Three Weeks Later
The report from Portugal was the first one that made me pause my morning poha.
Ganesh had sent it, marked "Low Priority – Cultural Quirk." Some nun in a Lisbon orphanage. Kids were saying she had a "quiet magic." Nightmares stopped when she sang her strange, new prayers. The local priest thought it was "divine grace." The report included a shaky phone recording.
I listened. The nun's voice, soft and old, was chanting a hymn. But beneath the Portuguese, the melody… it was Jayanti Mangala Kali. A Kali mantra. Clear as day.
My spoon froze halfway to my mouth. Kya bakwas hai? A Portuguese nun chanting Kali?
I pulled up the Silent Choir's logs. Cross-referenced the date of the first "strange prayer" report.
It was the morning after Navratri's fifth night. The night I'd turned the dial.
Chutiya pan hai. This couldn't be connected. It was too… far.
Then the Shaolin report came in. From a MAKA contact in Hong Kong. A gossip snippet: a Shaolin master had demonstrated a "spiritual breakthrough"—shattering a training stone with a touch. The description of his focused energy… it matched the prana focus of a Durga sadhak, not a Qi master.
Another date check. Two days after my experiment.
My poha was forgotten. I pulled up a global map. Fed in the parameters: Low-level anomalous events. Onset: within one week of [DATE]. Nature: Unusual peace/strength/instinct tied to protective or fierce feminine archetype.
The system chugged. It wasn't designed for this. But I had upgraded it. Level 7.
Markers bloomed.
Portugal: Nun. "Protective Aura."
China: Monk. "Amplified Force."
Chicago, USA: Community Guard. "Precognitive Conflict Sense."
Lagos, Nigeria: Midwife. "Vision-guided Life Saving."
Kyoto, Japan: Lawyer. "Fierce Oratory for the Weak."
A dozen more. Scattered across the globe. All within the psychic "splash zone" of the amplified signal. All individuals with deep, latent discipline or faith—vessels waiting to be filled. And I had, for one night, turned a firehose of a very specific idea of power towards Earth.
They weren't calling it Durga or Kali. The nun called it "The Mother's New Song." The Shaolin master called it "The Unyielding Feminine Principle." The Chicago guard just called it "The Feeling."
But I knew.
I had broadcast a job description. For protectors. For warriors of the vulnerable. For destroyers of evil. The archetypes of Durga and Kali.
And the right people, the hungry ones, the ones whose souls were tuned to that frequency… they'd heard the hiring call. And they'd accepted, without even knowing who the employer was.
Bahut heavy ho gaya, yaar. This was not in the manual.
I leaned back. This wasn't creating random miracles. This was… typecasting. The universe was auditioning for roles in a play I didn't know I was directing, using my amplifier as the casting call.
The implications rolled over me, cold and terrifying.
I could imprint concepts on people. Not control them, but… seed them.
These people were now growing powers related to those concepts.
They were reinforcing the signal. Every time the nun chanted, every time the monk focused his strike, they were broadcasting a tiny bit of that Durga/Kali frequency back into the psychic soil. Making the "band" I'd amplified slightly stronger, permanently.
My GARDEN wasn't just a shield anymore. I had planted seeds. And now, all over the world, strange, specific flowers were pushing through the concrete. Flowers that looked suspiciously like lotuses and swords.
I closed the map. The markers glowed, a quiet constellation of my accidental creations.
Kya karoon main ab? What do I do now?
The answer came, not from panic, but from the coldest part of my merchant's mind. You observe. You protect your investment. You see what the hell you've grown.
I typed a new protocol.
> MAKA Directive: GARDEN-VARIETY MIRACLES.
> Objective: Identify and observe subjects of 'Resonance Imprinting.' No contact. No interference. Log development of abilities.
> Priority: Prevent exposure to state or corporate entities.
> Goal: Understand if they are assets, risks, or… something else.
I sent it. The deed was done.
I looked at my cold poha. My chai was also cold.
Upstairs, I could hear Maa laughing, teaching Huilan another line of a Durga aarti. "Yaa Devi Sarva Bhuteshu…"
The same words the nun in Portugal was chanting.
A shiver went down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold food.
I had wanted to build a wall around my home. Instead, I'd accidentally started a global, spiritual talent show. And the audition tape was stuck on a loop of my mother's favorite prayers.
Bhagwan jaane kya hoga. God only knows what will happen next. And the funny thing was, right now, I was the closest thing to a god in this story. And I had no idea what I was doing.