The brief on the tablet was a study in cheerful horror. Case files from a dozen districts, all within a 200km radius, linked by a single anomaly: outbreaks of euphoria with catastrophic side effects.
· File 01: A village where a wedding party danced for 72 hours straight. Seven dead from cardiac arrest, their faces frozen in ecstatic smiles.
· File 02: A school sports day where the winners' joy was so potent it induced seizures in the spectators. Losers reported sinking into profound, suicidal despair.
· File 03: Satellite imagery of a traveling carnival, "Mela Manoranjan," that appeared on fallow land overnight. Thermal scans showed no body heat within its garish tents. Visitors spoke of "the most perfect fun," but returned home listless, emotionally brittle, and unable to feel simple pleasures for weeks.
The final report, flagged by the old I.O.'s residual algorithms, was the clincher: a psychic resonance scan from the carnival site showed not an emission, but an absorption pattern. It was siphoning not pain, but joy, hope, simple delight—the positive emotional spectrum.
"Another Engine," Kiran said, staring at the data over Dan's shoulder in their Ludhiana room. The tablet's glow lit her face, which was set in grim understanding. "But the opposite. The Stillness Engine fed on expressed emotion, quieting faces. This… this feeds on the feeling itself. It consumes the source."
"It's not just consumption," Dan murmured, zooming in on the carnival's layout. The tents were arranged in a non-Euclidean pattern that made his eyes water slightly. "It's cultivation. It creates a peak experience to harvest the maximum yield. Like forcing a fruit tree to over-produce until it dies." He tapped the image of a large, central tent shaped like a laughing demon's head. "This is the epicenter. The 'Harvester.' We need to see what's inside."
Their new status as "Cell Alpha" changed little in practice, but everything in potential. Malhotra's funding bought them a better vehicle—a rugged, unmarked Force One—and access to a streamlined, anonymous supply chain for non-lethal tactical gear. Dan now carried a sidearm loaded with psycho-reactive pellets; Kiran had a suite of miniaturized resonator tools to measure and, hopefully, disrupt emotional frequencies.
They reached the site just after dusk. The carnival sat in a bowl-shaped valley, its lights a garish smear of color against the darkening earth. From a distance, it looked ordinary—the distant tinny blare of music, the whirl of rides, the silhouettes of tents. But as they parked a kilometer away and approached on foot through scrubland, the wrongness settled in.
The music had no melody. It was a loop of carnival sounds—calliope notes, laughter, ringing bells—chopped and rearranged into a catchy, mindless sequence that burrowed into the brain. The smells were too sweet: cotton candy, frying jalebi, rose attar, all mingling into a cloying, nausea-inducing perfume.
And there were people. Dozens of them, moving between the stalls and tents. They walked with a strange, shuffling eagerness. Their laughter was sharp, too frequent, and identical in pitch. Their eyes, even from a distance, had a glassy, hungry sheen. They weren't enjoying themselves. They were consuming enjoyment, desperately, under duress.
"They're addicts," Kiran whispered, her empathy recoiling from the frantic, hollow yearning that washed off the crowd. "The Harvester gives them a hit of pure, fabricated joy, and in return, it takes a little more of their natural capacity for it. They're here to feed, and be fed on."
Dan's grip tightened on the scanner in his pocket. It was reading emotional energy levels spiking into the red, followed by precipitous crashes. "It's a farm. And these are the livestock."
They blended into the crowd, donning cheap, glowing carnival masks bought from a silent vendor. Up close, the horror was intimate. A man weeping with happiness as he repeatedly shot water pistols at a target, his body trembling with exhaustion. A woman stuffing gulab jamun into her mouth, tears of sugary bliss streaming down her face, her stomach visibly distended. The joy was a manifest sickness.
The central tent, the laughing demon, loomed ahead. A line of people waited, their anticipation a palpable, feverish wave. Above the entrance, in flickering bulbs, was the promise: THE GREAT FULFILLMENT! YOUR HEART'S TRUE DESIRE!
"That's the processing core," Dan said. "We need to get in, see the mechanism, and devise a counter-resonance. Like in Bhulpur, but the emotional inverse."
Getting in was easy. The crowd was a river of wanting, and they let themselves be carried with the current. The barker at the entrance, a man with a smile stretched so wide the corners of his lips were cracked and bleeding, waved them through with a mechanical, "Enjoy! Enjoy!"
Inside, the music and smell ceased. There was only a profound, waiting silence, and a soft, pinkish light. The tent was much larger than it seemed from outside. In the center was not a stage, but a pool. Not of water, but of a viscous, shimmering, champagne-colored liquid that bubbled gently. Around it, on a raised walkway, the attendees stood, their masked faces turned in rapture towards the pool.
As Dan and Kiran watched, a man was led forward by two attendants with the same bleeding smiles. A thin, crystalline tube was lowered from the ceiling. The man grasped it, closed his eyes, and a look of transcendent ecstasy transformed his features. From his chest, a visible, tendril of golden light—warm, rich, and alive—was drawn out, siphoned down the tube and into the bubbling pool. The pool glowed brighter. The man's ecstasy lasted for ten perfect seconds. Then the tube retracted. The bliss vanished from his face, replaced by a devastation so absolute it was a vacuum. He stumbled back, empty, and was guided out a rear exit. The next addict shuffled forward.
"It's harvesting their core joy," Kiran breathed, appalled. "The memory of their first love, the pure delight of childhood, their capacity for wonder… It's taking the templates."
"And the pool is the battery," Dan said, his scanner overloading. "Storing raw, refined positive emotion. But for what? What is this architect building with this?"
As if in answer, the pool's bubbles increased. The champagne-colored liquid began to rise, forming a shape in the center. A humanoid shape, smooth and featureless, sculpted from condensed delight. It was beautiful, and it radiated a promise of unconditional, effortless happiness so powerful that Dan felt his own resolve soften, a treacherous voice whispering, Just one taste. You've earned it.
Kiran gasped, grabbing his arm. Her empathy was under direct assault. "It's… it's making a siren. A beacon to attract more. To farm the whole region."
The figure in the pool opened eyes made of sparkling, golden light. It smiled. And it began to sing.
The sound was not a melody. It was the direct neural activation of every pleasure center in the human brain. It was the chemical cascade of a first kiss, the triumph of a hard-won victory, the comfort of perfect safety—all synthesized into a single, irresistible frequency.
Around the pool, the masked attendees fell to their knees, sobbing with want. Dan's vision swam. The memory of a rare moment of pride from his stern father surfaced, followed by the simple joy of a shared ice cream with Arjun. The hook was in him, but this time, it was a hook of desire.
Kiran, however, did not kneel. The hollow space inside her, still resonating with the cleansed sorrow of Bhulpur and the Saint's faded peace, created a dissonance. The song of pure joy clashed against her inner spectrum of complex, earned feeling. It couldn't find a pure note to resonate with.
She turned to Dan, her eyes blazing not with joy, but with fierce, protective anger. "It's a monoculture! It only understands one note!" she shouted over the psychic roar. "We have to give it a chord! A dissonant chord!"
She understood. The Stillness Engine was broken by acknowledging historical pain. This Harvester, built on stolen joy, would be broken by confronting complex, real emotion.
She reached for Dan's hand, and for the first time, she actively pushed her empathy into him, down their link. She didn't send calm. She sent the full, messy, human spectrum she carried: the sorrow of Bhulpur, the terror of the pumping station, the grim determination of survival, the fragile trust they had built, and yes, even a flicker of something warmer, deeper, that had grown in the quiet moments between crises. She sent the bittersweet memory of Arjun, not as a wound, but as a part of Dan's strength.
It was not a weapon of joy. It was a weapon of experience.
The wave of complex humanity hit Dan, breaking the siren's spell. It was overwhelming, painful, and profoundly true. He amplified it, adding his own layers—the weight of command decisions, the guilt transmuted into responsibility, the cold focus of the analyst, the burning will of the survivor.
Together, they turned this fused, dissonant emotional signature towards the rising figure in the pool, not as an attack, but as an answer.
The Siren's perfect song faltered. The golden eyes flickered with confusion. The champagne liquid shivered. The architect of this place had designed it to process pure joy. It had no protocols for grief, for resolve, for bittersweet memory, for love that was earned, not taken.
The beautiful figure began to crack. Its song became a screech of feedback. The pool thrashed, bubbling violently. The attendees around them woke from their trance, not to joy, but to the crashing hangover of their own stolen happiness, and the raw reality of their lives.
The Harvest was over. The Carnival of Wanting was breaking its own heart