Chapter 45: Blending In

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For 20 advanced chapters, visit my Patreon: https://patreon.com/Twilight_scribe1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Spring had arrived in Los Angeles, and the beach was back to being a postcard fantasy. Bikini-clad sunseekers lounged in the sand. Tanned, chiseled dudes flexed like walking steroid ads, their muscles glistening with baby oil and questionable choices. The air was thick with heat, hormones... and the distant whir of opportunity. For Henry, spring wasn't just a change in the weather it was a shift in momentum. Two weeks after registering with the actors' unions, he finally landed his first job. One scene. Zero lines. If it even made the final cut, it'd be a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. Still, it was something. He spent an entire day on set. Eight hours, paid the minimum union wage of $10 an hour. No overtime. No stunt work. Just pure, entry-level Hollywood. Lunch was on the house no lavish buffet, of course. Just a boxed combo: burger, fries, and a choice of soda or bitter coffee. Still, for a small-time shoot, it wasn't bad. The scene he filmed? Done in under fifteen minutes. But with setup, lighting, and endless reshoots, that quarter-hour dragged into an hour. And when you weren't in front of the camera? You were expected to help. Small productions ran lean. Everyone pulled double duty. So when the gaffer needed an extra set of hands, or the director's assistant needed props lugged across the set, guess who got volunteered? That's right the nameless background extras. Forget what people said about American workplace boundaries. Whether you were in Burbank, knowing how to "read the room" and "play the game" mattered. A smile and a willingness to do grunt work could be the difference between getting rehired or never getting the call again. People think America doesn't "grind." Henry knew better. Even those velvet-sofa social climbers clawing their way into fame through shady casting sessions were still hustling just a different kind of hustle. Was Henry expecting to see his scene on the big screen? Hell no. The whole shoot felt more like a con job to impress investors than an actual production. The producers barely hid their disinterest, the director phoned it in, and the crew looked ready to unionize in protest. If not for the union contract, Henry might not have even gotten paid. Still, that one day on set? It was a door. Not wide open, but cracked. And once you were on the other side, things got easier. Soon, Henry was getting more calls. One-day gigs, mostly. No lines. No fame. But each one meant another paycheck, another line on his résumé. For most people, living like this meant picking up side jobs to survive. The rent alone would kill you if the acting gigs didn't. Henry? He was fine. Kryptonian perks, after all. On his days off, he alternated between the Los Angeles Public Library, Caltech's archives, and the Blockbuster near his place. He wasn't just binging classics anymore. He'd added cult B-movies to the mix cheesy, weird, sometimes brilliant in all the wrong ways. Occasionally, he'd even catch a flick in theaters. Nothing beat the big screen for soaking up style and narrative. But most of his time? Spent at home. In front of a custom-rigged StarkTech i486 PC. This wasn't just Henry messing around on forums or writing basic programs. He wasn't content being a "power user." He was rebuilding computing from the ground up. Using his superhuman processing ability and memory, Henry began writing his own OS something lean, efficient, and brutally optimized to squeeze every ounce of power from the i486's architecture. He referenced Linux, reverse-engineered existing shell environments, built custom compilers, rewrote libraries. He didn't just want control of the machine he wanted it to submit. And while the early '90s were filled with edgy hackers writing worms and boot-sector viruses to ruin people's systems, Henry had... different ideas. He wasn't in it to destroy. He wanted access. So he started scanning IP ranges. When a system responded? He slipped in a silent worm, opened a backdoor, and watched. Not for malice. For knowledge. He even developed custom encryption protocols to cloak his movements and built isolated runtime environments inside compromised systems basically his own hidden ecosystem within other machines. He wasn't a virus. He was a parasite quiet, invisible, everywhere. And no, his i486 couldn't pull off something like the NSA's PRISM program. Not yet. But with time? Maybe. Kryptonian subtlety offline, full-blown chaos god online. By all modern definitions, Henry was committing dozens of felonies. Hacking government servers, sniffing data, building quiet fail-safes in major agency systems... But he had rules. No stealing. No data leaks. No financial harm. Just eyes in the dark. Just understanding. That was his excuse, anyway. Still, modems in this era were delicate beasts. Too much use? They overheated. Thunderstorms? A voltage spike could fry the whole thing. And don't even get started on ISPs playing dumb when your connection randomly dropped. Henry, ever the tinkerer, decided enough was enough. He dove into electrical engineering, looking to optimize and bulletproof his hardware. This was, after all, the age of American industrial dominance. Spare components weren't hard to come by resistors, capacitors, logic chips. If guys like Jobs could build Apple in a garage, Henry could certainly trick out a modem. With his heat vision and Kryptonian micro-manipulation, soldering was a joke. His steady hands made circuit adjustments like threading a needle in zero-G. Eventually, he started wondering... Could I build my own chips? The x86 80486 had a manufacturing process between 1μm and 0.6μm—too small for purely manual construction. But with a few tools? Some clever shortcuts? Not impossible. Sure, it wouldn't be cost-effective, and mass production was out of the question. But a handmade chip, customized for his personal OS? Yeah. He could do that. And that's when he realized: His mind wasn't just a powerful tool it was designed to innovate. He didn't need to memorize existing schematics. When he pictured a result, the entire process unfolded in his head. Step by step. No blueprint needed. If he had access to arc reactor schematics, he could probably cook up a Mark I suit in a garage with duct tape and a car battery. But for now? He had something better: Momentum. The acting gigs were picking up, too. Still no major roles. Still the guy who got punched, fell through a table, or stood behind the lead in a crowd shot. But that's what made him stand out. He wasn't afraid to get messy. To look stupid. To fall flat literally. He didn't care about image. He was a young white guy with a strong chin and no ego. And in a town where everyone was trying to be the next Brad Pitt? That made him weirdly valuable. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ???? New Power Stone Bonus Chapters! ???? By popular demand, here's a fresh reward system: ???? 1 BONUS CHAPTER for every 400 Power Stones! (Example: 400 Stones = 1 chapter, 800 Stones = 2 chapters, etc.) Keep voting, and let's see how many extra chapters we can unlock together! ???? Your support fuels this story let's go! ???? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~