Chapter 30 – The Face of the Future
The launch event was held in a modest auditorium on the outskirts of Bengaluru. Nothing extravagant. No fireworks. No giant LED screens. Just a clean, sleek stage, a dark blue banner reading "Welcome to the Future: Atherion Technologies", and a single spotlight.
The crowd was small—journalists from obscure tech magazines, a few government tech officers, curious university students who had stumbled upon a free registration link online. No one knew exactly what the startup was. The name had appeared barely a month ago, registered in a tangle of companies across Singapore, Estonia, and India.
But word had spread like wildfire: something new was coming.
Something disruptive.
The lights dimmed. A breathless hush.
Then he walked on stage.
Arjun Dev—CEO of Atherion Technologies.
He looked to be in his early thirties. Sharp black suit, lean build, salt-and-pepper streaks at his temples, a calm, unwavering smile. His voice was velvet dipped in clarity. His eyes scanned the audience with programmed charm.
> "Thank you for being here," Arjun said. "Today, we begin a journey to reshape how intelligence is understood, applied, and delivered."
No one knew he wasn't real.
Not even the journalists shaking his hand afterward.
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Behind the Curtain
Ram watched the livestream from his lab in Uttarakhand. Still wearing his school uniform. Still a boy, at least to the world.
But now, he had his first public mask.
Atherion was a hardware/software hybrid startup that promised to integrate AI assistants into low-cost educational tablets, government-run health centers, and even legal documentation services. It was pitched as a tool for equality. A tool for upliftment.
The government loved the pitch.
They never asked who funded it.
They never questioned Arjun Dev's background, which had been algorithmically forged across social media platforms, government records, and university alumni databases.
He was real. In the eyes of the system.
But in truth, he was Ram's voice. A carefully coded puppet speaking the words of a twelve-year-old mastermind hidden in a valley.
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The First Test
Atherion's first real test came when the company proposed a pilot program to digitize classrooms in 500 rural schools across Karnataka.
Ram coordinated everything behind layers of secure nodes—from hardware logistics to staff interviews to backend software AI training. Arjun handled the rest: public addresses, meetings with officials, investor calls.
Every time someone asked Arjun a hard question, Ram's console lit up in the valley, Athena whispered probabilities in his ear, and a reply was issued through Arjun's lips seconds later.
They passed the test. Easily.
By the end of that year, Atherion was awarded ₹200 crore in grants and subsidies under India's "Digital Bharat" initiative.
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Ghost in the Light
For the first time, Ram tasted what it felt like to influence the world from the shadows. He had no office. No official ID in the company. No fingerprints anywhere.
But every wire, every chip, every word spoken by Atherion was him.
It was exhilarating. Terrifying. Empowering.
He could feel the future bending, slowly, subtly, around his touch.
And yet, at night, as the wind howled over the valley and his screen dimmed to black, he still saw his own reflection. A child. Alone. With eyes too old for his face.
> "The world sees Arjun," he whispered, tracing his silhouette in the dark screen.
"But who will see me?"
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