14 October 1980 Paris, 13th Arrondissement Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Orphanage
The first thing was not a thought. It was a pain.
A red-hot iron bar, incandescent, planted just behind the eyes. Lazare Bonaparte opened his eyelids and the world swayed violently. The peeling plaster ceiling of the dormitory seemed to pulsate to the rhythm of his temples. He knew this ceiling. He knew that lightning-shaped crack that ran from the left corner to the dusty suspension. He had stared at her for three years before falling asleep.
He closed his eyes, took a slow, controlled breath.
Calm down. Breathe. Analysis.
It wasn't a dream. Dreams have a fuzzy texture, an elusive logic. Here, the smell was too precise. It smelled of cheap parquet wax, the cold sweat of twenty teenagers crammed into the same room, and that lingering dampness typical of old, badly heated Parisian buildings.
He tried to move his right hand. The fingers obeyed, but with a latency, a foreign heaviness. He put his hand to her face. The skin was smooth. No three-day beard. Not the tiny scar under his chin that he had made in French Guiana. Just the soft, almost insulting skin of a sixteen-year-old boy.
The migraine returned, a wave of nausea that made her clench her teeth. That was the price to pay. You don't compress forty years of memories, wars, computer codes and industrial strategies into a brain that hasn't finished growing without blowing a few fuses. It was a biological glitch. Its mind was a Formula 1 engine forcibly mounted on a 2CV chassis.
He remained motionless. He didn't know what time it was, but the gray light that filtered through the thin curtains suggested dawn. October. October 14, 1980. The date imposed itself on him as an absolute certainty, engraved in the marble of his new memory.
He pushed aside the rough sheets. His body. He looked at her legs, her arms. It was disappointing. He remembered being a rock, a block of muscles and nerves forged by the Hubert Commando. There, he saw a teenager in good health, certainly, but fine. The muscles were long, not yet densified. If he were to hit someone today, he would probably break his knuckles.
"Fuck," he whispered.
His own voice surprised him. She had molted, but she lacked gravitas. It was a voice that had never given orders, a voice that still asked permission. We were going to have to work on that.
He sat up, ignoring the hammer blow in his skull, and laid bare feet on the cold floor. The cold helped. He anchored Lazarus in the present.
He turned to the small white lacquered metal bedside table, dented by generations of orphans. He pulled out the drawer. The metallic creaking made a sleeper stir in the next bed. Lazarus froze, predatory reflex, waiting for the other's breathing to resume a regular rhythm.
He looked inside the drawer. It was pathetic.
A chewed blue Bic pen. A Clairefontaine spiral notebook half-filled with school scribbles and car drawings. A basic quartz watch with a black plastic strap. And a small tin box that must have contained mint tablets.
He opened the box. He poured the contents onto the sheet.
Three ten-franc pieces. A five-franc piece, the one with the Silver Sower. One-franc coins and a few yellow cents. He counted. Twice.
Forty-seven francs.
He sat on the edge of the bed, the coins in his hand. Forty-seven francs. It was all he owned in the world. It was the entirety of his capital. In his head, he had plans for processor architectures that would be worth billions of dollars. He knew how the fall of the Berlin Wall would reshape Europe. He knew about the security flaws in all the banking systems that had not yet been invented. He knew that GSM would connect humanity.
And he had enough to buy maybe three packs of cigarettes and a sandwich.
A nervous laugh rose in his throat, which he immediately stifled. The situation was of a biting irony. He was the richest tramp in the history of mankind. But knowledge, without leverage, is just frustration.
He put the coins in the box, the box in the drawer. He closed his eyes for a second, visualizing his goal. Not wealth. Sovereignty. He didn't want a yacht. He wanted no one, ever, to be able to dictate his conduct. Not an orphanage director, not a banker, not an American president.
To do that, we had to get out of this hole.
Lazarus got up. He grabbed his rasping towel at the foot of the bed. He walked through the dormitory, silent as a shadow. Her feet instinctively avoided the creaking slats of the floor. It was a remnant of muscle memory, a survival habit that had stood the test of time. At least he hadn't lost that.
The communal showers were at the end of the hallway. White tiles, blackened joints, smell of bleach and mold. There was no one there. At 5:50 a.m., the others were still asleep.
He entered a cabin and turned on the tap. He did not wait. He threw himself under the jet.
The water was freezing.
The shock took his breath away. His adolescent body revolted, his skin stood on end, a violent shudder shook him from head to foot. He could have screamed. He could have jumped back. He did not move. He forced his breathing to slow down. He forced his muscles to relax under the thermal aggression.
It's just information, he thought. Your nerves send a cold signal. Your brain decides what to do with it.
He used the cold. He used it to anesthetize the migraine that was pulsating behind his eyes. He used it to harden the soft will of this new body. He stayed there for two full minutes, until the sensation of burning from the cold became a kind of armor.
When he turned off the water, he was no longer shaking. He wiped himself vigorously. In the damp-studded mirror above the sinks, he met her gaze. Gray eyes, a little too big for his still angular face. Messy black hair that should be cut shorter. But in the depths of the pupils, there was something that was not sixteen years old. A fixity. An absence of fear.
"Lazare Bonaparte," he murmured to his reflection.
What a ridiculous name. The Sisters must have found it funny in 1964. Or maybe it was the chance of the civil status. Lazarus, the one who returns from the dead. Bonaparte, the one who wants the empire. In the end, it suited him well.
He returned to the dormitory, dressed in the clothes prepared the day before on the chair. Faded jeans that were too wide at the knees, a white cotton t-shirt, a navy blue wool sweater that scratched at the collar. His sneakers were worn at the heel. He mentally noted: priority 3, equipment. You don't walk towards the conquest of the world with shoes that take on water.
The alarm clock rang at 6:30 a.m. An electric ring, strident, which made the whole dormitory groan. The bodies began to move. Muffled insults, mattress noises. Lazare was already sitting on his bed, perfectly motionless, his bed squared, his things put away.
A boy of his age, a certain Thomas, passed in front of him, rubbing his eyes, his hair like a firecracker. "Are you sick or what, Lazarus?" Did you see the time? Are you already undermined? Lazarus looked at him. He searched his memory for the "Thomas" file. A nice guy, a bit of a follower, who would end up as a garage owner in the Val-de-Marne. It had no strategic importance. "I had some things to do," replied Lazarus. "At six o'clock in the morning?" You're really weird.
Thomas shrugged and dragged his feet toward the showers. Lazarus did not rise. "Weird". He was going to hear this word often. He was going to have to get used to it.
He went down to the refectory. The smell of warm latte and industrial toast greeted him. It was a smell of collectivity, a smell of managed poverty. He took a brown plastic tray and stood in line. A bowl, two slices of bread, a knob of butter wrapped in golden foil.
He went and sat down at a secluded table near the window overlooking the asphalted inner courtyard. It was raining. A fine, grey, typically Parisian rain. He ate methodically. He needed calories. His adolescent metabolism burned energy at breakneck speed, especially with his brain running in overdrive.
"Lazarus?"
He looked up. The Mother Superior. Sister Marie-Agnès. A small, dry, bright-eyed woman behind tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. She held her bunch of keys like a handgun. In his previous life, he remembered her as a dragon. Today, he saw only a tired administrator who managed stocks of children and electricity bills.
"My Mother," he said.
He did not stand up, but he stood straight. She frowned. Usually, at this hour, Lazarus was either heckling or sleeping with his head on the table. "We didn't hear you this morning," she said. No music, no noise in the corridors. Are you brooding over something? "No, Mother." I just... thoughtful. "Thoughtful of it?" To what? See you next time you mess up for the All Saints' Day holidays?
Lazarus put down his toast. We had to put on the mask now. She had to be given a version of the truth that she could accept, a version that would buy her peace. He looked her straight in the eye. He put into his eyes all the calculated sincerity of which he was capable.
"To my future, Mother." I am sixteen years old. I'm not going to stay here forever. I decided to get back on track.
She stepped back imperceptibly, surprised. She was looking for irony, mockery. She found only a flat calm. "It is... it is a good resolution, Lazarus. Unexpected, but good. And concretely? — Concretely, I'm going to work on my maths. And I'm going to look for work for Wednesdays. I need money for books.
It wasn't a lie. Not quite. Sister Marie-Agnes stared at him for a moment more, suspicious. Then her face softened slightly. She had wanted these kids to get out of it so much. If one of them had a click, even a weird one, she wasn't going to discourage him.
"Very well," she said. If it's serious, I can see with Father André for support classes. But do not disappoint me, Bonaparte. I don't like false hopes. "I never disappoint when I decide, Mother.
The sentence came out a little too dry, a little too definitive for a teenager. She winked, but said nothing. She nodded and walked away to reprimand a group of little ones who were throwing bread crumbs at each other.
Lazarus expired gently. First test passed. He had neutralized the local authority. He had transformed surveillance into prudent benevolence. He finishes his coffee in two sips. He looked out the window. Paris was waiting for him. A Paris of 1980, analog, dirty, slow, and full of opportunities.
He had forty-seven francs. He needed five hundred francs before the end of the week if he wanted to sign up for the computer club whose announcement he had read on the notice board in the corridor last night — well, in his memory of last night. He got up and cleared his tray.
Head to the Aligre market. It was time to see what this body had in its belly. It was time to sell the only thing he had for now: his sweat.
14 October 1980 Paris, 12th arrondissement Marché d'Aligre
Paris in 1980 had a color: gray.
It wasn't the clean, metallic gray of the future he knew. It was a greasy grey, soaked in soot, lead exhaust fumes and crushed cigarette butts. As he left the Ledru-Rollin metro station, Lazare took this reality in his face.
There were no screens. No smartphones illuminating the faces of passers-by. No flashing digital ads. Just paper, concrete, and people walking fast, collars up, a Gauloise or a Gypsy screwed to the corner of their lips. The smell of tobacco was omnipresent, a heavy screed that stuck to the clothes as soon as they came out of the underground.
He felt like an astronaut stranded on a planet with too much gravity. Everything was slow. To get information, you had to buy a newspaper at the newsstand. To call someone, you had to find a booth, have change, and hope that the device wouldn't be vandalized. This permanent friction, this resistance of the material in the face of the intention, gave him a sudden vertigo.
You're in the Middle Ages, he thought. And you don't even have a sword.
He pulled up the collar of his itchy sweater. He had walked from the 13th arrondissement to save a metro ticket, but he ended up cheating at the Chevaleret station. A kid's impulse, or a risk calculation: the fine was unlikely at that hour, fatigue was certain.
He arrived in the Rue d'Aligre. The market was already in full swing. It was a cacophony of screams, the smell of overripe fruit, fresh fish and black coffee served in the bistros that lined the square. That was where the cash was. No checks, no transfers, no traces. Just dirty bills and heavy coins changing hands.
He spotted a truck parked in double file. A massive man, in his fifties, his face red with rosacea, was struggling to unload crates of purple turnips. He swore at every movement.
Lazarus approached. He did not assume a supplicating air. He took on his "technical" air. "Do you need help, boss?" The man stopped, a crate balanced on his stomach. He stared at the skinny teenager. "Who are you?" I have no time for beggars. Get out. "Not a beggar." Labour. I'll empty the truck in thirty minutes for fifty francs.
The man burst out laughing, a fat laugh that smelled of white wine in the morning. "Thirty minutes?" Did you see your arms, kid? You're going to break in half at the first crate. "Try me on three boxes." If I hang around, you fire me without paying. If I keep up the pace, it's fifty bullets.
The market gardener looked at him again. He saw something in Lazarus' gray eyes. Not arrogance, but mathematical certainty. And he had back pain. "Go." Three boxes. But if you screw up my merchandise, I'll kick your ass all the way to the Bastille.
Lazarus did not answer. He put his jacket on a concrete pedestal. He attacked the first crate. She weighed a good twenty kilos. His sixteen-year-old body protested immediately. The muscles in his forearms burned, his lower back sent an alarm signal. Locks the pelvis. Bend your legs. Use the thighs, not the back.
He applied the body mechanics he had been taught twenty years later – or ten years earlier, depending on your point of view. He lifted the load not with force, but with leverage. He continued. A crate. Two boxes. Three boxes.
He did not stop. The market gardener, skeptical at first, went back to work on his own, a little more slowly, observing out of the corner of his eye this strange kid who said nothing, didn't blow, and piled up the vegetables with the precision of a robot.
After forty minutes, the truck was empty. Lazarus was swimming. His t-shirt stuck to his back. His hands were shaking slightly from hypoglycemia. The migraine had returned, lurking behind her forehead, pulsating to the rhythm of her racing heart. But he stood up.
The market gardener wiped his forehead with a checkered cloth. He took a wad of cash out of his pocket, held in place by a rubber band. "You're not thick, but you're nervous, kid. Here.
He handed him a fifty-franc note. Pascal, the severe face of the philosopher on the blue paper. Lazarus took it. The paper was worn and soft. "Thank you." "Come back on Saturday if you like." But eat a steak first, you're scary to see.
Lazarus nodded his head, put his jacket back on. Ninety-seven francs. He had doubled his capital. He bought a ham and butter in a bakery for six francs. He ate it as he walked, without smelling the taste, just for the fuel. Head for the rue de la Roquette.
The entrance to the "Club Micro-Amat" was an anonymous carriage door between a furniture store and a laundromat. Only a sheet of paper taped to the window read: MEETING SATURDAY AND WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON – FLOOR 1.
Lazarus climbed the wooden staircase that smelled of wax and dust. As soon as he got there, he heard the sound. Not music. A rattle. The dry, rhythmic, mechanical noise of the keyboard keys. For the first time since waking up, his heartbeat calmed down. It was the sound of the house.
He pushed open the door. The room was an old converted Haussmannian apartment. The floor was littered with cables, L'Ordinateur Individuel magazines and empty coffee cups. Cigarette smoke formed a bluish haze under the neon lights.
There were about fifteen people there. Men, above all. In their thirties, bearded for the most part, seen in thick wool sweaters or corduroy jackets. The archetype of the passionate engineer of the 80s. On the trestle tables, the gods of the time were enthroned: two beige Apple IIs, a Commodore PET that looked like a futuristic toy, and three TRS-80s with their monochrome screens.
No one paid any attention to him. A kid who went to the wrong floor, it happened. A man with thick glasses and a red beard sat near the entrance, welding a component onto a green card. "It's private, little one. The music school is opposite.
Lazarus approached. He took out his fifty-franc note and two ten-franc pieces. "I'm coming for the free session. The poster says seventy francs for non-members. The man raised his glasses. He looked at the money, then at the boy. "Do you have seventy bullets to slam to look at screens?" Don't you have a soccer ball? "I don't need to look." I need to touch.
The man smiles, amused by the aplomb. He took the money and slipped it into a cigar box that served as a box. "Be careful. If you break, your parents pay. Take the TRS-80 at the back, near the window. No one uses it, the cassette player is messing around.
Lazarus crossed the room. He felt the curious looks weighing on him, but he didn't care. He could only see the machine. The TRS-80 Model I. A thick grey and black keyboard, integrating the computer. A separate video screen. 4 KB of RAM. A Zilog Z80 processor clocked at 1.77 MHz. For a 2024 engineer, it was less powerful than a pocket calculator that came with a cereal packet. For Lazare Bonaparte, in 1980, it was Excalibur.
He sat down. The Formica chair was hard. He turned on the screen. A green dot appeared, stretched, and the blinking cursor stabilized. READY >_
The BASIC. The language of beginners. The machine was waiting for him to type 10 PRINT "HELLO". Lazarus put his hands on the keyboard. The keys had a long travel, a satisfactory spring. He closed his eyes for a second. He revisited architectures, flow diagrams, registers. He wasn't going to speak BASIC. He was going to speak to the machine in his mother tongue.
He typed: SYSTEM. The machine replied: *?
He entered the system monitor. He began typing hexadecimal codes. He didn't need a textbook. He knew the memory map of the Z80 by heart. He knew that the video address started at 3C00. He knew how to hijack the interrupted clock.
His fingers came to life. ED B0 21 00 3C 11 01 3C 01 FF 03 36 2A...
He hardly looked at the screen. He wrote directly in the RAM. Around him, the clatter of the other keyboards faded. He was in the flow. The headache disappeared, driven away by the purity of logic. Here, he was not a broke orphan. He was a god. He controlled every electron.
"Hey... What are you doing here?
It was the man with the red beard. He had stood up, intrigued by the furious rate of the kid's punching. He approached, looked at the screen filled with columns of numbers. "Are you typing at random?" You're going to crash the bike.
Lazarus did not stop. He typed one last sequence: C3 00 80 (JUMP to start). Then he pressed ENTER.
The black screen exploded. It was not text. It was smooth motion graphics. Sine waves composed of ASCII characters that danced, intersected, and formed perfect geometric patterns, refreshed at 60 frames per second. On a TRS-80 that normally struggled to display a line of text without flashing.
Silence fell in the room. One by one, the other members stood up. They approached. They formed a semicircle behind Lazarus' chair. The red-bearded man leaned over, his nose almost glued to the screen. "It is... Is it pure assembler? "Z80 optimized," Lazare replied without turning around. I shorted the BASIC ROM to write directly to the video buffer. It gains forty percent cycles.
There was a murmur. "How old are you, kid?" Lazarus turned in his chair. He crossed his arms. He was hungry, his legs hurt, and he was wearing second-hand clothes. But in this room, at that precise moment, he was the boss.
"Sixteen years," he said. And I need unlimited access to this machine. In exchange, I show you how to run this on your Apple II.
The red-haired man looked at him as if he had just seen an alien land on rue de la Roquette. Then, slowly, a smile split his beard. "It's free for you, kid. But you don't leave until you've explained to me how you calculated the sinusoid with integers.
Lazarus smiled. A real smile, this time. He had his computer. He had his first team. The conquest could begin.