[Five Years Later - July 1919]
Young Alexander Sterling sat cross-legged on the Persian rug, its patterns worn soft by years of small feet and spilled milk. The radio crackled with jazz that sounded like someone strangling a brass section—modern for 1919, torture for someone who remembered Spotify.
His father sat in his armchair, hands trembling around his pipe. Joseph Sterling had returned from the Great War eight months ago, but his thousand-yard stare had apparently booked a permanent residency.
"Tell me about Freedom's Five again, Papa."
Joseph's laugh came out like gravel in a cement mixer. "Christ, son. Haven't you heard it enough?"
"Please?" Alexander deployed what he'd mentally catalogued as Puppy Eyes Level 5: Geneva Convention Violation. It was, as the kids would say in about ninety years, super effective.
"Language, Joseph!" Natalia called from the kitchen, somehow hearing mild profanity over running water and the radio's tin-can jazz. Mothers had evolved echolocation apparently. That or the house had thinner walls than a campaign promise.
"Sorry, dear." Joseph settled back, leather groaning protest. "Well, there was Union Jack—Lord Montgomery Falsworth himself. British aristocrat who could fight like ten men, though that might've been the gin..."
No, Alexander thought, absorbing every word. That was definitely not the gin.
"Phantom Eagle flew like the devil was his co-pilot. Never saw him take a hit, even when the sky was more lead than air. Then there was Sir Steel—Ned Chapel. Took enough bullets at Cambrai to arm a platoon. Just kept walking, laughing like it was Sunday in the park."
"And the Frenchman?" Alexander prompted, knowing the answer but needing the confirmation like an addict needs another hit.
"Crimson Cavalier. Moved like smoke, killed like lightning. And Silver Squire—just a boy, really. English lad fighting alongside Sir Steel with nothing but courage and a sword that never seemed to dull."
"Did you see them?"
"Once." The thousand-yard stare intensified to about two thousand yards. "Belleau Wood. Hell on earth, son. But Sir Steel... he held the entire German advance. Bullets bouncing off him like rain. That's when I knew—there are things in this world that don't belong. Things that make a mockery of everything we thought we knew."
His hands shook harder. Alexander reached out with his small fingers, steadying the pipe before it could spill burning tobacco on the rug. Again.
No, Dad, he thought, his child's heart attempting to breakdance against his ribs. They're exactly where they belong. And I'm trapped in a universe where that's going to be a massive fucking problem.
That night, after his parents performed the sacred ritual of tucking him in with enough blankets to survive nuclear winter, Alexander lay staring at the ceiling's water stains. They looked like a map of Europe if Europe had been drawn by someone having a seizure.
"System activate," he whispered for the thousandth time, feeling like the world's most pathetic LARPer.
Nothing.
"Status. Menu. Inventory. Character sheet. Sudo give me fucking admin access?"
The universe remained unimpressed by his attempts at cosmic tech support.
"Come on! Every isekai protagonist gets a system! It's literally in the transmigration handbook! Page one: You die. Page two: You get reborn. Page three: Here's your cheat code, don't break reality too hard!"
Silence, except for the radiator's death rattle and his father's muffled nightmares bleeding through the walls like audio haunting.
Maybe I need to be more specific?
"Jarvis?"
Nothing.
"Alexa?"
Still nothing.
"Okay Google, how do I activate my isekai cheat system?"
The darkness judged him silently.
Alexander had tried everything. Standing before mirrors making mystical gestures that probably looked like a child having a stroke. Meditation poses that made his mother ask if he needed more fiber in his diet. He'd even tried eating weird combinations of food, hoping to trigger some kind of achievement unlock.
All he'd gotten was violent food poisoning and a lecture about wasting groceries during "these trying times," which was apparently what everyone called the post-war economic shambles when they didn't want to say "we're all fucked."
"Fine," he muttered to the darkness. "No system. No magic. No superpowers. Just me and my future knowledge in a universe where Norse gods treat Earth like a cosmic rest stop and billionaires in metal suits punch aliens."
He paused, really processing the spectacular nature of his predicament.
"I'm so dead. So absolutely, catastrophically, comedically dead."
But then again...
Alexander closed his eyes and instantly recalled every moment from his past life to the present with HD clarity. Every conversation, every newspaper headline, every stock price his father mentioned over breakfast eggs that tasted like economic anxiety.
Photographic memory. Not exactly Superman-level powers, but in a world about to go through the Roaring Twenties into the Great Depression into another World War into whatever cosmic clusterfuck comes after?
Knowledge is power, Francis Bacon had said. Of course, Bacon had never had to deal with a universe where that knowledge included "someday a purple alien will snap his fingers and delete half of everything," but the principle stood.
"Alright, universe," he whispered to his teddy bear, which judged him with button eyes that had seen too much. "You want to play on Nightmare difficulty without giving me any cheat codes? Fine. Let's fucking dance."
From down the hall, his father cried out—something about gas and men who wouldn't die properly.
Alexander pulled the blankets higher. Ten years until the market crash. But people made fortunes on crashes if they knew they were coming. And he knew. Oh, how he knew.
First step: Survive childhood without anyone noticing I'm not normal.
Second step: Make money. Lots of money.
Third step: Don't die when the superheroes start punching each other.
Fourth step: There is no fourth step because I'll probably be dead by step three.
But hey, at least it wouldn't be boring.