Rewritten Past

It would be the inverse of the situation with generative AI in the 2020s.

If I seeded enough assets to work with, and if I put out enough proper tutorials, we would get generations of creatives who wouldn't even consider touching things like that. A mindset shift of 'I could never be that talented' into 'anyone can do it if they put time in' would gut generative AI before it even had a foothold.

And if it didn't, I knew every argument under the sun both for and against GenAI. I could kill it in the cradle the moment I caught a whiff of it coming out. Or at least guide it to strictly stay on the data processing side and out of the creative side.

The main reason people used it was because it was so easy. But if I created a similar environment of 'prompting' into a gamified commissioning space where you could earn points, build reputation, and so on...

...So much to do. So many exciting things to bring into existence.

And so much of the future to shape...

Like YouTube.

The moment that drops, I am SO going to get ahead of the curve with let's play videos and commentating. Not to mention starting up PNGtubing...

Argh, too much stuff.

Let's focus on the here and now.

First off, visual novel infrastructure for novel-adjacent creative projects. Let's call it... Hm. Infinite Archives? Yeah, the inverse of AI, IA. Bet.

We'll start on Infinite Archives ASAP. Carving out a whole niche would put me on the map for sure.

Needless to say, I'd need to be anonymous for it, but I'll make it work.

Second, start brainstorming how to do Live2D rigging and keep an eye out for when YouTube drops.

I already had the voice synthesizer module from Hero Creator, so I can use that to do pseudo-VTubing and hide me being a kid.

Third, improve my skills to prep for the Olympics in 2008.

It was an inverse order of operations. The sooner I laid the infrastructure for creative works, the sooner we could have a complete revolution in the entire industry.

Like keeping all NovelFires free to read, but pay to add features like music, graphics, save/load functions, and more.

And we could keep fantranslations in the environment by automatically hosting them with crowdsourcing within the actual framework...

No, no. Getting ahead of myself here.

"Alex?" April waved her hand in front of me. "It's recess time. Are you sleepy? You missed Ms. Blumgren saying that!"

I blinked and looked down at my pages of notes. Then I closed my notebook and smiled at April. "Sorry, April. I was doing lots of notes. Ready to go play?"

"Yeah!" April grabbed my hand and tugged me out of my seat. "Let's go! I want to try hanging onto the monkey bars like you today!"

I laughed. "Alright. I'll teach you. Let's go have some fun."

===

Time continued to march on.

We'd settled into a routine now with me waking up, training, heading to my old house with Mama Yue, Serena, and April to pick up Mom, going to school, getting picked up by Mama Yue after she finished her acting sessions for the day, heading to my old house where I did homework with April and worked on Infinite Archives, having dinner with my parents, then heading home and repeating.

There wasn't really anything important going on for a few weeks. Just my parents getting used to our new dynamic, me getting used to the new routine, and school.

And like that, November wrapped up, along with most of December.

Before I knew it, Christmas Eve had arrived. December 24th, 1999.

Since we were out of school for the holidays, April and I, along with Mama Yue and Serena, were at my old house with Mom. We'd slept over the night before, so the moment the clock hit 4:30 AM, I woke up, swapped myself with a pillow in April's arms, and then headed to the backyard for my morning training.

Not martial arts. I was getting kind of concerned with how that was molding my body... And the fact that said molding was very much turning me into a deadly instrument.

I'd learned my lesson from Thanksgiving, thank you very much. Let's NOT make my default anger response into a reflexive murder session.

Nope.

Instead of martial arts, I was practicing footwork. Both for fencing and for tennis.

Sidesteps, lunges, backpedals... the basics.

I wasn't concerned about being able to land blows or hit the tennis ball. My proprioception was pretty extreme at this point due to martial arts training.

Well, technically 'kung fu' training...

But anyway, that was squared away.

What I was missing was maneuvering. It was the foundation to both sports, and also what most people neglected.

Not me though.

There wasn't a point in hitting hard and fast if you couldn't reach your opponent or the target, after all.

So because of that, I got up before the crack of dawn, quietly made my way outside, and started drilling footwork on the garage pavement.

Sidesteps, advancing, backstepping, leaning...

It was structured chaos. I made sure to never make the same movement twice in a row to teach my body to just find the optimal movement pattern.

...At least, that was the theory.

It had worked before with my martial arts training, so it'd probably work now...

If not, I still had years to retrain myself, so it wasn't a big deal.

'It's a good thing we're not having a repeat of Thanksgiving.'

California weather was behaving for once. No white Christmas here. The forecast said pure sun through the new year, and we had nice 70 degree weather. Fahrenheit, of course. Didn't know what that was in Celsius off the top of my head.

But anyway, training.

I kept at it, doing my drills and being mindful of my footwork as well as my body's inclinations as I moved.

But as the sun began to rise, the door to the house opened up.

I glanced over to see my dad walk out, already dressed for work.

The usual light blue dress shirt, gray slacks, a tie, and a leather suitcase. Paired with his hair slicked to the side with some gel, he looked every bit the part of a sharp manager.

...Not sure why that was necessary when he worked for Public Housing, but it was just his style-

Hm.

...Now that I think about it...

I stared at my father a bit longer and realized with a start how similar he looked to me. At least, to 'past' me.

His eyes were a bit sharper, but his facial features, the way he styled his hair, and even his general stride were all mine.

...Or I guess it was better to say that I was all him?

I'd never noticed since he was different in the future. The years of working in Public Housing had made him a bit rounder due to stress and his black hair had gone gray. He also lost a bit of his sharpness, moving with a bit more ease.

But right now, at 25- No, I guess he had turned 26 last month?

At 26 years old, he could have passed for my twin. A gruffer, sterner, and more serious twin, but definitely my twin.

Weird.