34: Chapter 34 Subplots and Foreshadowing

Back at his apartment in Los Angeles, Alex did not start working immediately.

He stood before his workbench, his gaze sweeping over the vintage light meter, the sketchbook filled with notes, and the footage waiting to be edited on his computer screen. The bonfire in Nashville, Taylor's eyes, that handwritten card—these images remained clear in his mind.

But reality was knocking.

He handled Eric's matters first. The laboratory meeting was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, two days away. Then, he sat down and began to seriously consider Taylor's invitation to collaborate.

This was not a decision he could make lightly. Collaborating with Taylor Swift meant being instantly thrust into the global spotlight; it meant every creative decision he made would be scrutinized by millions of eyes; it meant he had to grow quickly to the level where he could converse as an equal with an artist of her caliber.

But at the same time, it also meant a massive platform, an opportunity to magnify the influence of his work a hundredfold.

He opened a document and began to draft an initial concept for the collaboration. Not a specific project proposal, but an exposition of his creative philosophy—what he hoped to achieve, what he would insist upon, and what he would avoid if he were to work with Taylor.

After writing for an hour, he stopped, realizing a problem: he needed to protect his creative ideas.

---

Wednesday morning, Alex did not go to school. He sat in front of his computer and opened the U.S. Copyright Office's electronic registration system, eCO.

Over the past few weeks, he had quietly studied the relevant procedures. Copyright protection in the United States arises automatically the moment a work is "fixed in a tangible medium of expression," but formal registration offered three key benefits: it served as evidence of ownership in infringement lawsuits; it allowed for the recovery of statutory damages and attorney's fees after registration; and it was a prerequisite for certain international protections if the work was infringed upon outside the U.S.

What he was doing now was not registering the complete, future hit works he had exchanged from the system—that was too dangerous and contradicted his strategy of "not importing high-ranking works early on."

What he wanted to register were some "seeds."

He created a new encrypted folder named "Copyright Library" and established several subfolders inside:

· Musical concept snippets

· Script/story outlines

· Core mechanisms for variety shows/reality shows

· Visual art project proposals

Then, he summoned the system interface and browsed the "Creative" category in the exchange list. Those complete movie scripts, hit songs, and phenomenal variety show proposals were still marked with exorbitant prices, which he would not touch for the time being. But he found a new subcategory: "Inspiration Fragments / High Concepts."

The price was not high, requiring only a few thousand to ten or twenty thousand popularity points each. The exchange items were not complete works, but rather "creative cores" with high potential—a unique story premise, a magical melodic motif, a disruptive game mechanic idea.

He exchanged three:

1. 【Musical Concept: City Pulse】

A 45-second electronic music melodic snippet, blending the warm texture of analog synthesizers with the sampled rhythms of urban ambient sounds. System note: "Core motif suitable for development into an urban-themed concept album."

2. 【Story Core: Memory Black Market】

A 500-word story premise: In a city in the future, there exists an underground black market where people can trade, implant, or erase specific memories. The protagonist is a "Memory Hunter" who specializes in finding lost or hidden memory fragments for clients. System note: "Suitable as a world-building foundation for a sci-fi series or movie franchise."

3. 【Variety Show Mechanism: Real Role-Playing】

A simple game mechanism: Let ordinary people immersively role-play another profession or identity for a week (such as a CEO, detective, or chef), filming everything covertly, and finally revealing the gap between their performance and that of real professionals, as well as the resonance. System note: "Emphasizes identity cognition and human observation."

After the exchange was complete, Alex did not directly use these "fragments." Instead, he began to adapt, expand, and localize them based on his own understanding.

Using music software, he developed the melodic snippet of 【City Pulse】 into three different variation versions, adding more of his own chord progressions and rhythmic changes. He rewrote the story premise of 【Memory Black Market】 into a short story outline set in contemporary Los Angeles, adjusting the protagonist's identity from a "Memory Hunter" to a "Private Investigator specializing in digging up forgotten truths." He refined the mechanism of 【Real Role-Playing】 into a concrete production proposal, adding multiple dimensions such as psychological assessment, vocational training, and social experiments.

For each adapted version, he retained the core highlights of the original "fragments" but imprinted them with a strong personal mark. Then, through the eCO system, he formally registered these adapted works—the melodic demos, story outlines, and program proposals—for copyright.

The entire process took most of the day. When he submitted the final registration application and received the system confirmation email, it was already dusk outside the window.

These registrations would not bring any immediate revenue, and they might never even be used. But they were like seeds buried in the ground, or more accurately, like landmarks pre-buried in the creative field. If someone "coincidentally" proposed a similar concept in the future, he could prove he owned it earlier; if he decided to release the complete work at some point in the future, these early registrations would serve as powerful evidence in the creative chain.

More importantly, the process itself gave him a clearer understanding of how to "safely" utilize system resources: not by directly importing finished products, but by exchanging high-value conceptual cores and then transforming them into unique, traceable original works through his own creation.

This approach would be slower, but absolutely safe and completely in line with the growth trajectory of a genius creator.

---

At 3:00 PM, Alex arrived at Eric's laboratory on time.

It was much more formal than he had imagined—not the cluttered look of a garage startup, but a standard office space in a Santa Monica tech park, with glass partitions, standing desks, and whiteboards filled with complex formulas and architectural diagrams.

"Alex!" Eric looked up from a pile of equipment, his eyes bloodshot but his spirit high. "Come take a look at this."

In the center of the laboratory was a semi-open test area, the floor covered with reflective markers for motion capture, surrounded by multiple high-speed cameras and sensors. A tester wearing a lightweight motion capture suit was wearing a rather bulky-looking pair of AR glasses, moving slowly.

"We call him 'Pathfinder One'," Eric pointed to the data stream on the screen. "During the test last weekend, when he triggered a specific 'reality puzzle' in the virtual environment, we detected abnormal brainwave patterns and environmental electromagnetic readings."

The screen switched, showing a waveform graph. At a certain point in time, the blue curve representing environmental electromagnetic radiation showed a clear spike, while the red curve representing "gamma wave" activity in the tester's brainwaves surged almost synchronously.

"Gamma waves are associated with higher-order cognitive functions and usually appear when people have an 'epiphany' or solve complex problems," Eric zoomed in on the image. "But the problem is, this electromagnetic spike was not generated by our equipment. We checked all possible external interference sources—power supplies, mobile phone signals, even the laboratory's air conditioning—none of them were it."

He turned to look at Alex, his eyes serious. "Then I reviewed the test footage. At the moment this spike appeared, what the tester saw in the virtual environment was a puzzle that required him to memorize and reproduce a set of rapidly flashing symbols within ten seconds. He succeeded, and later stated that at that moment, he felt 'time slowed down, and the symbols were exceptionally clear'."

Alex felt a slight chill down his spine. He remembered the 【Dynamic Vision】 and 【Neural Reaction Enhancement】 he had exchanged.

"This reminds me of your videos," Eric lowered his voice. "The frame-accurate edit points in 'Dancing Sculptures', the clear capture of fast-moving objects in 'MythBusters'... Of course, I don't mean anything else by it, just an observation as a technician."

"Do you think the two are related?" Alex remained calm.

"I don't know," Eric admitted honestly. "But I have a hypothesis: perhaps certain specific cognitive states—heightened focus, creative epiphany, extreme reaction—can generate some kind of weak coupling with the surrounding environment that we don't yet understand. Our AR environment, through highly immersive visual and cognitive challenges, can occasionally trigger this state."

He pointed to another screen, which showed data analysis charts of several of Alex's videos. "Look, in your videos, during several key 'satisfaction points', audience interaction data (comments, shares, completion rate) also show similar spike patterns. Of course, this could be due to content quality, but... the time structure and waveforms are too similar."

Alex was silent for a few seconds. Crisis Intuition did not give a warning, indicating that Eric was currently just curious as a researcher and had no deeper threatening intent.

"So what do you want me to do?" he asked.

"Participate in the testing," Eric's eyes shone. "Not as a lab rat, but as a collaborator. You are the person with the most intuition for visual rhythm and cognitive stimulation that I have ever met. If we can design the 'challenges' in the AR environment together, maybe we can trigger this 'coupling state' more stably, then study it, understand it, and eventually... the possible applications are too many, from education to psychotherapy to entertainment."

This was a tempting proposal, but it was also full of unknowns.

"I need to consider it," Alex said. "And if I participate, I need a clear cooperation agreement—data ownership, authorship of research results, and revenue sharing ratios."

"Of course!" Eric nodded immediately. "I'm already preparing the documents. You are not a tester; you are a creative consultant and technical partner."

Leaving the laboratory, Alex took a cooperation draft with him. He needed to find a lawyer to review it carefully, but this was indeed a brand-new, potentially highly valuable side quest: a research project capable of legally studying the "interaction between cognition and reality," and he happened to possess the personal experience of such interactions granted by the system.

---

Returning to school on Thursday, the atmosphere was noticeably different.

Lena found him at lunch, her expression serious. "Derek spoke publicly at the fraternity party yesterday, saying he would 'let that Asian kid know who the master is here.' And... it seems he found people from outside the school."

"People from outside the school?"

"A few guys who often hang around the campus, the kind with criminal records," Lena lowered her voice. "My boyfriend interns at the police station, and he found out. Alex, you have to be careful; they might make trouble when you go out to shoot."

Alex nodded. Crisis Intuition sent a faint stinging sensation upon hearing this news.

"Thanks, I'll be careful."

In the afternoon self-defense class, he mentioned the possibility of a "multi-person conflict scenario" to Coach Mick.

Coach Mick's teaching was very practical: "The first choice is always to leave. But if you are surrounded and can't run, remember three principles: create space, create chaos, create opportunities."

He demonstrated several techniques for quickly breaking free from entanglements, using environmental objects to create obstacles, and how to choose a breakthrough point when facing multiple people. There were no flashy moves like in movies where one fights ten, only concise, efficient, and even somewhat awkward escape techniques.

"We start simulated combat next week," Coach Mick said. "Put on your protective gear, and I will have two students attack you at the same time; you need to practice applying these techniques under pressure."

After the class ended, Alex practiced for an extra half-hour. Sweat soaked his training clothes, but Primary Self-Healing was already alleviating the muscle soreness. He felt his body's reaction under pressure and evaluated his own limitations.

He was not strong enough yet. If he really encountered a prepared attack involving weapons or multiple people, his existing abilities could only increase his survival chances, not guarantee he would walk away unscathed.

He needed more training. He also needed to consider some more practical defensive measures—like legal personal protective equipment, like choosing safer shooting locations, like... deterrent means when necessary.

---

On Friday night, Alex finished the revision of his collaboration proposal for Taylor. He didn't send it immediately, but archived it first.

Then, he opened the confirmation email from the Copyright Office, looked at the file numbers of the registered works, and wrote down the next steps in his notebook:

1. Continue to accumulate "seeds": Exchange 1-2 high-quality "Inspiration Fragments" every month, adapt and register them. Build his own creative reserve.

2. Advance the AR project: Review the cooperation agreement, participate in the research while ensuring his own rights and interests. This might be a window into understanding the underlying logic of the system.

3. Strengthen security capabilities: Accelerate self-defense training, while researching legal personal safety solutions. Consider exchanging 【Environmental Perception Enhancement】 type abilities to warn of threats in advance.

4. Deal with campus threats: Regarding Derek, he cannot remain passive. He needs to collect evidence of his potential misconduct (academic dishonesty? misconduct?) and prepare to fight back when necessary.

5. Advance content line: The first episode of "Student Filmmaker's Survival Guide" will be released next week. Start planning the second episode, "How to Shoot a Cinematic Look with Natural Light."

After writing these down, he leaned back in his chair and looked out the window.

The night sky of Los Angeles was dyed dark red by urban light pollution, with no stars visible. But Alex knew that in the places those lights couldn't reach, many things were growing, lurking, and waiting for the right moment.

His system, his abilities, those "seeds" he exchanged, his potential collaboration with Taylor and Eric, and even Derek's secret threats—all of these were threads, some bright, some dark.

And what he needed to do was to sort out these threads, grasp the ones he should grasp, cut the ones he should cut, and then, at the right moment, weave them into a web sturdy enough to support his rise to higher ground.

On the computer screen, the page of the copyright registration confirmation email was still lit.

Alex moved the mouse and clicked "Print."

The printer hummed and spat out pages of confirmation with official watermarks and file numbers.

He picked up the first one, looking at the words "Work Title: 《City Pulse_Variation 1》" on it.

This was just the beginning.

A long, cautious, but step-by-step beginning.