Chapter 36: Famous

Chapter 36: Chapter 36: Famous

As for Daniel, the reason he hadn’t answered his second brother’s message was that he was absorbed in the world inside Benjamin’s videos.

A moment earlier, when Michael hung up, Daniel’s smart screen hadn’t yet closed, a notification suddenly appearing on it that caught his attention.

The notification read "You have followed the channel Farming with the Martinezes".

Only then did Daniel remember that after following Benjamin’s channel earlier he hadn’t had time to exit it.

He was about to go browsing anyway, so he might as well take a look at Benjamin’s vlog channel and see whether there was anything remarkable. Daniel sniffed, dismissed the notification and clicked on "View channel".

Benjamin’s channel name was in perfectly ordinary black letters with a gold outline, the avatar a shot of the back of somebody in a cloth sun hat. Looking at that slender figure, Daniel guessed it was Liam.

He laughed without meaning to. These two Martinez siblings really did dote on their younger brother to the skies.

Through the whole negotiation today, the two of them had only sat in silence on either side of Liam like two guardian spirits, leaving everything for their brother to decide. At dinner it had been even more extravagant, because from beginning to end they had barely eaten anything themselves, concentrating instead on putting food in Liam’s bowl. Even when Liam got caught up talking and wasn’t paying attention to his food, Isabella had fed him by hand.

Daniel felt a certain envy. However much his own two brothers doted on him, they had never served him food or fed him by hand like that.

Daniel gathered his thoughts back, going on to read the channel description. The description was extremely blunt:

[Have you ever been angry enough to want to punch your boss? Have you ever felt the pressure of competing for work against machines? Are you unhappy because life isn’t going the way you want? Come here and farm with the Martinezes, and let all your negative feelings blow away on the wind.]

Daniel wanted to laugh. He had no idea who had written that line, but it was funny and true at the same time. He couldn’t stop himself clicking into the video list, then stared:

"Only two? How is that supposed to be enough to watch?"

He pouted, scrolled down to the first video, pressed Play.

The video opened on an aerial shot, apparently a panorama of the Martinez family’s planet. Looking at this wild, barren landscape, Daniel was rather lost for words.

He had known the Martinez agricultural planet was a low-grade planet, but this was low even so. Looking around at nothing but parched earth and gravel and dry yellow scrub, Daniel didn’t believe this place could grow vegetables.

The comments were full of the same thought as his.

[Don’t look at it as a wasteland now, because in just a few months we will certainly have made this place green.]

Benjamin’s warm low voice came out of the video. There was a confidence woven into that voice, entirely different from the shaking, stammering one Daniel had heard today. He couldn’t help wanting to hear the man say a few more lines.

But through the whole remaining length of the video, Benjamin said nothing further. The one doing the talking was mostly Isabella. For reasons he couldn’t explain, Daniel felt a touch of disappointment.

The first video filmed the two of them working the soil and watering the vegetables, over a gentle backing track taken from the galactic network’s library. There was nothing remarkable about it. Once he had finished this video Daniel clicked the next one. He expected another wasteland like before, only for the first thing he heard to be the rushing sound of rain.

The faint point of light at the start of the video gradually sharpened, showing rainwater running down off the roof. Then the image slowly widened, the angle lifting suddenly high before tipping slowly downward. Daniel tilted his head along with it without thinking, then, realizing what he had just done, patted his own head in embarrassment.

The shot of the raindrops falling from high above, and then the shot of the raindrops landing on a vegetable leaf in slow motion. Daniel’s lips parted slightly, a small sound of admiration escaping.

He suddenly leapt off the bed, took the VR glasses out of the storage cupboard and put them on, then rewound the video to watch it again from the start. Watching in 5D was entirely different from 3D, giving Daniel the sensation of being there, witnessing with his own eyes what had happened at the time.

He could feel the damp of the rain falling on his face, then the warmth spreading out of the dawn light.

The whole video had no music in it at all, using only the most natural sounds.

In this video it was still Isabella talking, Benjamin silent from beginning to end. But Daniel absently caught the sound of his laugh mixed in with the machinery, at which his heart suddenly beat a little faster.

The video ended on withered leaves left lying in an empty field, and Daniel took off the VR glasses with some regret.

Compared with the first, the second video had plainly improved by leaps, from the color to the imagery to the sound quality, with absolutely nothing to criticize. Most important of all was the sense of reality it carried, which was something smart technology could never produce.

Daniel couldn’t stop himself opening the gift menu, throwing out ten Starry Sky Battleships in one go. This move of his seemed to push Benjamin’s channel straight into the top ten of the hot search board.

The staff member watching the data system was hit stupid by this move.

One Starry Sky Battleship cost three million silver stars, so ten was thirty million. Who on earth played that big?

The staff member hurriedly opened it to look, finding the sender was the top spender on the consumer ranking, the recipient... a vlog channel set up only a few days ago. He was immediately struck blank.

The other staff in the office were in an uproar as well. Once they learned that this new vlog channel was the one he was responsible for, every sort of look turned in his direction.

"Damn it, what kind of unearthly luck have you run into? First a food streamer famous across the whole network, and now a blogger taking thirty million silver stars in a single go. Why doesn’t anybody hand me someone like that."

The staff member swallowed and didn’t dare open his mouth. Only he knew that this new blogger had been introduced by that food streamer. He had grabbed the man onto his own list quickly, thinking that famous or not he would take him first.

He hadn’t expected that a few days later this person would hand him a surprise he could never have predicted.

At that same moment, the three Martinez siblings had just come off their ship. A notification sounded from Benjamin’s smart watch, and when he opened it to look his feet tangled with each other, sending him flat on his face right where he stood.

Liam and Isabella started, hurriedly helping their brother up. Isabella scolded him:

"You’re a grown man, how can you not even manage to walk properly?"

Benjamin’s whole body was still in a daze, as though his soul had left him. Liam shook him and called his name several times, but he still didn’t answer. Just then, Liam’s smart watch lit up, showing a message from a close friend.

He opened the message to look, finding Daniel had sent a long string of messages expressing his excitement. Below them the "typing" line was still running.

[Aaaah! Outstanding! Your brother’s videos are incredible!]

[Damn it! After watching that I want to run away from home and go farming too!]

[Your brother shot every one of those scenes himself, didn’t he!]

[I just sent him ten Battleships, and it pushed him into the top ten!]

The newest message had only just arrived:

[Wow, wow, your brother’s channel is famous! Go and look, quickly!]

Only then did Liam understand what had happened to his brother. He must have been knocked senseless by Daniel’s ten Battleships. He winked at Isabella, then each of them took Benjamin under one arm, dragging him into the house.

Liam didn’t try to wake the petrified Benjamin either, only opening his brother’s channel and turning on screen sharing so Isabella could watch with him.

The subscriber count had leapt from where it started to twelve thousand and was still climbing. The comments beneath the newest video ran past as fast as system code, the two of them watching until their eyes swam. Liam had to switch off the live comment effect, setting it to a flat list so he could scroll through them one at a time himself.

[Holy hell! I only clicked in out of curiosity to see which vlog channel got ten Battleships from the top spender, and after watching I am completely hooked.]

[This sound, this image, this real, true shade of green! It’s been ages since I saw anything like it!]

[The person upstairs must be over two hundred years old. Because that real-capture technology filmed by a human only existed two hundred years ago.]

[You guessed right, I’m two hundred and sixty-two this year. Back then films shot by people were far more real than they are now. But even then nobody filmed as beautifully as this brother does.]

[Obviously. How could the smart technology of back then compare with today’s. But I suddenly feel these Sawtooth greens look better than the ones I’ve eaten. Has the channel owner attached a shopping cart?]

[I’m an old follower, and at first I only wanted to see when this brother would give up. And here I am already slapped until my face swelled.]

[I love this video, I watched for a while and my irritation is gone. I think tomorrow I can go another three hundred rounds with my old boss!]

[Everyone put on your VR glasses, then close your eyes and just listen. I feel like my chronic headaches have been healed by this real sound.]

[This sister’s voice is so gentle, but I’m mad about the brother’s laugh. Brother, laugh a few more times for us!]

[I heard the brother’s voice back in the previous video, he said exactly one line, and I couldn’t hear anything special about it at all.]

[I hereby declare that from today I have planted my backside on this land. Don’t anybody try to drive me off.]

Comments of every kind, all of them praising the content of the videos and the realness of the image quality, and the closeness to nature it brought.

Isabella clapped her brother hard on the shoulder in delight: "Brother, you’re brilliant! Your channel is famous!"

Isabella’s clapping knocked Benjamin’s soul back into his body. He came to himself, looked at the figures, then at his two siblings, and it was a while before he could force out a single sentence:

"Are these numbers real?"

Liam and Isabella nodded hard.

Benjamin immediately covered his eyes with a hand, not wanting his siblings to see the hot tears running from them. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

He had taken over the family’s farming work because there was no other choice. He had never much liked the work himself, nor had he any particular love for it.

At the start he had wanted to sit the entrance exam for the Capital Military Academy, and be a strong soldier the way other Alphas went. It was only that the circumstances he grew up in wouldn’t allow him to do it, and later, once he fell ill with the pheromone disorder, he no longer dared entertain such distant ideas.

After Liam appeared and suggested he film a vlog, he had suddenly discovered a fierce passion of his own for creating real footage. Benjamin had never expected to become famous, wanting only to record moments of real life and share them with everyone.

And instead, he had become a famous man...