The first time I ruin Dante Riker’s life, I’m barefoot in my living room, wearing pajama shorts with a hole in the waistband and a T‑shirt that says CUT ON ACTION.
The irony doesn’t hit until later.
Right now, all I see is the livestream feed on my laptop, a neat little multi‑cam grid of Hollywood perfection. Dante’s charity special: “RIKER LIVE: ONE NIGHT ONLY.” Millions of people watching. Sponsors. Hashtags. A scrolling cascade of heart emojis and crying faces and things like WE DON’T DESERVE HIM.
I’m not watching as a fan. I’m watching as the exhausted idiot who’s been remote‑editing inserts for this thing for three weeks straight.
“Come on, come on,” I mutter, nudging a crumb off the trackpad. My tiny studio apartment smells like burnt coffee and neighbor’s weed. The rent invoice is open in another tab, a bright red OVERDUE glaring at me like judgment. “Just thirty more seconds and I can invoice, and then you can maybe afford real groceries, Marina. What a wild concept.”
On my screen, Studio Feed A shows Dante onstage, haloed in soft gold light. His jaw could have been carved by a propagandist sculptor. He’s laughing with some host whose name I’ve already forgotten, one hand tucked into the pocket of a perfectly tailored black suit. His teeth flash white. The audience screams like a single organism.
In Feed B, the telethon graphic: DONATE NOW. CUREKIDS.ORG. A counter climbs, the numbers ticking like a slot machine.
In Feed C, a behind‑the‑scenes angle: crew, cables, a handheld swinging past a glittering backdrop. And in Feed D, my domain: the pre‑packaged segment we spent all day wrestling into shape. The one where Dante is supposed to cry.
“You good with ingest?” a voice crackles in my headset. I’m not on‑site; I’m patched into the control room from my couch, hair in a messy bun, surrounded by empty noodle containers and a sick fern.
“Good enough,” I say. “File’s clean, audio’s synced. You’ll get your ugly sobbing.”
“Nothing about Dante’s ugly,” the tech snorts. “Switch at my go. Three, two—”
On my laptop, the digital switcher panel glows. I’ve been doing this long enough that it’s muscle memory: click, cue, fade, breathe. I hate live work—too much chaos, too much that can go wrong—but I also like eating and paying off my student loans.
The segment I cut is a five‑minute emotional hammer: Dante visiting kids at the hospital, kneeling by their beds, holding tiny hands. We filmed it three days ago. He hit every mark, every beat. His eyes even glistened on schedule.
“—one. Roll package,” the voice in my ear says.
I hit the key that cues my segment. On the main preview window, the first frame pops up: a close‑up of a cartoon mural in the hospital hallway, bright and hopeful.
Then everything jerks.
For half a second, my screen glitches—a flicker, like a skipped heartbeat. The software window jumps. My finger, already descending for a drag adjustment, lands not on the crossfade slider but on something else.
A small, red square labeled END STREAM.
I don’t even register it until I feel the click through my finger.
The call in my ear explodes. “What the—? We just dropped! We DROPPED!”
On my laptop, the feed goes black.
No, not black. Worse.
