Rebirth 1991: Keep the Fame, I'll Take the Royalties

The Logistical Nightmare

Early February 1993 washed over Los Angeles with an uncharacteristic, biting chill, but inside the sprawling, twenty-thousand-square-foot fortress of Sovereign Media on Sunset Boulevard, the internal climate was a chaotic, high-temperature furnace of absolute capitalist momentum.

The aftermath of the Super Bowl XXVII visual hijacking was monumental. Elias van Kempen’s three-second, un-invoiced monopoly on a national broadcast had shattered the terrestrial radio embargo orchestrated by Sony Music. Tower Records managers across the country were screaming into their telephones, begging the Sovereign Manufacturing plant to expedite the pressing of another hundred thousand ”Creep” compact discs. The independent single was currently operating like an unstoppable acoustic virus, infecting the American youth demographic with terrifying efficiency.

Yet, as the physical inventory flew off the shelves, creating an avalanche of pending Net-90 revenue, Elias van Kempen sat behind his acoustic-glass executive desk, looking profoundly unamused.

He was meticulously adjusting the cuffs of a crisp, dark navy dress shirt. His dark, striking eyes were fixed on the heavy, plastic rotary phone resting on the polished steel surface.

Outside his glass office, the warehouse floor was a portrait of comedic, administrative agony.

Paul Rudd was currently jogging between three different ringing telephones, a pencil tucked behind his ear, his Anti-Awkwardness Sunglasses sitting crookedly on his sweating face.

”Yes, I understand Ms. Theron’s fitting for Lethal Weapon 3 is at two o’clock! I am telling you, the studio wardrobe department needs to clear the jacket through us first!” Paul yelled into one receiver, before frantically slamming it down and picking up another. ”No, Don! Elias is not fighting a rematch in Vegas next week! I don’t care if the PPV numbers were legendary, he is currently transitioning into a record executive! Stop calling!”

Owen Wilson was reclining on a modular steel sofa nearby, lazily eating a bag of pretzels, watching Paul with deep, philosophical fascination.

”You gotta pace your breathing, man,” Owen drawled, tossing a pretzel into the air and catching it in his mouth. ”You’re taking all the corporate anxiety into your chest. Let it flow through your legs. You’re blocking your own chi.”

”I am blocking a breach of contract lawsuit, Owen!” Paul shrieked, sprinting to a third ringing phone. ”If I drop one of these plates, the entire Omni-Portfolio collapses!”

Inside the serene silence of the corner office, Elias’s private, unlisted direct line buzzed with a sharp, frantic ring.

Elias picked up the receiver with slow, aristocratic grace. ”Sovereign Media.”

”Elias. Thank God you picked up. It’s Arthur.”

The voice on the other end was breathless, dripping with pure, unadulterated white-collar terror. It was the mid-level Sony Music accountant Elias had blackmailed in a Century City diner months ago by purchasing his predatory credit card debt.

”Good morning, Arthur,” Elias purred, his baritone voice a smooth, cold rumble. ”I trust your mortgage payments are no longer keeping you awake at night?”

”Listen to me, you have to do something,” Arthur gasped, ignoring the pleasantries, the sound of a closing office door echoing in the background. ”Tommy Mottola is losing his mind over the Super Bowl stunt. He knows you bypassed his radio blackout. He knows you’re gaining leverage. But worse... he saw the way Mariah looked at you at the Thanksgiving Gala.”

Elias’s dark eyes narrowed into bottomless voids of pure, absolute calculation.

”Tommy is terrified she’s going to jump ship when her current album cycle ends,” Arthur whispered frantically. ”He’s calling in the heavy artillery. He just instructed the senior legal team to draft a ’Lifetime Perpetuity Clause’. It’s an airtight, ironclad contract extension. It locks her publishing, her masters, and her touring rights exclusively to Sony for the next seven albums. If she signs it, she’s a corporate prisoner until she’s fifty, Elias. And he is going to force her to sign it at the pre-Grammy party next week to generate press.”

”A lifetime perpetuity clause,” Elias repeated, testing the words on his tongue. It wasn’t an artistic negotiation; it was a legal hostage situation.

”The draft is sitting on the desk of his senior legal assistant, Brenda, right now,” Arthur warned. ”They’re revising the penalty clauses today. Elias, if Tommy gets her signature, you can’t touch her. The Pop Dictators will lock the gates permanently.”

”I appreciate your diligence, Arthur,” Elias murmured softly, his tone completely devoid of panic. ”Continue reviewing your ledgers. I will handle the legal department.”

Elias hung up the phone.

He didn’t slam his fist on the desk. He didn’t curse. He simply calculated the logistics of a corporate infiltration.

He stood up, grabbing a black dry-erase marker, and walked out of his office. He approached the massive whiteboard that separated the reception area from the distribution floor.

”Paul. Owen. Board meeting,” Elias commanded, his voice carrying effortlessly over the chaotic ringing of the warehouse phones.

Paul dropped a phone receiver, wiping a massive sheen of sweat from his forehead, and practically dragged his feet over to the whiteboard. Owen ambled over, bringing his bag of pretzels.

Elias began drawing a rapid, highly detailed architectural floor plan of the Sony Music executive suite in Century City, referencing the blueprints he had meticulously memorized from a municipal zoning archive weeks prior.

”The Pop Dictators are attempting a hostile lockdown of our primary target,” Elias announced smoothly, drawing a large, red ’X’ on a specific corner office on the map. ”Tommy Mottola is drafting a slavery contract for Mariah Carey. The physical document is currently resting on a desk on the twelfth floor of the Sony building.”

Paul blinked, pushing his glasses up his sweaty nose. ”Okay. So, what? We call our lawyers? We send them a strongly worded cease and desist?”

”We do not have lawyers, Paul. We have you,” Elias smiled, a dark, terrifying expression of pure capitalist intent. He tapped the red ’X’ with the marker. ”We cannot fight a contract we have not read. Therefore, we must acquire the document before it is presented to the target.”

”Acquire it?” Paul’s voice jumped an octave. ”Elias, you mean steal it. You want to steal a classified legal document from a multinational conglomerate.”

”I prefer the term ’involuntary early discovery’,” Elias corrected flawlessly. ”Tomorrow evening, the executive floor will be operating on a skeleton crew. We are initiating a covert extraction. Owen will secure the perimeter in the transport vehicle. I will monitor the radio frequencies from a tactical distance.”

Elias turned, locking his hypnotic, predatory gaze directly onto his Executive Assistant.

”And you, Paul,” Elias murmured, his voice dropping into a velvety, inescapable command, ”will be entering the building disguised as a third-shift sanitation worker. A janitor. You will empty the trash cans, infiltrate the legal assistant’s office, and photograph the draft contract.”

Silence fell over the warehouse.

Paul Rudd stared at Elias. He stared at the whiteboard. The blood drained from his face at an absolutely terrifying speed, leaving him the color of old chalk.

”A... a janitor?” Paul whispered, his knees visibly trembling. ”Elias, I am an actor. I went to the University of Kansas for theater! I was in a national commercial for Mervyn’s California! I can’t sneak into Sony Music with a mop! If they catch me, Tommy Mottola will have me buried under a stadium! I will die! I will literally die of a stress-induced coronary in a utility closet!”

Elias didn’t offer a comforting pat on the shoulder. He needed absolute compliance, and he refused to let the logistical hierarchy crumble.

He mentally engaged the digital loan shark.

[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: TAWA KARISMATIK ANTI-CRINGE (ANTI-CRINGE CHARISMATIC LAUGH)][COST: -5 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 150 CP]

[CHA-CHING!]

Elias leaned back, crossing his arms, and unleashed a rich, dark, perfectly calibrated laugh that echoed off the high warehouse ceilings. It was a sound of such overwhelming, aristocratic superiority that it instantly crushed Paul’s frantic energy into dust.

”Oh, Paul,” Elias chuckled, shaking his head with an expression of profound, pitying amusement. ”You believe your dignity is a protected asset. It is not. Your dignity is a heavily depreciated liability that currently stands between Sovereign Media and absolute market dominance. You are not sweeping floors; you are performing an aggressive corporate espionage maneuver.”

The sheer, undeniable dominance of the laugh shattered Paul’s last remaining shred of mental resilience.

With a high-pitched, tragic squeak that sounded like a deflating balloon, Paul Rudd’s eyes rolled to the back of his head. His knees completely buckled, and he collapsed forward, hitting the polished concrete floor in a flawless, comedic dead faint.

THUD.

Owen Wilson stopped chewing his pretzel, staring down at Paul’s unconscious body. A massive, cartoonish sweatdrop rolled down Owen’s cheek.

”Wow,” Owen murmured softly. ”You literally just laughed his consciousness away, man. That is a very intense management style.”

”He will reboot in three minutes,” Elias stated, entirely unbothered, stepping cleanly over Paul’s legs. ”In the meantime, we require the wardrobe.”

Two hours later, a beat-up, unmarked white van pulled into the Sovereign Media parking lot.

A man stepped out, hauling two heavy plastic garment bags and a small metal briefcase. He was a notorious Hollywood underground prop vendor named Frank—a man who supplied highly realistic, specialized equipment to independent film crews who didn’t want to pay studio rental fees.

Frank walked into the warehouse, stepping over a slowly recovering Paul Rudd, who was sitting on the floor drinking a generic sports drink and whimpering softly.

Frank slammed the bags onto Elias’s desk.

”Alright, kid. Just like you asked over the phone,” Frank grunted, unzipping the bags to reveal two meticulously weathered, authentic-looking gray sanitation uniforms, complete with utility belts. He opened the briefcase, pulling out a plastic ID badge. It bore the Sony Music corporate logo, complete with a magnetic strip and a fake employee ID number. ”The uniforms are tailored down to the thread count. The ID card is a flawless clone of their night-shift vendor badges. It’ll pass a visual inspection by any rent-a-cop in Century City.”

”The craftsmanship is adequate,” Elias acknowledged, inspecting the ID card. ”And the invoice?”

Frank crossed his arms, puffing out his chest with the arrogant swagger of a black-market monopolist.

”Seribu lima ratus dolar, Nak,” Frank sneered, an ugly, greedy smile on his face. (One thousand five hundred dollars, kid.) ”Ini kualitas studio. Kau mau ID card Sony palsu atau tidak?” (This is studio quality. Do you want the fake Sony ID card or not?)

Paul, overhearing the number from the floor, let out another tragic groan. ”Fifteen hundred dollars for a mop suit. We are going to go bankrupt before we even commit the felony.”

Elias van Kempen did not flinch at the extortionate price tag. He simply looked at Frank with the cold, deadpan silence of an executioner determining the angle of the blade.

Elias didn’t argue the price. He audited the supplier.

[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: CORPORATE X-RAY SCAN][COST: -10 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 140 CP]

[CHA-CHING!]

The red, translucent grid snapped over Frank’s body, bypassing his clothes and locking directly onto the worn leather ledger poking out of his back pocket, and the microscopic stitching details on the sanitation uniforms.

The system processed the data with brutal efficiency.

[SCAN COMPLETE. THREAT ANALYSIS: RETAIL FRAUD & LABOR EXPLOITATION DETECTED.][VULNERABILITY: THE TARGET DOES NOT MANUFACTURE THE PROPS IN A STUDIO FACILITY. THE GARMENTS WERE SEWN IN A RESIDENTIAL GARAGE IN VAN NUYS. THE LABOR FORCE CONSISTS ENTIRELY OF UNPAID UCLA THEATER DEPARTMENT INTERNS, OPERATING UNDER FALSE PROMISES OF ’INDUSTRY EXPOSURE’.]

Elias’s dark eyes gleamed. The system overlay vanished, leaving only raw, uncompromising leverage.

Elias didn’t reach for his checkbook. He smoothly turned the fake Sony ID card over in his long fingers, his face a mask of chilling, aristocratic calm.

”Aku menginginkannya seharga seratus lima puluh dolar, Frank,” Elias smiled. It was a deeply shameless, terrifyingly polite expression. (I want it for one hundred and fifty dollars, Frank.)

Frank’s arrogant sneer vanished, replaced by a flush of genuine anger. ”A hundred and fifty?! Are you out of your damn mind?! The materials alone cost more than that! I’m not running a charity for indie filmmakers, kid! Pay the fifteen hundred or I’m taking the gear back!”

Frank reached for the garment bags.

”Jika kau menolak,” Elias purred, his voice dropping into a silken, lethal whisper that stopped the vendor’s hand dead in its tracks, ”aku akan menelepon SAG-AFTRA dan memberi tahu mereka bahwa kau mempekerjakan mahasiswa tanpa bayaran untuk menjahit kostum bajak laut ini di garasimu.” (If you refuse, I will call SAG-AFTRA and let them know that you are employing unpaid college students to sew these pirate costumes in your garage.)

Frank froze. The blood drained entirely from his face, leaving him a sickly shade of gray.

Elias leaned forward, resting his knuckles on the steel desk, completely dominating the older man.

”Margin keuntunganmu memang indah,” Elias whispered flawlessly, executing the vendor extortion with surgical precision. (Your profit margins are indeed beautiful,) ”tapi ancaman penjara federal jauh lebih menawan.” (but the threat of federal prison is far more captivating.)

The silence in the warehouse was absolute.

A massive, highly visible sweatdrop materialized on Frank’s forehead, rolling rapidly down his nose. The kid had completely bypassed his tough-guy facade and struck directly at the illegal, highly taxable foundation of his entire black-market business. If the labor board raided his garage, he wouldn’t just be fined; he would be criminally prosecuted for exploiting minors.

”You... you’re a psycho,” Frank choked out, his hands trembling violently.

”I am a highly motivated buyer,” Elias corrected smoothly.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a single crisp hundred-dollar bill and a fifty, and dropped them gently onto the desk.

Deep in the background of his mind, the system rang out, logging the transaction and applying the daily toll with mechanical indifference.

[DEDUCTING -$150.00 USD FOR EXTORTED PROP ACQUISITION.][SYSTEM WARNING: DAILY MAINTENANCE FEE DEDUCTION INITIATED.][DEDUCTING -$50.00 USD FROM LIQUID CASH RESERVE.]

Elias barely felt the two hundred dollars leave his ledger. His liquid cash settled at exactly $3,310,853.00. The capital preservation was flawless.

Frank stared at the $150. He looked at Elias’s unblinking, dead eyes. With a pathetic whimper of a man whose profit margin had just been violently assassinated, Frank snatched the cash, turned on his heel, and practically sprinted out of the warehouse without looking back.

Elias picked up the gray sanitation uniform and tossed it casually onto Paul Rudd’s lap.

”Get dressed, Paul,” Elias commanded.

Deep in his cerebral cortex, the loan shark erupted in a golden symphony of applause.

[CHA-CHING!][SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: THE PROP VENDOR EXTORTION & LOGISTICS PREPARATION EXECUTED WITH MAXIMUM SOCIOPATHY!][EVALUATION: YOU LAUGHED YOUR ASSISTANT INTO A COMA AND BLACKMAILED A SWEATSHOP OPERATOR TO SAVE $1,350 ON A FAKE MOP SUIT. YOUR SHAMELESSNESS IS A WORK OF ART. THE INFILTRATION IS GREENLIT.][REWARD: +15 SHAMELESS POINTS (CP) DEPOSITED.]

Elias felt the warm surge of digital capital. His CP balance ticked up to 155. He was heavily armed.

He walked back over to the whiteboard, tapping the red ’X’ on the twelfth floor of the Sony Music building.

”Tonight, we bypass the gatekeepers,” Elias announced, his voice echoing with absolute, terrifying ambition. ”Tommy Mottola believes he can lock an asset in a vault. We are going to remind him that Sovereign Media holds the master key.”

Paul looked down at the gray janitor uniform in his lap, tears of genuine despair welling in his eyes. ”I am going to die smelling like industrial floor wax.”

”A minor sacrifice for the Dynasty, Paul,” Elias smiled. ”Now. Let us review the floor plan.”