Date: November 14, 2028
Location: Apartment 1404, "Green Heights," Gurugram
Time: 20:06 IST
The door clicked shut, severing the connection to the outside world.
Aravind stood in the darkness of the entryway for exactly ten seconds. It was a necessary recalibration period, a physiological airlock allowing his heart rate to decelerate from the stress of the commute to the baseline of his sanctuary. He reached out and touched the capacitive switch on the wall. The lights did not flood the room; they bloomed gradually, programmed to rise to a warm 2700 Kelvin sufficient for visibility, insufficient to disrupt melatonin production.
He toed off his Woodland shoes. They were heavy, caked with the invisible particulate matter of the National Highway, carrying the dust of a city that was slowly choking itself to death. He placed them on the designated rack, parallel to his running sneakers, with geometric precision.
The apartment was a study in vacuum. The living room contained no sofa, no television, no decorative rugs that trapped allergens. There was only a single ergonomic chair, a wide desk dominated by his custom-built liquid-cooled rig, and a small dining table that seated two but had only ever served one. The air here was scrubbed. The HEPA filter in the corner hummed at a frequency bordering on subliminal, its display reading PM2.5: 12. Safe.
Aravind walked to the kitchen. He did not turn on the main overhead light. The under-cabinet LEDs provided enough lux for the task at hand. He placed the cloth bag on the granite counter and began the unpacking ritual.
Spinach. Tomatoes. Lentils. Jaggery.
He examined the spinach again. The journey from the vendor's stall to the apartment had caused a 2% loss in turgidity due to evapotranspiration. Acceptable. He turned on the tap. The water flow was restricted by an aerator he had installed himself, reducing output to three liters per minute. He washed the leaves, stripping away the grit of the NCR, his hands moving with the repetitive, soothing cadence of a machine.
Cooking was not an art for Aravind Roy. It was chemistry. It was the application of thermal energy to biological matter to maximize bioavailability.
He placed a stainless steel pot on the induction cooktop.
Induction efficiency: 84%. Gas stove efficiency: 40%. The choice was mathematical.
He added exactly 250 milliliters of water. He added the lentils. He set the temperature to 100 degrees Celsius. While the water reached its boiling point, he chopped the tomatoes. Uniform cubes. Surface area maximization for faster breakdown.
He reached for the spice box. Turmeric. Cumin. A pinch of salt.
He did not taste as he cooked. He knew the ratios.
Taste is subjective. Stoichiometry is absolute.
As the lentils began to simmer, a smell drifted in from the kitchen vent. The exhaust fan in the apartment above 1504 was malfunctioning, pushing air down instead of up. It was a heavy, rich scent. Mustard oil reached its smoking point. Garlic sizzling in fat. Dried red chilies releasing their capsaicin into the air. The "Tadka."
Aravind froze.
The smell was inefficient. It represented burnt hydrocarbons and excessive lipid oxidation. But the olfactory bulb is wired directly to the amygdala, bypassing the logic centers of the prefrontal cortex. The scent hit him like a physical blow, bypassing his defenses, dissolving the sterile walls of his apartment.
The induction hum faded. The cool air of Gurugram vanished.
Suddenly, the air was sticky. Heavy with moisture.
It was Kolkata. It was 2022.
Date: June 12, 2022(Memory Fragment)
Location: Jadavpur University Gate No. 4, Kolkata
Time: 14:30 IST
The heat in Kolkata was not like the dry, dusty furnace of Delhi. It was a wet blanket, a suffocating embrace that made sweat cling to the skin like oil.
Aravind stood on the broken pavement outside the university gate. He was eighteen. He was thinner then, his collarbones sharp against his shirt. He was the topper of the incoming batch. He had just cracked the toughest entrance exam in the state. He felt like he owned the world.
Then he saw the car.
It was a Honda City. In 2022, in a middle-class neighborhood, it was a symbol of insurmountable distance. The engine was running, the AC compressor dripping a puddle of condensation onto the hot asphalt.
Sneha stood by the open passenger door.
She was wearing a pastel kurti that looked expensive. Her hair was frizzy from the humidity, strands sticking to her forehead. She looked tired. Not angry. Not sad. Just exhausted.
"My father is waiting, Avi," she said. Her voice was low, barely audible over the roar of a passing bus.
"Just tell him," Aravind pleaded. He didn't recognize the desperation in his own voice then; he only recognized it now, in the memory, and he hated it. "Tell him I got into Jadavpur University. In four years, I'll have a decent placement. Tata. Mahindra. I can definitely manage both of our expenses."
Sneha looked at him. She looked at his shoes canvas sneakers that were turning grey from the street dust. Then she looked at the open door of the Honda, where the cool air was spilling out, promising relief.
"It's not just the money, Avi," she said softly.
"Then what is it? I can work. I can tutor. I can…"
"It's the waiting," she interrupted. She didn't shout. She didn't make a scene. She spoke with the crushing practicality of a girl who had seen the ledger of her life and realized the math didn't work. "You're asking me to wait ten years for a life I can have tomorrow. You want to struggle, Avi. You think suffering is noble. My father... he says stability isn't a sin."
"I'm not asking you to suffer. I'm asking you to believe in me. My trajectory—"
"You're a good student, Aravind," she said. It sounded like an eulogy. "You'll make a great employee someday."
She turned and sat in the car.
The door closed. The sound was a dull, heavy thud.
Quality engineering. Sound dampening.
Then, the window rolled up.
It was tinted black.
Aravind watched as his reflection appeared in the glass. A skinny boy in a sweaty shirt, standing on the side of the road with his hands empty.
Then the car moved. The reflection slid away.
He was erased.
Date: November 14, 2028
Location: Apartment 1404, "Green Heights"
Time: 20:45 IST
Aravind gasped, inhaling sharply. The smell of burnt garlic had faded, replaced by the sterile scent of boiling lentils.
He gripped the edge of the granite counter. His knuckles were white.
Cortisol spike. Heart rate: 110 BPM. Unnecessary caloric expenditure.
He stared at the induction stove. The display read: Timer: 00:00. It had switched off automatically. The safety protocol had worked. The machine had done its job while the human malfunctioned.
"Optimization failure," he whispered to the empty kitchen.
He finished the cooking mechanically. He poured the lentils into a bowl. He did not garnish it. He took the bowl and walked to his desk. He did not sit at the dining table. The dining table was for people who ate meals. Aravind was merely refueling.
He sat in the ergonomic chair in front of his rig.
He pressed the power button.
The machine woke up instantly. The custom loop liquid cooling system hummed to life—a soft, fluid sound, like a stream flowing through a metal forest. The RGB lighting was set to a static, dim white. No rainbows. No strobing effects.
He ignored the work emails. He ignored the news.
He opened the simulation.
Cities: Skylines III.
The save file loaded in four seconds.
Name: Neopolis_v7
Population: 450,000
Traffic Flow: 98%
Pollution: 0%
Happiness: 92%
This was his real life. The world outside the dusty roads of Gurugram, the screaming couples at bus stops, the VPs who needed fifty lakhs to feel valid was just a chaotic, buggy beta version. Neopolis was the patch.
Aravind ate a spoonful of bland lentils and zoomed in on the industrial district.
It was perfect.
The cargo trains arrived exactly as the factories needed raw materials. The trucks used dedicated freight lanes, bypassing residential zones completely. No noise pollution. No smog.
He clicked on a commercial zone near the city center. The data panel showed a slight dip in efficiency. A retail store was generating excessive traffic for low tax revenue.
Inefficient, Aravind thought.
Click. Bulldoze.
The building vanished. The traffic flow arrow turned green again.
He felt a small, cold spark of satisfaction. In the simulation, he was not the boy left on the pavement. He was the Honda City. He was the tint on the window. He was the force that decided what stayed and what was erased.
He spent the next hour optimizing the public transport grid. He adjusted the bus lines to reduce wait times by twelve seconds. He replaced a coal power plant with a fusion reactor, watching the pollution cloud dissipate instantly.
If only it were this simple, he thought, watching the little digital citizens walk on his clean, digital sidewalks. Delete the waste. Upgrade the engine. Cool the system.
He was God in a machine, bringing order to chaos, one click at a time.
Time: 22:45 IST
Location: Apartment 1404
The peace was shattered by a frequency designed to induce urgency.
Ringtone: Default Digital Alarm.
Source: Work Phone.
Aravind froze. The spoon hovered halfway to his mouth. The silence of the room, so carefully constructed, fractured instantly.
He looked at the phone lying face up on the desk.
The screen was flashing red.
Caller ID: PLANT CONTROL ROOM - EMERGENCY LINE.
It was 10:45 PM. Calls from the Control Room were rare. They meant a catastrophic failure. They meant entropy had won.
Aravind put the spoon down. He picked up the phone.
"Report."
The voice on the other end was breathless, fractured by static and the background roar of alarms. It was Mishra, the night shift supervisor. A good engineer, but prone to panic.
"Sir? The Twin. The Thermal Twin. It's… it's awake."
Aravind went rigid. His spine straightened, locking into alert posture. "Clarify. The simulation is script-bound. It runs on the server, Mishra. It cannot be 'awake'."
"No, Sir. Bhalla… Mr. Bhalla ordered a live run. He came back after drinks. He wanted to show the VP from Japan. We ramped the Hydrogen injection to 110%."
"Bhalla is a fool," Aravind said cold y. "Cut the feed. Reset to ambient."
"We can't!" Mishra screamed. The terror in his voice was raw, unpolished. "Sir, you don't understand. It's not just failing. It's feeding. The cylinder temps are at 1200 Kelvin and climbing exponentially. But the fuel flow is zero. Sir, the injectors are dry!"
Aravind's mind stopped.
Zero fuel. Rising heat.
Q = mcΔT.
If mass (fuel) is zero, heat generation should be zero.
Unless the system is drawing energy from an external source.
A violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics.
"Cut the power, Mishra. Hard scram. Pull the main breaker."
"We did! We pulled the mains! The backup generators are off! The screen is still on! It's drawing power from the ambient heat, The room is freezing, but the engine is melting! The VP... Sir, his breath is freezing on his face, but the metal is glowing white! And the readout… the readout doesn't show numbers anymore."
"What does it show?"
Mishra was sobbing now. "It's not code, Sir. It's text. It says: ASSIMILATION OF SOURCE REQUIRED."
Aravind stood up. The chair rolled back, hitting the wall with a dull thud.
The air in his apartment suddenly felt very cold. The hairs on his arms stood up. It wasn't the AC. It felt as if all the thermal energy in the world was being sucked toward a distant point in Manesar.
"Get out of the bay, Mishra," Aravind commanded. "Do not touch the rig. Do not look at the pattern. Evacuate."
"But Sir—"
"Run!"
Aravind cut the call.
He didn't change his clothes. He shoved his feet into his shoes—the laces still tied from the morning.
He grabbed his laptop bag.
He ran to the door.
He sprinted down the silent corridor, his footsteps thundering against the cheap carpet. He hit the elevator button.
The display flickered.
The red LED number '14' dissolved. The pixels scattered, buzzing like angry insects.
They didn't reform into a number.
They reformed into a jagged, rising line. A thermal gradient curve.
But it wasn't just a curve.
It curved up at the ends.
It looked like a smile.
Aravind didn't wait for the doors.
He turned and hit the stairs, taking them two at a time, descending into the dark.
The Ghost was awake. And for the first time in six years, he didn't have a formula to solve the problem.