4 Changes

Three days later.

The camera finally made it home, it was a Canon Eos 1300D. It had a very good quality and was a relatively cheap model... only compared to the rest of the same caliber. Sam was ready to record, for the past few days Sam had done a lot of training because he wasn't used to singing, he had to train a lot for his voice to sound clean. At first Em laughed at him when she heard him sing but only after a few minutes she started to enjoy listening to him singing, she even pestered him every night to sing her a song before she went to sleep.

Today was Sunday, Sam had waited for the weekend to rent a room in the studio, he took Em with him and left for the studio. They arrived after only a few minutes and went into their recording room, a young man was sitting there playing on his phone. When he saw Sam he stood up and smiled at him "Sam right ? I'm Keith, I'm a mastering engineer and I'll take care of you today. What are you going to record today ?"

Sam shook his extended hand while giving a slight smile "I'm doing a cover so you won't have much to do, just give me the instrumental and I'll do fine."

He had thought a lot about what to sing, he needed something that was trending at the moment to make it work. When he will start to get known a bit he will do things that he like but at the moment he's have to ride on the trending wave so he had checked what was working at the moment and the cloud rap was doing very good, lots of artists had emerged with this trend and made quite a lot of money.

"I'll sing Changes by Xxxtentacion can you find me the instrumental?"

"Haha i love Xxxtentacion, nice choice! Give me a minute I'll get everything ready."

After checking everything with Keith Sam went inside the room and left his camera recording on the side, he was in front of the microphone when Keith made him sign that everything was ready.

The instrumental rang, a slow piano rhythm.

After a second Sam took a deep breath and started to sing, his voice was deep but not too much and it gave of a comforting feeling to the people listening.

"Mmm, baby I don't understand this...

You're changing I can't stand it...

My heart can't take this damage..."

When Keith heard Sam's voice he was directly absorbed into the song, he felt a lot of sad emotions being transmitted through Sam's voice, even though it was very different from X's voice it gave off the same lonely feeling.

"Girl, you're making it hard for me..."

Sitting behind Keith was Em, she was smiling slightly while looking at her big brother through the glass and enjoying the song. She had never heard her brother sing before these few days but she was certain that he was more talented than half the professional singers that she heard on TV.

After 2 minutes of recording Sam was done and got out from the soundproof room, Keith was looking at him with a big smile "Man since I'm in charge of the rental room I have every type of singers that come to me, from very good to very bad but I've never had someone that could give off these kind of deep emotions, I definitely wasn't ready for your performance but I don't think we need for another try. The first one was perfect, what do you think?"

Sam was very happy, a professional with tons of experience had said that he had never seen something like this so his performance was obviously outstanding.

Keith continued "I work here full time, the next time you rent a room here ask to have mine I'll take care of you !"

After thanking Keith and promising him that he'll ask for him the next time he came, Sam and Em took their stuff and left in direction of home.

"Big brother I prefer when you sing happy songs, I don't like sad songs."

Sam looked at his little sister with a smile and answered

"Then the next song I'll record will be a happy song, even better I'll let Em' chose what I'm going to sing!"

"Hahah big brother is the best, you'll sing Dora the explorer's opening next !"

Sam started to sweat... maybe this promise was a bad idea.

"Haha hey Em' this song is too hard for me... why don't you chose something else ?"

Em glared at him for a while and then said

"Fine I'll chose something else but let me time to think of something, I'll tell you later."

When they made it home Sam went toward his computer, he had everything ready. The video was inside the SD care of the camera and the song was inside an USB flash drive. Then he tried to download a video editor software but when he started installing it his computer crashed... time to buy a new one but not before he got his first income from YouTube so it would have to wait. He restarted his computer and looked for 24/7 internet coffee near his house, it was late now and Em was already in bed so he could go and come back as soon as he was done.

5 hours later it was way past midnight but he was still working on his video, he was almost done. The singing and the lipsync were perfect already and he was just getting the last details perfect. The room was a bit dark, a handsome and fit guy wearing a white tee shirt and blue jeans was standing in front of the microphone and singing slowly with a piano in background, the scene was very attracting. When everything was done Sam just had to register an account and publish the video, he started registering and used his own name as his pseudonym, Sam Petit.

The cover took only a few minutes to be posted, Sam gave himself his first view and was very satisfied with the result. He didn't have any friends to share with and pump his count view. So he just left it as it was and left for home, if his performance was good enough he'd have views and people will share it.

It was already 2 and a half in the morning when he finally got back home, he was sleepy as hell and was ready to go to sleep when a voice rang in his head. After 3 times he was already used to hearing so he wasn't as surprised as every other times but was expectant, what would the system give him this time...?

[The System has stores enough energy, the system is now fully awakened. Master can ask the system any question and the system will answer if it has the answer.]

Sam hadn't thought about it a lot but the system always said that it will fully awaken when it has enough energy... so the time had finally came and Sam was impatient to see what could a fully awakened system do ? So he asked out loud « What kind of system are you ? »

[The choices system is here to help master to accomplish his dreams through dilemmas, the other informations are locked for the moment. Master should try asking this question later.]

"Fine, then what can you do ?"

[Except for the dilemmas, the system can condense master's stats into numbers. Later master can unlock a shop and a currency usable only there. This will help master in case luck isn't on your side during the dilemma.]

"That's cool so I won't have to rely on luck all along, how do I see my stats ?"

[Please think of it and it will appear, by the way master can converse with the system by thought to avoid speaking alone in front of other humans.]

« Can't you say that sooner? I've been speaking alone for a good 5 minutes now... also, tell me how I got this system. Why is it me and not someone else.»

[Master got lucky and obtained the system, this is all I can tell you at the moment.]

'What a sh***y explanation... anyway I have to think about it huh...'

He thought very strongly to his status page and after a long long time of focus it finally appeared, he had beads of sweat rolling down his forehead. 'You actually said it like it was easy, I needed a full minute to make it appear.'

Just like the usual choices HUD, a similar one appeared in front of him but this one was a bit bigger with a lot more lines of text.

Name : Sam Petit

Age : 19 years

Job : Student

Status : None

Title : None

Stats :

Strength : 8 (+10)

Agility : 6

Speed : 10

Intelligence : 9

Leadership : 4

Luck : 18

Skills :

Level one boxing book.

Level one singing book.

Inventory : LOCKED.

Shop : LOCKED.

It looked a lot like a typical RPG game HUD and after seeing his luck points Sam started to guess why he had obtained the system and not someone else as his luck points were already equal to his strength points even after gaining the strength points...