget. I will release it in two broken-down theaters in Idaho for a week, and then I will dump it straight to the discount VHS bins. Your ’First-Dollar Gross’ percentage will be a percentage of absolutely nothing. I will starve you out."

It was the ultimate studio threat. A legal chokehold. The executive couldn’t change the film, so he was threatening to assassinate its release.

Paul Rudd let out a small, tragic squeak of despair from the background.

Elias did not flinch. He recognized the bluff for exactly what it was: a man terrified of losing his quarterly bonus on a risky cinematic gamble. Michael didn’t want to bury the movie; he wanted a safety net.

It was time to provide one, laced with poison.

In the quiet architecture of his mind, Elias authorized the expenditure of his digital capital.

[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: AURA DOMINASI RAPAT SAHAM (BOARDROOM DOMINATION AURA)][COST: -20 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 340 CP]

The shift was instantaneous. The air beneath the canopy seemed to thicken, the ambient temperature dropping slightly. Elias didn’t change his expression, but the sheer, crushing weight of a billionaire tycoon suddenly radiated from his posture. He was no longer a teenager defending an indie film; he was an institutional force backing a hostile wager.

"You are confusing demographic anxiety with market monopoly, Michael," Elias said, his voice dropping into a register of cold, clinical precision. "You are terrified that a dark ending will alienate the Midwest. I am certain that it will define the decade."

Elias smoothly slipped the contract back into his pocket. He didn’t ask for a compromise. He offered a Win-Win Parasite.

"Let us construct a wager to insulate your corporate liability," Elias proposed, his eyes pinning the executive in place. "If Se7en hits theaters with the original ending and fails to secure the number one spot at the domestic box office during its opening weekend... Sovereign Media will voluntarily surrender its international distribution rights back to New Line Cinema. In perpetuity. Completely free of charge."

Michael stopped breathing. The hostility on his face was instantly replaced by a look of sheer, stunned greed. International distribution rights for a film with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman were worth millions of dollars in secondary markets. Elias was essentially offering to hand the studio a massive, risk-free golden parachute if the movie bombed.

"You would sign over the international rights?" Michael asked, his voice losing its aggressive edge, replaced by the cautious tone of a man calculating a sudden windfall.

"I would," Elias affirmed, his face a flawless mask of serenity. "Your financial downside is completely covered. If the test audiences are right, New Line absorbs millions in overseas revenue."

Michael licked his lips. It was an irresistible offer to a studio executive. It made him look like a genius negotiator to his bosses. "And if you win? If by some miracle this depressing garbage actually hits number one?"

Elias allowed a slow, devastatingly sharp smile to touch the corners of his mouth.

"If the film takes the number one spot at the box office," Elias dictated, the steel trap snapping shut, "New Line Cinema amends my current contract. Sovereign Media receives an additional two percent of the Gross Backend. Permanently."

The silence under the canopy was absolute.

Two percent of the gross on a number one film was an astronomical sum. But in Michael’s mind, the risk was non-existent. Every metric, every focus group, and every historical precedent told him that a movie ending with a severed head in a box would never, ever debut at number one in America. The teenager was arrogant, naive, and literally giving away his international rights for a pipe dream.

"You’re a fool, van Kempen," Michael scoffed, a victorious, incredibly smug grin spreading across his flushed face. "You just bet your biggest asset on a statistical impossibility. But I am not going to turn down free money for the studio. You have a deal. I’ll have the legal department fax the addendum to your office by tonight."

"I look forward to the paperwork, Michael," Elias replied, offering a brief, polite nod. "Now. Please return to Los Angeles. You are obstructing the camera lines."

Michael didn’t argue. He had just secured millions of dollars in international rights for his studio. He practically strutted back to his waiting town car, eager to call his superiors and boast about how he had outsmarted the arrogant shadow producer.

As the town car kicked up a cloud of dust and drove away, David Fincher walked over, looking at Elias with a mixture of profound relief and absolute disbelief.

"Elias, you just bet the farm," Fincher muttered, shaking his head. "I love the ending, but even I know it’s a hard sell. If we don’t open at number one, you lose the overseas money. That’s your entire profit margin."

"I do not gamble on statistics, David. I invest in inevitabilities," Elias stated calmly, turning his back on the departing vehicle. "The public does not want to be coddled. They want to be shocked. Shoot the scene."

Brad Pitt, having watched the entire exchange, tossed his granola bar wrapper into a nearby bin and chuckled. "You are one crazy son of a bitch, Elias. I love it. Let’s go put a head in a box."

Paul Rudd slowly emerged from behind the apple boxes. He looked at Elias, his hands trembling as he clutched his clipboard. "You just... you just bet millions of dollars on a box office ranking. You extorted a studio executive by offering him a bribe."

"I merely leveraged his arrogance to finance our future, Paul," Elias corrected, walking back toward the set.

Deep within the unseen architecture of his mind, the digital ledger finalized the brutal, brilliant transaction.

[CHA-CHING!][SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: THE FINAL CUT HOSTAGE MISSION COMPLETED WITH FLAWLESS, PREDATORY LOGIC!][EVALUATION: YOU UTILIZED A FAKE COMPROMISE TO BAIT A STUDIO EXECUTIVE INTO SURRENDERING A PERMANENT PERCENTAGE OF THE GROSS. YOU WEAPONIZED THEIR DEMOGRAPHIC ANXIETY AGAINST THEIR OWN LEDGERS. THE SYSTEM REVELS IN YOUR CAPITALIST SUPREMACY.][REWARD: +10 SHAMELESS POINTS (CP) DEPOSITED.]

Elias felt the subtle hum of the system settling. His CP balance updated to 350. The daily maintenance fee cycled through with quiet, mechanical indifference.

[DEDUCTING -$50.00 USD FROM LIQUID CASH RESERVE.]

His liquid cash adjusted to an exact $502,800.00. But the true victory was not in the cash on hand. It was in the ink of the impending contract. He had just legally secured an additional 2% of a film that was historically destined to gross over three hundred million dollars worldwide.

The studio thought they had outsmarted a teenager in the desert. They had no idea they had just handed the keys to the vault directly to the parasite.