As spring arrived in Los Angeles, the eye-catching sights on the beaches gradually returned, with more gorgeous women in scorching bikinis.
Along with them came men flagrantly radiating hormones—though in truth, they had simply injected too many steroids—showing off their bronzed skin and sharply defined muscles.
The reviving spring seemed to signal to Henry that his path to stardom was also steadily improving.
After registering with the Actors Guild, it took two weeks before he finally landed his first job.
It was one shot, with no lines, and it would probably last less than three seconds in the final cut. Yet even that single shot let Henry spend a day with the crew and earn a day's pay.
The wage was ten Dao an hour, the union-mandated minimum. Eight hours a day, no overtime, filmed locally. His earnings for the day came to eighty Dao.
Lunch was provided by the production. Since it was a small crew, there was naturally no all-you-can-eat buffet, but everyone got a burger-and-fries meal with Otaku happy water or coffee.
Though his shot was simple, filming it still took more than ten minutes. Including preparation and moving between setups, Henry worked alongside the crew for over half an hour.
The rest of the time was not for idling around, either. Since it was a small production, the producer had background actors without anything to do help with miscellaneous work.
Props had to be moved, and when the lights or cameras changed locations, someone had to lend a hand. Aside from the main staff handling things personally, those background actors were also dragged in as manual labor.
Forget that nonsense about Western countries having clearly defined job scopes, where actors only acted and were not supposed to touch anything else in case they became liable for it.
In truth, whether in the east or west, knowing how to conduct oneself and whether one had social sense affected how others saw them. That, in turn, determined whether they got another opportunity.
Do not assume that being in the United States, in such an advanced society, meant you did not have to compete. Those climbing the casting couch were competing too, weren't they?
As for whether he would ever see his first on-camera appearance, Henry had no expectations whatsoever. This crew looked like it existed purely to scam investors, and the people running it were incredibly perfunctory.
The actors at least had contracts and the union backing them, so they would not end up unpaid. But those amateur investors hoping the movie would be released and become a box-office hit would probably only end up crying themselves unconscious in the restroom.
With his first production credit under his belt, it was as though he had crossed some invisible threshold. Henry began getting more work afterward. On average, he could get onto a set once a week, wasting an entire day each time.
For others who had come to Hollywood to make a last-ditch attempt at success, they would probably have needed odd jobs during the rest of the week just to make ends meet.
Henry did not have that concern. When he was not on set, he occasionally went to the Los Angeles Public Library or the California Institute of Technology library to update his knowledge.
He also went back and forth between Blockbuster and home. Besides classic old movies, Henry added cult B-movies to his viewing list.
Every now and then, he went to the theater to contribute one ticket's worth of box office and enjoy the different experience offered by the big screen.
But most of his time was still spent on that i486 computer made by Stark Industries.
This time, Henry was no longer content to be an ordinary computer user, merely using a modem to connect to California Institute of Technology's electronic bulletin board and surf the net or chat.
Nor did he want to be an ordinary programming expert who only knew how to use programming languages. He began studying machine language from the ground up, designing a more rational and efficient programming language for his own use.
Drawing on Linux's development path, Henry also wrote a kernel, shell, compiler, function libraries, and more, designing an operating system that could squeeze the i486 hardware's performance to the absolute limit.
Then, in an era when most hackers were still obsessed with writing computer viruses to destroy other people's systems, Henry began scanning IP ranges, planting worms in every IP that responded, opening backdoors, and taking a look inside other people's systems.
To better conceal what he was doing, Henry also studied communication protocols, using different encryption methods to break in and issue control commands. That allowed him to come and go through other people's systems without leaving a trace.
To achieve that, aside from using existing system vulnerabilities as the first step of intrusion, he had to build his own ecosystem and isolate it from the original system, thereby becoming invisible.
Next came deleting any traces that might have appeared in log files and completely hiding himself. In other words, this was not the usual worm-opening-a-backdoor approach. It was parasitism.
Indiscriminately intercepting packets was not something a mere i486 computer could accomplish. Otherwise, the Prism Project would have been created early by some Kryptonian.
One could say that while the Kryptonian in real life aimed to keep a low profile, he completely let himself go online. Every single thing he did would count as a crime in any era.
The only reason he could use to convince himself was that Henry had caused no one any financial loss and had not altered the numbers in any bank.
He was only satisfying his personal curiosity by looking at information that had not been made public. While he was at it, he merely left a few contingencies behind in the systems of major agencies and institutions.
However, anyone who had used a modem knew how delicate those things were.
Using one for too long, overheating it, or the telecommunications company making a few adjustments could all reduce transmission efficiency. Using one during thunderstorms was even worse. A single power surge could destroy one outright.
For Henry, who could be considered a heavy user, buying a new modem every week as a replacement was simply too stupid. So he began studying electrical engineering and optimizing the performance of the hardware he had on hand.
As the industrial powerhouse of the modern world, the United States did not lack electronic components. Otherwise, someone like Steve Jobs could never have started Apple in a garage with a few companions.
Replacing or modifying resistors and capacitors was only minor work. Swapping in better chips or components was nothing special, either.
With a Kryptonian's Heat Vision and fine control, such tasks were effortless. Henry even began considering the possibility of hand-making chips.
The 80486 CPU of the x86 architecture had a process size between 1 micron and 0.6 microns. Hand-making one was impossible, really. But with the aid of certain tools... it did not seem entirely impossible.
Since he did not need to consider mass manufacturing or commercial production, Henry could even use crude methods to create a custom chip whose performance surpassed products currently available on the market.
It was only at this point that Henry truly understood why his Super Brain could be called "super."
Beyond optimizing the structure of knowledge he already possessed, it could extrapolate into the next unknown field. Everything came as naturally as water flowing downhill; whenever he wanted a certain result, the process simply appeared before his eyes.
If he had Arc Reactor data on hand, he felt he could easily miniaturize one and then hand-build that metal can known as Mark I.
But none of that compared to his gradually increasing work in Hollywood.
Even though they were all background roles, Henry had never considered fighting for supporting roles or even lead roles. Still, a young white man unafraid of looking ridiculous, taking beatings, or wrecking his image for a gag gradually built a solid reputation among small productions.
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