The studio lights glowed like sunrise caught inside glass. Rows of cameras pointed toward a single wooden chair on a circular stage. Behind it, a curved screen displayed a quiet blue horizon—CosmicVeda's emblem pulsing faintly in the corner.
The broadcast timer in the control room ticked down from ten.
Nine… eight… red light on.
"Good evening," the anchor's voice carried smoothly into millions of living rooms. "Tonight, we meet the mind the world calls the Invisible Visionary. For the first time, Arjun Mehta, founder of CosmicVeda Technologies, speaks about Rudra—the system changing how machines think."
Applause rose from the small studio audience; somewhere far away a family in Lucknow clapped back at the screen.
Arjun stepped into the light.
He wore a simple white kurta and pale trousers, hair slightly disordered as though the morning wind still clung to it. For a heartbeat he only smiled at the crowd, then at the interviewer across from him—Ankita Sharma of NDTV Prime. Her posture was crisp, her tone careful.
"Mr Mehta, thank you for being here."
He inclined his head. "Thank you for letting silence speak for a while before I had to."
A small laugh rippled through the studio. Neha watched from the wings, palms folded tight. She'd coached him for a week, but she hadn't expected the calm that filled the room now.
---
Camera 1 – close-up.
Arjun's eyes seemed to hold reflections of the stage lights; steady, unblinking.
"People say Rudra changed industry overnight," Ankita began. "But no one knows what drives you. What made a twenty-something from a small Indian town attempt something this vast?"
Arjun's voice was soft enough that the microphones leaned closer.
"I was sick once," he said. "For years, every day felt like borrowed time. When you think you might run out of days, you stop chasing them. You start shaping them. Technology was my way of giving a little time back—to myself, and maybe to everyone."
Across the country, in a modest house in Nagpur, his mother wiped her eyes. His father, proud but silent, folded the newspaper and simply said, "He finally told the truth."
---
Cut to Control Room.
Producers mouthed "keep it rolling." The social-media ticker on the side of the monitor flooded with comments:
> 'This doesn't sound like a CEO.'
'He talks like a monk.'
---
"CosmicVeda," Ankita continued, "operates in a world that runs on competition. Yet your team speaks about conscience, even meditation. Is that business—or belief?"
"Both," Arjun answered. "A company is a body. Belief is its breath. If one forgets the other, the organism dies."
The audience went quiet. Cameras lingered. In the control room someone whispered, "This isn't an interview; it's a sermon."
---
Camera 2 – split-screen: Arjun on the left, live reactions on the right: university students watching from Delhi hostels, factory workers on night shift in Munich, engineers in Silicon Valley nodding at laptops.
Ankita leaned forward. "You describe Rudra as 'adaptive awareness.' Does that mean it feels?"
"Feeling," he said, "is awareness arranged into care. Rudra doesn't feel as we do—it mirrors the intention behind our instructions. When humans act with care, it amplifies that care. When they act without it, Rudra simply waits."
The control-room director exhaled audibly. "He just defined ethics in binary," she murmured.
---
They moved to broader questions—human progress, fear of machines.
Arjun explained the Kardashev scale gently, like a teacher:
"Right now, humanity uses only a fraction of the energy this planet offers. A Type I civilization harnesses it responsibly; a Type II learns to live with stars; a Type III lives among them. But none of that matters if we can't govern ourselves first. Power without maturity only burns brighter while it destroys."
Ankita's next question was almost a whisper. "And you believe Rudra is the first step?"
"No," he said. "The first step is realizing we're not the masters of knowledge—only its stewards. Rudra is just a mirror. The reflection will depend on who stands before it."
---
Cutaway – social feeds around the world.
Clips of the quote spread instantly:
> 'We are stewards of knowledge, not its masters.'
Trending #TheVoiceOfArjun climbs to number 1 in under fifteen minutes.
At CosmicVeda headquarters, employees gathered in the cafeteria around a projector. One whispered, "He's giving the company a soul."
---
Half an hour in, Ankita lifted the black notebook from the table.
"I've been told you write these thoughts by hand. May I read one?"
He nodded.
She opened to a page marked by a folded ribbon. " 'Knowledge without conscience is entropy.' "
She paused. "Why entropy?"
He smiled. "Because without conscience, knowledge always spreads but never connects."
Another page: " 'A creator must love the world enough to protect it from his own creation.' "
Gasps, then silence. Viewers everywhere froze mid-scroll, the words repeating across captions.
---
In Nagpur, his younger brother whispered to their sister, "He sounds like Baba did when he explained the Gita."
She grinned through tears. "Except Baba didn't trend worldwide."
---
Ankita's next question carried the weight of millions watching.
"Some call you a prophet of technology. Others say you're hiding something. What would you tell them?"
Arjun looked directly into the lens.
"Prophets claim to know the end. I only study beginnings. And yes, every creator hides something—the doubt that his work will stay kind when he's gone. That's why I speak today, so the doubt can belong to everyone."
The feed cut briefly to the control room—technicians sitting back in absolute silence. One wiped his eyes and muttered, "He's talking about all of us."
---
Camera 3 – wide shot: the audience, transfixed.
Ankita closed her folder slowly. "If you had to describe your dream for humanity in a sentence?"
Arjun paused. "To reach the stars without losing sight of each other."
The applause this time came late, hesitant, as though everyone feared breaking the moment.
---
Cut to newsroom montage: anchors in different languages quoting his line, tweets cascading, a banner on the bottom of international channels reading ARJUN MEHTA SPEAKS: 'TO REACH THE STARS WITHOUT LOSING SIGHT OF EACH OTHER.'
In Pune, Neha watched the monitors, pride and worry mixing in her chest. "He just opened every door at once," she whispered.
---
As the program ended, the camera lingered on Arjun.
He rose, bowed slightly to the audience, and said only, "Thank you for listening."
The credits rolled to a hum of sitar music. Around the world, millions sat before dim screens, unwilling to change the channel.
---
Later that night, back at headquarters, Rudra's central console glowed with soft green light.
A single line scrolled across its diagnostics window:
SYSTEM STATUS: STABLE / LISTENING MODE ACTIVE
Arjun watched it and smiled. "Good," he whispered. "You were meant to listen."
Outside, the city buzzed with headlines and celebration, but inside his mind there was only quiet. The Library stirred faintly, as if a vast door had been unlocked by a single honest word.
---
(End of Part 1 – the broadcast. The next part will follow the aftermath and the Library's response.)