Apr 11–Apr 25, 2016
"The Birth of Shakti Semiconductors"
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The Secret Lab – Under the Estate
April 12, 2016.
The elevator descended without a sound. The walls of the shaft glowed with faint blue veins of embedded quantum conduits, lighting the MC's face as he stood with hands clasped behind his back. Beside him, two human engineers fidgeted nervously — veterans of India's fading semiconductor sector, men used to dusty state-run labs, not… whatever this was.
The doors slid open.
They stepped into another world.
The underground complex was vast, stretching out like a cathedral of steel and light. Transparent glass corridors crisscrossed above fabrication chambers, where clean-suited androids moved with unerring precision. Suspended in mid-air, holograms showed wafer schematics spinning slowly, numbers scrolling too fast for human eyes.
The older of the two men — Dr. Ravi Narayan, a semiconductor physicist who had once begged foreign firms for outdated lithography machines — stopped dead. His voice cracked.
> "This… this isn't possible. India doesn't have this. No one does."
The MC turned slightly, his expression calm, measured.
> "You're mistaken, Doctor. India will have this. And you will help me build it."
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POV – Dr. Ravi Narayan
For thirty years, Ravi had fought a losing battle. He had seen India's Semiconductor Complex Limited destroyed by fire, seen bureaucrats stifle every attempt at revival, seen his brightest students flee to Intel, TSMC, Samsung.
Now, standing here, he felt tears prick at his eyes.
A nanofabrication chamber hummed softly before him — not bulky EUV lithography equipment, but a sleek, modular unit, its insides glowing with a kind of controlled plasma he couldn't even identify.
His fingers trembled as he approached. The android assistant beside him silently handed him a tablet. On its screen:
"Process Node: 2 nanometers. Status: Stable."
Ravi nearly dropped it.
> "Two nanometers? That's… years ahead of TSMC. This is—this is beyond Moore's law."
He turned to Rao — no, to the man everyone called "Arjun Rao," though Ravi sensed something older in those eyes.
> "Where did you get this technology? Who are you really?"
The MC smiled faintly, evasively.
> "What matters is not who I am, Doctor. What matters is what we can do together."
For the first time in decades, Ravi felt like a child in a laboratory again, staring at the future.
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MC's POV – Building the Gamble
The MC walked the engineers through the lab. They would never know that the heart of it was drawn from Marvel Universe nanotech smuggled across dimensions, merged with Aarya's processing genius.
The gamble was simple: skip ahead a generation. While the world still struggled at 7nm and 5nm, India would quietly birth a 2nm architecture.
But secrecy was key.
> MC (to Aarya, subvocalized): "We don't reveal this until next year. Not a single wafer leaks. Otherwise, the Americans will come with lawsuits, the Chinese with spies, the EU with sanctions. This must gestate in silence."
> Aarya: "Confirmed. Lab sealed with biometric redundancies. All human staff compartmentalized. Knowledge distribution minimal."
Still, he allowed Ravi Narayan and two others a taste of the truth. He needed them inspired — their patriotism would anchor them.
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Flashback – Why Chips Mattered
Late at night, alone in the lab, the MC pulled up old government reports. India imported 95% of its semiconductors, worth billions annually. Every smartphone, every missile guidance system, every supercomputer chip came from abroad.
Dependency. Vulnerability. Chains disguised as trade.
He thought of his father reading newspapers, proud of his tunnels. He thought of Dorjee the villager, selling rice and salt thanks to those tunnels. Infrastructure built nations — but semiconductors decided futures.
If he gave India chips, he wouldn't just be a builder of roads. He'd be the architect of destiny.
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Side POV – The Engineer's Diary
April 18, 2016.
Dr. Ravi Narayan sat in his quarters within the estate, pen scratching furiously across paper. He still couldn't bring himself to type notes on a laptop — it felt unsafe.
> "Today I touched the future. The fabrication line here is like nothing in Taiwan, Korea, or the U.S. They use brute force — massive EUV machines, billion-dollar fabs. But this… this lab dances with atoms. It is precise, elegant, almost alive.
> Rao says we will call it Shakti Semiconductors. He says it will power not only computers but India's sovereignty. For the first time in decades, I believe him.
> I don't know who he truly is. But I know this: I will follow him."
He closed the diary and locked it in a drawer. Outside, androids glided silently, making sure he would never tell the world too much too soon.
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The First Wafers
On April 22nd, the lab birthed its first wafers. Under sterile lights, thin silicon discs slid out of the chamber, etched with circuits so fine they seemed like shimmering mandalas.
The MC stood with his parents, who had been invited just for this moment. His father, still in his simple kurta, looked bewildered.
> "Beta, it looks like… like a CD."
His mother leaned closer.
> "And this small thing will change the world?"
The MC nodded.
> "Yes, Maa. More than tunnels. More than roads. With this, India will never beg again."
For a long moment, they stood together in silence. The machines hummed. History was being born, unnoticed by the world.
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Foreshadowing – Beyond India
On April 25th, Aarya flagged an anomaly.
> Aarya: "Satellite reconnaissance from U.S. commercial providers detected abnormal thermal signatures under the estate. Resolution insufficient to confirm details, but probability of suspicion rising."
The MC exhaled slowly. Of course. Nothing remained hidden forever.
But he smiled anyway.
> "Let them wonder. By the time they realize what's happening, it will be too late."
He lifted the shimmering wafer in his gloved hand, light refracting like a miniature sun.
Thus was born Shakti Semiconductors — not with a public announcement, not with ribbon-cuttings or press releases, but in silence, underground, beneath a veil of secrecy.
The gamble had begun.