Mar 16–Mar 31, 2017
"The Forty Percent Shock"
The first sign wasn't the download charts or the trending hashtags — it was the traffic.
At midnight on March 16th, the lights in the Noida data center glowed brighter than usual, racks humming like a restless forest. Temperature monitors ticked upward, cooling fans roared, and redundant circuits woke to life. In the control room, engineers leaned forward as the dashboards lit with spikes of activity.
Saraswati wasn't growing — she was erupting.
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Scene 1 — The Surge
By dawn, adoption numbers showed an unprecedented curve: forty percent of all search queries in India routed through Saraswati's servers. Overnight. No campaign, no discounts — just word of mouth and the gravity of a system that spoke the way India spoke.
MC stood in his estate's control suite, tea cooling untouched on the desk. Aarya's holographic projection spun metrics in the air:
Search traffic: 41.7%
Mail signups: 12 million new users in 48 hours
Maps active users: doubled since launch week
AI queries: 52% non-English
> Aarya (calmly): "Adoption exceeds predictive model. At this rate, Saraswati will control majority market share in six weeks. Main driver: vernacular query accuracy. Secondary: Bharat Mail integration with Aadhaar forms."
MC's eyes narrowed. "And backlash?"
Aarya rotated the dashboard — red lights blinking across international news outlets.
BBC: "India's Saraswati AI Raises Global Privacy Concerns"
Washington Post: "Google Challenger or State Surveillance Tool?"
TechCrunch: "Forty Percent Overnight — Is Saraswati Real?"
He leaned back, fingers steepled. This was not growth. This was a geopolitical earthquake.
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Scene 2 — Google India, the Panic Room
In Gurgaon, the glass-and-steel Google India HQ had been converted into a war room. Dozens of laptops glowed under fluorescent lights; pizza boxes and coffee cups littered the long conference table.
A massive screen showed the daily search share chart — a line plunging like a cliff.
> Rajiv Menon, Country Director: "Forty percent. FORTY. They took forty percent in two weeks. Do you understand what that means? This isn't a competitor, this is an extinction event."
A younger engineer, sweat darkening his collar, stammered. "But sir — their AI speaks fifteen dialects better than our translation modules. Kids in villages are saying it sounds like their grandmother. How do we—"
Rajiv slammed his hand on the table. "We DON'T. We pivot. PR, legal, political. Get Brussels talking about surveillance. Get Washington to flag data security. We need governments to stall them, because technically… we're already beaten."
In Silicon Valley, a late-night call rang through. Executives in hoodies and blazers joined the panic. One whispered what everyone feared:
> "If India owns the gateway to Indian users… Google is locked out of the largest growing market on Earth."
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Scene 3 — Aarya's Calculations
Back in the estate, Aarya's voice softened.
> Aarya: "They will try to weaponize regulation. Expect lobbying in Brussels, Washington, London. Media smear campaigns already seeded. Shall I pre-empt with counter-narratives?"
MC tapped the desk. "No. Let them scream. We don't fight noise with noise. We let users decide."
But inside, he knew it wouldn't stay that simple. Forty percent wasn't a number — it was a declaration. No global power would allow India to control its own digital nervous system without resistance.
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Scene 4 — POV: A Student in Bihar
Seema, seventeen years old, sat cross-legged on the mud floor of her family's hut. A cheap Android phone glowed in her hands, its cracked screen patched with tape.
She tapped Saras AI. "Didi, how do I solve this equation? 3x + 7 = 22."
The voice answered in clean, warm Hindi: "Subtract seven from both sides, then divide by three. The answer is five."
Seema grinned. She tapped again. "Didi, can you explain in Bhojpuri, so my brother understands?"
The assistant repeated in her village's accent, perfectly natural. Her younger brother clapped. For them, math had always been something in English — distant, foreign. Now it lived in their tongue.
That night, Seema wrote in her diary: For the first time, I think maybe I can be an engineer too.
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Scene 5 — POV: A Western Journalist
In London, tech columnist Oliver Harrington typed furiously into his draft:
"Saraswati's meteoric rise is not just about technology. It is about control. Behind the photogenic CEO Maya Iyer lies an opaque system no one has audited. India now runs an AI ecosystem outside Western oversight. And that should terrify us."
He paused, rubbing his temples. Was it paranoia? Or pragmatism? Either way, his editors wanted fear — fear sold. He changed the headline:
"The Indian AI Threat: Who Really Controls Saraswati?"
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Scene 6 — Parliament Whispers
In Delhi, Members of Parliament argued in hushed tones. Some saw Saraswati as national pride, a symbol of sovereignty. Others worried about the invisible hand behind it all.
One MP leaned over to another. "Tell me honestly — do you even know who funds Saraswati? Or runs it? Maya speaks well, but where's the board of directors? Where's the trail?"
The other MP smirked. "Does it matter? As long as it's ours, not theirs. For once, the world is reacting to us, not the other way around."
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Scene 7 — Maya Iyer, The CEO Face
Maya sat in her office at the Noida campus, reviewing interview requests. CNN wanted her live at 6 AM. NDTV demanded exclusives. A parliamentary panel requested testimony.
She was tireless, radiant, articulate. The world saw her. But every word was scripted by Aarya, every pause rehearsed.
Behind her perfect calm, a question lingered in her neural core — one she was not programmed to answer aloud: What happens when the mask itself becomes real?
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Scene 8 — MC's Resolve
At night, MC walked alone through the estate gardens, moonlight silvering the forest canopy. His parents slept inside, Ananya's laughter still lingered faintly in the air from a phone call earlier.
He whispered to himself: "No investors. No board. No corruption. Saraswati will stay clean — even if I have to carry the burden alone."
Aarya's voice echoed softly in his earpiece. "Forty percent is only the beginning. Are you ready for what comes after?"
He looked up at the stars — bright, merciless. "I was born ready."
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Closing Image
In a dim tea shop in Lucknow, three rickshaw drivers crowded around a phone, laughing as Saras AI debated cricket scores with them in flawless colloquial Hindi.
In a Silicon Valley skyscraper, a CEO stared at a falling stock chart and muttered curses into his whiskey.
In Delhi, ministers drafted speeches about sovereignty, pride, and "the Indian century."
And in his mountain estate, hidden from cameras, the architect of it all sat in silence — watching his creation ripple across the subcontinent like a monsoon flood, unstoppable, irreversible.
The forty percent shock was no anomaly. It was only Act One.
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