The order to liquidate the grain stockpile was given. The penitent retreat for Swami Suryananda was arranged. The first, tremulous steps to firewall MANO from MAKA were initiated. Each instruction felt like a surgeon's cut, precise and self-inflicted. Rajendra sat in the silence of his Mumbai apartment, the monsoonal rain streaking the windows like tears on a dirty face. The victory over Colonel Wei was ash. Shanti's cold, judicial triumph was a cage.
Frustration, a hot, coiled thing, writhed in his chest. For what? The question echoed in the hollow spaces the merchant's calculations had left behind. He had spun gold from straw, turned lies into lanes, bargained with generals and aliens. He had built a financial fortress, a shadow network, a religion. And for what? To be cornered by a regional journalist? To have his partner—his anchor—look at him as if he were a poison to be purged?
He was working himself to the bone, dancing on a thousand knives, for… what? More Void-Coins? A bigger warehouse? The wary respect of a warlord who saw him as a useful pet?
His gaze drifted to the System interface, a silent, cosmic shopfront in his mind. On a whim, he didn't ask for a listing or a report. He pushed a raw, formless thought into it, a sentiment it was never designed to parse.
What was my purpose here? To come back to the past just to… do this?
The System's response was not text. It was a visual stutter in his consciousness: a bewildered, pixelated ¯_(ツ)_/¯ emoji. Then, a flicker. A light bulb icon appeared, glowing bright, then vanished.
In its place, a recording began to play. It was from his own memory, accessed and projected by the System with archival clarity.
He saw himself—his young self—waking up in Vinayak Shakuniya's spare room. He watched his own hands come up, turning in the dim light, unfamiliar, strong, unlined. He heard the internal gasp, the dizzying vertigo of displacement. And then, the System's voice, from that very first day, chirpy and absurd:
"Hello, Host! Primary synchronization complete. Let's rule the world!"
Rajendra stared at the memory. Then, a short, dry chuckle escaped him, sounding alien in the quiet room.
"Yeah, right," he murmured to the empty air. "You were the one who gave me the idea. The challenge. The playground." He shook his head, the irony bitter and clarifying. "But I… I really didn't have anything to do, actually."
No grand mission. No destiny. Just a bored, dead man and a glitchy cosmic sales terminal suggesting conquest as a starter goal. He had taken the suggestion and run with it, building an elaborate, high-stakes game to fill the void of a second chance. And now the game's rules were choking him.
He needed out. Not from a deal or a country, but from the entire board. The scent of Mumbai—damp earth, exhaust, frying oil, the faint, clinging sweetness of night-blooming jasmine from a neighbor's pot—felt suddenly cloying, suffocating. This world, with its Shantis and its Suryanandas and its poisoned wells, wasn't with him right now. He needed a place where the rules were different, where the air didn't smell of betrayal and ledger books.
He closed his eyes, not to meditate, but to remember. Not the strategies or the deals, but the before. His past life. The quiet moments. His father, not on his deathbed, but in his workshop, hands stained with grease, eyes crinkled with a simple, enduring wisdom. A memory surfaced, clear as crystal:
"Beta," his father had said, watching a younger Rajendra struggle with a seized gear, "Agar kabhi raasta na dikhe… toh ek jagah rukna se accha, bas chalte jaana. Kahin na kahin toh pahochoge. Ya koi to rasta milega."
(Son, if you ever can't see the path… better than stopping in one place, just keep walking. You'll reach somewhere. Or you'll find some path.)
He hadn't been talking about cosmic trade or corporate wars. He'd been talking about a stuck gear. But the principle was the same. The path here was gone, shrouded in mist and recrimination. Standing still in this apartment, in this city, in this life, was agony.
So just keep walking.
He opened his eyes and accessed the System's communication log. His contacts glowed: Vex, Pixel-Lord, Lyra of the Crimson Needle, The Mad Scientist.
Vex's world was a nightmare of emotional barrenness and crystalline logic—the last thing his churning soul needed. Pixel-Lord's realm was adjacent, a festival of manic sensation that would likely feel like noise. Lyra's twilight hive was beautiful but fraught with the politics of a species he'd barely begun to understand, and he wasn't in the mood for solemn, psychic diplomacy.
That left one.
He selected The Mad Scientist. The entity whose communications were a chaotic blend of glee, CAPS LOCK, and terrifying biological insight. A world of pure, amoral creation, where the only rules were those of physics and ambition. It seemed… refreshingly simple.
He drafted a message, uncharacteristically blunt.
Rajendra (Earth-Prime): I need to go somewhere. Can I come to your place for a week?
The reply was almost instantaneous, not with words, but with a single, gloriously perplexed character.
The Mad Scientist: ?
He typed back, the explanation feeling both pathetic and liberating in its honesty.
Rajendra (Earth-Prime): Just some relationship problems here. Need a change of scenery. You can sign a contract.
There was a pause. He could almost hear the cackle of delight on the other end of reality. A transaction! A guest! A biological specimen from a primitive world voluntarily walking into her lab! It was too delicious to refuse.
A new window popped up in his mind. A System-mediated contract, drafted with The Mad Scientist's distinctive, lurid green font and excessive exclamation points.
CONTRACT FOR TEMPORARY SANCTUARY & NON-INTRUSIVE OBSERVATION!!!!
*Host: The Mad Scientist (Tier-3)*
*Guest: Rajendra of Earth-Prime (Tier-0)*
Term: 7 (Seven) Standard Planetary Rotations of Guest's Origin World!
Terms:
*1. Guest agrees to temporary relocation to Host's primary domicile/laboratory (Designation: The Chrysalis).*
*2. Host agrees to provide basic life-support and NOT to deliberately disassemble, hybridize, or cognitively rewire Guest for the duration! (Accidental exposure to transformative biomists or resonance fields covered under Clause 7b).*
*3. Guest agrees to submit to non-invasive physiological and psychic scans for RESEARCH PURPOSES (so fascinating!!!!).*
4. Guest may observe Host's work! NO TOUCHING THE GLOWING THINGS!
5. In return for sanctuary, Guest will provide one (1) narrative account of a failed "relationship" from his world! Emotional data is a VALID CURRENCY!
**SIGN HERE: ________________________
It was insane. It was perfect. The clause about "accidental exposure" was a glaring red flag that, in his current state of mind, felt like an acceptable risk. He needed the not-knowing. He needed the alien.
He focused his will. A shimmering, golden signature—Rajendra—appeared on the dotted line.
A final, ecstatic message flashed.
The Mad Scientist: WHEEEEEEE! Portal forming in your domicile NOW! Try not to scream! It voids the waiver!
In the center of his living room, the air began to scream. Not with sound, but with a violent, silent shearing of reality. A vertical slit tore open, not the violet calm of the Vesperae gate, but a livid, pulsing green. It crackled with arcs of bio-electric energy, and a smell washed out—ozone, damp soil, and something profoundly organic, like a rainforest after a lightning strike.
Rajendra stood up. He didn't look back at the apartment, at the city, at the world that had asked too much of him. He walked towards the tearing green light, the nano-ring warm on his finger, his father's advice a quiet mantra in his head.
Bas chalte jaana.
He stepped through.
The last thing he heard before the world dissolved into a torrent of chlorophyll and light was the distant, fading wail of a Mumbai police siren. Then, it was gone, replaced by the deafening, joyful, chaotic symphony of unbridled creation.