Chapter 45: Integrating into the World

Entering spring in Los Angeles, the eye-catching scenery on the beaches gradually returned, and more beautiful women in hot bikinis appeared.

Accompanying them were men recklessly radiating hormones—actually pumped full of steroids—showing off their tanned skin and sharply defined muscles.

The reviving spring also seemed to signal to Henry that his star path was gradually hitting its stride.

From the very beginning to registering with the Actors' Guild, it took two weeks before he finally got his first job.

One shot, no lines, probably wouldn't even stay in the final cut for three seconds. Yet, just that one shot kept Henry on the set for a whole day, earning him a day's pay.

The wage was ten dollars per hour, the minimum salary set by the union. Eight hours a day, no overtime, filming locally. So the income for that day was eighty dollars.

Lunch was provided by the production crew. Since it was a small crew, there was naturally no buffet with unlimited drinks, but everyone got a meal of burgers and fries, paired with a soda or coffee.

Although the shot was simply one take, filming took over ten minutes. Including preparation and scene-change time, Henry spent more than half an hour busy with the crew.

The rest of the time wasn't a state where one could just sit idle and zone out. Because it was a small crew, the producer would have idle background actors help with odd jobs.

Like moving props; when lights and cameras needed to be relocated, someone was needed to lend a hand. Besides the main personnel handling things personally, those background actors were also dragged in to work as laborers.

Don't talk about how work scopes are clearly defined in Western countries, that actors should just do actor things and not touch other matters to avoid taking responsibility.

In fact, whether in the Eastern or Western world, knowing how to conduct oneself and how to handle matters affects others' impressions of you, which in turn relates to whether you get another chance.

Don't think that being in America, in this advanced society, means you don't have to grind. Those climbing the red carpet are also a manifestation of grinding.

As for whether he could see his own performance in his first on-camera appearance, Henry had no expectations. Because this crew looked like it was just for scamming investors; the people in charge were extremely perfunctory.

It was only because the actor had a contract and the union as backing that he didn't end up not getting paid at all. But those amateur investors hoping for the movie's release and a huge box office explosion would probably just get the result of crying themselves to sleep in the toilet.

Having the qualification of a first crew experience was like crossing an invisible threshold. Henry's subsequent jobs increased. On average, he could squeeze into a crew one day a week, each time wasting a whole day.

If it were other people who had bet everything to come to Hollywood to develop their careers, they would probably have to find odd jobs during other times, otherwise it would be hard to make a living.

Henry didn't have this kind of trouble. During the times he couldn't get into a crew, he would occasionally go to the Los Angeles Public Library or the California Institute of Technology library to update his latest knowledge.

He also went back and forth between Blockbuster and his own home. Besides classic old movies, Henry's movie-watching categories added one more: cult B-movies.

Occasionally, he would contribute a single person's worth of box office at the cinema, enjoying the different feeling brought by the big screen.

But most of the time was still spent on that i486 computer produced by Stark Industries.

This time, Henry was no longer content to be just an ordinary computer user, surfing and chatting on the electronic bulletin board belonging to the California Institute of Technology via modem.

Nor was he just an ordinary programming master who only knew how to use programming languages. Instead, starting from machine language, he began to ponder and design a more reasonable and efficient programming language for himself.

Henry also referenced the development path of Linux, writing the kernel, shell, compiler, and libraries, etc., to design an operating system for himself that could maximize the hardware performance of the i486.

Then, in an era where most hackers were still obsessed with writing computer viruses to destroy other people's systems, Henry began scanning IP segments, deploying worms on all responding IPs, opening backdoors, and then sneaking into other people's systems to take a look.

To better hide his actions, Henry also delved into communication protocols, using different encryption methods to break through and issue control commands, thereby achieving the result of coming and going without a trace in other people's systems.

To achieve this, besides using existing system vulnerabilities as the first step of intrusion, the next step was to build his own ecosystem, thereby isolating himself from the original system to achieve the goal of invisibility.

The next step was to delete any footprints in the log files, completely hiding himself. In other words, this wasn't the game of deploying worms and opening backdoors, but rather that of a parasite.

Intercepting packets indiscriminately was something a mere i486 computer couldn't do; otherwise, the Prism program would have been developed earlier by some Kryptonian.

It can be said that while the Kryptonian whose goal in reality was to lie low, on the internet he completely let himself go. The things he did, no matter in which era, could be considered crimes.

The only reason he could convince himself was what Henry told himself: he caused no one any economic loss and didn't change the numbers in the bank.

It was just to satisfy personal curiosity, so he went to look at some unpublicized information, and incidentally left a few backdoors in the systems of various government agencies and units.

However, anyone who has used a modem knows that this thing is delicate.

Using it for too long, overheating, or telecom providers messing with it a bit would all lead to a drop in transmission efficiency. If used during thunder and lightning weather, it would be even worse. A single surge could write off an entire unit.

For Henry, who could be considered a heavy user, the behavior of buying a new modem every week to replace the old one was too stupid. So he began to ponder electrical knowledge and started optimizing the performance of the hardware at hand.

As an industrial powerhouse in the current world, various electronic components were not lacking. Otherwise, someone like Jobs wouldn't have been able to start the Apple business with a few partners from a garage.

Replacing or changing resistors and capacitors could only be considered small projects; swapping in better chips or particles was just the same thing.

Under the Kryptonian's heat vision and micro-manipulation abilities, these tasks could be said to be a piece of cake. Henry even began to ponder the possibility of hand-crafting chips.

The x86 architecture 80486 CPU, with a process between 1 micron and 0.6 microns, was actually impossible to hand-craft. But if some tools were used... it seemed it wasn't impossible.

Because the premise of mass production and commercial manufacturing was not considered, Henry could even complete a custom chip using very crude methods, with performance even superior to products currently on the market.

It can be said that only at this point did Henry truly realize what his super brain was for to be called 'super'.

Besides optimizing the structure of known knowledge, deriving into the next unknown field, and all of this happening as naturally as water flowing to a channel; when he wanted what kind of result, the process would just float before his eyes.

This was because he didn't have the data for the Arc Reactor at hand; otherwise, if he miniaturized it and hand-crafted the Mark One iron can, Henry felt he could easily do these things.

But none of these compared to the gradually increasing Hollywood jobs.

Even though they were all background roles, Henry hadn't thought about striving for supporting roles or even the lead. But a white young man who wasn't afraid to make himself look ugly, take falls and hits, and ruin his image for comedic effect gradually built a reputation among the small-production crowd.

The new book has been signed. Please follow, bookmark, and recommend. Thank you~~

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(End of this chapter)