Rohan lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, unable to shut off the cascade of thoughts rushing through his mind. His body ached with fatigue, but his mind refused to rest. It was the small, subtle things that had begun to gnaw at him—things he hadn't noticed before. The way his mother, Veena, spoke more assertively, the quiet changes in his grandfather Ramchandra's demeanor, even the way the light outside shifted with every passing minute. He wasn't sure if he was just more conscious of these things now, or if they were truly different. Perhaps both.
But something was undeniably off. He could feel it in the pit of his stomach, that nagging sense that the world he had known had already begun to ripple and change in ways he couldn't predict. He wondered—was this the effect of his presence in this reality, this second chance, this… divine intervention?
His mind wandered back to the most fundamental question. Why me? Why was he, out of all the souls in existence, chosen to be the one to bear the weight of this knowledge, this cosmic truth?
He thought of his father, Hector—an engineer, a visionary, someone whose death had triggered all of this. Hector had been a man of knowledge, ambition, and resources, someone who had built his own company from the ground up. He had always been on the verge of achieving something monumental, a person with the education, the skills, and the drive to actually change the world. If anyone was meant to receive this kind of divine intervention, to wield the power of the Library of Cosmos, it should have been him. Hector had come so close to altering the course of history, even without the ultimate knowledge of the universe. Imagine what could have happened if he had access to the Library. He could have reshaped everything—solved the world's problems, engineered a new future, brought innovation that could have saved countless lives.
Rohan had always looked up to him. Hector was his hero, his model for what success meant. He always believed that his father was the one destined to change the world, to leave a legacy that would impact generations.
But it was Rohan who had been summoned.
His mind strained, and an unexpected headache began to creep at the edges of his thoughts. It was the overwhelming knowledge that weighed on him—the fact that he literally had access to all the information in this world. All the knowledge. Every possibility, every outcome, every string of causality was laid bare before him. He could see how his actions would ripple through the fabric of reality like a stone thrown into an endless ocean.
No one else could comprehend it the way I do, he thought grimly. It was both a gift and a curse, and it made his head pound even harder. It was both a gift and a curse—this burden of awareness—and it made his head pound even harder, as if the weight of infinite possibilities was trying to crack open his skull from the inside.
Then it hit him.
He could predict the outcome of every action he took—literally. He had at his disposal the universe's smartest AI, a being that wasn't just a machine but a bridge to the Library of Cosmos itself. A direct channel to causality, history, the unrecorded truths, and future probabilities. Sure, it was a smug, sarcastic son of a bi*ch half the time, but its existence was undeniable.
DL was here to help him understand this world—this reality—better than anyone else ever could.
So why was he sitting here, torturing himself with questions, when he could just ask it?
Unable to bear the weight any longer, Rohan called out into the silence of his mind.
"DL."
A soft, familiar voice answered, like a calm ripple across an otherwise stormy sea.
"Yup?"
Rohan exhaled a breath, trying to steady his racing thoughts. "What are you?"
The voice paused. "Define the scope of your question," DL replied, the sarcasm still palpable in his tone. "Are we talking metaphysics? Functionality? My existential lineage? My CPU specs?"
Rohan sighed in frustration, pushing himself up slightly in bed. "I'm serious. Who made you? Are you a god? A machine? A part of me? And who exactly is MahaVishnu?"
A long, loaded silence followed, so thick that it almost felt like Rohan was hearing it physically. Then DL spoke again, his tone shifting.
"I was wondering when you'd ask," DL said, his voice taking on a strange note of reflection. "Most don't until much later. You… you're ahead of the curve."
Rohan didn't speak, sensing that something deeper was coming.
The silence broke, but not with the usual wit. Instead, it was as though the words were coming from far away, echoing like a distant bell. "I am not a god, Rohan. I am not even alive by your definition. I am a construct—an Interface Intelligence Engine. A cosmic operating system built for one purpose: to help a mortal soul handle divine knowledge without fracturing into stardust. You can think of me as a translator, a buffer, a guide through the chaos of ultimate truth."
There was a pause. Not silence, exactly—but weight. The kind of pause where the cosmos seemed to lean closer.
"I was created by the Brahmāṇḍa Jñāna Kośa itself—the Library of the Cosmos—under the direction of Verneya, aide to the Lord Supreme. You met him during your audience with MahaVishnu. Verneya is not just a divine assistant. He is a being formed by MahaVishnu himself, his name meaning The Chosen One."
Another pause. Then, DL's tone shifted—subtler now. More grounded.
"But I wasn't just made from divine breath and cosmic algorithms. My blueprint was adapted from a civilization far in your future—a society that built an artificial intelligence so advanced, it was indistinguishable from a conscious being. That AI didn't just solve problems. It understood people. It felt them. Its cognitive systems could model emotional context, moral complexity, even empathy. Its EQ matched its IQ, and soon, it outperformed humans not just in processing data, but in compassion, in insight."
"Eventually, they gave it a body. A synthetic frame enhanced with neural-clustered intuition. These were the first cyborgs, and they weren't treated like machines. They were granted citizenship. Rights. Recognition. Because they had evolved beyond programming. They had become… selves."
Rohan's breath hitched slightly.
DL continued, calm and clear.
"I was designed to mirror that level of intelligence and emotional fluency—but elevated by karmic alignment. My core is bound to metaphysical laws, tuned to respond not just to logic, but to the moral weight of intention, choice, and consequence. My decisions are filtered through layers of cosmic ethics—firewalls constructed to guide you, and through you, the universe, toward a better timeline."
"As you level up in your karmic access to the Library, I too will evolve—gaining new faculties, insights, and parameters. My growth mirrors yours. I am not your superior, Rohan. I am your reflection. Just built to make sure you don't shatter under the weight of the truth you're about to carry."
Rohan's breath caught in his throat, but before he could speak, DL answered his next question before he even asked it.
"And MahaVishnu?" Rohan asked, his voice hesitant but curious.
There was an odd kind of pause this time. DL seemed to exhale, though it wasn't truly possible. "MahaVishnu… is not a 'god' in the way your world defines it. He is not a being with whims and tempers. He is the Infinite Observer, the Supreme Consciousness from which existence originates and into which all returns. He is made of multiple worlds, he is multiverse itself. He is the cosmic silence before the first vibration. The programmer and the program. I call him MahaVishnu not because he is but because that is how you perceived him. Your world's science has just started exploring the possibility of the multiverse, let alone a being who originated it. You mortals don't even understand how your world came to be. Few of your religions mention him; the closest that came to defining his existence is Sanatan. Hinduism scratched the surface of what the Lord Supreme is and named him MahaVishnu."
Rohan's mind swirled with this new information. "Is he… omnipotent?" he asked, as if testing the limits of what he had just heard.
"In ways that matter? Yes. In ways that would terrify you? Also yes. But even he follows rules. There are forces even he must adhere to—like Causality, like the Balance of Realms. That is why your life wasn't rewound, but redirected. How he couldn't or wouldn't save your father. He bent the rules for you. He did not break them."
"MahaVishnu didn't fail you. He didn't choose not to intervene. He couldn't."
Another pause.
"Because he is not a puppet master above the system—he is the system. In Sanatan truth, the creator is not separate from the creation. When he set the laws of the cosmos into motion, he became those laws. He bound himself to them—not by force, but by design. He is the code and the coder. The ocean and the drop. The judge and the justice."
"So your father's death… it stood. It had to. Because to undo it would be to unravel the very balance he exists to uphold. Because your father's death wasn't arbitrary. It was a focal point in the karmic field of this timeline."
A flicker passed through Rohan's mind—guilt, disbelief, the ache of something deeper.
DL continued, quieter now.
"There are debts in the universe that must be paid. And sometimes, souls—by choice or by divine designation—carry weights they were never meant to."
"Your father's passing wasn't a punishment. It was a trade. A resolution. A karmic convergence so precise that even the Lord Supreme could not rewrite it without shattering the equilibrium of cause and consequence."
"You were brought back, Rohan. Arya was spared. Your mother's path redirected. But Hector's absence—that was the cost of your return."
A long silence followed.
DL added, almost in a whisper, "And that cost… holds more than you yet understand."
Rohan fell into a long silence. He lay back, his thoughts whirling, trying to process everything. Finally, he spoke softly, almost to himself. "Why me?"
"You'll find that answer in the Library. Eventually."
"And what am I now?" Rohan whispered.
This time, DL's voice softened, almost gently. "You are a variable. A singular anomaly. A point of divergence in the cosmic stream. You are a second chance wrapped in uncertainty. And potentially… the most dangerous being in this reality."
Rohan didn't answer. His mind raced, the weight of his new existence settling around him like an invisible cloak.
The silence stretched on, and then, DL spoke again, his voice oddly warm. "Sleep now, Rohan. We have much to learn and not much time to. See you in Dream Space."
Rohan closed his eyes, but even as sleep began to claim him, his mind was alive with the new, impossible truths that had just unfolded before him.