by Newbiel
"We are getting out of topic." Said his grandfather wishing to come back to the previous subject.
"Where do you want to go to college?" Ask Mary, starting to worry. She didn't want to see him leave far away.
"I will study in New York to be with you guys. I choose Columbia, I want to have a law degree." Said Nathaniel.
Hearing that they were once again surprised unlike Karine who started smiling joyfully. She had graduated from Columbia with mention and she liked the fact that he was going through her footsteps and going to the same university she did.
"Baby are you sure? This is a very competitive law school, it's one of the top five in the country." Mary asked worriedly.
"You would need to have a 170 score in LSAT to apply and that's the minimum, even with that, you could not be admitted. I had 172 to mine and I barely passed." Clarified Karine.
"I will help, I know a few people. But i will start making phone calls after we have the results of your test. When will you take it?" Ask Robert.
"We just finished the song and the guy you sent me to make the music video says that it will take a few days. Let me have two weeks and I will be good." He answers.
"Very well grandson, I will make the necessary arrangement. Do not disappoint me." He warned before leaving.
Chapter 21: :
Hampton, 8/06/2012. 08:30.
Nathaniel was peacefully running on the beach and was thinking about everything that has happened since he came out of coma. There were the memories and experiences of a forty years old veteran that he had to merge within his mind. Followed by the excruciating pain that he had to experience to build back his muscled mass. The reason that he was able to exceed every prediction of rehabilitation was because of his soul power.
When he was moving his soul inside of his body, he could see with his sight the tissues and muscles knitting back after each session of training and pain. He had made some experiments and without using his soul, he could see his metabolism was faster than it should be. Without the ability to see the difference with an average person, he could not quantified by how much. When he was using his soul in a specific area, that was even stronger.
He even pricks his finger with a knife to test things out. Focusing his willpower and soul where he was bleeding, he could see in a minute the blood flow stopping and his skin knitting back together. When he witnessed it he could not hold back a thrill of excitement followed rapidly by apprehension. He would need to avoid hospital in the future, he did not think that an examen could find something wrong with his body but better not risk it. Moreover, it would be a pain to explain why he could heal way faster than ordinary people.
His body was full of power and energy all the time and even a fifteen miles sprint could not suck his energy out. Nathaniel knew that he could become an athlete and win even against people shooting themselves with enhancing drugs. That was not of course something he was considering, he wanted to be known for his intellect and mind, that sound conceited when he thought about it but he never considered himself as arrogant.
He remembers a sentence he read in a book in his youth that greatly affected him.'To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.'
That phrase echoed deep inside of him and at that moment he resolved to always be true to himself, even if people didn't like it.
The Caldwell case had finally started to die down since last week when he was extradited to the EU and LaHaye. He was currently charged with crime against humanity and all his assets had been frozen. Thanks to anonymous information, they managed to block all his accounts, even the more hidden one in EU and Africa, everything was on the file he sent them so that was not overly complicated. News anchors start to question where the file they all received originated from. Some people say it was someone in Africa who was a victim who did it. Others severely rebuked them when they say that every letter and mail they received could not be traced back to their original owner. That was not something an ex slave could do, especially when the letters were sent from the US. Some say that was the investigation of a hidden agency inside from the US government, that's why it was so well orchestrated. That eases considerably the worry that experienced his grandmother when she listened to it, where his grandfather just laughed it out with disdain.
Now that the case was behind him, he could focus more on his musical career. He started to write more songs, some were rock and other more pop like. He didn't want to be confined to one kind of song and one gender of music. Last week, he finally made the music video for his song which he named 'Will to Love'. They had a lot of fun with Taylor doing it despite getting in an argument with the director. He wanted to make a scene with him that was not in the spirit of the music and involve him being almost naked or shirtless.
Things could have gone out of hands if not for the presence of Maggie. Maggie was his agent and was hand picked by his mom. She was a brown haired forty years old woman with a stern expression always present on her face. She was a renowned agent of movie stars but wanted to change and experience the music industry. Despite her stern face she was quite nice and talked to him with respect which was essential to have a healthy working relationship.
That didn't mean that she was nice with everyone, when he was berated rather vehemently by the video director, she jumped in the conversation and ripped him a new one. Nathaniel did not need someone to defend himself but he admitted that she was quite scary when she was angry. Things that the guy in question did not argue with when he almost bowed to excuse himself, which was quite funny. He admits that since he was so young there were people bound to not take him seriously, having a scary agent would be a must in cases like this. Especially in a field which was not renowned for being the most benevolent one.
Hearing his phone ringing, he stopped running and chuckled when he saw the caller ID. Sometimes thinking about something was akin to summoning it.
"Hello Maggie, how are you? It's a sublime morning don't you think?" Said Nathaniel with a radiant voice.
"I hate morning people." She grumbled on the phone which made him laugh.
"You say that but you should come running with me early in the morning, that would help you see the beauty of dawn."
"Not going to happen! Stop goofing around now you make me think about my daughter! I had an important novel from the label, we can finally upload your song."
"Finally!" Exclaim Nathaniel. Since last week the music video was finished and they were waiting for the label to finalise the last point with downloading the application and mass producing the disc for the single.
"According to what I have heard, a week of waiting has never happened before. Even a huge star like your friend Taylor needs to wait a couple of months if more than that. I guess being the only grandson of the CEO has its perks even if I don't argue that you are not the worst singer I have ever heard."
"Ohhh you're so sweet Maggie, remind me to hug you next time you come at the house."
"If you try I will smack you!" She threatened in a stern voice. "Instead of bothering me, you should run back to the house and publish the video on Youtube."
Reducing the window of his call on his phone, he opened an app that he had created last week. Pressing it, the command embed in the app launch itself, publishing the video and tweeting on his account. Just like that both of his accounts with no follower or subscriber publish their first post. Things were silent on the beach when he did but he knew that this calm was not bound to last.
"Done." He said with a tone of gravity.
Chapter 22: :
"Done?" Ask Maggie confused.
"Yes, I created a command on my phone to publish the video in case I was not home at the time. It seems I was right."
"Well, aren't you smart."
"You know, that would ring better if it was not said with a voice that sarcastic."
"And runn
ing the risk of turning you into an insufferable prick? Not on my watch." She said in a righteous tone.
"You just enjoy bullying me, admit it." He said in a wrong tone.
The only answer he got was an ominous chuckle before she hanged up. He looked at his phone for a few seconds before he got a laugh too. Maggie was a handful but he knew he was lucky to have her given her amazing credential. She was a little snarky but that was not something that bothered him, especially when he knew that she appreciated him.
Putting the matter aside, he resumed his run. He decided to not look at his youtube or twitter for the next few hours and focus on his physical exercise. If people were to see him exercise on the beach, they would feel tired just looking at him. Lately, he was focusing on agility type of exercise since he saw a documentary on Parkour and Freerunning. After watching a few videos of people doing parkour, he got immediately hyped and started running around performing stunts and getting cursed by passersby which made him laugh. Doing it, he had a sense of liberty that was exhilarating.
Nathaniel did not tell anyone that he was starting parkour of course. He remembered how hard he had to convince his mothers when they learned that he was learning self-defense. He had to promise them that he would not engage in the military or become a cop before they finally agreed which will never happen. After they had almost lost him, all of them were extremely protective of him, even his grandfather was. The only difference was that he was hiding it better.
Returning home, he hoped in the heated pool where he started swimming to relax his muscles. Parkour was extremely hard and he would need to reinforce his joint to perform as well as he wanted. An hour later, after a very warm shower he was finally dressed. Once leaving the pool, he was walking in the house with a simple short when he realised that his grandmother was having tea with a few friends over.
Nathaniel did not want to get caught up in a conversation as he had a lot of things to do but he could not be impolite either. So he went to the living room, kissing his grandma cheek hello, he then performed a flourishing bow to the three other ladies in the room which made them giggled. Exiting the room, he could hear the lady whispering among themselves, the thing that made him laugh was when he heard someone saying 'If only I was forty years younger'.
Turning on his laptop, he finally logged onto his twitter account and literally froze upon seeing the number of notifications displayed on the screen. Thinking that it was a bug, he quickly actualised the page but nothing changed. His number of notifications on his account was blocked at '99+' on both his mentions and messages. It was not even what surprised him the most but the number of followers that was displayed on the screen. 281 458 people had followed his twitter account in the last three hours and the number of people just kept increasing. Just with a quick update on the page and his number increased with four thousand more, that was incredible. He congratulated himself to have disable the notification or his phone would have crashed under the flow of so many alerts.
His first and only post says: 'Hello, I'm Nathaniel and I'm from NY. This is my first song that I made with a friend, I hope you will like it!' followed by the link Youtube. It was not a very well made message but it had currently six thousands comments on it! That was crazy! Curious to how the situation escalated that quickly, he started sorting through the comments and followed until he had a clear picture of what had happened. The Lyndon Label twitter account had RT him, followed closely by the label of Taylor and finally Taylor herself.
She had even commented on his first tweet where she was pouting that he did not follow her which made him laugh. Rectifying his mistakes, he hastened to follow her back as well as following his label account and hers too. Looking more attentively at the comment and mention he was constantly getting, the question that was coming back were how old he was, if he was single and the most 'Are you Taylor boyfriend?' which made him smile bitterly. He understood the hype around a famous artist like Taylor but there were so many other topics much more important than that. Human nature could not resist the concept of gossip it seems.
Looking on the side of the screen he could see the words "Nathaniel Lyndon" and "Will to Love" were trending on twitter with more than one hundred thousand mention each. He knew that his song was good but he did not expect that it was going to resonate with so many people across the country and the world. He could read so many emotional messages of people deeply touched by his song that he was starting to feel emotional himself. So many emotions were raging inside of him that he could not do anything except breathe calmly through them.
Calming himself, he opened a new window to look at his Youtube account. His video was currently number 4 on the trending list with 3 millions vues already, his account having two hundred thousand subscribers already! They were staggering numbers! Looking at the description of his video, he remarked that something important was missing.
'Time to make my second tweet it seems.' He thought with humor.
'Hi guys! Thank you for your immense support, this is very motivating! Just wanted you to know that you can buy the song on Itunes or in store. All the money made from the sales will be donated to a foundation who help our retired veteran getting back to civilian life!' Nathaniel finally tweeted adding the tag of the foundation and the link to buy the song.
His choice of foundation was not an accident. The man in charge of it was a retired marine who opened it after he was forced to leave for an injury in combat that restricted his movement. Marc had served with this man in fact and he knew that he was an honorable man. That didn't stop Nathaniel to look into him before contacting them to make them aware of what he was going to do.
At first they hadn't even believed him and hung up on him which was quite funny. Nathaniel had to call them three more times and then video call them with Taylor to convince them that it was true. As a small entity with only him and his wife working on it based in Georgia, they would never have believed they would be targeted by something this big. When Nathaniel told the couple the projected money the song was supposed to gather, they all but broke down crying.
When they asked him how they came to know about them, Nathaniel simply smiled but otherwise stayed silent.
Chapter 23: :
Instantaneously after being published, the tweet starts amassing fav, comments and retweets. People were surprised to see that his first song was going to be for charity and was showering him with a compliment. The feeling was exhilarating but dangerous at the same time. At that moment he knew that he was going to need his family and his agent to keep him on the ground. As much as he disliked arrogant pricks, he did not want to become one, that would result in him hating himself.
Hearing his phone ring, he laughs when he sees the caller ID. To believe that she knew when he was thinking about her, that was scary.
"Hi again Maggie, I was just thinking about you." He said playfully.
"All good, I'm sure" She answered immediately, sounding smug.
"Well, I was feeling lonely so I started thinking about you, then my hand started caressing my abs and…"
"I WILL KILL YOU" She almost yells on the phone, which made him explode in laughter.
Maggie was a 46 years old, single mom. She raised her daughter alone as the father left before birth. He would not talk to everyone like that except her who he enjoys teasing as much as she loves bullying him.
"Now shut up and let me speak, this is important." She said sternly.
"Sorry sorry, go on."
"I had a lot of calls in the last few hours, did you see the activity on your social network and Youtube?"
"Yes, I just got home, this is crazy." Nathaniel said with awe.
"Yeah about that, keep your head on your shoulder, appreciate the praise but don't let it influence your behavior and you will be okay. I know you are young but you are way more mature than any actor I work with so far so keep it up."
"Yeah I know, I start to feel it, the success, I understand why people go Mariah Carey on people."
<
br /> "You don't know half of it about Mariah, trust me kiddo." She said, sighing. "Enough with the jokes, we have pressing matters." Maggie added sternly.
"Ok ok, go on."
"I had a lot of calls in the last hour, as you are trending and nobody knows anything about you, a lot of talk shows want to interview you."
"Who invited me?" He asked, curious.
"As of now, CBS, NBC, FOX want to interview you. I expect that this list will grow as the day passes so you don't have to make a decision right now." Maggie said.
"Ok, first of all I will not accept any invitation from FOX." He said firmly.
"Why?" She asks, surprised.
"You know very well what they take on LGBTQ rights. Do I need to remind you that I have two mothers?"
"No you don't but you will need to go to their network one day or another for promotional purposes. You can't cut away one of the most watched networks in the country without consequences on your music. I advise you to reconsider Nathaniel."
"Maggie you are far more experienced than me on virtually everything and I will gladly follow your advice on anything but that." He said sharply.
That was not the only reason why he wanted to boycott FOX. When the Caldwell scandal broke out, the only one who started defending Caldwell was Fox News. The reason was political as Fox News was one of the companies who played Caldwell for his 'consultant' service. On Nathaniel book, you don't get to defend someone who commited slavery for political reason, hiding behind the free press. The former reason was enough for not going to this channel. He remembers plenty of times when his mothers were watching, tears in their eyes as they were being judged en slender for loving each other. That left a deep impression on him when he was young; things that he carried with him to this day.
"I hope that you will not regret it but this is your decision." She said, sighing. "What about the other two?"
"Let's wait until tomorrow and then we will look more closely on each one." He said. He didn't want to make a decision while not having all the propositions.
