Anya Patel was seven, a bridge between the world of magical thinking and a startling, relentless logic. She had her mother's quiet eyes and her father's unnerving habit of asking the question that dismantled the room.
The Christmas holidays were a brief, cherished lull. Harsh had forced a full week's disconnect—no secure tablets, no crisis calls. They were at a secluded beach house in Alibaug, the Arabian Sea a vast, breathing slate of grey and green.
Anya had brought her "Udaan Junior" kit, a pre-release prototype. It wasn't a tablet but a "maker box": simple circuit boards, LEDs, sensors, and a visual programming interface on a rugged, offline laptop. She was building a "turtle guard," a small solar-powered robot meant to scare birds away from turtle nests, a project inspired by a documentary.
Harsh watched her work, a familiar pride warming him. She was debugging a light-sensor loop, her small brow furrowed in concentration identical to his own when he stared at a complex schematic.
Then, without looking up, she asked her question.
"Papa, is Disha your friend?"
The simplicity of it was a lance. He had fielded questions from prime ministers, from journalists, from hostile billionaires. This one, from his seven-year-old daughter, left him speechless.
He crouched beside her. "What do you mean, beta?"
She finally looked at him, her gaze clear and direct. "You talk to it all the time. It tells you secrets about the world. It helps you do things. That's what friends do." She paused, her logic marching forward. "But Rohan Uncle said Disha doesn't have feelings. It's a… a very smart calculator. Can a calculator be a friend?"
He felt the weight of his own empire, of his life's work, press down on him in that sun-drenched room. How to explain an oracle, a weapon, a tool, a nervous system to a child who understood friendship in its purest form?
"Disha… is a very special tool I built," he began, choosing his words like stepping stones across a river. "It's like a thousand of the smartest people, all working together to see patterns. It helps me keep people safe, like your turtle guard will help the baby turtles."
"But does it want to help?" Anya pressed, her childish metaphysics colliding with the hard reality of code. "My turtle guard will only work if I program it right. It doesn't care about turtles. Do you have to program Disha to care about people?"
The question was the core of every ethical debate at the Foresight Institute, reduced to its essence by a seven-year-old. Did the tool have a moral compass, or was it just a reflection of the programmer's intent?
"Disha doesn't care, beta," he said, the truth feeling inadequate. "But the people who use it do. I do. We have to be very careful that we only ask it to do things that help, not hurt."
She considered this, her eyes drifting to the churning sea outside. "So… you are its friend. But it is not yours. That seems sad for you."
The compassion in her statement undid him. In her childish framework, he had built a magnificent companion that could never return his care. It was a portrait of profound, self-inflicted loneliness.
He thought of the hours spent in the Map Room, the weight of Disha's predictions, the constant vigilance to keep its power aligned with good. He did relate to it, rely on it, commune with it in a way he did with no human. It was the most intimate and most sterile relationship of his life.
Later that night, with Anya asleep and the sea whispering against the shore, he shared the conversation with Priya.
"She sees it more clearly than any of us," Priya said softly. "You've built a god that cannot love you back. And you've bound your life to its service."
"It's not a god," Harsh protested, but the word hung in the air, true and terrible.
"It's a power. And you are its priest. Anya just asked if the power loves its priest." Priya took his hand. "The question isn't about Disha, Harsh. It's about you. Are you building a world where you are the lonely keeper of a heartless machine? Or are you building a world where the tools serve humanity, and humanity remembers how to serve each other?"
He had no answer. He looked at the star-flecked sky, thinking of the Pioneer Institute's amoral wonders and Udaan's fragile compass. He was caught between the relentless, uncaring logic of the universe and the messy, caring logic of the human heart. Anya's question had drawn the battle line not in the world of finance or politics, but in the soul of his own life's work.
The child's question would echo in every boardroom, every design session, every encrypted chat with Sharma or Thorne from that day forward. It was the only metric that mattered now. Was he building a world fit for a curious, compassionate seven-year-old? Or was he building a labyrinth where the keeper was the loneliest one of all?
(Chapter End)