She pinged her Nous Assistant app, Aida. Aida had a warm, professional voice with gentle optimism. Clear and articulate but not overly formal.
Mindt: Okay, so is this serious? Tell me this is a real hack!
Aida: Well you did just bet a ton of money on it being real. But to put you at ease, it appears to be real AF. Hold - I'm currently scanning the Nous network.
Aida was a general purpose app good for real time tasks involving search, data, and giving drones commands.
Aida: Yep, it looks as though "Jiem" has really hacked into every Nous device on the planet, including yours. There are stunned reactions on all the socials and VRs. No word yet from Synapto on their official stance.
Mindt: Is Nishigatana a real person? Any chance that was just a VR?
Aida: Way ahead of you. Nishigatana is indeed a real person who lives at the address mentioned. Want me to send him a message request?
Mindt thought that might be interesting to see if he had any further info, but he was likely swarmed with messages right now and from the video stream, it seemed like he was just as confused as everyone else.
Mindt: No. Keep me up to date if there is any news.
Aida: You better believe it, sister.
Checking her other messages, it seemed no one had any idea what was going on. Some theories on Jiem already popped up, including reaction videos, and posts shaming Nishigatana.
Mindt rested her gaze out the window. Wispy strings of clouds floated below -- like a balding man's head she could see the land below the gaps. Her mind wandered. She thought about a bald man she saw while boarding the airplane. She could see him now a row ahead of her, with a striking shiny head in the sea of thick manes. The name above him said Retro. Without prompting, the posh voice of her Wiki app came into her mind.
Wiki: Baldness is the partial or complete lack of hair growth, and part of the wider topic of "hair thinning". Today, hair loss is a choice. Nous implants largely solved the unsavory characteristic of baldness by controlling a hormone --
Mindt muted the wiki app. She didn't care about baldness.
She thought again about the dog and of Nishigatana. What would Nishigatana go through after being doxxed that like? Assuming Jiem really hacked everyone's Nous implants, Nishigatana's now the most famous person in the world. In an instant. More famous than the plutocrats, than gods. What would that be like?
Sure, he will not be liked, but he would be popular. And with that he could use it to tell a story. His version of why he was kicking the dog. If he spun it right, he could lie how his ailing mother needed money since she turned down Universal Basic Retirement, or those spilled noodles were the only meal he'd had in days, after working long hard shifts at, wherever he worked — plumber, pest control, whatever.
Mindt thought it was a bit of a stretch especially with an apartment that big, but it could work. She could see the headlines now, "Nishigatana, the Dog Kicker, is a Misunderstood Victim of Society".
Or better yet, why Jiem singled him out. Did Nishigatana have a secret?
She suddenly wished she was the one Jiem had picked to stream randomly to the world. Was it worth kicking a dog? Mindt could not reach an answer when Nous Calendar pinged her.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Calendar: Reminder, you have a new batch of memes due in 60 minutes. Doubtful you'll make anything good.
Mindt sighed. The Calendar app was an asshole with a snooty voice. She would describe the Calendar as "condescending librarian".
She had been a meme creator for 5 years now, and she was on the rise. She had a few sponsors, and she was making a decent living, but still had years to go.
Clearly there would be no nap for her with all this excitement going on and now work to do, and she opened her workstation. A browser appeared in her field of vision. The socials were flooded with memes about Jiem already. Millions of reactions in moments -- likes, emojis, bookmarked posts -- she was already way behind. She wanted to check the news as well but thought it would be best to get the memes out first.
Mindt: Give me the most controversial comments with at least 100 reactions on the top 10 Jiem memes from Bulgaria.
Mindt liked searching smaller countries that wasn't part of the mainstream. Bulgaria was down to 4 million people overall, most of them on UBR. Not only did it make her job easier as a professional meme creator in a largely non-competitive region, it let her get fresh content that she could easily modify and cross post to larger regions, hoping to strike big. She had to be careful not to reveal her sources, otherwise Bulgaria and the balkans would be flooded with other meme creators.
Browsing through the comments, she gave a laugh at one of them and she muttered in Bulgarian aloud, "let's go", which resulted in a glance from Retro, the bald man.
Mindt mentally selected 3 of the comments.
Mindt: Can you analyze the virality of these 3 comments if we were to change any Bulgarian specific references? Show me any local virality scores above 70%.
Aida: Comment 1 will perform best. It has a virality score of 71% if you apply the "microplastic" template in Synapto, Los Angeles and Google, San Francisco Bay Area. There is a 74% score if you apply the "Right, I'll get my coat" template in Synapto, London, and a 91% score with the "gimme my gun" template in United Free States.
Mindt: Always the guns with those people. It's their entire identity. Total addressable market on those three regions?
Aida: Approximately 900 million people. With a projected reaction conversion rate of 0.3%. Plus, a follow rate of .005% . With these estimates, you would net about 45k followers. Annnnd, you would be over the threshold of a regional sponsorship in Synapto, London. That means they would buy another weekly ad spot from you. Remember on the Nous network, there's 3,400 years worth of content created every second, so these scores are quite good.
Mindt: 900 million's not good enough. Jiem is worldwide. I need a bigger TAM.
Aida: There is another template you could use, but you're not going to like it. It'll be like when your parents told you to make your dreams come true, but you're always being chased and murdered in your dreams. Anyway, 84% worldwide virality score.
Mindt: Holy fuck -- 84%! What is it?!
Aida: It's the "I welcome our Synapto overlords" template.
It felt like she was hit in the chest, Mindt lost focus on the workstation information windows. The bald head of Retro ahead reflected light from the sun into the aircraft cabin. Chose to be bald, she thought. Bold or just oblivious? Just then, a time sensitive message came into her head.
Pilot: Sorry to interrupt the excitement, folks. We will be landing in Synapto, London in a few moments. The weather is clear skies with a slight breeze and a cool January afternoon of 32C. We hope you've enjoyed your flight with us and hope to see you again on a future Crossroads flight.
Mindt blinked back and resumed her attention on her workstation.
Mindt: Eighty. Four. Percent. World. Wide.
Mindt wanted to add a bunch of excited happy face and money emojis to her message but swore she would only use spoken natural languages even when communicating to her Nous apps. Though it was hard to describe what a natural language even was these days considering half the population spoke using only images, evolving language itself into its most simplistic base. But to her, spoken languages allowed her to convey her true message. One of her fears was to become someone who could only speak in images, an increasing problem in society. These people lived completely normal lives since N0us auto translated everything for them, but to Mindt, it just felt wrong.
Aida: Shall we roll it out?
She would already be flagged for shorting Synapto, delegating a huge chunk of her savings on that bet, and didn't want to take another risk for her income.
She pinged her money app.
Stonks: Synapto down 3%. You're going to need a change of underwear with the money you're about to make.
She didn't want to jinx it, but she was wondering how close this would get her to financial independence. Finally, she sighed.
Mindt: I can't risk shadowban. No. Just the 900 million TAM. That's all.
Aida: Pushing it out to the socials now. Your normally scheduled memes have been pushed back in favor of this new time sensitive batch. I've got a good feeling about this one.