The Digital Knight
After a hearty lunch, Henry climbed into the Rolls-Royce and headed to Manhattan for work, despite it being a Saturday. Through the car's sleek windows, 1979's Times Square looked nothing like the dazzling tourist trap he remembered from 2026. The streets were packed with lines of yellow taxis and vagrants drifting between them like ghosts. Scruffy long-haired holdovers from hippie culture, punks loitering at alley entrances and blowing hazy cigarette smoke while picking fights—it was all there. Once the sun went down, women in skimpy outfits, high on drugs, would flood the streets to sell their bodies. This was New York at its absolute worst, the city's dirty underbelly laid bare. Henry felt the notorious reputation of Times Square, considered the most dangerous area in America, in every fiber of his being.
Whoa, is this seriously the Times Square I remember? This place is straight-up Gotham. When the hell are those flashy billboards going to show up—the ones where tourists from all over the world would line up to take selfies?
The future landscape plastered with massive digital screens was still a long way off. Henry paused in thought, then jotted a quick note in the notebook resting on his knee.
Or maybe I should just make them myself later once I've got the money? New York City would probably shower me with every benefit they have if I led the project... Yeah, better write it down for now.
The car stopped in front of the horizontally elongated One Times Square building. The burly bodyguard in the passenger seat quickly got out, opened the rear door, and scanned the surroundings with sharp eyes. Jay slipped out from the driver's seat just as fast, flanking Henry to create a protective shell around him. Henry grabbed his notebook and strode into the building.
His first stop was Enjoy. The moment he stepped into the office, the energy hit him like a wave—Saturday might as well have been a regular weekday. The engine driving them was the fifty-cent incentive per unit sold. It might sound like pocket change, but when you factored in the global volume of the handheld game consoles, it was no small sum. Henry himself would have hesitated to offer it if it hadn't already been standard practice. Since even the industry giant Yatari followed the custom, he'd gone along with it—and now that it was in place, he had to admit it was a smart move.
Capitalism really is the best. Throw an incentive in front of people and Saturday becomes just another workday.
Henry surveyed his employees with satisfaction. The real reason he invested so much in Enjoy was simple: he was personally handling three roles at once—CEO, planner, and designer—putting him at the very center of operations. By contrast, Henry 1 Capital on the upper floor had nothing urgent to do. The positions had already been established, and silver prices hadn't skyrocketed enough yet for pyramiding. For now, their only tasks were market research and report writing, and since it was Saturday, most of the staff hadn't even come in.
The moment he arrived at the game console company, Henry was greeted by an incredibly lively atmosphere. He remembered how on the first day everyone had shown up in crisp suits, faces stiff with tension. Now they were all in comfortable short sleeves, expressions relaxed. Seeing no signs of discontent on their faces, Henry felt satisfied for the moment. Companies that sold fantasies—whether games or game consoles—needed to loosen up their organizational culture and office vibe to maximize efficiency. That was his belief. Only then could creativity flow freely and a healthy ecosystem emerge where even the lowliest employee's casual idea wouldn't be dismissed.
The downside was that control became harder, but Henry had never intended to micromanage anyway.
Leave management to professional executives. Double-check accounting with the family office and think tank. I'll just be the cheat-key guy who sets the company's direction. That's the easiest and surest path for a regressor to succeed.
This was something he'd emphasized from the moment he first recruited Marcus Wayne. The company he was building would be free, horizontal, and unbound by old customs or rigid regulations. Back then Marcus had enthusiastically agreed, saying it was exactly the company he'd always dreamed of. Watching him now, cracking jokes with the engineers and laughing his head off, it seemed he'd been sincere.
Henry greeted every employee whose eyes he met with a light "Good afternoon" before stepping into his CEO office. Before long Jay brought in a fragrant cup of coffee, and Marcus Wayne followed right behind him.
"Good afternoon, Marcus. I trust today will be uneventful?"
"Haha, good afternoon, boss. Today has been wonderfully peaceful."
Henry took a sip of coffee and continued in a playful tone.
"You said the same thing yesterday, but yesterday afternoon the entire LCD design team was in my office pulling their hair out. They looked like they were about to cry because the gorilla arm movements I sketched had to be broken into eight stages on the display, and the wiring was getting so tangled they thought the whole board would burn up."
"Haha, those guys really suffered. Normal calculator numbers only need seven strokes, but for each stage of the gorilla's movement you gave us, they had to pre-embed dozens of shapes into the LCD. They said they'd never heard of cramming so many overlapping images onto a single display panel. The poor bastards who used to only make calculator digits were suddenly doing art, and their fingers cramped up like crazy."
"So, did they manage to clean up the overlapping sections?"
"Yes. Just as you pointed out, boss, we decided to use common electrodes for the overlapping arm paths. Thanks to that, we barely managed to squeeze in the way the gorilla's tie flutters when he jumps. The samples that came back from the Japanese factory look surprisingly alive and moving."
Henry nodded with relief and reached for his coffee cup again, only to suddenly freeze.
"You even got the tie in?"
"Yes. In the sketch you provided, the gorilla is wearing a tie with the clear initials 'DK' on it, right? The detailed lettering was beyond our technical limits, but we managed to capture the texture of the tie. By the way, I've been curious—what does that DK on the tie stand for? It's not our company name."
"Ah, that DK?" Henry set down his coffee cup and smiled as if completely at ease. Inside his head, however, a 2026-era quad-core engine was screaming at full throttle.
I unconsciously stamped the name of a game from my past life right onto it! Fuck. This is a blatant setting error... But I can't just say "my hand slipped." I have to protect the genius image I've built up until now! Think, brain! Show me why I invested in those knowledge stats! Can't you see Marcus's sparkling puppy eyes staring at me?!
Henry's gaze drifted past Marcus's bright eyes to the world map on the wall. In that instant, a plausible-sounding term flashed through his mind.
"Digital Knight."
"Digital... Knight?" Marcus tilted his head at the unfamiliar combination.
Henry immediately infused his voice with authority, as if he'd been waiting for this.
"That's right. The small machine we're creating isn't merely a toy for children. From a narrative perspective, I wanted it to become something like a knight protecting the virtual world made of zeros and ones—the digital realm. This gorilla is the first sentinel to open the gates to that world."
Wow, I can't believe that bullshit just came out of my mouth. They say people get creative when they're cornered, and damn if it isn't true.
"My goodness... Digital Knight! I thought it was just a simple character name, but it carried such a philosophical meaning!"
Marcus couldn't contain his admiration. He carefully copied the term into his notebook as reverently as if it were a Bible verse. Henry was slightly taken aback by how seriously Marcus was reacting, but he quickly drove the point home with a straight face.
"Of course, since our game title is Mighty Ape (MA), we'll eventually need to revise the initials. For now, let's treat this sample as a limited-edition concept symbolizing 'The Birth of the Digital Knight.' It actually slipped out while I was conceptualizing the gorilla's future rival and sequel, Wreck-It Ralph. Still, Marcus, I'm glad you noticed."
"It's an honor, boss! As expected, your vision is far ahead of our time. Already thinking about sequels...! I'll tell the engineers right away. We're not just making a gorilla doll—we're creating the 'very first Digital Knight'!"
Watching Marcus's excited back as he practically ran out of the office, Henry wiped away the cold sweat running down his spine.
That was too fucking close. From now on I need to double-check every design myself. By the way, Digital Knight? DK? Does that mean I should prepare one design cut with DK initials for each future project in advance, then later run media campaigns about how it all had this deeper meaning? And while I was talking, making Wreck-It Ralph the rival actually sounds pretty good? If I acquire Pixie later, it would be perfect for animation. A gorilla and a gorilla-like human. It somehow fits, doesn't it?
Henry's on-site inspection continued after that. He stopped by the LCD team and held a deep discussion about the ghosting issues inherent to segment LCDs, telling them, "It won't do if my gorilla looks like a ghost." To the battery engineers he applied pressure: "If it can't even last a week, this isn't a portable device—it's just pretty trash. Don't forget that the clock function is the main feature." He also discussed the LCD's transparency with Marcus. Packing the images too densely made the background look messy.
Henry was forcibly transplanting 21st-century minimalist sensibilities onto 1979's technological capabilities. Without meaning to, he was pushing the engineers to their absolute limits in order to create what he considered a properly finished product.
Once he'd resolved the immediate issues at the game console company, Henry headed straight upstairs to his investment firm, Henry 1 Capital. The atmosphere on the other side of a single door was completely different. It was the analog world of 1979 Wall Street—people shouting orders into phone receivers and frantically scribbling trade tickets without pause. Not wanting to disturb the busy staff, Henry slipped into his office without saying much. Fortunately, since it was Saturday the headcount was low, so it felt less awkward.
In truth, Henry hadn't come here for any major work. He was simply showing his face. Honestly, he didn't have the ability to engage in any practical financial discussions at this investment company. The financial mechanisms of 1979 were far too unfamiliar to someone from the 21st century. The only financial knowledge Henry possessed was the broad strokes of historical trends.
From the end of '79, silver and gold prices will go completely insane. Interest rates will shoot up vertically, making shorting bonds a jackpot. That's about it. The detailed execution plans have to be built from scratch every single moment.
In his past life, Henry had been used to trading that ended with a click of a mouse on a computer program or MTS. He'd been an ordinary person who'd never even witnessed complex pyramiding strategies. Now, trying to build an execution plan with just one piece of information, he had no choice but to stay up every night poring over finance books until his head throbbed. Phones, trade tickets, telexes—the ordering methods of this era were trivial history that no one had taught him in his previous life. Novels might have given fragmentary explanations about the underlying stories, but facing the actual scene was like entering an entirely different world.
The term "war zone" was no exaggeration. In this situation, Henry couldn't bring himself to open his mouth in front of the veteran operators he'd spent good money to recruit.
If I pretend to know things and they realize I don't actually understand finance, I'll be instantly dismissed. Better to maintain the mysterious genius cosplay.
He drew a firm line and kept conversations with the staff to a minimum. There was only one thing Henry did when he came to this shelter-like office: sit at his desk, pull out a sketchbook from the drawer, and meticulously review the designs he'd drawn himself. It was to prevent repeating mistakes like the "DK tie" incident he'd experienced at the game company earlier.
"Fortunately, that was the only problematic page."
Henry picked up his pen and began drawing new pictures. Games, comics, animations, and car designs that would bring him enormous wealth in the future—he sketched whatever came to mind, one by one. Every single one of these was treasure. He was turning them into cash before he could forget them.
He had originally drawn at the game company, but after growing tired of Marcus's constant fussing and theft of his sketches during frequent visits, Henry had decided to kill two birds with one stone—stamping his face at the investment company while using it as a safe haven for his drawing work. This was also because Enjoy had already generated countless new patents for trademarks, design rights, and copyrights thanks to Marcus, that ghost who could smell money from a mile away.
Under the names Pac-Man, Dig Dug, and Kirby.
I can just sketch this much for The Legend of Zelda and explain the rest verbally later. By the way, I don't remember exactly when Pac-Man launches. Looking at the graphics level and simple game structure, it feels like it's around this time. If I want to take the lead, should I make my move by next year at the latest? Or maybe I should borrow more money under the Enjoy name and make a serious push into the arcade game market while I'm at it?