Chapter 29: The Copyright Heist

The Copyright Heist

The rusted blue 1984 Honda Civic hatchback sat baking in the courtyard of The Pelican Motel. Its rear suspension was currently sagging under the weight of a stolen Warner Bros. director’s chair.

Elias van Kempen stood by the open trunk, admiring the pristine black canvas and the iconic gold shield logo printed on the wood. He didn’t see stolen property; he saw an untaxed, highly liquid asset.

"Elias, I am having palpitations," Paul Rudd wheezed, pacing back and forth on the cracked concrete, practically pulling his hair out. "Do you understand what happens if a studio security detail tracks that chair back to us? It’s grand larceny! They have our names! They have our social security numbers! I’m going to be blacklisted before I even get a SAG card!"

Elias leaned against the hatchback, flashing a brilliant, completely shameless smile. He crossed his arms, his vintage leather jacket creaking in the heat.

"Paul, you worry like a middle manager," Elias chuckled, a rich, dark sound that carried zero trace of guilt. "Warner Bros. loses thousands of dollars of equipment every week to ’administrative drift.’ A single canvas chair is a rounding error. More importantly, this chair is about to subsidize our entry into the most profitable, highly leveraged sector of the entertainment monopoly."

Charlize Theron stepped out of Room 104, having finally changed out of her sweaty audition clothes into a simple, oversized t-shirt and jeans. She looked at the chair, then at Elias, her blue eyes narrowing with a mixture of amusement and exhaustion.

"Alright, Mr. Monopoly," Charlize sighed, crossing her arms. "You got me the role. You robbed a CAA agent. Now you’re fencing stolen studio furniture. What exactly is the master plan for today?"

"Today, Charlize," Elias declared, his eyes gleaming with clinical ambition, "we are going to conquer the global music industry. Get in the car."

Thirty minutes later, the screeching Honda Civic pulled into the gritty, graffiti-lined streets of Silver Lake. In 1991, this neighborhood wasn’t a gentrified haven for organic coffee shops; it was the raw, beating heart of the Los Angeles underground indie scene.

Elias parked in an alleyway behind a dilapidated brick building. A hand-painted wooden sign above a reinforced steel door read: Echo Chamber Studios.

Elias hauled the Warner Bros. director’s chair out of the trunk, carrying it effortlessly under one arm. He kicked the steel door open and led Paul and Charlize down a flight of steep, dimly lit concrete stairs.

The basement studio smelled like a potent cocktail of stale beer, old carpet, and deeply ingrained marijuana smoke. The walls were lined with cheap egg-carton acoustic foam. Behind a scratched mixing console sat the operator—a guy in his mid-twenties with bloodshot eyes, a faded band t-shirt, and long, unwashed hair pulled back into a messy ponytail.

"Hey, man," the operator drawled, barely looking up from a magazine as they walked in. "I’m Kyle. You guys booking time? It’s forty bucks an hour. Cash upfront. No checks, no credit."

"Kyle. A pleasure," Elias said, his voice smooth, warm, and dripping with street-smart charisma. He didn’t pull out his wallet. Instead, he snapped the Warner Bros. director’s chair open with a loud clack and placed it directly in the center of the control room.

Kyle blinked, his bloodshot eyes slowly focusing on the pristine wood and the iconic gold studio logo. "Whoa. Is that... a real lot chair?"

"It is an authentic, production-used asset directly from the set of Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon 3," Elias spun the pitch flawlessly, leaning against the mixing console like he owned the building. "It was personally utilized by Mel Gibson. It practically radiates A-list cinematic history."

Paul Rudd stood in the background, his face buried in his hands, internally screaming at the sheer, unapologetic money laundering happening before his eyes.

"That’s wild, man," Kyle breathed, reaching out to touch the canvas. "What are you doing with it?"

"I am currently experiencing a liquidity reallocation," Elias smiled, tapping his fingers on the console. "I require two hours of your studio time. I will barter this piece of Hollywood history in exchange for the session. You get a chair that you can brag about to every indie band that walks down those stairs, and I get an open mic. A mutually beneficial transaction."

Kyle looked at the chair, then at Elias’s striking, confident face. The sound engineer grinned, highly amused by the sheer hustle. "You know what, dude? Respect. The chair is sick. You got the booth for two hours. What are we tracking?"

"A cultural reset," Elias answered.

Elias grabbed a legal pad and a pen from Kyle’s desk. He sat down on a ratty sofa in the back of the room, instantly shutting out the ambient noise.

Charlize walked over, looking over his shoulder. Her eyes widened as Elias’s hand flew across the paper at blistering speed. He wasn’t pausing to think. Thanks to his Photographic Memory, he was flawlessly transcribing the lyrics, the chord progressions, and the precise tempo notations of a song that wouldn’t technically be released to the global public for another year.

Creep by Radiohead.

It was the ultimate anthem of 90s alienation. A masterpiece of self-loathing and explosive, distorted guitar that would go on to generate millions in royalties.

"You write music?" Charlize asked, genuinely surprised. "I thought you were just a corporate shark."

"I am an architect of assets, Charlize," Elias said without looking up from the notepad. "And in this town, music is the ultimate asset. When you act in a movie, you get paid once. Even with residuals, the studio owns the master. But music?"

Elias finished the final chord notation and spun the legal pad around, tapping the paper with his pen. His dark eyes locked onto hers, burning with capitalist intensity.

"If you control one hundred percent of the Publishing Rights and the Master Recording of a global hit," Elias explained, his voice low and mesmerizing, "you are no longer an employee. You become a sovereign nation. Every time a radio station plays it, every time a film licenses it, every time a teenager buys a cassette... a royalty check is printed. It is a perpetual motion machine of passive income. I am not here to sing. I am here to mint currency."

He stood up, tearing the sheet off the pad and handing the chord progressions to Kyle. "I need a simple, clean acoustic guitar track laid down. G, B, C, Cm. Slow, melancholic tempo. And rig a distortion pedal for the chorus breaks."

"Just acoustic?" Kyle asked, raising an eyebrow. "No drums? No bass?"

"Raw vocals and a single guitar," Elias insisted, grabbing a pair of heavy studio headphones. "We are selling depression, Kyle. Overproduction dilutes the misery."

Elias stepped into the recording booth, pulling the heavy, soundproof glass door shut behind him. The air inside the small, foam-lined box was dead and silent.

He stepped up to the condenser microphone, adjusting the pop filter.

Through the glass, he saw Kyle hit a button on the console. "Alright, man. Let’s do a quick mic check. Give me some levels. Sing a few bars of whatever you got."

Elias cleared his throat. He leaned into the mic.

"When you were here before..." Elias sang.

The sound that came out of his mouth was... aggressively average. It was slightly raspy, lacking breath control, and entirely devoid of any resonance. It was the voice of a sixteen-year-old boy who looked like a god but sang like a guy at a dive-bar karaoke night.

In the control room, Kyle actually burst out laughing. He hit the talkback button. "Uh, hey man. Listen, the aesthetic is great, but your pitch is entirely flat. You sure you don’t want to just stick to modeling? Because this is gonna be a rough two hours."

Paul visibly winced. Charlize crossed her arms, looking at Elias through the glass with a mixture of skepticism and curiosity. She knew he was too calculating to fail this badly by accident.

Inside the booth, Elias didn’t look embarrassed. A slow, terrifyingly confident smirk spread across his face.

He had the lyrics. He had the publishing rights drafted in his head. Now, he just needed to buy the talent to execute the robbery.

He closed his eyes and mentally called up his mechanical loan shark.

[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: GOD-TIER BARITONE / PERFECT DEPRESSION VOCALS (DURATION: 10 MINUTES)][COST: -20 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 5 CP]

[CHA-CHING!]

Elias felt a sudden, profound heat bloom in his throat. The physiological structure of his vocal cords seemed to temporarily mutate. The tension in his chest deepened, expanding his lung capacity. When he breathed in, he didn’t just take in air; he drew in the heavy, melancholic weight of his previous thirty-four years of failure, exhaustion, and corporate abuse.

He opened his eyes. They were dark, entirely serious, and completely captivating.

"Roll the track, Kyle," Elias commanded. The spoken words alone resonated through the studio monitors with a rich, velvety timbre that made the sound engineer jump in his seat.

Kyle blinked, confused by the sudden change in audio quality. He hit the record button. The simple, haunting acoustic chords of Creep began to play in Elias’s headphones.

Elias leaned into the microphone. He closed his eyes.

"When you were here before... couldn’t look you in the eye..."

The sound that poured out of Elias van Kempen was otherworldly. The flat, raspy teenager was gone. This was a God-Tier baritone. It was smooth, hauntingly beautiful, and saturated with an agonizing, authentic vulnerability. He wasn’t just hitting the notes perfectly; he was bleeding emotion directly into the condenser mic.

In the control room, Kyle’s jaw literally dropped. The joint resting in the ashtray beside him burned down to the filter, completely ignored. The sound engineer stared at the meters on his console, entirely mesmerized. The sheer, devastating beauty of the vocal tone was paralyzing.

"You’re just like an angel... your skin makes me cry..."

Charlize Theron stood frozen near the back of the room. A sudden, involuntary shiver ran down her spine. The raw pain and self-loathing in his voice was so intense, so deeply authentic, that a flush of heat rose to her cheeks. She found herself staring at the boy behind the glass, entirely captivated. For a man who claimed to have no soul, he was currently singing like an angel who had just been thrown out of heaven.

Paul Rudd was clutching the edge of the sofa, his eyes wide. "How... how is he doing that? He sounded like a dying duck two minutes ago!"

The pre-chorus built up. The acoustic guitar strummed harder.

And then, Elias hit the explosive, self-deprecating core of the anthem.

"But I’m a creep... I’m a weirdo..."

He pushed his newly acquired vocal cords to the absolute limit. The baritone soared, powerful and agonizingly desperate. It was the sound of a generation realizing that the polished, plastic promises of the 80s were a lie. It was perfect.

Elias rode the emotion flawlessly through the bridge, his voice cracking with calculated perfection, before bringing it back down to a haunting, whispered close.

"I don’t belong here..."

The last chord faded into silence.

For ten agonizing seconds, the control room was dead quiet.

Kyle, the cynical stoner engineer, was staring at the glass, a genuine tear pooling in the corner of his bloodshot eye. He slowly reached out and pressed the talkback button, his hand shaking. A massive sweatdrop rolled down his forehead.

"Dude," Kyle whispered, his voice cracking with raw emotion. "That was... that was the most beautiful, fking tragic thing I have ever heard in my life. Who hurt you, man? That was a one-take masterpiece. I don’t even need to touch the EQ on this."

Elias allowed the God-Tier Baritone skill to deactivate. The heavy, emotional weight evaporated from his chest in an instant, replaced by the cold, calculating thrill of a successful heist.

He pulled the headphones off and stepped out of the booth. He didn’t look emotionally drained. He didn’t look like a tortured artist seeking validation. He walked straight to the mixing console, looking at the spinning spools of the master tape.

"Eject the tape, Kyle," Elias commanded briskly, his street-smart arrogance back in full force.

Kyle hastily hit the eject button, pulling the cassette out. He handed it to Elias as if he were handing over a religious artifact. "Man, you gotta tell me what label you’re pitching this to. That track is going to be massive. You’re a genius."

"I am aware," Elias smirked, pocketing the tape. "Thank you for the use of your facilities. The chair is yours. Enjoy the acoustics."

Without waiting for further praise, Elias turned on his heel and marched up the concrete stairs, leaving a deeply moved sound engineer and a bewildered Charlize and Paul in his wake.

They piled back into the boiling Honda Civic.

"Elias," Charlize said, her voice still slightly breathless from the performance. "I... I didn’t know you could sing like that. That was incredible. It was real."

"It was a highly calculated manipulation of auditory frequencies to exploit the impending cultural shift toward grunge," Elias corrected smoothly, entirely dismissing the magic of the moment. He shoved the car into gear. "And it means absolutely nothing until the paperwork is filed."

Elias drove like a madman through the Los Angeles traffic, his eyes darting between the road and the clock on the dashboard. He ignored Paul’s panicked shrieks as he ran a yellow light.

He slammed on the brakes in front of a federal Post Office building just ten minutes before closing time.

Elias sprinted out of the car, sprinting through the doors and slamming a stack of pre-filled forms onto the counter.

Form SR (Sound Recording).Form PA (Performing Arts).

He listed "Elias van Kempen" as the sole author of the music and lyrics. He listed "Sovereign Media" as the exclusive claimant of 100% of the Publishing Rights.

The postal clerk, an older woman who was severely annoyed by his last-minute arrival, stamped the forms. "That’ll be thirty dollars for the copyright registration fees, sir."

Elias reached into his pocket. The physical pain of handing over thirty dollars in cash was agonizing, but it was the final toll on the bridge to his monopoly. He handed her the bills.

"Registered," the clerk said, tossing the receipt across the counter.

Elias picked up the receipt. He stared at the blue ink.

At that exact moment, the loan shark arrived for its daily extortion.

[CHA-CHING!][DEDUCTING INFLATED DAILY MAINTENANCE FEE: -$50.00 USD.][CURRENT LIQUID CASH: $49,830.00]

Elias didn’t flinch at the eighty dollars he had just bled out. He didn’t care about the maintenance fee right now.

He held the receipt up to the fluorescent light of the post office. The paperwork was stamped. The master tape was in his pocket. The greatest rock anthem of the early 1990s now legally belonged, in its entirety, to Sovereign Media.

Elias van Kempen smiled. A terrifying, predatory, utterly shameless smile.

Radiohead wouldn’t even write the song for another six months. By the time they did, Elias would already own the airwaves.

The music monopoly had begun.