25. Readying for the Big Stream
Rippa got to work. She wanted to have a slide deck with questions, but first, she needed to come up with what she would ask. She wondered if three days would be enough. ‘Welp, it should be just enough to cover the basics,’ she thought to herself.
“Oh, oh, let me see when you are ready,” Buttons demanded.
“Nope.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Because I want you to answer on the fly and not come prepared with some bullshit lies.”
Buttons looked hurt. “When have I ever lied to you?”
Rippa put her hands on her hips. “Well, for one, you guys never tell me anything unless it becomes necessary. So, I’m always left misinformed—”
“Technically, you misinformed yourself of your own volition,” Goggles interjected, but surrendered with his hands up upon seeing the expression Rippa made.
Rippa huffed. “So, I’m going home. I’m gonna make a list of questions, and you will not peek, OK?”
Buttons pouted but accepted.
***
Once again, Goggles checked the mailbox that stood next to his desk. He already knew it was empty, but doing it physically gave some meaning to the act.
It was a simple, classic mailbox. Tin, painted red, on a pole, with the flag and all. Something one could just buy at any hardware store.
He had planted three other identical ones on Earth some sixty years ago, each containing an identical letter.
“When nothing is left but to pray, write me,” he had written in three languages. English, Russian, and Chinese.
For sixty human years, the custodians had not written him back. That was understandable, given that they didn’t even know who Goggles was. He hadn’t signed the letter or left a return address.
But Goggles was now watching them scratch their heads and wonder. By now, they had all seen the viral clips.
If they were ever to write him, what would they write? Goggles mused. Of course, he would instantly know what was written in the letter even before it was put in the mailboxes, but something had to be written first, or at least drafted in the mind of whoever was tasked with writing it.
‘Was that you?’ Goggles settled on that. Yes, if he were human and in their shoes, that was what he would write. But then again, a simple question asking, “Are you the guy in the video?” didn’t really fall under the last resort category. The custodians would fight the urge and remain silent.
‘Well, it’s only for three days,’ Goggles thought. Their agonizing curiosity would finally be satiated by… a VTuber’s live-stream.
Goggles looked around the office. There was no one except the two Roman marble soldiers guarding the door to Buttons’ bedroom.
“We ball,” he whispered and looked around. He cleared his throat and resumed being Goggles.
***
Rippa only had three slides.
Who are you?
Why are you here?
What’s your plan going forward?
She couldn’t think of anything else. All other questions either fell under one of these three or were frivolous. Asking about Buttons’ favorite color would not fit the nature of the stream, although, come to think of it, Rippa had yet to ask Buttons about her favorite color.
This wasn’t going to be like a typical VTuber debut stream. It was, for all intents and purposes, more of an official announcement of Buttons’ existence. Literally running the ‘Hello World’ script for the first time. What would come thereafter was unknown territory, and Rippa felt a sense of adventure.
Rippa stared at her monitor. ‘Shit, maybe I didn’t need three days.’
Her X inbox and business email were still blowing up. Strangers were sending long lists of questions they wanted Rippa to ask on their behalf. Were they like X-Men mutants? Did they work for the CIA? Was it all AI, or some clever special effects?
‘Who are you people?’ Rippa ignored them all.
Among this mountain of messages were legitimate business inquiries. Businesses, including online gambling sites, were offering to sponsor the Q&A stream and wanted the deal signed really fast. Reading the emails from the plushie shop and the energy drink brand that had dropped her during the wizard game controversy, Rippa couldn’t help but laugh.
Rippa stared at the slide deck again. Maybe three slides weren’t that bad. Given how Buttons and Goggles were like truth onions, or like Russian nesting dolls of stories, going over all three slides could easily spiral into a Lord of the Rings trilogy unless Rippa managed the pace mindfully.
***
The day before the stream, Rippa went back to Buttons’ pocket dimension. She had settled on that term some time ago. Given its vastness, a spaceship didn’t make sense. A planet felt too distant. Narnia wasn’t her copyright. A pocket dimension felt… more Buttons. Maybe the word pocket was hard-carrying the sentiment? Rippa mused.
She sat down with her two friends and discussed the technical aspects of the upcoming stream.
First of all, it would be weird and too radio-like if all three sat together. Besides, Rippa was a VTuber. She didn’t want the world to see her real face. That made the ‘Joe Rogan’-style across-the-table podcast arrangement undesirable.
“So, what I’m thinking is, I stay in the bottom right corner,” Rippa sketched the layout on a sheet of paper, “and the main screen will be you guys in one window and the slide deck in the other. I will resize the two windows as needed.”
“Wow, you sound so professional,” said Buttons.
“I am,” Rippa flashed a smile. “So anyway, do you guys want to be on one camera together? Or separate cameras?”
“Hmm… separately, please,” Goggles answered this time.
“Yeah, that way, when you make my face big, people can see how cute I am,” added Buttons.
“Exactly,” Goggles nodded.
Rippa glanced between the two, sighed, and made changes to her layout sketch.
After clearing her throat, Rippa continued, “Ahem, so, we’d need two cameras, two new DJI microphones, and two ring lights… ah, no, Goggles could probably control the lighting himself—”
Without a word, Goggles spawned the cameras and the microphones.
“Ahem, ahem. Thank you, thank you.” Rippa felt a bit embarrassed. Maybe she was too obvious. “Aaaand, now let’s show you guys how to do a video call on Discord.”
Rippa set up a camera and a laptop on the writing desk in Buttons’ bedroom. The kid would do the interview from there. And, to avoid Goggles’ mic picking up Buttons, the butler would be at Rippa’s stream station in his office.
Rippa herself would stream from her room at home. This was going to be the biggest stream of her life, and she wanted to do it in her comfort zone.
After showing her friends how to do video calls, Rippa let them practice by talking to each other over the call.
In the meantime, she had urgent messages to read. Her stream moderators were panicking in the Discord mod channel.
“Rippa, the scheduled stream on YouTube shows 5k people are waiting!”
She knew what that meant. Her stream was still about twenty hours away, but already five thousand people had the page open and were waiting for the stream to go live. The actual number of live viewers would be at least ten or twenty times larger than that.
“We can’t mod this,” another moderator said in the channel. “We don’t have enough mods!”
A moderator for Rippa’s Twitch channel offered help. “We can switch over to YouTube.”
Rippa thought hard. Given the number of people who were already waiting with the page open, she could potentially face viewer numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Way over her usual three to four thousand.
Her moderators were waiting for her decision. She made up her mind.
“Twitch and Kick go emote-only. YouTube goes members-only chat. Everyone switch over to YouTube. YouTube guys, show them the ropes, OK?”
“Members-only mode will look bad, Rippa,” a moderator pointed out.
“Well, if someone has something to say, they pay up first. I will tell them to cancel membership right after the stream.”
Another mod liked the idea. “That could discourage trolls.”
At that moment, Buttons came out of her room and interrupted Rippa. “Rippa, Goggles’ voice bleeds into my mic.”
Goggles turned around from the stream station as well. “Yes, my microphone picks up her voice, too.”
“Oh, right,” Rippa quickly realized the cause of the issue. “We need headphones. The mics are picking up the speakers.”
“Aha, I can handle that,” said Goggles.
He and Buttons then proceeded to browse through Amazon. When Buttons picked a pair of cute little pink cat-ear headphones and Goggles picked his, he spawned them onto the desk.
Rippa chuckled and took a deep breath. ‘Tomorrow’s gonna be a big day.’