Chapter 44: Understanding the World

Henry didn't notice when 1991 arrived, because after finding and settling into his apartment, his schedule was packed solid, with not a moment to spare.

He visited both actors' unions, and the outcome was exactly as Old Gary had said.

The Film Actors Guild still had some scattered opportunities, but they were all from obscure small production companies and directors, low-budget films where one person played multiple roles.

Occasionally a lead role opened up, but from the synopsis alone, it felt unreliable. Some even required the lead to pay out of pocket to join the production—was this some kind of Hollywood scam?

The Television and Radio Artists Union had no scattered opportunities at all; the registration staff clearly told him to find an agency and join. You couldn't pick up work by chance.

With a laissez-faire attitude, Henry made himself an actor self-introduction sheet and mailed audition materials to every production that met his criteria.

To accomplish this, Henry once again dealt with Giovanni, the Italian owner of the photo studio. Besides developing more headshots, he needed a set of full-body audition photos.

Following Old Gary's advice, no flashy artistic photos were needed—just simple, clean images showing his full physique and proportions. Flashiness only hurt; it obscured the essentials.

Four such photos were taken, printed in bulk—a total of one hundred sets—for three hundred dings. It was already a fire-sale price; our poor, greasy old white guy nearly cried.

Still, Henry commissioned Giovanni to order a Stark i486 personal computer, priced at four thousand five hundred dings, including keyboard, screen, and a 28.8 kbps modem.

The mouse… in this era, the mouse wasn't even standard equipment, and using it was a nightmare—anyone who knows, knows.

He turned to Giovanni because in Los Angeles stores, only IBM or DELL branded personal computers were visible.

Buying loose components and assembling them yourself wasn't mainstream in this era, so finding computer parts wasn't easy.

Especially Stark Industries' "premium" products—you needed connections just to buy them on the West Coast, let alone loose Stark computer parts.

Hoping to try out Stark products, Henry had no choice but to rely on Giovanni, and braced himself to wait an unknown length of time. The portly, greasy old white guy promised to resolve it within two weeks.

Still, spending time browsing stores wasn't entirely fruitless. Henry bought himself a television, a VCR, and a telephone answering machine.

He even acquired a turntable and a substantial collection of vinyl records at a remarkably low price.

Because cassette tapes were mainstream in this era, and CDs were rising, vinyl was a dying industry. Who could have known vinyl would make a comeback nearly twenty years later?

The telephone answering machine was for catching calls he might miss when away from home.

Though he considered buying a mobile phone, seeing the brick-sized, weapon-grade devices of this era, Henry gave up.

These things were flashy and expensive—utterly unnecessary. Telephone answering machines and B. B. Calls remained the mainstream.

With a television and VCR, of course, he watched classic films. In an era without binge-watching series or anime, classic old movies were the best way to pass the time.

Besides his daily visits to the actors' unions to check for new work or any contact from productions, Henry mostly spent his time at the Los Angeles Public Library.

It's said that one's horizons and experience determine one's height. Suddenly arriving from under the red flag into this gun-violence-every-day Happy America—even in a different universe—Henry deeply felt his past life's knowledge was utterly insufficient.

Forget how much useless stuff exam-oriented education taught; those things wouldn't even qualify as entry-level in scientific research. This was the 1990s, not the 2990s.

With a super brain, extraordinary memory, and computational power, not leveraging these advantages but only using fists to beat people was sheer waste.

It was like being given a top-tier computer that could smoothly run AAA games at full settings and also run AI models offline.

But the user only used it to download movies and browse the web, occasionally smashing people with it as a brick. This…

Even if he didn't expect to become a Stark father-and-son duo or a wild-eyed Mr. Ho, to hide himself in the coming information society without power or influence, he needed to understand these tools to parasitize optimally.

Henry didn't just absorb knowledge about the information industry—he comprehensively scanned every book in the Los Angeles Public Library, from science to art, from culture to history.

Although such long-established libraries had "restricted sections," these usually held antique books like first editions or rare copies—not forbidden knowledge.

So Henry only read books in the public reading area, never deliberately seeking out restricted sections.

When no one was watching, he could scan an entire bookshelf in about one minute.

If someone was watching, his speed slowed slightly, but he'd still take down a book, flip through its pages with his thumb, breeze through it in a flash, then move to the next—nothing like how a normal person read.

This rapid "skimming without reading" drew attention. Library staff even called him out a few times to ask his intentions.

Henry said little, recited passages from several books, and let them randomly test him on any page. After a few rounds, Henry became a minor legend among librarians—a weirdo who read incredibly fast.

Though this contradicted his desire for keeping a low profile, in a world full of oddities and geniuses, it wasn't that noticeable. What's wrong with reading fast? Could he turn into a genius? Tell anyone—they wouldn't believe it.

Within just over two months, Henry had read every publicly available book in the library, including journals, newspapers, and archived materials.

Among them were the latest scientific journals, which helped Henry fully illuminate Earth's technological tree.

He couldn't claim to fully master all Earth's technology, but he grasped over eighty to ninety percent.

The rest he could deduce, combined with his knowledge from his previous world's development over the next thirty years, giving him sufficient ability to develop future technologies that would be called black tech in this era.

But what most shattered Henry's worldview was this world's different social development.

Supernatural phenomena were openly discussed and studied. The primary cause of this shift was mutants, born for unknown reasons.

Their unpredictable appearances made them nearly impossible to hide.

On the other hand, the main social conflict in contemporary America remained the Black-white divide. The Black civil rights movement, initiated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., kept whites too occupied to focus on mutants.

One day, some genius might shift the social conflict from Black people to mutants.

But these two months finally let Henry understand what world he was in—and gave him clearer insight into the future.

New book signed, please follow, collect, and recommend, thank you~~



(End of Chapter)