Chapter 44: A Glimpse of the World ( Bonus )

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For 20 advanced chapters, visit my Patreon: https://patreon.com/Twilight_scribe1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Somehow, without even noticing, Henry had stumbled his way into 1991. He didn't even remember the new year starting. After finally settling into his new place, life had been a blur one jam-packed task after another. No breaks. No downtime. Just the relentless grind of carving out a life in a city that chewed up dreams and spat them back out as cautionary tales. He'd hit up both acting unions just like Gary suggested. And, just as Gary warned, the results were... underwhelming. The Screen Actors Guild had a handful of scraps mostly low-budget productions run by first-time directors with shoestring funds. Half of them wanted their lead actors to pay for the privilege of starring. Henry couldn't tell if it was indie filmmaking... or some Hollywood-flavored scam. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists was worse. No listings, no auditions just a blunt "go find an agency" from the staff at the front desk. You couldn't stumble into gigs there. You needed connections. Still, Henry wasn't here to chase stardom. He just wanted a foot in the door. He made himself a straightforward actor résumé, printed out headshots and full-body stills, then mailed packets off to any production that seemed remotely interested in a warm body to stand in the background. That meant dealing with Giovanni again the oily Italian guy who ran the local photo studio. He developed another batch of passport-style photos, plus a set of basic full-body shots. Gary had told him not to overdo it; casting directors didn't want glamor. They wanted proportions. Clean, plain photos that showed what you looked like, period. Henry had a hundred sets printed. Four photos per set. Three hundred bucks in total. A deal that nearly brought tears to Giovanni's overworked, pizza-stained eyes. Still, Henry had one more ask: a computer. Specifically, a Stark i486 Personal Computer, complete with keyboard, CRT monitor, and a bleeding-edge 28.8 kbps modem. Yeah, you read that right. Modem. Mouse? Not standard. And even if you had one, using it felt like trying to draw with a soap bar. If you know, you know. The reason he went to Giovanni wasn't just the photo work it was access. Most electronics stores in LA only stocked Iachines. DIY PC building wasn't common yet, and if you wanted Stark Industries hardware? You needed connections. Especially the high-end "boutique" gear. Giovanni claimed he had a supplier and promised delivery in two weeks. Henry wasn't holding his breath. Still, his trip to the electronics store wasn't a total bust. He walked out with a decent TV set, a VCR, and a telephone answering machine. He even snagged a vinyl record player and a sizable collection of vinyls for a shockingly low price. Tapes were king now, CDs were rising, and vinyl was considered trash. Nobody knew it'd come back in a couple decades like some kind of hipster phoenix. The answering machine was practical Henry didn't want to miss calls. He considered getting a mobile phone, but one look at the brick-sized monstrosities of the era had him backing away like it was radioactive. The thing looked like it belonged in a Batman utility belt. Besides, pagers and home answering machines were still the standard. He could live with that. As for the TV and VCR? Henry used them to dig into the film history of this world classic movies, golden-age legends, whatever he could get his hands on. This was a pre-streaming world, after all. No binging shows, no anime rabbit holes. Just good old-fashioned cinema, one tape at a time. But most of his time? That was spent somewhere else entirely: The Los Angeles Public Library. It started as curiosity then became obsession. Everyone says perspective is everything. That what you know defines how far you can go. Henry had come from a world of red flags and state-controlled textbooks. Dropping into this version of America the Marvel-flavored one was like being tossed into a shotgun blast of freedom, madness, and mystery. And he was woefully underprepared. Sure, his old world's education system gave him a few nuggets of useful knowledge. But most of it? Garbage. Useless trivia. He couldn't rely on any of it if he wanted to understand this new realit or survive in it. So he leaned on his Kryptonian advantage. A brain built for optimization. A memory that never forgot. A mind that processed data like a supercomputer and could learn at speeds that would give Einstein an existential crisis. He wasn't just going to punch things. That would be a waste. It'd be like buying a high-end gaming rig, prepped to run AAA games at max settings, and using it to browse Facebook and pirate old sitcoms. No. He had to put it to work. Even if he didn't have Tony Stark's resources or Bruce Banner's lab, he could still evolve. Learn. Adapt. If he was going to survive in a world full of Hydra, S.H.I.E.L.D., and cosmic-level threats, he needed more than fists. He needed to think smarter. So Henry didn't just focus on tech. He read everything. Science, history, engineering, literature, philosophy, art. He cleared the public sections of the L.A. library like a human Roomba with a PhD. Sure, there were restricted sections rare first editions, ancient manuscripts but those were just collector items, not secret grimoires or forbidden knowledge. He didn't bother sneaking in. Most of the time, he just stood in front of a shelf, made sure nobody was looking, and scanned it at inhuman speed. Pages turned with a flick of his thumb. One book down. Next. Repeat. Sometimes he slowed down to avoid suspicion. Once or twice, he even got flagged by staff his reading habits looked... off. But after a few rounds of "pick any page, I'll recite it," the librarians stopped asking questions. He became known as "that weird guy who reads too fast." Which, honestly? In this world? Not the weirdest thing. Within two months, Henry had absorbed every single accessible book, magazine, and archived newspaper the library had. That included the latest scientific journals. Armed with those and his pre-existing knowledge of the next 30 years from his old Earth he began to mentally map out a personal roadmap of innovation. Was he a Tony Stark? No. But could he develop near-future tech that looked like Stark magic in the early '90s? Absolutely. He didn't claim to master every corner of human science... but he understood most of it. Enough to recreate future technologies and maybe even nudge this world's tech tree ahead of schedule. Still, the biggest revelation wasn't technological. It was societal. This world... wasn't quite like the one he remembered from the comics. Mutants existed, yes. But they weren't being hunted. Not yet. The Brotherhood and X-Men were active, but their conflicts mostly stayed under the radar or among themselves. No giant sentinel programs. No Mutant Registration Act. No government-mandated purges. Why? Because the country's main focus wasn't on mutants. It was still stuck in the middle of racial tensions Black and white, civil rights, systemic inequality. Ever since Martin Luther King Jr., America's biggest cultural fault line had been race. Mutants were still a side concern. For now. Henry had a bad feeling that would change eventually. Someone, someday, would realize they could distract the masses from systemic issues by turning mutants into scapegoats. All it'd take was one "visionary" with a PR team and a thirst for control. But for now? He had time. Time to learn. Time to prepare. Time to build something for himself quietly, carefully before this world spun off into chaos. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ???? 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