In my life I always had a fascination for two things, technology, I love everything related to computers in terms of hardware and software, and among them the video games fascinated me, which leads us to the second thing, magic. My world is full of legends and myths from the past, where mysteries abounded and gods existed everywhere. But in the present everything is fantasy and belief only in science, the only thing that can explain the truth.
Well in reality three things fascinate me, women. Despite spending my whole life fighting, since as an orphan from the orphanage I had to fight day after day, looking for jobs that a child could do. An orphanage cannot give you more than the basics, and in my case as a single newborn abandoned at the doors of the orphanage, I grew up in this place until almost my majority of age. I was a shy but studious and hardworking child, things that were good traits in a child that would quickly lead to adoption. But to my disappointment and that of the nuns who took care of the orphanage, a foster family was never able to be finalized for me.
Going out with a wooden box with products and tools to polish shoes, deliver newspapers, sell boiled eggs on the beach, etc. were the small jobs I did until graduating from public elementary school. In secondary school working part-time in convenience stores, stationery shops and the emerging internet cafes, where I discovered the beauty of technology.
Thanks to my good grades they accepted me in the best high school in my city, linked to the best university in my country, the UNAM. While I was going through high school I delved more into computing and the emerging era of the Internet. On television I discovered the so-called animes, and on the net my catalog expanded to mangas and video games.
As I had said, I was a shy child and I had few if not any friends, let alone girls. So in this period was where my three fascinations came together in one place, enjoying the emerging technology that globalized the world, and magic and fantasy in animes and video games, and the girls, perhaps these things led to distorting feminine beauty in my mind, so the women I met in real life were not even the shadow of the representations of femininity in video games and anime.
Despite spending a lot of time on these -pastimes- my grades were always the top of my generation, so when I graduated from high school I had a direct pass to university, and although my desire was to study things related to technology, the real need for money led me to the only thing linked to that, economics. But not with that career recommended by my teachers did I leave aside studying programming systems and hardware architecture in my free time and also enjoying the new video games that came out year after year with new graphics technologies and the implementation of artificial intelligences. And on the anime and manga side, perhaps having had a wide catalog of watched ones, the new seasons no longer satisfied me as before. So I left aside the visual part and started to focus on the letters, of the so-called web novels.
University time passed, always being the top in my economics faculty, meeting people in the country's elite, being recommended for financial projects and little by little building a network of contacts, that led me to a good job even before graduation.
But there was a reality in my life that was mentioned in the entire social circle, I was never known to have a girlfriend or at least a female friend around me, despite efforts from people to introduce me to some family girls, because of my work and my personal projects I never concretized even one relationship. Time passed and with rumors that perhaps I was one of those, from the community. And because of my Y chromosome I definitely like women.
And now, at my 37 years old, when I finally decide to solve this problem and commit myself an dark era arrives for humanity, a flu that ended up taking many people to the pure land and among them I was one. But not because of that pandemic, but because of a stab in the back, literal. Carrying a joint project with the federal government in support of the citizens touched the sensitive nerves of some people. Believing that without me the project would fall, but, the person who had the dagger in hand saw their smile fade when they heard me say, "the project is shielded and already on track, they will not be able to stop it".
Feeling that darkness envelops you, you only have the thought of regret, not for the things you did, but for the things you did not do, out of fear. Among my regrets were my technology projects, web novels that I had not finished reading, the final chapter of a video game that I was going to finish 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 would come with a family, or at least a mother. Being born again, or reborn, even with my memories of my previous life, just my entire previous life as if it were a movie watched yesterday. In the orphanage of my previous life it was administered by nuns, of a monotheistic religion, apart from the regular classes they also made us study their sacred 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 did I feel anything that made me believe. But I still respected their belief and although I was not a good person, I was definitely never bad and from childhood until my adult life, of whatever I earned a part was always to help the sister nuns who raised me until I became self-sufficient.
But upon going through a rebirth, it definitely made me believe that there is no god like that in my world, since I do not think that 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 because, apart from remembering my entire past life, I also have memory of a technology that never existed in my previous world, -steam technology-. And they are going to say, how are you going to call that technology, if we stopped using it decades ago when we started refining oil and started using gasolines and natural gas.
And the thing is that the steam technology I have in my mind is much more mature than the one we abandoned, rather, it came from a video game, the one I never managed to finish. -They Are Billions- or in Spanish: They Are Billions (you know, United States being unique and different, not only with an obsolete and inefficient measurement system, but also in their counter they skip a zero). An RTS (real-time strategy) and survival game where you are in a post-apocalyptic world full of zombies that after 500 years of clinging to the only bastions of human megacities, it has been decided to start expanding the territory and recover the world that was once of humans.
As an RTS game you start in a small base and with few colonists to recover lands and increase the population, and survive zombie waves. It has difficulty levels, and as a person who likes challenges I set the highest difficulty, apocalypse mode. Although at times I lowered the difficulty to be able to pass the level and then try again at maximum difficulty, I spent a lot of time since its launch until finally only the last level was left for me.
And the technology comes from this video game world, an analog technology very advanced that could easily compete with my world and its technology. But here is a detail, after all that I learned on my own in my previous life now it seems very easy for me to combine the two technologies and make something new that perhaps solves many problems of my previous world, like pollution and energy inefficiency. The base technology of They Are Billions is inspired by Tesla's electrical theory, and its energy efficiency and power transmission without losses with zero emissions of gases or other pollutants is really fantastical.
And with these thoughts my new life began and my future was infinite. And now with a family perhaps in this life I could fulfill my longings and this time die without regrets. But obviously I was not going to start talking on the day I was born nor much less bring out the technology instantly, without wanting to scare my new mother and not be stabbed in the back again, I had to move step by step and achieve power so that it does not happen to me like those who invented a water engine that would change the world, disappear.
My plan was simple, to demonstrate that I was a child genius without seeming like a monster. I have seen television series with genius characters and their childhoods so it would not be so difficult. Practice walking, that I know how to walk in my previous life does not mean that this body is already prepared to walk at birth, I am human not deer. So after entering this body day by day, little by little, demonstrating that I could walk at 7 months, surprised, but did not alarm anyone. Babbling words and after the year saying small simple phrases my mother loved it and bragged about me with her social circle, about how intelligent and well-behaved her little daughter was.
Yes, I said daughter, had I not mentioned it already?, I noticed it shortly after being born, apparently the soul and/or spirit have no gender. So, although I kept my memories it seems that not my sex. Although for a time I remained paralyzed, like a soulless doll, which caused my mother to take me to the hospital, where they told her that, although strange behavior was not abnormal and my vital signs are fine and otherwise I was healthy in every way. And on my part, I managed to encourage myself, that this should not stop me in my goals in the new life, although the part of getting a partner and family would have to be reviewed and adjusted.
And if you also ask, why I only mention my new mother, but not a new father, well, apparently there is abandonment. It does not surprise me, since, if in my previous life I was completely abandoned, at least in this life I have a family member. My mother is called Lluvia, she has Slavic blood, her family was from the communities that came from Europe in the colonial era and settled in an isthmus, the community was xenophobic at the beginning and in more modern times they opened more to other peoples. At those moments was when Lluvia's family moved to the city to change their lifestyle and fight for a modern world.
This is how Lluvia was born already in a modern city and with education from public schools, since the family, although not poor, was not rich enough to send their daughter to a private school. But in her high school period, as it happened in that era, she fell in love with a young man from an older generation and with consequences of me being born in '96. She had no choice but to leave school and was expelled from home by her father. Living for a time with a friend who also only had her mother and working to be able to raise her little daughter and herself.
So my plan would have to accelerate a little to be able to obtain money for the family, thinking of ways in which it would not raise suspicions and the money would not only be legal but recognized, so I managed to figure it out to enter a technology contest at 6 years old with a small steam machine that could generate energy with a lower loss range but still not too much so as not to attract the attention of the eliminate-oil-dangers group.
Although for obvious reasons I did not win first place, the second place prize was good enough to change the current life of my family of two. And not only the cash prize, with the media effect I became known as a little genius with schools offering 100% scholarships and even paying cash supports.
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 that her little one was so intelligent and earned money for the family felt ashamed, so she decided to return to study in night schools to finish the unfinished high school and enter a university, and on my recommendation, study in the economics faculty.
But everything started to go wrong until a month ago when the loving father who only went for cigarettes returned. My mother upon already graduating from the economics faculty had job offers from several companies, and with the plus of a genius daughter as an ornament they opened doors for her in important companies. But she never thought of leaving the city and I did not worry about that either until the unknown factor attacked. That man who did not want to take responsibility for a daughter at first saw me in the newspapers, although at first he did not recognize who I was. But in the last programming contest, a board wrote about my life and family story, and that man realized that he had a gold mine available.
So that factor was the one that, with my positive support, mother decided to accept a job in the island country where they offered her not only a house with all services paid and the visas of mother and daughter in order, but also a scholarship in a prestigious secondary school, since at my 11 years old I would graduate from primary school in my country. The company would arrange everything so that they would accept me in their study model, since the school was also interested in accepting an intelligent girl, even if she is foreign. The country of Neon had confidence that we would fall in love with their culture and we would become their citizens.
I, satisfied to start a life in the country where the stories that in my previous life I enjoyed and later ended up hating were born, and enthusiastic for tomorrow when I would enter my first class in a school that I had only seen in animes and mangas I finally fell asleep very late at night, only remembering to see the time on the table clock that marked 3:33 am.
Who would have thought that destiny would mock me again, and now I find myself in a dark cave with a smell of rot and blood. It seems that my life is not satisfied with just one isekai, but now I have a second isekai even more unknown and dangerous.