Looking at this 486-era computer, Henry suddenly had a lot of ideas.
He might have been used to AAA blockbusters from twenty or thirty years later, but that did not mean games from the '90s and earlier were worthless.
A lot of games were not about graphics or how much grinding they offered, but about their concepts. Take Tetris, for example. No matter how powerful future consoles became, how much could its core gameplay really change? Would it somehow stop being popular in the future?
But! A computer was not a game console, and gaming was not its only purpose.
A computer's main function was computation, followed by network capabilities based on signal transmission principles. Those were all fields with enormous potential.
In his previous life, he had just been a shut-in who played games and downloaded porn. In this life, with a Kryptonian's Super Brain, hacking should not be difficult, right?
Although DC's Superman often relied on an external brain—Batman—to wreak havoc, his own intelligence was nothing to scoff at.
In Brainiac's intelligence ranking system for super artificial intelligences, he himself was at the highest Level 12, while all of humanity on twentieth-century Earth combined only amounted to Level 6.
The only one on Brainiac's level was Superman's arch-enemy, Lex Luthor, who had reached Level 12 intelligence at his peak. Superman himself averaged Level 11.
It was just that Brainiac possessed the technology to synthesize Kryptonite, so he could keep Superman firmly under his thumb most of the time.
Superman also had plenty of scientific inventions, but most served supporting functions. Mainly because his personal abilities were simply too powerful, people often overlooked just how smart he was. Especially when Batman was around, his Super Brain seemed to go offline.
Of course, Henry did not think his Kryptonian template could compare with Superman's.
Just look at their starting points. Superman had encountered the Kents, who had somehow raised a god among humans on Earth into a Kryptonian traitor who saw himself as human.
Meanwhile, Henry had been tortured half to death by the Russians from the very beginning, yet he was still a lazy slacker too unmotivated to turn evil and take revenge on society. What right did he have to stand alongside that paragon of Moral?
But as long as his brain was half as smart as Superman's, the best way to hide himself on Earth was to develop the uses of his brain as much as possible, rather than counting on his fists to solve everything.
He certainly did not want to end up wearing red underwear outside his pants just to block bullets. Or have Earthlings look up at the sky and shout, "Look! It's a dumb bird!"
Or shout, "No, it's a bullet!" and make everyone wonder just how good their eyesight had to be to see a bullet flying that high overhead...
Since he had such thoughts, Henry could not possibly wait until computer performance advanced to the level of the world he had once lived in before getting involved with this stuff.
He had to start early. Besides, computers in every era had their own technologies. Computer hardware might keep advancing, but technology itself could accumulate continuously.
And one interesting thing was that although hardware advanced at a breathtaking pace, actual equipment was not phased out nearly as quickly.
A lot of old stuff kept being used as long as it did not break and there was no special need to replace it. That was only human nature.
Take the Millennium Bug disaster. Every bank had clutched its money and searched everywhere for old programmers, even retired old men, hoping they could fix their systems' Millennium Bug vulnerabilities.
A bunch of newcomers who did not understand old technology were completely useless at times like that.
Even if they could cram at the last minute, banks would not dare trust those youngsters rashly. After all, this concerned bank transaction systems. If something went wrong, the whole world would be thrown into chaos.
So when Henry saw this 486 computer, he could not help looking it over before asking, "Do you have a modem? What system are you using?"
The enthusiastic old white man said, "I don't have a modem. That little thing can only connect to some university electronic bulletin boards, BBSs, right now. I use this big guy to play Ultima VI. It's way more fun than those low-IQ game consoles.
"As for the system, it's MS-DOS 4.01. PC-DOS has worse command efficiency and resource management, so I don't use it. I've also added DOSV and use colors to group file types. It looks much prettier."
"Do you know Linux?" Henry asked.
"Li... what the hell is that?"
"Oh, it doesn't exist yet." In his memories, the ancestor of open-source sharing should have been born around this year or the next.
In fact, related open-source sharing projects had always existed, especially throughout university campuses in Europe and the United States.
The main reason was that professors and college students conducted all kinds of research, and commercial software available on the market did not necessarily fit their needs. So for them, developing the software they needed themselves was the best option.
But all this software had always been application programs based on some existing system; it did not involve a computer's core operating system.
In other words, if people wanted to use a computer, they still had to buy those commercialized system software packages. Only after Linux, a kernel created for the purpose of open-source sharing, was born did open-minded university campuses gain another free option.
In short, these people had one core principle: as long as it was not commercialized and no one was making money from it, build as much as you wanted!
Even though many commercial server vendors based on Linux systems appeared later, what they actually sold was service, not the system itself.
No matter what, it was a very interesting path. Especially since the foreseeable future was bound to become the information age. Getting involved a little earlier was better than waiting.
After all, there was no limit to improvements in hardware performance, so waiting was meaningless. This was not a game where he could level up to the maximum in the beginner village before leaving to slaughter monsters everywhere.
If he wanted to keep leveling up until he had the ability to slaughter monsters before leaving the beginner village, he might very well remain there forever.
Seeing Henry's interest in personal computers, the old white man smiled and said, "You like them? I've got a friend who can get one for you. It's fast, and it's the newest model too—not like those other guys who only sell old stock to clear their inventory."
Henry was quite tempted. After wandering aimlessly through the streets of Los Angeles these past two days, he had realized that the United States of this era did not yet have the electronics specialty superstores he remembered.
If someone wanted something, they usually had to try their luck at a department store. Otherwise, they had to find the product company's sales department directly and place an order.
But... after glancing around, Henry asked in confusion, "This is a fucking photo studio, isn't it?"
"It is."
"And you also fucking sell personal computers?"
"You said it yourself—I sell them on the side. If it makes money, why wouldn't I make it?"
"You're really not a Jew?"
"I'm Italian. Fuck Mussolini." The old white man sounded as though he were declaring his anti-fascist stance.
After thinking it over, Henry shook his head and said, "Forget it. I need to find a place to live first. Unless you can get me a personal computer I can use in a car."
"Hey, I can help you find a place too."
"Fuck." The Kryptonian was speechless...
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