The Ignored Future

Looking at this 486-era computer, Henry suddenly had a lot of ideas swirling in his mind.

Even though he was used to playing AAA games from twenty or thirty years later, that didn't mean games from the '90s and earlier were completely worthless.

A lot of games weren't about graphics or how much you could grind—they were about the concept. Take Tetris, for example. No matter what kind of hardware you ran it on, how could the core gameplay ever change? Would it stop being popular in the future?

But! A computer wasn't a game console, and its uses weren't limited to just playing games.

The main function of a computer was computation, and then there was networking based on signal transmission principles. These were directions full of potential.

In his past life, he was just a shut-in who played games and downloaded adult videos. This time around, with a Kryptonian's super brain, doing some hacker work shouldn't be too hard, right?

In DC, Superman often relied on his external brain—Batman—to dominate, but his own intelligence was nothing to sneeze at.

In Brainiac's intelligence classification, he himself was the highest at Level 12, while all of 20th-century Earth combined was only Level 6.

The only ones on par with Brainiac were Superman's archenemy, Lex Luthor, who also peaked at Level 12 intelligence. Superman averaged around Level 11.

It was just that because Brainiac had synthetic Kryptonite technology, he could usually keep Superman completely under his thumb.

Superman had plenty of scientific creations, but most were auxiliary in nature. The main reason was that his own abilities were too powerful, so people often overlooked how smart he was. Especially when Batman was around, the super brain seemed to go offline.

Of course, Henry didn't think his Kryptonian template could compare to Superman.

Just looking at the start—Superman met the Kents, who managed to turn a god among men on Earth into a Kryptonian traitor, making him see himself as an Earthling.

Meanwhile, Henry's start had him tortured by the Russians, but he was still too lazy to turn dark and take revenge on society. What right did he have to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with that moral paragon?

But as long as his brain was half as sharp as Superman's, the best way to hide himself on Earth was to develop the brain's potential as much as possible. Not rely on his fists for everything.

He didn't want to end up wearing red underwear to stop bullets. Or have Earthlings look up at the sky and shout: "Look! A stupid bird!"

Or shout: "No, it's a bullet!" and then make people wonder how good your eyesight had to be to see a bullet flying through the high atmosphere...

With that in mind, Henry couldn't just wait until computer technology advanced to the level of the world he once lived in before getting involved.

These things needed to be done early. Besides, each era of computers had its own technology. Hardware might keep improving, but knowledge could always accumulate.

And one interesting thing was that while hardware advanced at a breakneck pace, actual equipment didn't become obsolete that quickly.

A lot of old stuff, if there was no special need, people just kept using it as long as it didn't break. That was human nature.

Take the Y2K bug, for example. All the banks were throwing money around, hunting down old coders, even retired old-timers, hoping they could fix the Millennium bug in their systems.

A bunch of newcomers who didn't understand old technology were useless at times like that.

Even if they could cram at the last minute, the banks wouldn't dare trust those young folks. After all, it involved the banks' transaction systems—if something went wrong, it would be chaos.

So, seeing this 486 computer, Henry couldn't help but look it over left and right, then asked, "Got a modem? What system does it run?"

The enthusiastic old white man said, "I don't have a modem. That little thing can only connect to some university BBSs anyway. I use this big guy to play Ultima VI—way more fun than those low-IQ game consoles.

"As for the system, it's MS-DOS 4.01. PC-DOS's command efficiency and resource management are a bit lacking, so I didn't use it. I also slapped on DOSV to color-code file types—makes it look a lot prettier."

"Do you know about Linux?" Henry asked.

"Li... what the hell is that?"

"Oh, it doesn't exist yet." In his memory, this pioneer of open-source sharing should be born around this year or the next.

Actually, related open-source sharing projects had always existed, especially widespread on university campuses in Europe and America.

The main reason was that professors and students had all kinds of research, and commercial software that fit their needs wasn't always available on the market. So for them, developing their own software was the best choice.

But up until now, these self-developed programs were all applications based on some system—they didn't touch the computer's core system.

That meant if you wanted to use a computer, you still had to buy those commercial system software packages. It wasn't until Linux, a core system built for open-source sharing, was born that open-minded university campuses got another free option.

Anyway, the core principle of these people was simple: as long as you don't commercialize it, don't make money off it, then go wild!

Even though many commercial server vendors later based their products on Linux, what they were actually selling was 'service,' not the system itself.

Regardless, this was a very interesting path. Especially in the foreseeable future, it was bound to lead into the information age. So jumping in early was better than waiting.

After all, hardware performance had no limits, and waiting was pointless. This wasn't a game where you could grind to max level before leaving the starting village and then go around bullying monsters.

If you kept trying to level up until you had the power to bully monsters before leaving the starting village, you might end up stuck there forever.

Seeing that Henry was very interested in personal computers, the old white man smiled and said, "Like it? I've got a friend who can get you one. Fast, and it's the latest model—not like those other guys selling old junk to clear inventory."

Henry was quite tempted. After wandering the streets of Los Angeles for two days, he noticed that while this era's America had those electronics stores he remembered, like RadioShack, some rare items still required luck.

Either you kept hitting big stores and hoping for the best, or you found a way to contact the product company's sales department directly and place an order.

But... looking around, Henry said with confusion, "Isn't this a damn photo studio?"

"I am."

"And you also sell damn personal computers?"

"You said it yourself—'also sell.' If I can make money, why wouldn't I?"

"You're not Jewish, are you?"

"I'm of Italian descent. Fuck Mussolini." The old white man said it like he was 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...

New book requesting follow-up reads, collections, and recommendations. Thank you~~