Arjun stood outside the massive, red-brick campus of IISc. He wasn't a student, and security was tight. But he wasn't looking to go inside the labs. He was looking for the people who left them.
He activated the skill.
"System, [Talent Scout]. Parameters: [Software Architecture], [Hardware Engineering]. Minimum Rank: [A]."
A pulse of invisible energy rippled out from him. His vision shifted. The world turned slightly grey, like a monochrome photograph.
Then, he saw the lights.
Most people walking by had no aura. Some had faint white glows (Rank D or C). A few professors walking near the gate had solid blue auras (Rank B).
He waited. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes.
His PP was draining slowly—1 point per minute to keep the radar active.
There.
A brilliant, blinding pillar of gold light erupted from a bus stop fifty meters away. It was so intense it almost hurt his eyes.
[Target Detected.]
[Talent Rank: S (Software/Hardware Integration)]
[Talent Rank: S (Cryptography)]
Arjun's heart hammered. Double S-Rank? That was a unicorn.
He jogged toward the bus stop. The golden light was emanating from a young woman sitting alone on a concrete bench.
She looked... disheveled. Her hair was a frizzy mess, pulled back in a loose clip. She wore a faded salwar kameez and thick, oversized glasses. She was furiously scribbling in a notebook, muttering to herself, completely oblivious to the world. A half-eaten packet of biscuits sat beside her.
Arjun slowed down, deactivating the skill to save energy. The golden light faded, leaving just the girl.
He walked up to the bench and sat down, leaving a respectful distance. She didn't notice him.
He peeked at her notebook. It wasn't code. It was a circuit diagram for a motherboard, but the architecture was... weird. It was non-linear.
"You're trying to bypass the bus width limitation on the 386 processor," Arjun said casually. "But that bridge circuit won't work. The latency will kill the clock speed."
The girl froze. Her pen stopped mid-scratch.
She turned her head slowly, looking down at the 12-year-old boy sitting next to her. Her eyes, magnified by the thick glasses, were wide with shock.
"What did you say?" she whispered. Her voice was raspy, like she hadn't spoken to anyone in days.
"The bridge," Arjun pointed a small finger at her drawing. "You're trying to trick the CPU into accepting 32-bit instructions on a 16-bit bus. It's clever. But the heat generation will melt the solder."
She stared at the diagram. Then at him. Then back at the diagram. She did a quick mental calculation. Her eyes widened further.
"He's right," she muttered to herself. "Little monster is right. The thermal load would be... 90 degrees Celsius."
She turned fully toward him. "Who are you? A dwarf? Are you a professor with a growth hormone deficiency?"
Arjun laughed. "I'm Arjun. I'm 12."
"I'm Meera," she said, narrowing her eyes. "And 12-year-olds don't know about bus width latency. Are you an alien?"
"Maybe," Arjun smiled. "System, [Scan]."
[Name: Meera Reddy]
[Age: 21]
[Occupation: Junior Technician, State Electronics Corp (PSU)]
[Loyalty: 5/100]
[Talent: S-Rank (The Motherboard Queen)]
[Current Status: Misunderstood Genius. Bored. Frustrated by bureaucratic bosses who make her fix printers instead of building supercomputers.]
[Critical Desire: Creative Freedom.]
She was perfect.
"So, Meera," Arjun said, swinging his legs. "Why is a genius like you drawing groundbreaking motherboard architectures at a bus stop?"
Meera sighed, closing her notebook with a snap. The fire in her eyes died down, replaced by a deep, crushing exhaustion.
"Because if I draw them at work, my boss yells at me for wasting government paper," she said bitterly. "I'm supposed to be 'maintaining legacy systems.' Do you know what that means, kid? It means I replace fuses. I have a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras, and I replace fuses for idiots who can't turn a computer on."
She slumped against the bench. "I'm quitting tomorrow. I'm going to go farm coconuts in my village. At least coconuts don't have latency issues."
Arjun felt a surge of adrenaline. She was at the breaking point. The timing was divine.
"Don't farm coconuts," Arjun said. "Farm data."
Meera looked at him. "What?"
"I have a project," Arjun said. "We need to digitize five million land records. The current scanners are too slow. The current software is too dumb. We need to build a custom rig. Hardware and software integration. Something that doesn't exist yet."
He looked her in the eye.
"I have the capital. I have the government contract. I have the company."
Meera snorted. "You? You're a baby."
"I'm the baby who fixed your circuit diagram in five seconds," Arjun countered.
Meera paused. That was a solid point.
"I can't pay you a PSU salary," Arjun lied. (He could, but he needed her hungry for equity). "But I can give you something better."
"What? Chocolate?"
"A blank check," Arjun said. "And a lab. No bosses. No forms to fill. No fuses to change. You run the R&D. You build whatever you want, however you want, as long as it solves my problem first."
Meera's mouth opened slightly. The "Blank Check" promise. It was the siren song for every engineer who had ever been told "no" by a manager.
"You're lying," she whispered. But she wanted to believe.
"Come to Akbar Towers, Suite #214, tomorrow morning at 10 AM," Arjun said, hopping off the bench as his bus approached. "My lawyer will be there. We're building the future, Meera. You can come build it with us, or you can go farm coconuts."
He climbed onto the bus, looking back.
Meera was sitting frozen on the bench, clutching her notebook, the golden aura around her pulsing with a new, chaotic hope.
The Technologist was hooked.