Chapter 1: Origins
I am a software engineer working in a multinational company. On paper, my life looks settled. In reality, it feels provisional—like something I'm borrowing and will eventually have to return.
Hyderabad hasn't suited me. Not yet. Maybe it never will.
That night, the rain had been falling without pause, thick and unaccommodating. It was close to nine when hunger finally caught up with me. I had smoked some herbs earlier, and the appetite came all at once, sharp enough to pull me out of my chair and into the kitchen.
I decided on noodles. Something easy. I filled the cup, reached for the stove, and realized the gas was empty. I stood there for a moment longer than necessary, then looked outside through the window.
Rain.
I opened a food delivery app and scrolled without enthusiasm. Everything looked the same. I placed an order anyway. Thirty minutes. I tore open a packet of chips, lit a cigarette, and waited.
The phone rang suddenly and I flinched. Ash slipped from my fingers and fell onto the chips. I brushed it away. They were still edible, technically, but the taste had already turned. I chewed slowly.
For a brief moment, I thought the food had arrived.
It hadn't.
The call was to cancel the order. No rider available. Just an apology delivered with practiced neutrality. When the call ended, something in me dropped with it. The rain outside hadn't slowed. The gas was still empty. The chips tasted like ash.
When I left my hometown, I had hope. I left behind an abusive relationship, a girlfriend who took more than she gave. I believed distance would untangle things. I believed a new city would reset me.
Hyderabad didn't.
The city didn't fit. The people at work didn't either. Conversations felt guarded. The language gap was always there, just wide enough to remind me I didn't belong. Sharp glances. Muted whispers. Maybe they weren't about me—but they felt close enough.
I had never felt this kind of quiet resentment before.
People say Hyderabad is one of the most accommodating cities for people from my region. My experience told a different story.
The only genuinely good thing that happened here was meeting Fani bhaiya.
He worked in the same company as an infrastructure manager and came from my region too. Familiar accent. Familiar silences. I started living in his house as a paying guest. It wasn't much, but it felt steady.
Between tea breaks and smoke sessions, he would share what he knew—formulas for dealing with managers, navigating office politics, knowing when to speak and when to stay quiet. He never sounded bitter. He never lectured. He just talked.
After the call, I decided to skip dinner. It didn't feel like a decision—more like surrender. I filled a bottle with water and drank it slowly until it was empty. The rain tapped steadily against the windows.
There was nothing else to do.
I turned off the lights and went to sleep.
I was dreaming.
I knew it, and I didn't.
Among countless shadows, I saw her—radiant, unmistakable. She called to me without words. Her hand was extended, open, as if I had always been expected. I reached out.
The lightest touch dissolved everything.
Thunder split the night and I woke drenched in sweat, my heart racing. The sound lingered longer than it should have. I lay there in the dark, trying to remember, but the dream slipped away. All that remained were fragments—images, whispers, nothing whole.
My stomach churned. Hunger had returned, stronger now. I checked the time. Three o'clock. The rain hadn't stopped. If anything, it had intensified.
Sleep wasn't coming back.
My thoughts drifted to work, to unfinished tasks and unresolved problems. After a while, I got up. The house felt heavier at night, its silence more pronounced.
I stepped out of my room and walked to the one at the far right. I hesitated before opening the door.
The smell reached me first—bamboo shoots. Memory followed immediately.
Fani bhaiya was gone.
He had died in a road accident. He was in a cab when a bus hit it. Today marked one month since his funeral. I hadn't stepped into this room until now.
He used to call it his lab.
He was a good man, but not a simple one. Through his role in infrastructure upgrades and maintenance, he had quietly hoarded hardware—GPUs, servers, network devices, high-end workstations. I had known about it. I just hadn't cared. I was tangled in my own life back then.
I turned on the lights.
Machines lined the walls, most of them covered in drapes. I pulled them back one by one and began counting.
Forty-eight GPUs.
Seventeen servers, with rack capacity up to thirty-two.
Three high-end laptop workstations.
Five network interface devices.
Everything was connected. This wasn't storage. It was operational.
Fani bhaiya used to train his own AI models here. He had told me about it. We had collaborated on a few personal projects, though never closely. The last time he went home, he handed me the key—and a USB drive to access the infrastructure. He told me to use it if I ever wanted to experiment.
I hadn't.
I had been buried in work, trying to exceed expectations, trying to stay ahead of people who were quietly jealous and openly indifferent. I neglected my own interests, my own time.
It hadn't mattered.
I had recently learned that my work was credited to someone else. I had solved problems no one wanted to touch. I had designed two new algorithms to reduce entropy in event-driven systems, making them more robust and reliable.
No one noticed.
No one asked.
My effort was reduced to "meeting expectations."
Six months in Hyderabad, and something in me finally gave way.
I came back to my dreams. To the projects I had postponed. To the thoughts I had set aside for later.
This was the first time I was going to work on something of my own.
I called it MIA—My Illusory Assistant.
I inserted the USB key.
Powered up the infrastructure.
Watched the systems come alive.
Then I logged in.
For the first time since arriving in Hyderabad, I wasn't running from anything.