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Henry couldn't stop staring at the relic of a computer on the counter an honest-to-god 486. It was ancient by his standards, but instead of writing it off, his mind started spinning.
Sure, he'd grown up on AAA games and cutting-edge tech from the 2020s, but that didn't mean the stuff from the '90s was worthless. Some games weren't about graphics or grind they were about concept. Look at Tetris. Even on a toaster with buttons, that game slapped. Good design never aged.
But a computer wasn't just a game console.
Its real strength was in processing power, in connectivity, in the foundations of the digital age. All the stuff you could build on top of it.
Back in his old life, Henry had been just another basement-dwelling nerd games, anime, pirated movies. A cliché. But now, with a Kryptonian brain riding shotgun? The idea of hacking didn't feel far-fetched. It felt… inevitable.
Superman might've let Batman play the "genius" role on the team, but the guy wasn't dumb. In Brainiac's intelligence ranking scale, Supes clocked in at a mind-bending Level 12. The entire human race, by comparison? Level 6. Combined.
Even Lex Luthor his ultimate nemesis barely kept pace intellectually. But Clark's raw power often overshadowed his brains. Especially when Bruce was in the room, monologuing like Sherlock Holmes on a caffeine bender.
Henry wasn't delusional he knew he wasn't that Superman. Hell, his version had crash-landed in a Russian hellhole and got tortured for years. No loving Kent family, no sweet Kansas upbringing. Just isolation and Soviet sadism.
But still. If he had even half the brainpower of Clark Kent, wasn't it smarter to develop the mind, not just the fists?
He didn't want to end up being the guy in red tights deflecting bullets for YouTube views. Or worse some idiot people point at going, "Look, up in the sky! It's a dumbass with a cape!"
The key to hiding in plain sight wasn't punching everything into submission it was blending in. Building tools. Understanding systems. Especially in a world that was racing headfirst into the Information Age.
If he waited for tech to catch up to his memories of the 2020s, he'd be sitting around for decades. But software? Concepts? Systems? Those evolved year by year. You could build on them.
Take the Y2K panic, for example. Banks had thrown mountains of cash at retired old coders just to keep the world from burning down because no one else understood the ancient systems their infrastructure ran on. All the new kids with slick degrees were useless when it came to legacy code.
Old tech didn't die fast. If it worked, it stayed.
So, standing in this dinky photo studio, eyeing a computer that most people wouldn't look twice at, Henry felt the gears in his head turning.
He leaned over the counter. "This thing have a modem?"
The greasy photo guy his new best friend, apparently grinned. "Modem? Nah. Only connects to a couple college BBS boards anyway. But I use this beast to play Ultima VI. Way better than those dumb consoles. And it runs MS-DOS 4.01. Didn't bother with PC-DOS clunky as hell. I've got DOS/V running too color-coded file types. Real sexy stuff."
Henry smirked. "You ever hear of Linux?"
"Li…what?"
"Thought so." He chuckled. Right around now, somewhere, that Finnish kid should be about to start writing it.
Open-source was already bubbling under the surface college campuses, mostly. Too many engineers and students building niche tools for niche problems. Most commercial software didn't meet their needs, so they rolled their own.
But up until now, they were all just making applications on top of existing systems MS-DOS, Unix, whatever. Linux would be the game-changer. An open-source operating system. A new foundation, free to build on.
No surprise it started in universities. The motto was basically: As long as you're not selling it, build whatever the hell you want.
Even later, when companies would slap a price tag on Linux servers, what they were really selling was service, not the OS itself.
Henry couldn't stop himself from grinning. This was the beginning of something. Something massive. And he wanted in early.
Forget waiting for hardware to catch up this wasn't an RPG where you maxed out before leaving the tutorial zone. If you hung around too long grinding levels, you'd just get stuck. The only way to grow was to move.
The photo guy must've noticed the glint in his eye. "You like that rig?" he asked. "I got a buddy who can hook you up with one. Newest model. Fast. Not like those other jokers trying to unload junk stock."
Henry was tempted. Radioshack had some stuff, but most of it was hit-or-miss. If you wanted rare components, you either had to get lucky in a warehouse store or know a guy who knew a guy.
Still, he looked around, eyebrows raised.
"This is a photo studio, right?"
"Yup."
"And you also sell computers?"
"Yup. Like you said—also. Why not make a buck if I can?"
"You're sure you're not Jewish?"
"I'm Italian. F*** Mussolini," the man said proudly.
Henry shook his head. "Thanks, but I gotta find a place to live first. Unless you can get me one I can use in my car."
The man grinned. "Hey, I can help you find an apartment too."
Henry let out a long-sigh.
He stared at him, speechless.
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