[TBBT] Ch: 10 [Before Leonard Says Hi] (Patreon)

[First Person POV]

The next morning, I stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around my waist, wiped the steam from the bathroom mirror, and mentally opened the Login System before I could forget.

[Daily Login Available]

"Please don't give me another thousand dollars."

[Login Successful]

[Reward: Physical Growth (Low)]

I stared at the message for several seconds.

Then I looked down at myself.

"Well, somebody was listening."

The change wasn't dramatic enough to turn me into an action hero overnight, but it was definitely visible. My shoulders looked slightly broader, there was more definition around my arms and chest, and faint lines had appeared across my stomach where absolutely nothing interesting had existed yesterday.

I tightened my abdomen and leaned closer to the mirror.

Those were definitely the beginnings of actual abs, although calling them impressive would've been generous.

They looked like my body had downloaded the free trial version of a six-pack, but they were there.

I flexed one arm experimentally and watched the muscle tighten with considerably more enthusiasm than it had twenty-four hours earlier. The System apparently hadn't just added cosmetic definition either. My body felt firmer, lighter, and strangely more coordinated, as though several months of basic exercise had been compressed into one supernatural update.

"Physical Growth, low tier," I murmured while turning slightly before the mirror. "If the high-tier version turns me into Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'm going to have questions."

Still, I wasn't complaining. I'd literally thought about joining a gym while carrying boxes into the apartment, and now the System had apparently decided to help.

I dried off, got dressed, and made a mental note that supernatural assistance didn't excuse me from exercising. If anything, having a better starting point made joining a gym more useful. Besides, I don't know if this was a permanent effect or not. But I can skip the gym for another month and find out. I mean, if this is permanent and let's say I get another physical upgrade, I won't have to waste my time in a sweaty gym. 

After putting on some casual clothes, I made two chicken sandwiches, filled a glass with fresh lemon juice, and carried everything over to my desk. The air conditioner was doing God's work against Pasadena weather, and for once I didn't have an equation demanding immediate attention.

I turned on the computer, opened MySpace first, and nearly took a bite from my sandwich before noticing the numbers.

My music page had changed far more than I expected.

Nothing had exploded into instant celebrity territory. I wasn't getting mobbed outside the building, record executives weren't camping beneath my window, and YouTube hadn't spontaneously redesigned its homepage around my face.

Still, people were listening.

The play count on "I'm Yours" had climbed steadily since I uploaded it. My friend requests had multiplied, several people had reposted the track onto their own pages, and messages were beginning to arrive from strangers asking whether I had more songs.

I opened YouTube next.

The video had crossed a hundred views.

By modern internet standards, that would've been microscopic. In 2007, for a completely new music channel with no promotion campaign, no label, and only one simple recording of some unknown guy sitting with a guitar, it was enough to make me sit straighter.

The comments were even more interesting.

Jetson: Found this from MySpace. Dude, put this on iTunes already.

19GH: Why does this only have 121 views? I've played it six times today.

Lex: My girlfriend sent me this and now she won't stop singing it. Thanks a lot, Karl.

ProtonMonkey: Okay, science guy can actually sing. Didn't expect that.

BigLaser: Wait, is this the same Karl Peterson with the MIT papers? What the hell is your life?

That last one made me laugh hard enough that I nearly dropped part of my sandwich.

Apparently using my real name was already doing exactly what I'd expected. Some people were arriving because they liked the song, while others recognized the scientist attached to it and clicked purely because the combination seemed ridiculous.

That wasn't necessarily bad.

Curiosity was still traffic.

I checked the MySpace messages again, leaned back in my chair, and considered the original version of the song from my first life. "I'm Yours" hadn't become some instant global monster the moment it existed. It had taken time, performances, exposure, radio play, and eventually years of momentum before becoming the ridiculous sleeper hit I remembered.

This world had another complication.

The original artist didn't exist here.

At least, I hadn't found him.

That meant I couldn't rely on history repeating itself around the song. My version might become popular quickly, or it could take time to gain attention. There’s also a chance I could release a song that becomes well-known, but only a few thousand people would enjoy it before the internet forgets about me.

Future knowledge told me the song worked.

It didn't tell me exactly how a changed timeline would react when I was the one releasing it.

"Okay," I said while reaching for the second sandwich. "Then we don't bet everything on one song."

I already knew what I needed to do during the coming week. Record several tracks, keep the arrangements appropriate for 2007, upload them across MySpace and YouTube, and start feeding finished recordings through digital distribution. Once enough music was circulating to grow without constant attention, I could shift most of my time back toward research.

The important part was choosing those songs carefully.

That thought sent me into several hours of research.

I searched artist databases, record-label pages, chart archives, MySpace profiles, music forums, iTunes listings, interviews, and anything else that could tell me which musicians existed in this reality. Perfect memory gave me an enormous advantage, although it also made discrepancies painfully obvious.

Some artists I remembered existed exactly where they were supposed to exist.

Others existed but had different careers, different releases, or gaps where songs I clearly remembered should've been.

A few appeared to be completely absent.

Those were the dangerous ones.

I created a spreadsheet with three broad categories: confirmed, uncertain, and absent. Any song connected to someone in the first category was immediately removed from consideration unless I could verify that the specific work had never appeared. Anything uncertain went onto a separate list for deeper research. Songs linked to people who appeared genuinely absent were much safer candidates, although I still planned to check publishers, copyright databases, and existing recordings before touching them.

The butterfly effect was already working.

That meant relying purely on my memories would eventually become stupid.

By late afternoon, my eyes hurt, my lemon juice was gone, and the spreadsheet had become large enough that I finally stopped adding entries.

Then another number on the screen caught my attention: ten thousand dollars from the System's recent login rewards.

The System had spent nearly a week throwing money at me, and I'd been treating it like an annoying consolation prize because it wasn't another knowledge reward.

Treating ten thousand dollars like a disappointment was completely ridiculous.

Money was one of the main reasons I'd started this entire new direction.

I opened a browser tab and logged into my brokerage account.

The obvious temptation was to start throwing everything I owned at companies I knew would dominate the future. That would've been easy, and it also would've been stupid.

I knew what was coming in 2008.

Markets were going to get ugly.

There would be far better buying opportunities once fear started tearing through Wall Street, which meant there was no reason to commit serious capital right now. Ten thousand dollars, however, was perfect for building a test portfolio.

I split the money between four companies whose futures I remembered extremely well: Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, and Netflix.

Each represented a different piece of where the world was heading. Smartphones and consumer ecosystems would reshape daily life. Online retail and cloud infrastructure would become enormous. Graphics processors would eventually matter for far more than gaming. Streaming would turn physical media into an increasingly inconvenient middleman.

The exact road between 2007 and that future wouldn't be smooth.

I knew that better than anyone.

So I placed the orders without trying to time every tiny movement, then sat back and looked at the confirmation screen.

Ten thousand dollars wasn't going to make me rich.

What mattered was that I'd finally started.

The music had started moving.

The investment account was gonna give me profit in the future.

My research was waiting on the whiteboard.

And... I could hear some loud noises coming from outside. There were some loud grunts, and from what I could tell, it appeared that someone was carrying heavy things upstairs. So, I decided to take a peek.

I got up, did a little stretch before walking out of my apartment. I peeked down the stairs and saw a couple of guys leaving and a blond head saying...

"Thanks, guys." 

Then she moved out of my sight. 

“Wait a minute! Is that Penny moving in?” I wondered. I wanted to go downstairs to see for myself, but I felt really nervous. However, if I didn’t go now, Leonard and Sheldon would meet her first. Leonard might end up liking her, just like on that show.

I can't let that happen. 

'She was my crush, and I'll win her heart at all costs,' I said to myself in my head, and it didn't sound good. 'But what the hell am I gonna say to her? Shit! Okay. No point overthinking it. I'm better than those two. And I definitely won't say, 'Hi!' multiple times as they did. Yeah. I'm better. I got past life experience.' 

I took a deep breath, wiped my palms on my pants, and then walked downstairs. 

I stopped near the landing and noticed the door to 4B was open. 'Why is my mouth dry?' I walked over and... 

...There she was. 'Penny.' 

She was going through her boxes and as soon as I walked over, she looked at me and stood up with a smile. She was wearing a light turquoise short-sleeve t-shirt with a floral design layered over a dark long-sleeve top, paired with low-rise denim jean shorts.

'She is beautiful.'

"Hi!" I said.

"Hi!" She said.

"Hi!" I said.