Date: April 12, 2030 Location:Lucknow, Parallel Earth
The alarm didn't scream. It died a pathetic, gurgling death, its feeble digital chirp choked off by a power grid that was as reliable as a promise from a politician. Arjun Mishra's eyes snapped open in the absolute darkness. He didn't need to see the time; his body, tuned to a brutal schedule, knew it was 5:30 AM.
Another day.
He lay still for a moment on the thin mattress on the floor, listening to the silence. It was a heavy, profound silence that only existed in large, empty spaces. This house—a 100-square-meter relic of a life that wasn't his—swallowed sound and hope in equal measure. Five years ago, the Sharma family, his distant relatives and the only people who had ever shown him a shred of kindness, had died in a pile of twisted metal on the Lucknow-Agra expressway. Their death had left him alone. Their will had left him this echoing, too-big house in a city that felt increasingly alien, and a loneliness so vast it had its own weather.
With a sigh that was more reflex than emotion, he pushed himself up. His muscles, undernourished and perpetually tired, protested. The walk to the bathroom was through a canyon of shrouded furniture. He couldn't afford to heat or cool the entire place, so he lived like a hermit crab in a few rooms, the rest closed off and gathering dust.
A splash of icy water on his face—the geyser was a luxury he ran for exactly three minutes every other day—shocked him into a semblance of awareness. He stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror. A gaunt face, twenty going on forty, with dark circles under eyes that held too much knowledge and too little life. He looked away. There was nothing to see.
Breakfast was a calculation. One slightly stale roti from yesterday, warmed on a gas stove he feared would run out any day. A single spoonful of dal. No tea. The tea leaves were running low, and the milk was a tomorrow problem. Every item in his sparse kitchen was a variable in the complex equation of his monthly survival.
His mind, sharp and analytical—the one thing his cheap engineering college hadn't been able to blunt—ran the numbers automatically, a habit as ingrained as breathing.
Salary Credit: +₹40,000.
The number flashed in his mind, a brief flare of potential that was immediately extinguished by the inevitable deductions.
Rent: ₹0. (The only mercy). Municipal Tax & Utilities: -₹8,500.(The government's cut for existing). Ration: -₹12,000.(The cheapest calories he could find. The price of wheat had doubled in three years). Internet & Basic Mobile: -₹1,500.(A non-negotiable for his job). Emergency Buffer: -₹5,000.(For the inevitable—a fever, a broken shoe, a power inverter failure).
He chewed the tasteless roti. Remaining: ₹13,000.
A naive person might see that as money. Arjun saw it as a shield against the abyss. It was the fund for everything else: the occasional soap, the second-hand clothes, the bus fare he tried desperately to avoid. By the end of the month, if he was meticulous, if he walked everywhere, if he never indulged in a cup of tea from a stall, that shield would be whittled down to a pathetic ₹5,000. Sometimes ₹3,000. This month, it was ₹4,700. The abyss was getting closer.
He dressed in his one presentable shirt and trousers, their fabric thin from countless washes. He slipped his feet into worn-out sneakers, the sole on the right one beginning to peel away from the canvas. He'd have to fix it with glue tonight. Again.
Then began the walk. Five kilometers. Each way.
The city woke up around him in a cacophony of honking, shouting, and the smell of exhaust and frying snacks that made his stomach clench with hunger he couldn't afford to satisfy. He moved through the crowds like a ghost, unseen and unseeing. He was a data point, a statistic—one of millions of young men in cheap clothes walking to jobs that barely sustained them.
Infosys Complex, his destination, rose like a glass and steel fortress. Inside, it was a world of artificial coolness and fluorescent lighting. He slid into his cubicle, a beige-walled prison exactly like the hundred others around it.
"Mishra! Finally. The QA team found a critical bug in the payment gateway module. Drop whatever you're doing and fix it. The client is screaming." His project manager, a man with a perpetually sweating upper lip named Rakesh, didn't even make eye contact, just barked the order as he passed by.
Arjun didn't reply. He just nodded at the man's retreating back and opened the bug tracker. The "whatever he was doing" was his own assigned work, which was already behind schedule. This was how it worked. The work no one wanted, the emergencies, the late nights—they all flowed downhill to the orphan with no friends to cover for him, no network to push back.
He lost himself in the code, a world of logic and structure where problems had solutions. It was the one place where he felt some semblance of control. Hours bled into one another. His colleagues left, one by one, with cheerful goodbyes he wasn't a part of. The office emptied, the silence broken only by the hum of servers and the frantic clicking of his keyboard.
A message popped up on his screen from Rakesh, sent from home: "Status?"
Arjun typed back, "Fixing it."
"Need it by EOD. Don't leave until it's done."
Arjun leaned back, exhaustion weighing on him like a physical blanket. EOD. End of Day. His day had ended five hours ago. He looked out the window. The sky had turned a deep, bruised purple. Night had fallen.
It was past 10:30 PM when he finally committed the fix. The office was a tomb. His body ached from hours of poor posture and mental strain. His stomach was a hollow pit. He had missed his one meal of the day.
He shut down his system, the silence now feeling oppressive. The walk home, usually a tedious chore, now felt like a marathon. He stepped out into the night. The chaotic energy of the day was gone, replaced by a desolate quiet. The streets were mostly empty, the occasional car speeding past, its headlights cutting through the gloom.
The air felt thick, charged. A warm, unnatural wind kicked up scraps of paper and dust. Arjun looked up. The sky, usually bleached orange by light pollution, was a churning cauldron of black cloud. There was no moon, no stars. Just an oppressive darkness.
A low rumble echoed in the distance. Thunder. Great. Just what he needed.
He picked up his pace, his worn soles slapping against the pavement. The wind grew stronger, whipping at his thin shirt. The first fat drops of rain began to fall, cold and startling against his skin. He was still three kilometers from home.
Then it happened.
A brilliant, blinding fork of lightning tore the sky in two. It didn't snake across the heavens; it lanced down, a spear of pure, incandescent white energy aimed directly at the earth. And it was coming down right on top of him.
Time didn't slow down. It simply stopped.
There was no thought, no fear. There was only the light, filling his vision, consuming the world. A sound like the universe tearing apart, a deafening CRACK that was less a sound and more a physical force, hit him in the chest.
He felt a sensation not of burning, but of… immersion. It was as if every cell in his body was suddenly dipped in effervescent, sparkling energy. A thousand volts of pure power coursed through him, and for a single, terrifying, exhilarating moment, he wasn't Arjun Mishra, the lonely orphan. He was a conduit. He was a god.
And then it was over.
He was on his knees on the wet pavement, gasping. The rain was falling in earnest now, soaking him to the bone. The thunder rumbled again, this time a mere echo of the cataclysm that had just passed.
He patted his chest, his arms. No smoke. No burns. His clothes were soaked, but intact. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird, but it was beating. He was alive.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up in his throat. By some impossible, astronomical fluke, a one-in-a-trillion chance, the lightning had struck near him, not him. It had earthied itself through a nearby drain cover, the current arcing through the moist air and giving him the shock of his life without killing him. A coincidence. A miracle of bad luck and good fortune combined.
Shaking, he pushed himself to his feet. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a deep, bone-weary trembling. All he could think about was getting home. He started walking again, then broke into a shambling run, driven by a sudden, primal need for the familiar walls of his empty house.
He finally stumbled through his front door, dripping water all over the dusty floor. He slammed it shut and leaned against it, breathing heavily, his body thrumming with a strange, residual energy that felt… internal. He chalked it up to shock.
He was too tired to cook. Too tired to think. He stripped off his wet clothes, leaving them in a heap. In the kitchen, he mechanically filled a pot with water, dropped in five eggs, and set it to boil. He stood there, shivering, watching the bubbles rise until the timer on his phone beeped.
He ate the plain boiled eggs standing over the sink, barely tasting them. The strange energy was fading, replaced by a leaden exhaustion that went deeper than any all-nighter. He took the world's fastest cold shower—a brutal but effective way to shock his system into some semblance of normality—and stumbled into his bedroom.
He collapsed onto the mattress, not even bothering to pull the sheet over himself. The last thing he felt was the phantom tingle in his limbs, a memory of the lightning's kiss. Then, the blackness of utter exhaustion claimed him.
He had been asleep for what felt like only minutes when a sound pulled him back from the depths. A voice. Clear, synthetic, and utterly devoid of emotion. It wasn't in the room. It was in his mind.
["Activating. 10%"]
Arjun stirred, still mostly asleep, writing it off as a fragment of a dream.
["20%"] ["30%"]
He groaned, turning over. The voice was persistent.
["50%"] ["80%"] ["90%"] ["99%"] ["100%"]
His eyes flew open in the darkness. He was fully awake now, heart starting to race again. This was no dream. The voice was as real as the floor beneath his mattress.
A final, chime-like sound echoed in his skull.
["Congratulations. Activation complete. Welcome to the Supreme Upgrade System. The tool is ready for the user."]