Blogbuster - A comedy-laced blogger sci-fi thriller

1 - Introducing the Blogbuster...

“You know what blows me away ?”

Roman Stax pranced around the stage, stretched out his arms and smiled at the crowd. Over twenty cameras captured his style : premium onyx-black suit, the tanned skin and the corporate-blue eyes that stood out from it.  

“We live in the most exciting times of our history, ladies and gentlemen. The holy web has allowed us to reach every single person on the planet. It has helped creatives, businessmen and ambitious individuals to create their own online empires.”

He stared at the first ten rows of the audience.

“But the freedom to reach everyone has come with a hefty price tag.”

Stax turned his glance from left to right in a 180° swap. He wanted to capture them all. Wanted to compel them all.

“What do we do in a world where everyone gets a shot and no one cares ? Especially in a world with so much competition that people are overloaded with choices ?”

Pause.

“Do I want to watch a lefty political channel, a DIY cooking show with grandmother Grave or some cats getting furry in a J-porn ? Mucho choices, people, and not so mucho attention. The question is — what do you do to break through the clutter ?”

He grinned. No one in the audience replied.

“That, my dear friends, is a question that I’m going to answer very soon. But first, let me tell you an interesting revelation.”

He clapped his hands. Closed his eyes. Cleared his throat. 

“Back in the day, my father was conducting an official study on adolescents growing up in the Internet era. He claimed the general attention of a web kid was the same as a goldfish, about nine seconds.”

The audience laughed. At least the front rows did. 

“Humans with the attention spans of goldfishes ? That’s not even the bad news, folks. The bad news is today it’s even less than that.”

He looked down at his gold-plated shoes. They reflected the spotlight from above. Shoeshine deluxe.

“The average human nowadays has only one second of attention to spare.”

He lifted his head and glanced back at the audience.

“One second, ladies and gentlemen. One single second to hook your audience and make them eagerly anticipate the next second, and the next, and the next one after that.”

Pause.

“One second to be memorable online. So what would you do to stand out ?”

He walked back and forth between the stage, waiting for the audience to answer. Silence snuck in, with the only sound coming from the humming cameras that floated around him. A fizzy noise buzzing from every direction. Roman smiled. He forced the moment into an awkward pause. He knew timing was everything.

“Well, I believe I’ve found the answer. That’s why I’ve toiled away in obscurity for the last year. The media claimed I had an emotional breakdown, or that I retreated from my work life. Nah, it couldn’t be further from the truth. I wasn’t hiding from the public and chewing crackers in the dark, ladies and gentlemen, I was working on my secret project.”

He stood still, put his palms together. Made sure everyone glued their ears to his next sentence with crisp clarity.

“The secret project that cost me well over fifty million credits.”

The audience oooh’d. More people took pictures. Snap, flash, snap.

“And today, I’m going to reveal it to all of you.”

The audience cheered in unison, some whistled, some clapped extra fast. Cameras moved closer and zoomed into Roman Stax’ bleached biters. So close that the spotlight reflected off his teeth, making him look a sun swallower.

“I want to present you a web event the world has never seen. A show that will not only beat every crappy online video out there, but also revolutionize the way we experience entertainment.”

He paused yet again and allowed the audience to gasp.

“Now, how amazing will it be you ask ? Well, I want it to be so compelling, you’d want to cancel your honeymoon and forget about having sex.”

Waves of awkward laughter spread through the audience.

“It’s going to be so intense that doctors will abandon surgeries in the middle of the incision, even with the bloody scalpel in their hands, just to keep watching my show.”

He smiled and embraced another wave of laughter while ignoring the ones with covered mouths and shaking heads. He may have gone too far with this one. Nah, he didn’t. Not yet.

“Heck, even if you were suicidal, you’d postpone your impending death. Put away the blade, the pills and the rope, and tune into my channel, because what you’re going to witness beats the afterlife.”

He stretched out his arms and raised his chin towards the ceiling. The crowd exclaimed ‘ohhh’. Then silence blanketed the auditorium. A hall filled with over a thousand people and no one said a damn thing. Roman smiled, he called it the Stax Effect. That moment when his presence silenced the crowds and sucked the air out of the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen, viewers from around the globe, let me introduce you to the greatest online show event on earth.”

Pause.

“Let me introduce you to the Blogbuster.”