Like, Share, and Submit (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

“Oh my gosh, you guys are TOO nice to me! What’d I ever do to deserve it, huh? I can’t even tell you how much I appreciate you guys!” Stacy enthused to the camera with her most believable saccharine play-acting, while slitting open the second box for the fan mail call segment of her live stream. She did her best not to look directly at the counter showing that there were only one hundred and three people watching now, because otherwise her eyelids would twitch with rage-quelled frustration. “Seriously, I would NOT be here without you!”

In the chat, her loyal but precious few followers texted their support, while as usual, the eighteen-year-old feigned gratitude for the bottom-shelf lip gloss and nail polish waiting in the box from one of her so-called fans. She put on her best Bambi eyes, crooned as though she’d fallen in love, and suppressed the desperate annoyance telling her that, after four years spent churning out YouTube content, that 103 should’ve been 103,000 at least. But it wasn’t. And just below her smiling bubbly happy-squealing façade of put-together online grace, an abiding resentment gnawed at Stacy.

What the hell was it going to take? She had the stunning looks. The magnetic personality. The interesting hobbies. She had twice the charisma of the empty-headed bimbos and annoying dickwads who racked up millions of views for irritating copy-pasted memes, raking in the cash and making an audience the size of small nations care, deeply, about their existence, with people hourly refreshing in hopes of a new glimpse into the hotter, richer, more scintillating lives of web-based titans: the kind that Stacy should have been, but wasn’t yet, despite doing everything right, and being so perfect for the limelight that she couldn’t help but feel that every passing day she lingered in anonymity was a fresh injustice committed against her by all of mankind.

Because in fact, even if Stacy was the most popular face on YouTube, it wouldn’t have been enough. She’d put in the blood, sweat, and tears by now that to see the counter reaching millions wouldn’t have sated her. No, she was owed so much more. Never surer of anything in her life, Stacy was dead-certain – as she cheesily triple-thanked the stream viewer for the garbage-cheap presents they’d had the gall to mail her – that she deserved nothing less than lifelong consciousness-ingrained devotion from each person on the face of the planet, tending to her every slightest want and need.

Stacy sighed, picking up the third and final package for today’s stream, and etched the adoring grin into her lips, even while a part of her wanted to scream into the camera for her scant viewers not doing more to give her what she’d been owed since birth. But, keeping up the amiable act as ever, Stacy gave the box a rattle before tearing into it. Judging by the clatter, it was probably some chintzy piece of secondhand jewelry that she’d chuck in the trash the moment the live stream ended. Her guess didn’t seem far off, as it turned out to be a brassy antique necklace, like a large token carved with a language she didn’t recognize. At least it was more intriguing than the usual drivel, which meant that Stacy didn’t have to completely fake her enthusiasm. Beneath the probably-knockoff talisman was a hand-written note.

“This artifact is intended for the CHOSEN ONE,” Stacy cheerily narrated from the paper, grinning ear-to-ear. “When she has claimed it ‘round her neck, her dominion shall extend across all that is, for eternity, as is her right.”

There was no other explanation. Still, Stacy couldn’t help but snicker at the oddity of this gift, but especially the tempting offer on the note, even if she knew it was foolish to let herself momentarily play make-believe with such fantasy nonsense. She doubted she’d wear the necklace anywhere, but it would at least make for a good thumbnail for the stream, and plus, since this anonymous fan had inadvertently tapped into such a dire yearning of Stacy’s, she begrudgingly decided the least she could do was try it on for them. Piling on the sugar-coated thank-yous, Stacy daintily laid the chain around her neck and let the talisman settle against her bosom. The moment the metal touched her skin, then, everything was swallowed to blinding white-nothing, and Stacy vanished into ether.

When the YouTuber opened her eyes again, she didn’t recognize her surroundings, or even know for certain that she was “seeing,” though all her senses were quickly supplanted by the catastrophic perfection of the ecstatic pleasure which blasted through her in a shockwave. Pulsating with extremity-tingling exhilaration the likes of which she’d never known, Stacy rasped with euphoric curses, conquered in every way by her overloaded perceptions. She could feel her own essence exploding outward with electrically fluid-spurting orgasmic potency, while within, her mind was riddled through with an onslaught of strength enough to manipulate the cosmos between her own hands, as well as instantaneous hyper-intelligence comprising all existing knowledge both possible and impossible. In the throbbing cooldown following this revelation, then, Stacy calmly reclaimed control of her being, and at once understood all that she was.

Her flesh had become an ointment-smooth midnight void-black hue, dotted with luminous galactic clusters and sparkling star infernos. The “space” around her, though not as palpable as her universal body, consisted of the same non-dimensional white blank which had consumed her mid-live stream. There was nothing else of any greater significance in this plain than Stacy. As the seconds passed, the girl gradually remembered her own individual self as well as the endowment of all matter and knowledge she’d been bequeathed. A familiar smile spread on her cosmologically-black mouth, and her astronomic fingers shuddered with acceptance of the irrefutable truth. She was, in fact, all. As in, all there was to be. Her body, her being, and her will had assumed the entirety of tangible existence, plus every infinitesimal piece of creation housed within it.

Recalling her lowly origins, Stacy vividly witnessed the green-blue marble of her home planet, and at once, assumed total iron-fisted domain over the consciousness of each living thing which crawled upon its surface, from the most influential humans to the tiniest insects, now and throughout history. She needed only think of these beings, recognize their existence, and just like that, every inventive notion, religious plea, or sexual aspiration they’d ever had was collectively understood by Stacy, all swirling in her evolved brain as a chaotic storm that could’ve vanquished the combined might of a trillion black holes. Her temples surged with painful discomfort from this near-infinite burden clogging her thoughts, unable to make it stop, and in a moment of pure necessity, she loosed her tortured fury with a single edict:

“STOP!” she bellowed in a voice that could’ve enraptured all living things on every countable celestial body. “NO… MORE… THINKING. I will TELL you what to think, and when, and why. There is NOTHING ELSE!”

Then everything fell silent, and the relief that washed over Stacy was almost on par with her lustful introduction to her new self. The inhabitants of her origin world had gone droolingly catatonic across the board, contributing no more unbearable chatter to the universe-girl’s panged mind. The effect of her command was so vigorous that the brain-cancelling call soon rippled out from Earth like a stone dropped in an endless lake, spiraling to the nearest planets that were also supporting once-autonomous life, and then just kept on flowing.