Heart-Less

Chapter 12

There was a month left before the Inaugural Trilateral Youth Meeting, and the names of the selected applicants were expected to be announced any time soon. Nic hoped that she would be one of the few, but Ada hadn't been able to guarantee anything. Apparently, everything was left in the hands of Ada's eccentric Head Wizard.

Sitting in her studio, Nic looked around at the various charts hanging on the wall, constantly updated with the latest numbers. Nic took them down before each show, but to be honest, she preferred to be surrounded with them. Ada may not have been the most enthusiastic adopter of the discipline of analytics at first, but Nic had seen the value in it immediately. Finally, this was a way that could make sense of why the weirdest things went viral. Why two exact same videos could come out, and only one trend. She had encouraged her friend to stick with the program, eagerly took notes when Ada shared all that she had learnt.

Nic had managed to adapt the ideas used to achieving and maintaining virality. Judging by the fact that she now held the record for the longest ever viral personality, Nic felt confident that the methods were working. Of course, she could never admit this out loud — going viral was supposed to be an accident. A little gift from the Network to reward those who so faithfully documented and mixed and created something new from the pool of ideas.

A notification popped up — three new followers. That made it twenty new followers one hour after dropping semi-confidential information. Nic got up and added the numbers to the relevant charts. Taking a step back, she tried to adsorb the numbers and plan her next show in a way that would capitalise on them.

The next big idea was hovering at the edges of her mind, she could just feel it. A way to break through and make sure that she stayed viral even longer. Nic sighed in frustration. She wished she could talk to Ada about it, but lately the girl had been so wrapped up in the whole council business. Not that Nic was complaining, well, she wasn't complaining very much, since this was the reason she went viral in the first place. Nic made a mental note to tell Ada how much she appreciated the boost and to make sure Ada didn't feel hurt for losing virality first. Her feelings of guilt eased as she used one of Ada's techniques to try and clear her mind.

Slowly, she looked over the myriad of decisions that needed to be made before the next show.

She should reduce the amount of personal information — yes. The viewers weren't there to listen to what she had been doing, and anyway, she hadn't been doing anything interesting lately. Just lots of number crunching. But she couldn't reduce it by too much. If she focused on the upcoming meeting, she would lose the chance to increase her number of trufans. Her number of trufans, assuming that 80% of those who sat through her personal life updates were trufans, wasn't big enough to warrant lasting sponsorships yet. Perhaps she could open and close with snippets of updates, plus random interjections, so that everyone would have to listen and hopefully find her interesting. Nic made a note to test the theory on the next show.

That sponsorship offer from MegaJob — no. Not yet. Nic was providing valuable information. She couldn't be seen as selling out. The anon boards hated that.

Information from Ada — the last bombshell news worked, but should she consider a cliffhanger again? News aged fast, and cliffhangers didn't tend to work as effectively if they were used too often. Unless she made an addendum episode? But that might shorten the news cycle and give her less time to prepare.

She almost had it. The perfect show. There as just something missing. It was hanging around, hiding. Nic's mind reached out and very nearly got ahold of it when the door burst open.

"What are you doing? Get out!" Nic screamed. She almost had it. The final piece that would create the perfect show.

The soldiers streaming into the room didn't even respond. Unlike most of her countrymen, they were silent and focused. Immediately, Nic reached her hand into the pocket and activated the recording function in her phone. Thank goodness for short cuts.