Chapter 14: Garuda Protocol
April 12, 2009 – Dehradun, Uttarakhand
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The sky was unusually clear that Sunday morning.
Ram stood on the terrace of his home, barefoot, feeling the coarse cement under his soles and the quiet hum of the world waking up.
Birds scattered across the horizon like sparks, and one of them—a Garuda, a kite—soared higher than the rest.
> "They say Garuda never lands until the mission is complete," Ram whispered, watching it circle the sun.
Today was not about learning.
Not about school.
Not even about people.
Today was about money.
The real kind.
The kind that would one day buy satellites, supercomputers, political parties, or peace treaties.
> Bitcoin.
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The Hidden Vault
Inside his small bedroom, Ram locked the door and closed the curtain.
He pulled out the device—the ordinary-looking keypad mobile phone that hid the most powerful quantum AI of his century: Athena.
> "Athena," he whispered, "Initiate Garuda Protocol. Phase One."
The screen glowed pale blue.
> "Confirmed. Preparing quantum wallet infrastructure. Decoy chains engaged. Hash cloaking in process."
From the outside, it looked like he was tapping a keypad.
But beneath the surface, Ram was building an invisible empire.
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A Child's Hands, a Billionaire's Vision
In 2009, each Bitcoin cost just a few rupees.
Pocket change.
Ram's quantum phone had already preloaded 10,000 BTC from the moment he arrived back in time—stored inside cryptographic time-locked smart contracts tied to known mining pools of early Bitcoin adopters.
The technology didn't yet exist in 2009 to unlock most of these wallets.
But Athena did.
So Ram began slowly, quietly, transferring his BTC into new multi-signature cold wallets spread across thousands of shell identities.
> "We can't make noise," he told Athena.
"The moment this draws attention, the system fights back."
> "Understood. Funds will be distributed across 74 anonymized wallets, each routed through 128 cryptographic decoys, then passed to pre-registered exchanges post-2013."
Ram took a deep breath.
He was 9 years old.
He should've been worrying about exams or cricket.
Instead, he was setting up a financial shadow network that would one day fund satellites, pharma startups, political revolutions, and clean energy programs.
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The Paper Trail That Wasn't
To pull this off, Ram had already created dozens of digital ghosts.
He gave them names.
Birthdays.
Fake Facebook accounts.
He seeded photos using basic editing apps, set up email addresses using TOR, and used random bursts of time online cafés to spread their activity to places like Russia, Estonia, and even Nigeria.
Athena layered fake browser histories.
Some wallets would look like they belonged to libertarian coders.
Others to gamers.
Others to cybercriminals who disappeared.
In time, these fake lives would come to own startups, bank accounts, domains, and IPs that would slowly—methodically—feed resources into Ram's master vision.
> "I'm not ready to be seen," he said aloud.
"But I want the world to start feeling me."
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The First Transfer
He stared at the screen.
9,500 BTC ready to be locked into long-term cold wallets.
The rest—500 BTC—would be used to build Company Zero in 2014.
He'd already chosen the shell name: Ashvins Labs.
> "To the world, it'll be a scrappy startup run by ex-IIT grads.
In reality… it'll be my first outpost."
Ram entered the final command.
> "Garuda Protocol Phase One: Executed."
There was no fanfare.
No noise.
Just a single blue checkmark on the screen.
But in that moment, the future tilted.
Somewhere in the depths of the blockchain, a child had just secured the foundation of a global empire.
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Journal Entry: April 12, 2009
> "Money is not power.
Control over money is.
A thousand billionaires have built empires that can be traced.
But my empire will have no fingerprint.
Today, I became invisible.
Tomorrow, I begin to shape the visible."
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End of Chapter 14