Date: October 9th, 2012.
Location: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Mumbai.
The chartered Air India flight touched down on the Mumbai tarmac, carrying the most precious cargo in the country: the ICC World Twenty20 Trophy and the men who had bled to win it.
As Siddanth Deva stepped out of the aerobridge, the sound hit him before he even saw the crowds. It was a low, continuous rumble that vibrated through the glass panels of the terminal. It sounded like an impending earthquake.
"You ready for this, Sid?" MS Dhoni asked, walking beside him, the glittering silver trophy resting comfortably in his grip.
"I thought Colombo was loud," Deva muttered, adjusting his sunglasses. "This sounds like a war zone."
"This is Mumbai," Virat Kohli grinned, slinging his heavy kit bag over his shoulder. "They don't do quiet."
The team moved through the VIP exit. The moment the glass doors slid open, daylight was entirely eclipsed by the flash of ten thousand cameras.
Outside, the scene was apocalyptic in the most euphoric sense possible. A literal sea of blue jerseys stretched as far as the eye could see, completely swallowing the approach roads to the airport. Fans had climbed onto the roofs of parked cars, scaled the airport boundary walls, and hung precariously from the branches of nearby trees.
A massive, open-top double-decker bus, painted in the colors of the Indian flag and emblazoned with the words "WORLD CHAMPIONS," waited at the curb.
The police, deployed in the thousands, struggled to hold back the surging tide of humanity. As Dhoni stepped onto the bus and hoisted the trophy into the air, the roar that followed threatened to shatter the windows of the nearby terminal.
Deva climbed onto the top deck, joining Kohli, Raina, and Rohit. He looked down at the sheer density of the crowd.
"It's supposed to be a fifteen-minute drive to the Taj," the Team Manager shouted over the noise, looking at his watch in despair. "We are not going to make it in fifteen minutes."
He was gravely mistaken.
The bus crawled forward at a pace that made walking look like a sprint. It was a parade of pure, unadulterated delirium. People were throwing rose petals, marigold garlands, and blue confetti from the flyovers as the bus passed underneath. The rhythmic beat of Nashik dhols drowned out the sirens of the police escort.
Deva stood at the railing, waving until his arm went numb. Fans held up massive, hand-painted banners. Some read: "DHONI THE KING," while dozens of others were dedicated to the Vice-Captain: "DEVA: THE DEVIL OF COLOMBO" and "POTT: PRIDE OF THE TEAM."
It took two agonizingly slow, incredibly emotional hours for the bus to cover the distance to the Taj Mahal Palace in Colaba. By the time they reached the heavily barricaded hotel gates, the players were coated in a fine layer of dust, sweat, and flower petals, their voices hoarse from shouting back at the fans.
---
Time: 8:00 PM.
Location: The Crystal Room, Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.
The BCCI had pulled out all the stops. The celebration ceremony was an opulent affair, attended by the titans of Indian cricket, politicians, and Bollywood elites.
The team, having showered and changed into sharp formal suits, sat at the front tables. The mood was festive, the champagne was flowing, and the speeches were long.
Rajeev Shukla, the prominent BCCI official and IPL Chairman, took the stage.
"What these boys have achieved in Sri Lanka is nothing short of legendary," Shukla boomed into the microphone, gesturing to the team. "They have brought the World Twenty20 cup back home. They played like tigers, led by a captain who knows only how to win."
The room applauded politely.
"But tonight, we must make a special mention of one individual," Shukla continued, his eyes finding Siddanth Deva in the front row. "A young man who has redefined consistency. Back-to-back Player of the Tournament awards. He was our anchor, our enforcer, and our savior."
Shukla signaled to a staff member off-stage.
"Siddanth, please come up here."
Deva buttoned his suit jacket and walked up the steps, the spotlight following him.
"On behalf of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, and our sponsors, we want to recognize this unprecedented achievement," Shukla smiled warmly. "A trophy is nice, but we thought a special reward for consecutive Player of the Tournament awards is in order."
Shukla was handed a small velvet box by an assistant.
"A brand new, custom matte-black Audi R8 V10," Shukla announced to the cheering room, handing the box to Deva. "It is waiting for you in the hotel driveway. Drive safe, young man. You are too valuable to lose to a speeding ticket. Enjoy the gift."
Deva laughed, holding the silver keys up. "Thank you, Sir. I promise to keep it under the speed limit."
The ceremony concluded with a massive dinner. Dhoni gathered the core team in a quiet corner of the ballroom.
"Listen up," Dhoni said, holding a glass of sparkling water. "The Board has officially granted us a one-month rest period. No camps, no media duties, no cricket. The England team is touring India starting in mid-November for a long, tough series. I want you all to disappear. Go home. Heal your niggles. Don't pick up a bat unless you absolutely have to."
"One month?" Kohli grinned. "I'm going to sleep for a week."
"I am going back to Hyderabad," Deva said, tracing the Audi logo on his new keys. "I have a lot of work to do."
"Work?" Rohit frowned. "Sid, he just said rest."
"My kind of rest is different from your kind of rest, Ro," Deva smirked.
---
Date: October 14th, 2012.
Location: Deva Farmhouse, Shamshabad, Hyderabad.
Status: 5 Days into the Break.
The cricket kit was locked in the closet. The newly shipped Audi R8 sat gleaming in the garage between Tata Sumo and Swift Dzire.
Siddanth Deva sat in his ground-floor study, the heavy oak doors locked from the inside. The room was dark, illuminated only by the harsh, bluish glare of three high-definition monitors hooked up to a custom-built workstation.
For the past five days, Deva had barely slept. He was operating purely on the stamina provided by his [Perfect Rhythm] skill and a dangerous amount of black coffee.
He had the source code for BoltOS—the operating system designed for the upcoming Bolt 1 smartphone—open across two screens. Arjun's development team had done a phenomenal job optimizing it for speed, but Deva, wielding the [Harold Finch Template], saw the code differently. He didn't see lines of text; he saw architecture. He saw flow. He saw limitations.
In late 2012, Apple's Siri was a novelty, and Google Now was essentially an advanced search bar. They were reactive, rigid, and prone to misinterpreting Indian accents.
Deva wanted something better.
"System," Deva muttered, his fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard at a blinding pace. "Access Synthetic Intelligence Design protocols."
He wasn't building a sentient AI—the hardware of 2012 couldn't support an Artificial General Intelligence anyway. But he could build a highly advanced, localized neural network structure that utilized machine learning to adapt to the user's specific voice patterns and predictive needs.
He named the program VANI (Voice Assistant Network Interface).
He coded Vani to be integrated into the OS layer, not just an app sitting on top of it. He designed it to manage battery life autonomously, learn the user's daily commute to pre-load maps, and understand natural, conversational Hindi-English (Hinglish) syntax without needing robotic enunciation.
He made sure it was just a little bit better than Siri—faster response times, deeper system access, and less reliant on cloud computing to execute basic tasks. If he made it too advanced, it would look like alien technology. It needed to be a believable, albeit brilliant, leap in innovation.
While his fingers flew across the keyboard, his phone buzzed on the desk.
Headache:You vanished into your farmhouse to count cows again? I am bored in the city. Let's meet somewhere.
Deva chuckled, not taking his eyes off the cascading lines of code on his middle monitor. He picked up the phone with one hand and typed.
Me:I can't. I'm locked in. Busy working on a few things. Building a new brain.
Headache:Building a new brain? Yours finally stopped working? 😔
Deva laughed out loud, leaning back in his ergonomic chair. Her sad emoji was the perfect mix of dramatic and demanding.
Me:Don't be sad. Tell you what, my 'friend' at NEXUS still needs those articles refined. Why don't you come to the farmhouse tomorrow? On the pretext of article writing. My parents already think you work for me.
Headache:Professional exploitation. See you tomorrow, Boss.
True to the plan, Krithika arrived the next afternoon on her purple Scooty. She greeted Vikram and Sesikala politely, fully maintaining the charade of the diligent intern, before slipping into Deva's ground-floor study. While Deva coded the complex algorithms for VANI, Krithika sat on the small leather sofa, flipping through MBA prep books or distracting him with mundane, hilarious stories about her sister.
She came back again a few days later, creating a comforting, quiet routine amidst his technological marathon. They would sit in the cool, air-conditioned office, occasionally breaking the silence to argue over a movie plot or share a snack Sesikala had sent in, before she would drive back home before sunset. It gave him the perfect balance. Ten days of intense coding, punctuated by the scent of jasmine oil and her quiet companionship.
Most importantly, Deva applied the Ghost Protocol encryption. He locked the core Vani algorithm behind a cipher so complex that even if a rival company like Samsung or Apple managed to reverse-engineer the phone, they would never be able to crack the underlying architecture of the assistant. It was a digital vault.
On the morning of October 20th, Deva hit 'Compile' for the final time. He flashed the new OS onto a raw Bolt 1 prototype sitting on his desk.
He picked up the phone. He held the power button.
The screen lit up. The UI was impossibly fluid.
"Vani," Deva said, speaking casually. "I have a flight to Mumbai tomorrow at 9 AM. What time should I leave the house?"
The phone didn't hesitate. A smooth, natural female voice responded from the speaker.
"Checking current traffic patterns from Shamshabad to Rajiv Gandhi International Airport. To arrive two hours before your flight, you should leave the farmhouse at 6:45 AM, sir. Would you like me to set an alarm?"
Deva smiled. It was perfect.
He compiled the entire OS package, encrypted it, and sent a secure file transfer to Arjun's private server.
He attached a simple note: Flash this onto a test unit immediately. Call me when you pick your jaw up off the floor.
---
Date: October 21st, 2012.
Location: NEXUS Headquarters, Hi-Tec City.
Arjun sat at the head of the conference table, staring blankly at the wall. Surrounding him were Karthik, the Lead OS Developer, and three senior hardware engineers.
In the center of the table sat a single Bolt 1 prototype, running the new OS Deva had sent.
"I don't understand," Karthik said, his voice trembling slightly as he scrolled through the code repository on his laptop. "This isn't just an optimization, Sir. This is... this is a complete rewrite of the kernel logic. The memory management is terrifyingly efficient. And this voice assistant... Vani..."
Karthik picked up the phone. "Vani, remind me to call my mother when I leave the office."
The phone chirped. "Reminder set, Karthik. I will notify you when your GPS location changes from the NEXUS building."
The engineers exchanged looks of pure shock.
"It didn't even process that through an external server," a hardware engineer whispered. "It handled the natural language processing natively. How is that mathematically possible with our current chipset?"
"Because whoever wrote this code is a genius," Karthik said, looking at Arjun. "A literal, once-in-a-generation genius. Who did you outsource this to, Sir? Microsoft? Some black-ops DARPA lab?"
Arjun rubbed his temples, a severe headache forming. "It's... a proprietary source. A silent partner."
"Well, the silent partner just gave us a massive problem," the hardware lead sighed, crossing his arms.
Arjun frowned. "Problem? You just said this OS makes our phone the fastest device on the market."
"It does," the engineer agreed. "But Arjun... we were preparing for a November launch. We have already flashed the old, stable OS onto one hundred thousand units sitting in the Medchal warehouse. They are boxed and ready for distribution."
Arjun's blood ran cold. "One hundred thousand?"
"Yes. To implement this new OS with Vani, we have to unbox every single one of those units, manually hook them up to the flashing rigs, wipe the old OS, install the new one, run QA checks, and re-box them. We don't have the manpower to do that in two weeks."
"How long will it take?" Arjun asked grimly.
"A month," Karthik estimated. "Minimum. It pushes the launch back to late December or January."
Arjun stood up. "Cancel my afternoon meetings. I need to go to Shamshabad. Right now."
---
Time: 3:00 PM.
Location: Deva's Study, Deva Farmhouse.
Deva was sitting at his desk, casually tossing a cricket ball from hand to hand, when Arjun stormed into the ground-floor office. Arjun didn't bother knocking; he just shut the heavy wooden door behind him and locked it.
Arjun looked disheveled. His tie was loosened, and he was clutching a tablet like a shield.
"Arjun," Deva said mildly, catching the ball. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I have," Arjun said, marching over to the desk and slamming the tablet down. "I just saw an operating system that shouldn't exist in 2012 running flawlessly on our hardware."
"Vani is smooth, isn't she?" Deva smiled proudly.
"She is terrifying," Arjun corrected, leaning over the desk, his eyes boring into Deva's. "Karthik thinks we hired DARPA. The engineers think it's alien technology. The encryption on the core files is so complex that our cybersecurity lead literally cried trying to open it."
Arjun took a deep breath, pointing an accusatory finger at Deva.
"I asked you months ago who was fixing our code," Arjun said, his voice dropping to an intense, low register. "You told me it was a 'guy you knew'. A remote freelancer. Someone who owed you a favor."
Deva opened his mouth to reply, but Arjun cut him off sharply.
"Don't," Arjun warned. "Do not tell me it's a guy who owes you a favor. I have known you since we were fighting over batting in the gully. I know your 'tells', Sid. I know when you are lying to the press, I know when you are lying to your parents, and I know you are lying to me right now."
Arjun slammed his hand on the desk. "Who wrote that code, Siddanth? Give me a name."
Deva looked at his best friend. Arjun was shaking slightly, completely overwhelmed by the scale of what they were dealing with. Deva realized that the 'silent partner' lie had run its course. If they were going to build an empire, there could be no secrets between the two pillars of NEXUS.
Deva sighed, a long, slow exhalation. He put the cricket ball down.
"I did," Deva said quietly.
Arjun stared at him. He blinked once. Twice.
"You?" Arjun scoffed, a nervous, disbelieving laugh escaping him. "Sid, you have a degree in B.Com. You don't know C++. You don't know machine learning algorithms."
Deva didn't argue. He stood up. He walked over to the massive bookshelf lining the right wall of the study. It was filled with hundreds of books ranging from sports biographies to dense technical manuals.
"Pick a book," Deva commanded calmly.
Arjun frowned, his irritation spiking. "Sid, stop playing games. This is serious corporate espionage-level stuff—"
"Pick. A. Book," Deva repeated, his voice taking on the sharp.
Arjun sighed in exasperation. He walked over to the shelf. He ran his hand across the spines and pulled out a thick, heavy, blue-bound textbook: Advanced Object-Oriented Architecture and C++ Integrations.
"I bought that for the office," Arjun muttered. "You borrowed it a few months ago."
"Open it," Deva instructed, standing a few feet away, his hands in his pockets. "Any page. Middle of the book. Read the first sentence."
Arjun rolled his eyes, flipped the book open to a random page—Page 412—and looked at the dense, technical jargon.
"Go ahead," Deva urged.
Arjun cleared his throat. "In scenarios where dynamic memory allocation is critical, the implementation of virtual destructors in base classes ensures that..."
"...ensures that the derived class destructors are invoked properly during object deletion," Deva continued flawlessly, without a second's hesitation, staring directly into Arjun's eyes. "Failure to declare a virtual destructor results in undefined behavior, typically leading to memory leaks and resource exhaustion in persistent background processes."
Arjun froze. He looked down at the book. The words Deva had just spoken matched the text on the page perfectly. Every single syllable.
"Okay," Arjun swallowed hard. "You memorized a page. A parlor trick."
"Pick another one," Deva said, gesturing to the shelf. "Fiction. History. Anything."
Arjun quickly shelved the C++ manual. He pulled out a worn copy of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. He opened it to page 189.
"The real price of everything..." Arjun started reading, testing him.
"...what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it," Deva finished instantly, his voice perfectly even. "What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself."
The book slipped from Arjun's hands, thudding onto the Persian rug.
Arjun stared at Deva, his face pale, the blood completely drained from his cheeks.
"How?" Arjun whispered, his voice trembling. "How is that possible?"
"Eidetic memory," Deva said simply, walking back to his desk and sitting down. "Photographic recall. Anything I read once, I never forget. It's a... condition. I've had it for a while."
He leaned forward, looking at his stunned CEO.
"I haven't just been reading cricket pitches, Arjun," Deva explained softly. "While I was injured, while I was resting... I read. I read every manual, every coding language, every architectural design document you sent me. I absorbed it all. My brain processes it differently. That's how I optimized the OS. That's how I built Vani."
Arjun staggered backward until his knees hit the small leather sofa. He sat down heavily, looking completely numb. He stared at his hands, trying to reconcile the image of his cricket-obsessed best friend with the reality of the super-genius sitting across from him.
"You wrote it," Arjun murmured to himself. "You wrote the master-level software architect."
He sat in absolute silence for two full minutes. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the wall clock.
Slowly, Arjun snapped out of his stupor. He looked up, his business instincts battling his shock and finally winning out.
"What... what else can you do with it?" Arjun asked, his voice returning to normal, albeit laced with a new, profound reverence. "With this memory? With this code?"
Deva smiled. The truth was out, and it felt liberating. "I am planning a few things. We are going to change the world, Arjun."
---
Arjun ran a hand through his hair, shifting back into CEO mode. "Okay. Okay, I accept it. You're Tony Stark. Fine. But Tony Stark, we have a massive logistical nightmare. Half the phones are already flashed with the old software. The factory guys said it will take a month to reinstall Vani and the new OS. We were supposed to launch before Diwali."
Deva nodded thoughtfully. "A month delay."
"It kills our momentum," Arjun groaned. "We've been teasing the 'Speed Unleashed' campaign for weeks. The hype will die."
"No, it won't," Deva said decisively. "We delay it. We take the hit. But we absolutely do not launch with the old software. If we launch with the old OS, we are just another cheap Android phone. If we launch with Vani, we are a revolution."
"So we roll it out in late November?" Arjun asked, checking his calendar. "Make them work overtime. Pay them double to hit the deadline?"
"No," Deva shook his head firmly. "Push it to January."
"January?!" Arjun stared at him, aghast. "Sid, we completely missed the Diwali shopping rush! That's when everyone buys electronics!"
"If we force the factory to manually re-flash 100,000 units in a month, they will be working 18-hour shifts," Deva stated, his tone leaving no room for argument. "I don't want crunch culture at NEXUS, Arjun. Let them work normal hours. Let them spend Diwali with their families. They get it done methodically, with zero errors, without the pressure of a ticking clock."
Arjun blinked, the stress on his face softening slightly as he looked at his friend. "Taking care of the employees over the bottom line. Okay. I respect that. But marketing-wise? January is a dry month."
"We don't need a festival to sell this. The product is the festival," Deva grinned confidently. "We pivot the marketing. 'New Year, New Era.' It builds the mystery."
"Alright," Arjun sighed, typing into his tablet. "When exactly do we do the live keynote? You said you want to present it yourself, but your cricket schedule is insane. You have England coming, then Pakistan."
"I've already looked at the schedule," Deva said. "The Pakistan limited-overs series ends around January 6th. The England ODI series starts on January 11th. That leaves a perfect gap."
"January 8th, 2013," Arjun noted. "That's our date. I'll lock it in. And the venue?"
"Let's do Mumbai," Deva decided. "The Bollywood and cricket press are already there. The glamour quotient is higher. It fits the 'lifestyle' brand we want for Bolt. Book a premium venue. The Taj or the Trident."
"I'll get on it," Arjun said.
"Don't do it yourself," Deva instructed. "Send the details to Rahul. Let my PA handle the venue scouting and event logistics. You focus on the software integration."
"Now, onto the software side," Deva said, turning his monitor so Arjun could see. It displayed lines of complex, predictive code.
"I'm sending you an updated patch for Flash Messenger and Vibe tomorrow."
"More optimizations?" Arjun asked, leaning in.
"Evolution," Deva corrected. "I have integrated a predictive algorithm into both apps."
"Predictive text?"
"Predictive behavior," Deva said. "The algorithm analyzes user engagement. For Vibe, it won't just show posts chronologically; it will map which content keeps users on the screen the longest and feed them more of it. It creates an infinite loop of tailored content."
Arjun swallowed hard. "That's... highly addictive."
"That's the point. Attention is currency," Deva stated coldly. "For Flash Messenger, the algorithm will subtly analyze keyword frequency to build consumer profiles. We will anonymize the data, of course, to comply with basic privacy laws, but we will use those profiles to serve hyper-targeted ads on Vibe."
Arjun stared at the screen. "You are turning our social apps into a data-mining goldmine."
"Exactly. Advertisers will pay us triple what they pay Google because our conversion rates will be unmatched."
Deva minimized the window and opened a new schematic.
"And finally, the endgame," Deva pointed to a diagram titled 'NEXUS PAY'. "Digital P2P payments."
"Peer-to-peer?" Arjun frowned. "In India? Sid, everyone uses cash. Credit card penetration is less than 3%. Nobody trusts digital money."
"They will," Deva said with absolute certainty, knowing the future of UPI. "We integrate a digital wallet directly into Flash Messenger. You chat with your friend, and you can send them 100 rupees to split a dinner bill with one click. No bank apps, no complex passwords."
"How do we monetize that? We can't charge users to send money."
"We don't charge the users," Deva explained. "We make it free for users. We charge the merchants. Once the user base is hooked on the convenience of sending money to friends, we roll out QR codes for merchants at local shops. We take a micro-fraction of a percentage—say, 0.1%—on every merchant transaction."
Arjun did the math in his head. "0.1% is nothing."
"It is nothing on one transaction," Deva corrected. "But when 100 million Indians are using Flash Messenger to buy tea, groceries, and movie tickets ten times a day... 0.1% becomes billions of rupees a month in passive revenue. We become the digital bank of the nation."
Arjun sat back, utterly overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the vision. The cricket star wasn't just building a company; he was architecting a monopoly.
"I need one more thing, Arjun," Deva said, leaning forward. His voice dropped to a highly secretive, almost commanding tone. The casual atmosphere evaporated.
"More?" Arjun asked weakly, clutching his tablet. "I don't think my heart can take more today."
"I need hardware," Deva said, his eyes intense. "And I don't mean a few laptops. I want you to procure five custom-built, high-capacity enterprise server racks. Fully populated."
"Servers? We use AWS for the apps. Why do you need physical racks?"
"I want them here," Deva pointed a finger emphatically at the floor beneath them. "In the farmhouse. I'm going to clear out the large guest room on the ground floor. I need them loaded with the absolute highest-end Nvidia GPUs you can source globally—get the new Kepler architecture cards. I need massive parallel processing arrays, custom neural network boards, a petabyte of solid-state storage, and a dedicated, heavy-duty HVAC cooling unit to prevent thermal throttling."
Arjun stared at him, bewildered. "GPUs? Neural network boards? Parallel processing arrays? Sid, you are asking for a literal supercomputer physically sitting in your house! What the hell are you running down there that AWS can't handle?"
Deva kept his face deadpan. He couldn't tell Arjun the truth. He couldn't tell him that he possessed the Harold Finch Template and intended to use that massive, localized processing power to train an Artificial General Intelligence—a self-evolving, predictive AI that would eventually rival Tony Stark's J.A.R.V.I.S. It would sound entirely insane.
"A shadow project," Deva said smoothly. "I am coding a highly classified High-Frequency Trading (HFT) algorithm. An automated bot."
"Stock trading?" Arjun's eyes widened in alarm. "Sid, that's incredibly risky. And why do you need an AI-level supercomputer for a trading bot?"
"Because it won't just look at stock prices, Arjun," Deva lied flawlessly. "It needs to process millions of data points simultaneously. Global news feeds, weather patterns, micro-market inefficiencies, and supply chain disruptions are all processed through a parallel matrix in milliseconds. The GPUs handle the parallel processing. The AWS cloud latency is too slow; I need the data processed locally to execute thousands of micro-trades a second."
Deva leaned back, letting the financial hook sink in. "If this project succeeds, Arjun, we will never have to worry about seeking investment money, venture capitalists, or bank loans for NEXUS ever again. The bot will act as an infinite ATM. It will fund our expansion indefinitely."
Arjun stared at his best friend. The kid who used to hit tennis balls over his compound wall was now demanding biometric doors to build a high-frequency trading supercomputer in his basement.
"Five server racks, Kepler GPUs, and commercial cooling," Arjun nodded slowly, shaking his head as he accepted his new reality. "I'll order them tomorrow. I'll send my personal, most trusted IT guys to lay down the fiber-optic lines and set it up. No questions asked."
"Perfect," Deva smiled, the intense CEO fading, replaced instantly by the casual demeanor of a 21-year-old.
A sharp knock on the door broke the heavy silence.
"Siddanth! Arjun!" Sesikala's voice rang through the wood. "Dinner is ready! Stop working on your computers and come eat!"
Deva laughed, the transition from Tech Overlord back to obedient son instantaneous. "Coming, Amma!"
He stood up, clapping a still-stunned Arjun on the shoulder. "Come on, Mr. CEO. You look like you need some carbs to process all of this."
Arjun stood up, shaking his head as he followed Deva out of the study.
They sat at the dining table, eating Sesikala's phenomenal mutton curry. They talked about movies, about Sameer's new job at Nexus, and about the upcoming England series.
After dinner, Arjun washed his hands, grabbed his tablet, and headed for the door.
"I'll delay the launch to January 8th," Arjun said softly as Deva walked him to his car. "I'll book the Mumbai venue. And I'll order your supercomputer."
"Thanks, brother," Deva said.
Arjun got into his car, rolling down the window. He looked at Deva, shaking his head in a mix of fear and absolute awe.
"You really are the Devil, aren't you?" Arjun said.
Deva just smirked, waving as the car drove off into the Shamshabad night.
The code was compiled. The hardware was ordered. The traps were set. The digital revolution was officially underway.