The Mind Behind the Curtain
The storm came not from the skies, but from within the invisible war that was beginning to erupt beneath the surface of India's economic awakening.
Lightning lit up the peaks of Uttarakhand, throwing wild shadows across the dense pine forests below. Inside a hidden complex embedded deep into the mountains, accessible only through a winding, camouflaged route and guarded by bio-sensor gates, Ram sat alone in his private command chamber.
He was seventeen, but no one in the outside world saw him that way anymore. In public, Ram was a gifted but low-profile tech genius, rumored to consult for companies through anonymous digital aliases. But in secret, he was the beating heart of a rapidly growing web of hidden corporations, media networks, AI labs, and educational NGOs that were rewriting India's future.
The cold blue glow of the main interface—the AgniNet—illuminated his calm face as data scrolled past his eyes at inhuman speeds. Dozens of projects were underway: the Minion Initiative, his next-generation processors, the AI language model tuned for Indian law and governance, the biotech research on neural regeneration to save his grandmother's life. All of it was working. Until now.
"Sir," came a voice through his private channel. "We have a problem."
Ram tapped the air, and a secure hologram of Minion 002 appeared—a flawlessly realistic humanoid robot currently disguised as the assistant to the CEO of one of his AI front companies.
"Speak."
"Multiple shipments of rare earth materials—cerium, neodymium, lanthanum—have been delayed or canceled. We traced interference back to three foreign suppliers. All of them simultaneously cited 'regulatory reassessment' as the reason."
Ram's eyes narrowed. He already knew what this meant.
"They've found us," he said quietly.
Not "they" as in the governments. The governments were still oblivious. This was the work of shadow cartels—old powers that controlled the world not through votes or armies, but through control of materials, data pipelines, and information flow. Ram had grown up learning about them in 2035: international monopolies in disguise, using democracy as a mask while strangling any nation that tried to become self-sufficient.
India rising was a threat to their status quo.
One by one, his sources for critical components—processors, advanced fabrication units, high-temperature alloys, microfluidics systems—were being throttled. Banks began stalling funds routed through crypto. NGOs faced sudden audits. Scholarships for poor children were questioned in the press. A tech journalist, bribed by an unknown entity, published an "exposé" attempting to link his NGO to shell companies and "foreign influence."
The message was clear.
Stop. Or be stopped.
But Ram didn't panic. He had expected this. Not so soon, but it was inevitable.
He stood, walked to the edge of his private balcony. Rain fell like needles into the blackness below. The mountains stood like ancient sentinels, silent and vast. Somewhere down in the darkness, children in his schools were learning quantum mechanics, philosophy, and civic ethics in a language designed by AI. They believed in a better India. He couldn't fail them.
He wouldn't.
"Divert resources," he told Minion 002. "Initiate Protocol Surya."
"Are you certain, sir? That would mean shifting over 60% of production into domestic development."
"We don't have a choice anymore," Ram said. "They thought cutting me off would stop me. They forgot—I'm not from this timeline."
---
Over the next weeks, Ram vanished from all digital channels. His quantum AI systems went dark to the outside world. His companies issued press statements of "hiatus" and "restructuring." The media ran wild with speculation.
In reality, Protocol Surya was the most ambitious project he had ever undertaken.
Deep within the hidden Uttarakhand lab, work began on the Agni Core—a self-reliant semiconductor and chip manufacturing cluster, powered by AI-designed photolithography using homegrown materials and alternative synthetic compounds. Ram opened secret vaults containing data from 2035—formulas, architecture diagrams, simulation models of processors that hadn't yet been invented in 2014.
His humanoid Minions toiled day and night. They no longer needed human oversight. The bio-robotic labs, nestled in artificial caves powered by geothermal vents, began producing the first domestic AI training chips ever made in India.
Simultaneously, Ram launched Project Mithila, using underground biotech teams to begin synthetic production of rare earth analogues using lab-grown materials and smart microbes.
Everything the world tried to cut off, he recreated.
It wasn't about revenge. It was about independence.
---
Months passed.
One morning, in a remote village school in Bihar funded by Ram's NGO, a teacher booted up a new AI-powered education tablet made entirely in India. It was faster than anything Apple or Samsung had released.
In a private government defense lab, stunned scientists received an anonymous package—a microprocessor 50 times more powerful than anything they'd seen, accompanied only by the note: "Made in India. Ready when you are."
Ram sat back in his command chair, eyes scanning the new AgniNet interface. Everything was now domestic. Everything was now invisible. No foreign power could slow him down again.
But he knew this was only the first battle.
The real war was still coming.
And this time, he would not be the ghost behind the curtain.