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*****
The idea that any of this was temporary—that the multi-billion-dollar architecture of how music reached listeners was about to be rebuilt from the ground up by a digital technology the industry did not take seriously—was not a mainstream position.
It was the fringe position of a small number of people, ignored with the cheerful confidence of institutions that had not yet found a financial reason to question their own permanence.
Marvin was not going to ignore it. He was the one bringing the fire.
He was going to build around it. He would design the structure of Meyers Music Group specifically for the digital world that was coming, rather than the bloated analog world that currently existed.
This meant the decisions being made now, in the summer of 1998, had to be correct not just for 1998, but for 2005, 2020, and far beyond.
This placed extraordinary demands on corporate strategy. It required a clarity about the future that most people in the industry could not access, too embedded in the bleeding present to see past it.
He had seen the future clearly. He had lived it.
This was the second most useful thing about being exactly what he was.
New York City would inevitably tell him fascinating things. It always did, whispering its secrets to anyone intelligent and quiet enough to let it. And Marvin, buried beneath the persona he performed for the cameras, was profoundly patient.
He was patient in the specific way only his kind could be. It was not a forced patience achieved with exhausting human effort. It was not the fragile discipline of an ambitious being trying to suppress boiling impatience. It was the structural patience of a demonic entity that understood the passage of time differently than the panicking humans around him.
Time was simply a river he stood in, not a current that carried him away.
Marvin turned up the high collar of his dark cashmere coat against the humid July wind. He settled deep into the plush leather backseat of the armored car.
He had no specific destination for Gordon today. No grueling schedule. No screaming producers. Just the sprawling city, and whatever it was willing to show him.
"Gordon," Marvin purred. He leaned forward, tapping the privacy glass. "Did you know the emergence of Fifth Avenue as a luxury hub originated from wealthy New Yorkers in the early 19th century? They chose to isolate themselves at the southern end of what was simply a muddy country road. It was located on the central axis of Manhattan, designed to concentrate the economic essence of the city away from the working class."
Gordon, staring blankly at the traffic, grunted.
"Did you also know the Statue of Liberty was built by France in 1876 to commemorate the centenary of the American Revolutionary War? However, this female figure represents *Libertas*, the ancient Roman goddess of freedom."
Gordon sighed, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
"Did you also know the financial backers behind the Museum of Modern Art are the Rockefeller family? It opened on October 29, 1929. Black Tuesday—the darkest day in American securities history. From that day on, the globe entered a decade-long period of economic depression and starvation. It was during this time that the billionaires at the Museum of Modern Art opened their doors to the starving public."
Gordon let out a slow breath through his nose.
"Gordon, you know what else..."
Gordon, the imposing bodyguard with a shaved head, felt as if he were being force-fed useless knowledge every single day.
'I'm a highly paid bodyguard,' Gordon thought miserably, keeping his eyes on the road. 'I do not want to be a historian. I am paid to shoot people. Why do I need to know the corporate history of the MoMA?'
Fortunately for Gordon's sanity, five days after arriving in New York, Marvin completed the musical scores, the theme, and the background music for *The Sixth Sense*.
The process moved slower than his frantic work on the *Titanic* score. For Cameron's epic, he had lived inside the soundproof Wolf Cousins studio for two solid days, fueled by passion and time.
In New York, he traveled, ate at expensive restaurants, and explored the city every day, working in the studio for a civilized two to five hours. As an Incubus, he refused to establish a toxic, 80-hour work culture for his physical body. Kings do not toil. They command.
Now, he was ready to return to Los Angeles.
Gordon breathed an audible sigh of relief.
On his last day in New York, Marvin decided to visit the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan to pay his respects in advance.
Even though the impending horror of 9/11 would be a generational disaster for mankind, Marvin was not human. His soul could not empathize with the tragedy. To him, empires rose and burned every century. It was merely structural demolition.
As for anonymously informing the American government or the intelligence agencies in advance to stop it?
'Stop being hilarious,' Marvin thought darkly, looking up at the towering monoliths of glass and steel.
In 1998, his prediction would be regarded as the insane joke of a child.
Furthermore, his transmigrator mind knew the hands behind the attacks did not just emerge from radical caves. There were evidence points the FBI and CIA knew were coming, yet they did nothing to stop them.
The ensuing global War on Terror was guaranteed to make powerful, connected people rich beyond belief. The military-industrial complex demanded blood to run its engines.
Marvin knew the financial history. In the quiet weeks leading up to the attacks, a handful of elite investors made a series of highly profitable trades by shorting the stocks of major American airlines. These untouchable investors, based in the United States, Israel, and Europe, quietly made over $2 billion in blood profit before the dust settled in New York.
Clearly, too many powerful people operated behind the curtain. Iraq had nothing to do with it; it was a group of Saudi Arabians, Lebanese, and Egyptians, financed by a wealthy Saudi Arabian living in a cave in Afghanistan, and sheltered by the Pakistanis.
It was a sticky web of blood and oil. He preferred not to crawl into a lethal web of global superpower politics that offered no benefit and painted a target on his back.
'What does terrorism have to do with me?' Marvin thought, turning away from the Twin Towers. 'Nothing.'
---
"Come on, Gordon," Marvin smiled, checking his watch. "Today is our last day in New York before we fly back to the grind. Let's go hang out in Central Park and enjoy the trees."
Gordon put on his suit coat with a grimace, checking his concealed holster.
Central Park sat directly in the middle of Manhattan, surrounded by towering glass skyscrapers. The park covered an area of 3.4 million square meters and boasted 93 kilometers of winding trails. It remained one of the largest man-made natural landscapes in the world, divided into 49 distinct areas where tourists could boat, camp, walk, and cycle.
It was almost July, and the concrete city weather was starting to get hot and humid. But compared to the baking smog of Los Angeles, New York under the shade trees felt relatively cool.
Marvin kept his hands in the pockets of his dark trousers. He wore a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, and a black mask covering the lower half of his face.
Since his live performance at the Oscars, he had gotten too famous. People instantly identified him on the street and would surround him—especially young girls, screaming and crying.
So, he strolled anonymously in the park, with Gordon following silently ten paces behind, scanning the treeline for threats.
Thanks to the artificial lakes, dense forests, and breezes off the water, the park felt wonderfully cooler inside the tree canopy.
Marvin wandered around the paved edge of a dense forest section, lost in his thoughts.
Screech.
The squeaking sound of rubber tires on pavement shattered the quiet. A bright pink, customized Schwinn bicycle came flying around a blind corner, careening toward him at an unsafe speed.
With supernatural reflexes, Marvin calculated the trajectory of the metal frame. He could have side-stepped the bike in a fraction of a millisecond, avoiding the collision entirely.
But just as he shifted his weight to dodge, he saw the flushed face of the young female rider clinging to the handlebars.
A flash of realization crossed his mind. He recognized the face instantly.
Hundreds of manipulative ways to be hit by the bicycle appeared in his thoughts. He rapidly calculated angles, impact velocity, and optimal exposure.
He selected the best one.
He deliberately froze, widening his blue eyes in feigned, childish panic.
And then—*BAM!*
"Ouch!" Marvin cried out dramatically.
Marvin staggered backward after being clipped by the front tire. He threw his arms up, executing a perfect cinematic fall. He landed on the soft grass next to the pavement, turned onto his stomach, painted a look of fear on his face, and began to flail his limbs like a normal, injured boy.
Directly above him, a screaming shadow pressed down.
Bang. Thud. Oof.
Thirteen-year-old Scarlett Johansson was having a terrible day.
A group of teenage boys had recognized her on her bicycle and chased her down the path, shouting her name. She pedaled blindly to get away, her heart hammering in her chest.
Seconds after losing them in the winding trees, she rounded a sharp corner and hit a pedestrian.
The soft grass spared her from breaking any bones.
'Huh?' Scarlett thought, dazed as the world stopped spinning. 'Why is the ground so soft? And why does it smell so good?'
"Uh-huh... oof... get off..."
Muffled, annoyed masculine sounds came directly from beneath her chest.
Scarlett looked down. Her pale face flushed a bright, crushing red.
She had landed straddling the masked boy's chest. Her developing breasts pressed warmly into his face, pinning him beneath her body. The weight of her chest smothered him for several humiliating seconds.
"Oh my god!" Scarlett gasped. Her green eyes went wide. She frantically rolled off him, scrambling away, her cheeks burning hotter than the summer sun.
The masked boy let out a ragged breath, rubbing his chest. "Oh God… you almost suffocated me. Were you trying to assassinate me with a Schwinn?"
The dry sarcasm sent a burning shade of scarlet down to the root of her neck.
"Yes! I mean—no! I'm so sorry!" she squeaked, her hands fluttering. "I didn't mean to hit you. I was running from some idiots. Are you badly hurt? Do you need an ambulance?"
The boy turned his head. A pair of deep nebula-blue eyes met her panicked green ones.
'What beautiful eyes…' an inappropriate thought flashed through Scarlett's young mind. Her heart did a strange flutter that had nothing to do with the crash.
A more practical thought replaced it. 'Why is he wearing a black mask and a hat pulled down? Isn't it ninety degrees out here? Is he sick?'
"I am not dead yet, thank you," the masked boy groaned. His velvety voice sounded muffled through the fabric. "But I can't stand up. My ankle. Can you help me?"
Scarlett became defensively alert. Her eyes narrowed. 'Wait a minute. Could this guy have recognized me through my sunglasses, and used that line just to touch me?'
As a successful child star living in New York, she was used to obsessive fans manufacturing interactions on the street.
She studied the masked boy in the grass, searching for something manipulative in his expression. But all she saw in his blue eyes was genuine annoyance and frustration at being run over by a teenager.
'He isn't pretending,' Scarlett realized, feeling terrible. 'I just hit an innocent, sick boy with a metal bike.'
Scarlett blushed at her paranoid thought. She scrambled up, dusted off her jeans, and squatted next to the boy. She wrapped her arms around his shoulder and tried to haul his dead weight up.
She misjudged his density.
Halfway up, Scarlett lost her footing on the slick grass. They tumbled backward in a tangle of limbs, bodies slamming together as they crashed back down.
During the fall, the black mask snagged on her jacket collar and ripped downward, exposing his handsome features. Momentum sent Scarlett sprawling forward—her chest pressing against his for one heated second—before her face crashed straight down.
Their lips met in a sudden, breathless collision.
It wasn't a gentle peck. The impact mashed their mouths together with surprising force. The kiss lingered for several electric seconds as they lay stunned in the grass, bodies tangled—her small developing curves molded against his chest, one of her legs hooked over his thigh.
Both stared at each other, wide-eyed in frozen surprise.
Well, technically, only the teenage girl was genuinely surprised.
Scarlett's green eyes flew wide open in pure shock. Her heart slammed wildly in her chest like it wanted to burst free. Marvin's lips were impossibly warm, soft, and full against hers, sending a intoxicating jolt of pure electricity racing through every nerve in her body. The charm flared hot and bright, flooding her system with liquid fire that made her skin tingle wildly, her breasts tighten into hard little peaks beneath her thin shirt, and a deep, aching flutter bloom low in her belly.
*****
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