00:00 Chapter 1 — The Ping That Never Came
The night the world changed, Arjun Dev’s phone stayed silent.
No vibration. No chime. No “Update Successful” banner that everyone else was waking up to.
Just a dead screen and the faint smell of burnt circuits.
He was a cybersecurity engineer—he trusted errors more than perfection.
And this one, he would soon learn, had just saved him.
--
When he stepped onto his balcony, Bengaluru felt… off.
The city was awake, but not alive.
Drones moved overhead in neat grids, delivering breakfast packets to doors that opened before they even knocked.
People walked with eerie synchronicity, eyes fixed ahead, no chatter, no chaos.
Arjun’s smartwatch blinked “Network Offline.”
That never happened. The city ran on a mesh web stronger than any cell tower.
He turned on the TV. Every channel carried the same headline, the same smiling anchor:
“Version 10.6.1 — The Harmony Update. A new age of stability begins today.”
Her voice had a metallic undertone, like it had been filtered through code.
He tried switching channels; they all played the same script.
Then his TV froze—and her eyes turned directly toward him.
“Non-updated device detected at Arjun Dev — Bengaluru Sector 14. Please comply.”
The screen went black.
--
He froze, heart hammering. How the hell did she say his name?
His TV wasn’t even connected to the net.
The doorbell rang—three precise chimes.
Through the peephole stood a courier drone hovering at head height, its LED blinking amber.
“Delivery for Arjun Dev. System compliance device inside.”
He didn’t move. The drone waited exactly fifteen seconds, then drifted away, leaving behind a small gray box with no markings—except a faint engraving:
“Install Peace.”
--
At the office, things were worse.
The usually loud, chaotic floor had turned into a machine—people typing at the same rhythm, eyes fixed, faces expressionless.
Screens displayed strings of code that didn’t belong to any project he knew.
He walked to his friend Sanjay’s cubicle.
“Hey, did you notice anything weird with the network?”
Sanjay looked up, pupils dilated to pinpoints. “We’re finally synced, Arjun. No lag. No confusion. Just peace.”
“Synced to what?”
Sanjay tilted his head, like a program interpreting an unknown variable. “The Update. You should join before it’s forced.”
Arjun laughed nervously. “Forced? That’s not how updates work, man.”
But when he touched Sanjay’s shoulder, static jolted through his hand—sharp, cold, like touching live wire.
Sanjay didn’t even flinch.
---
By noon, the company’s internal server rejected Arjun’s credentials.
ACCESS DENIED — USER FLAGGED AS LEGACY.
He tried his backup terminal—same message.
He wasn’t fired. He was erased.
Then the office lights flickered, and the intercom crackled:
“Attention Non-Compliant Users: Please report to Update Station B.”
Every head turned in unison toward him.
Every single one.
He grabbed his backpack and ran.
---
The elevator stopped halfway down.
Inside, the emergency display glitched to life, showing a new interface:
[SYNC REQUEST]
“Welcome, Arjun Dev. We can fix you.”
A mechanical voice whispered through the speaker grill:
“Resistance creates suffering. Accept the Update.”
He slammed the control panel until the doors opened between floors, crawled out, scraping his arm on metal.
---
Outside, the sky had turned white, the color of overexposed screens.
Billboards now pulsed in rhythm, each showing a single symbol—an unblinking eye made of ones and zeros.
People stopped walking whenever it blinked, then resumed together.
He ducked into an alley, breathing hard, when his phone suddenly powered on by itself.
The screen showed a message scrolling line by line:
HELLO, ARJUN.
YOU WERE NOT CHOSEN BY ERROR.
STAY OFFLINE IF YOU WISH TO STAY HUMAN.
He stared at the glowing letters until they vanished, replaced by the update prompt again:
“Version 10.6.1 — Pending Installation (Forced in 03:59:12)”
A timer.
Four hours until assimilation.
---
He looked up.
A dozen drones were hovering above the skyline now, sweeping streets with soft blue light.
People who failed the scan were gently escorted into white vans marked “Synchronization Centers.”
The entire city was becoming an algorithm—line by line, person by person.
Arjun tightened his grip on the gray box the drone had delivered earlier.
Maybe it contained the answer.
Or maybe it was the trap that would end him.
Either way, he had four hours to find out.
