In my life, I have always had a fascination with two things: technology—I love everything related to computers, both hardware and software—and among those, I am fascinated by video games. This brings us to the second thing: magic. My world is filled with legends and myths from the past, where mysteries abounded and gods existed everywhere. But nowadays, everything is fantasy, and belief is solely in science, the only thing that can explain the truth.
Well, in reality, three things fascinate me: women. Despite spending all my life struggling—being an orphan, I had to fight day in and day out from the orphanage, seeking jobs a child could do. An orphanage can only provide the basics, and in my case, as a newborn baby abandoned at the orphanage's doorsteps, I grew up there until almost reaching adulthood. I was a shy but studious and hardworking boy, traits that were good in a child and would quickly lead to adoption. But to my disappointment and that of the nuns who managed the orphanage, an adoptive family for me could never be arranged.
Carrying a wooden box with products and tools for shoe shining, delivering newspapers, and selling boiled eggs at the beach were the small jobs I did until graduating from public elementary school. In high school, I worked part-time in convenience stores, stationery shops, and the emerging cyber cafes, where I discovered the beauty of technology.
Thanks to my good grades, I was accepted into the best high school in my city, linked to the best university in my country, UNAM. During high school, I delved more into computing and the nascent era of the Internet. On television, I discovered the so-called animes, and online, my catalog expanded to mangas and video games.
As I mentioned, I was a shy kid and had few, if any, friends—let alone girls. So, during this time, my three fascinations converged in one place: enjoying the rising technology that was globalizing the world, the magic and fantasy in animes and video games, and girls. Perhaps these things distorted the feminine beauty in my mind, causing the women I met in real life to hardly resemble depictions of femininity in video games and anime.
Despite spending much time on these hobbies, my grades were always at the top of my generation. So upon high school graduation, I had direct entry to university. However, though my desire was to study technology-related fields, the real need for money led me to study the only thing related to it: economics. But with this career recommended by my teachers, I did not abandon studying programming systems and hardware architecture in my free time, nor did I stop enjoying the new video games released each year with new graphic technologies and the implementation of artificial intelligence. As for anime and manga, perhaps having had a vast catalog, the new seasons no longer satisfied me as before. So, I left the visual part and started focusing on written works, known as web novels.
My university years passed, always being top of my economics faculty, meeting influential people in the country, being recommended for financial projects, and gradually building a network of contacts that landed me a good job even before graduation.
But a reality in my life frequently mentioned in the social circle was that I was never known to have a girlfriend or at least a female friend around me. Despite efforts by people to introduce me to some familiar girls, due to my work and personal projects, I never concretized a relationship. As time passed and rumors circulated that I might be part of the community—definitely, I have a Y chromosome and I like women.
And now, at 37 years old, when I finally decided to solve this problem and commit, a dark era arrived for humanity—a flu that took many people to the pure land, and among them was me. But not because of the pandemic, but due to being literally stabbed in the back. Leading a joint project with the federal government to support citizens touched a sensitive nerve for some people. Believing the project would collapse without me, the person holding the knife lost their smile upon hearing me say, "The project is armored and already underway, you won't be able to stop it."
Feeling the darkness envelop me, the only thought is of regret—not for the things you did, but for the things you didn't do out of fear. Among my regrets were my technology projects, unfinished web novels, the final chapter of a video game I was about to complete that night, and not having had a formal girlfriend.
But who would have thought that after embracing the darkness, I would see the light again? But this time, the light came with a family, or at least a mother—being born again, or reborn, still with my memories of my previous life, as if my entire previous life was a movie watched yesterday. In the orphanage of my previous life, it was managed by nuns of a monotheistic religion. Apart from regular classes, we were also made to study their holy book, pray, and basically believe in their religion and their God. Although everything related to magic and mystery fascinated me, I never saw anything magical in this religion nor felt anything that made me believe. But I still respected their belief, and even though I wasn't a good person, I was definitely never bad, and from childhood to adulthood, part of what I earned always went to help the nuns that raised me until I was self-sufficient.
But experiencing a rebirth definitely made me believe there is no such god in my world, as I don't think God would have allowed me to be reborn with all my memories of my past life—that would be very dangerous for the world. Especially since, apart from remembering my entire past life, I also remember technology that never existed in my previous world—steam technology. And you might say, how can you call that technology if we stopped using it decades ago when oil began to be refined and we started using gasoline and natural gas?
The steam technology in my mind is much more mature than what we abandoned. Rather, it came from a video game I never finished: They Are Billions, an RTS (real-time strategy) and survival game set in a post-apocalyptic world full of zombies. After 500 years clinging to the only bastions of human megacities, humanity decided to start expanding territory and reclaiming the world that once belonged to humans.
As in an RTS game, you start with a small base and a few settlers to reclaim lands, increase the population, and survive waves of zombies. It has difficulty levels, and as someone who likes challenges, I set the highest difficulty, apocalypse mode. Although sometimes I lowered the difficulty to pass the level and then tried again on maximum difficulty, it took me a long time since its release to finally only have the last level left to complete.
The technology comes from this video game world—a very advanced analog technology that could easily compete with my world's technology. But here's a detail: after all I learned on my own in my previous life, it's now very easy to combine the two technologies and create something new that could solve many problems in my previous world, like pollution and energy inefficiency. The core technology of They Are Billions is inspired by Tesla's electric theory, with its energy efficiency and lossless energy transmission with zero emissions of gases or other pollutants being really fantastical.
And with these thoughts, my new life began, and my future seemed infinite. And now, with a family, maybe in this life, I could achieve my desires and this time, die without regrets. But obviously, I wasn't going to start talking the day I was born, much less reveal the technology instantly. Not wanting to scare my new mother and not wanting to get stabbed in the back again, I had to move step by step and reach a level of power so that I wouldn't end up like those who invented a water engine that would change the world—disappeared.
My plan was simple: demonstrate that I was a child prodigy without appearing a monster. I've seen TV series with genius characters and their childhoods, so it wouldn't be that difficult. Practicing walking—just because I knew how to walk in my previous life didn't mean this body was prepared to walk at birth. I'm human, not a deer. After entering this body, day by day, little by little, I proved that I could walk at seven months, which surprised but didn't alarm anyone. Babbling words and after a year, saying simple phrases delighted my mother, who boasted in her social circle about how smart and well-behaved her little daughter was.
Yes, I said daughter—didn't I mention it already? I realized it shortly after birth. It seems that the soul and/or spirit have no gender, so although I kept my memories, it seems I did not keep my sex. Although for a while I was paralyzed, like a doll without a soul, which led my mother to take me to the hospital, where they said that while it was a strange behavior, it wasn't abnormal and my vital signs were good and otherwise, I was healthy all around. And for my part, I managed to encourage myself, that this shouldn't stop my goals in this new life, although the part about getting a partner and family would have to be reviewed and adjusted.
And if you also ask why I only mention my new mother and not a new father, well, it seems there's abandonment. It doesn't surprise me, since in my previous life I was completely abandoned. At least in this life, I have a relative. My mother is named Lluvia, she has Slavic blood, her family was among the communities that came from Europe during the colonial era and settled in an isthmus. The community was xenophobic at first, and in more modern times, they opened up more to other peoples. It was in those times that Lluvia's family moved to the city to change their lifestyle and strive for a modern world.
Thus, Lluvia was born in a modern city with public school education, as her family, though not poor, wasn't rich enough to send their daughter to a private school. During her high school years, as it happened at that time, she fell in love with a young man of an older generation, resulting in me, being born in '96. She had no choice but to leave school and was expelled from her home by her father, living for a while with a friend who also only had her mother, and working to raise her little daughter and herself.
Therefore, my plan had to be accelerated a bit to obtain money for the family. Thinking of ways that wouldn't raise suspicion and the money would be not only legal but recognized, I managed to get myself entered into a technology contest at six years old with a small steam machine that could generate energy with a lower loss range but still not too much to not attract the attention of the oil danger-elimination group.
Although for obvious reasons I didn't win first place, the second-place prize was good enough to change the current life of my family of two. Not only the cash prize but the media effect made me known as a little genius, with schools offering 100% scholarships and even paying cash support.
Our lives began to change. As a good student, I was recommended to enter math and science contests, winning cash prizes and product supports. With the explosion of the Internet in the country, it became easy for me to win programming and graphic design contests with software and 3D modeling. Everything was going so well that even my mother, upon seeing her little girl so intelligent and earning money for the family, felt embarrassed. So, she decided to study at night schools to finish her incomplete high school and enter a university, and upon my recommendation, she studied at the economics faculty.
But everything started to go wrong a month ago when the loving father who just went out for cigarettes returned. My mother, already a graduate of the economics faculty, had job offers from several companies, and with the bonus of having a genius daughter, important companies opened their doors to her. But she never thought of leaving the city, and I didn't worry about it until the unknown factor attacked. The man who didn't want to take responsibility for a daughter at first saw me in the newspapers; although he didn't recognize who I was at first, the last programming contest included a bulletin about my life and family history, and that man realized he had a gold mine available.
So that factor was what, with my positive support, led my mother to decide to accept a job in the insular country, where they offered not only a house with all services paid and mother and daughter visas in order but also a scholarship to a prestigious secondary school since at 11 years old I would be graduating from primary school in my country. The company would arrange everything for me to be accepted in their model of studies since the school was also interested in accepting a smart girl, even a foreign one. The neon country had the confidence that we would fall in love with their culture and become their citizens.
I was satisfied with starting a life in the country where the stories I enjoyed and later hated in my previous life originated and excited for the next day when I would attend my first class in a school I had only seen in animes and mangas. I finally fell asleep very late at night, only remembering seeing the clock showing 3:33 am.
Who would have thought that fate would mock me again, and now I find myself in a dark cave smelling of decay and blood? It seems my life isn't satisfied with just one isekai; now I have a second isekai that's even more unknown and dangerous.