Date: November 14, 2028
Location: R&D Sector 4, Maruti-Suzuki Advanced Propulsion Hub, Gurugram-Manesar Belt
Time: 18:42 IST
The air conditioning in the Vice President's office was set to eighteen degrees Celsius.
It was a criminally inefficient temperature. To maintain this artificial chill against the forty-two-degree ambient heat of the NCR evening, the compressor had to be running at maximum load, consuming electricity generated primarily by burning low-grade bituminous coal in thermal power plants three hundred kilometers away. The entropy generated to cool this one room was enough to melt a small glacier.
Aravind Roy sat on the edge of the plush, genuine leather guest chair—a material that had required three thousand liters of water to process—and watched condensation bead on the outside of Mr. Bhalla's crystal tumbler. He felt a mild itch of annoyance. Not at the man, but at the waste.
"Fifty lakhs, Avi. Fifty."
Mr. Bhalla leaned back, the synthetic fabric of his suit straining against a waistline expanded by years of sedentary management and excessive caloric intake. He tapped the laminated offer letter on the mahogany desk with a manicured fingernail. The sound was sharp, rhythmic, and performative.
"Do you know how many people in this building would kill for this number? You're twenty-four. You're a kid. And you're making more than guys who have been welding chassis since before you were born."
Aravind adjusted his glasses. He didn't look at the money. His mind had already parsed the figure, stripped away the illusion of the gross amount, and settled on the cold reality of the net inflow.
Gross: ₹50,00,000 per annum.
Deductions: 30% tax bracket plus surcharge. Provident Fund mandatory contribution. Professional Tax.
Inflation adjustment for 2028 NCR living costs: 6.8%.
Net monthly liquidity: Approximately ₹2.81 Lakhs.
It was adequate. It was a solve for X, where X was the cost of his mother's dialysis cycle in Kolkata and the structural repairs needed for their ancestral home's roof.
"Thank you, Sir," Aravind said. His voice was a flat line, a perfectly calibrated audio signal with no unnecessary modulation for gratitude or excitement. "Is the designation effective immediately?"
Bhalla blinked, his smile faltering slightly. He was accustomed to a specific social script: the benevolent benefactor bestows a gift, and the young subordinate performs humility and shock. He wanted the dopamine hit of being the "good boss." Aravind denied him that resource.
"Yes. Senior Deputy Manager, Powertrain Innovation. Effective today," Bhalla said, retracting his hand, the warmth leaving his eyes. "You've earned it, son. That 'Thermal Twin' algorithm... I don't pretend to understand the code, but the dyno results don't lie. Reducing cylinder hotspots by 400 Kelvin in microseconds? It's magic."
"It is fluid dynamics and predictive modeling, Sir," Aravind corrected gently, rising to his feet. He picked up his bag—a frayed, black canvas laptop bag he had bought in his second year at Jadavpur University. "Magic is a variable I cannot control. Thermodynamics is a law I can leverage."
Bhalla let out a short, confused laugh, shaking his head. "Right. You and your robot brain. Listen, the team is going to Cyber Hub tonight. Drinks on me. You're coming, right? Celebrate the win? The girls from HR will be there."
Aravind looked down at his shoes. They were Woodland, heavy, brown, and scuffed at the toes. They were six years old. The sole had been glued twice by a cobbler in Gariahat. They were still functional. The leather had molded to his feet perfectly, reducing friction blisters to zero. Replacing them would be an act of vanity, not utility.
"I have to calibrate the server for the overnight simulation, Sir," Aravind lied. He didn't have to do that; the script was automated to run at 2:00 AM when grid electricity rates were lower. "And I have groceries to buy."
"Groceries," Bhalla repeated, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. He looked at Aravind with a mixture of pity and distaste. "You just got a fifty-lakh package and you're worried about buying... what? Onions?"
"The organic market closes at eight, Sir. Cold storage reduces nutrient density by 15%, and I will be left with cold-storage product. Lower nutrient density. Higher carbon footprint due to refrigeration."
"Get out of here, Avi," Bhalla sighed, waving a hand dismissively, already turning his attention to the holographic monitor floating above his desk. "Just... try to be human sometimes, okay?"
"I will attempt to optimize for that," Aravind said.
He walked out. He did not slam the door. He closed it with precisely enough force to engage the latch without creating sound pollution.
Time: 19:10 IST
Location: The Employee Atrium, Ground Floor
The shift change at an automobile plant is a study in chaotic flow dynamics. Thousands of bodies, standardized in uniforms or corporate casuals, streamed toward the exit gates like coolant rushing through a breached gasket. The noise was a physical wall—laughter, shouting, the beep of ID cards, the thrum of waiting shuttles.
Aravind hugged the wall, moving against the turbulence. He wore a generic grey t-shirt, unbranded, purchased in a pack of five for ₹900. It fit his lean frame loosely. He didn't go to the gym; he walked. He didn't lift weights; he carried the burden of his own intellect.
"Oye, Topper!"
The voice grated on his ears—high pitch, excessive volume, laced with the artificial camaraderie of a predator. Aravind didn't stop, but a hand clamped onto his shoulder, forcing a deceleration.
It was Vikram. They had joined in the same batch. Vikram was loud, ambitious, and conceptually mediocre. He wore a smartwatch that cost more than Aravind's entire four-year education expenses at JU, and he reeked of stale coffee and expensive cologne that failed to mask the smell of cigarettes.
"Heard the news," Vikram grinned, stepping into Aravind's personal space. "Senior Deputy? Serious? Bhai, you bypassed the whole hierarchy. Did you blackmail Bhalla or what?"
"I delivered a functional product," Aravind said, removing Vikram's hand from his shoulder with a precise, minimal movement.
"Yeah, yeah, Mr. Einstein. Listen, perfect timing. I'm selling my Creta. Upgrading to the new BMW iX3. Electric, bro. Zero to sixty in four seconds. Since you're rich now, you should buy my Creta. I'll give you a friend's discount. It's got a sunroof."
Aravind looked at Vikram. He analyzed the proposition instantly.
Used Hyundai Creta. Internal Combustion Engine. 2024 model. Likely mileage: 45,000 km in stop-and-go traffic. Carbon footprint of manufacturing: Already sunk cost, but operating efficiency is less than 25%. Resale value: Plummeting.
"I do not require a vehicle," Aravind said.
"What do you mean?" Vikram laughed, looking around at two other colleagues who had stopped to listen, seeking an audience for his humiliation ritual. "You're a Senior Manager at a Top 5 Auto Company, Avi. You can't come to work in the metro or walking. It's about image. Status. How will you get a girl if you show up sweating?"
"A car is a depreciating asset," Aravind stated, shifting the strap of his bag. His voice cut through the lobby chatter, cool and detached. "It sits idle for 92% of its lifespan. It occupies 120 square feet of real estate that could be used for greenery. It burns fossil fuels to move a seventy-kilogram human using a fifteen-hundred-kilogram machine. The thermal efficiency is laughable. It is not status, Vikram. It is waste."
The circle of colleagues went quiet. The air grew heavy, thick with the unsaid judgment. They looked at Aravind not with admiration, but with the specific disdain reserved for someone who refuses to participate in a shared delusion. They hated him because he made their aspirations look small.
"You're a buzzkill, man," Vikram sneered, his smile vanishing, revealing the insecurity beneath. "That's why nobody invites you to things. You think you're better than us because you save money? You're just a miser. You're going to die on a pile of cash with no one to cry for you."
Aravind felt a phantom pinch in his chest. It wasn't pain. It was a memory, sharp and jagged.
Class 12 results. 2022. The tinted window of a Honda City rolling up. A girl named Sneha looking away.
"My father says love doesn't pay bills. He wants me to marry a doctor or an IAS officer, not a mechanic."
Vikram was wrong. Aravind wasn't saving money. He was saving efficiency. He was refusing to participate in the entropy that was consuming the world. He was building a fortress where he could never be hurt by a variable like "poverty" again.
"Enjoy the BMW, Vikram," Aravind said softly. "The battery degradation curve on that model is steeper than the brochure claims. Check the thermal management system before you sign. The cooling loops are prone to leakage in Indian summers."
He walked away before Vikram could respond. He walked past the gleaming glass facade of the R&D center, past the rows of parked cars baking in the residual heat of the day, and stepped out onto the main road.
Time: 19:35 IST
Location: The NH-48 Service Lane
The atmosphere of Delhi NCR in 2028 tasted like sulfur, burnt rubber, and dust.
The Air Quality Index (AQI) was hovering at 340—"Very Poor." The streetlights flickered, fighting a losing battle against the thick, brown haze that blanketed the city. Overhead, the metro rattled on the elevated corridor, a concrete snake slicing through the smog, carrying thousands of tired souls home to their concrete boxes.
Aravind walked. The rhythm of his steps was consistent.
Left foot. Right foot. Breath in through the nose. Breath out.
The city was a monument to bad engineering. He saw it everywhere.
The drainage grates were clogged with single-use plastic, ensuring that the next rain would cause waterlogging.
The glass-fronted corporate buildings trapped heat, forcing air conditioners to work harder, which pumped more hot air into the street, creating a feedback loop of thermal runaway.
The traffic was a gridlock of frustration. Horns blared—a useless expenditure of acoustic energy that solved nothing, changed nothing, moved nothing.
He passed a bus stop where a crowd jostled for space. Near the bench, a young couple was arguing. The girl was crying, mascara running down her cheeks in dark streaks. The boy was shouting, gesturing wildly at a phone screen.
"I told you I can't afford that trip! Why don't you understand?" the boy screamed, his voice cracking.
"Because you promised!" the girl sobbed, clutching her handbag. "You promised we'd go to Bali for our anniversary! Everyone else is going!"
Aravind slowed down for a fraction of a second. He watched them. It was a biological algorithm playing out in real-time. Expectation minus Reality equals Suffering.
Dopamine withdrawal, Aravind thought, observing the boy's panicked eyes. She associated the trip with social validation—Instagram likes, peer approval. He over-leveraged his future earnings to acquire sexual access or emotional stability. Now, the market has corrected. The valuation has crashed.
He felt nothing for them. No pity. No annoyance. They were just variables in the equation of the city. He kept walking, his woodland shoes crunching over a discarded packet of chips.
He remembered the heat of Kolkata. The humid, sticky air of Jadavpur. He remembered walking out of the campus gates, sweating, while Sneha stepped into the air-conditioned car. The realization that his intellect, his kindness, his dedication—none of it mattered against the raw, brute force of capital. That was the day Aravind Roy died. The Ghost was born. The Ghost didn't need Bali. The Ghost didn't need validation. The Ghost needed to solve I.E. Irodov physics problems until his brain went numb, until the chaotic variables of the human heart were drowned out by the beautiful, predictable silence of numbers.
He turned left, entering the narrower, darker lane leading to the residential sectors. The "Smart City" facade faded here. Wires hung like black spaghetti from leaning poles. The smell shifted from exhaust to something earthier—open drains and frying oil.
He stopped at a small, dimly lit vegetable stall under a yellow tarp. The vendor, an old man named Ramu, sat swatting flies with a towel.
"No plastic, Ramu Kaka," Aravind said, opening his backpack before the man could reach for a bag.
"I know, Beta, I know," the old man smiled, his teeth stained red with betel nut. "You and your cloth bag. Everyone else wants double polythene so it doesn't leak in their cars."
Aravind selected spinach. He checked the leaves for wilting, his fingers moving with the precision of a surgeon. He picked up four tomatoes, testing their firmness.
"These were harvested yesterday," Aravind noted.
"Day before," Ramu admitted, looking sheepish. "Truck got stuck at the border farmer protest."
Aravind nodded. He accepted the inefficiency. He paid via UPI—exact change—and placed the vegetables carefully into his bag, separating the heavy items from the leafy greens to prevent crushing.
"You look tired, Beta," Ramu said, handing him a small bunch of coriander for free. "Work is heavy?"
"Work is fine. The system is heavy," Aravind replied. He took the coriander. He didn't want it—it would wilt in two days—but rejecting it would cause social friction, which was energy-intensive to resolve. "Thank you."
Time: 20:05 IST
Location: "Green Heights" Apartment Complex, Tower C
The lobby of his building was designed to look luxurious in the brochures, but reality was a different render. Aravind saw the cracks in the Italian marble and the damp patches spreading like a fungal infection on the false ceiling. Construction corruption. Low-grade cement mixture. Sand mafia contracts.
He waited for the elevator. The digital display stuck on '4' for a long time.
Elevator logic error. Door sensor malfunction. Probability of entrapment: 2%.
When it finally arrived, it was empty. He stepped in and pressed '14'. The doors slid shut, sealing him in a metal box. For a moment, looking at his reflection in the polished steel doors, he saw a stranger.
Lean. Hollow-cheeked. Dark circles under eyes that looked like they had seen the heat death of the universe.
He was twenty-four. He looked forty.
I am efficient, he told his reflection. I am sustainable.
The elevator dinged. He stepped out into the corridor. It was silent. The motion-sensor lights flickered on—cheap LEDs with a poor color rendering index, casting a greenish, sickly pallor over the walls.
He walked to the end of the hall. Apartment 1404.
He didn't fumble for keys. He used the keypad.
Sequence: 7-2-9-1-5. A prime number sequence.
He paused before opening the door. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He knew who it was without looking. The timing was consistent with the conclusion of the evening news in Kolkata.
He pulled it out. "Ma."
He swiped green. "Yes?"
"Did you eat?" The voice was crackly, distant. The connection was poor.
"I am entering the house now, Ma. I bought spinach."
"Good, good. Iron is important." A pause. "Did you speak to your uncle? He sent a profile. A girl from a good family in Barrackpore. She is a teacher."
Aravind closed his eyes. He leaned his forehead against the cold metal of his door. "Ma, I told you. I am not interested."
"But Aravind, you have the job now. What is the point of earning if you come home to an empty house? Who will cook for you? Who will—"
"I cook for myself. It is more efficient," Aravind interrupted, his voice staying low, devoid of anger but firm as steel. "I am sending you twenty thousand extra this month. Fix the damp on the north wall of your bedroom before the monsoon starts. Don't spend it on rituals or matchmaking."
"Money isn't everything, baba," she whispered.
"Money is survival, Ma. Everything else is a fairy tale."
He cut the call.
Silence returned to the hallway, heavier than before. He stood there for a moment, listening to the hum of the city far below—the sirens, the dogs barking, the endless grind of machinery.
This was his kingdom. A 2BHK apartment stripped of all decoration. No paintings. No rugs. No extra chairs. Just a bed, a table, his liquid-cooled rig, and the composting bin in the balcony. A perfect vacuum. A place where no external variable could hurt him.
Aravind Roy placed his hand on the handle. The metal was cold.
He took a deep breath, inhaling the recycled air of the corridor, filtering out the smell of his neighbor's burnt garlic tadka.
"Status check," he whispered to the empty hallway.
He waited for an answer that never came.
"Survival: Optimal. Happiness: Irrelevant."
He pushed the door open and stepped into the dark.