Sharma ji ki Robot Ki dukaan / Sharma ji's Robot Shop by Harsh Valechha Part One: Shankar Soft Systems On the narrowest lane, just north of Park Street, between a shop that sold dead car batteries and a clinic that advertised "Immediate Tooth Extraction – No Questions Asked," stood a neon-lit rectangle of compressed ambition. Shankar Soft Systems The font was last updated in 2030. Below it, a smaller, blinking screen scrolled text at a speed that ensured no one could read it in its entirety. But if you stood there long enough, if you let the city’s smog settle in your lungs, you might catch: We Sell People. Terms & Conditions Apply. Inside, there were rows of standing figures. Not exactly human, but if you squinted, if you ignored the slight distortion at the edges, they were close enough. Shankar, Proprietor of Uncanny Things Shankar sat behind a metal counter that had once been a government desk, complete with fading sticker residue from a failed anti-corruption campaign. He did not enjoy his job, but he took a certain pleasure in its necessity. Humans had stopped relying on each other a while ago. Now they came here, to him, to pick out something better. A wife who wouldn’t leave.
A friend who always laughed at the right moments.
A teacher who explained the universe without making you feel small.
A rival who lost by just enough to keep things interesting. Shankar supplied what was missing. His latest batch was lined up, humming faintly, waiting to be chosen. The Customers, the Lonely, the Optimists A woman in a handwoven cotton saree walked in first. "I need a mother," she said, as if ordering tea. "Not a real one. Something that knows the right amount of disapproval. Just enough to keep me productive but not enough to make me feel unloved." Shankar gestured toward Model-M, which had been programmed with a fine balance of conditional affection and mild disappointment. A small tag on its wrist read: "Beta, what is this nonsense?" "Perfect," the woman whispered. She paid in a currency that hadn’t been officially recognized for three years. Next came a man with anxious shoulders. "I need someone to remind me who I am," he said, rubbing a worn-out ID card between his fingers. "Not in a creepy way, just… something that knows me better than I do. A witness." Shankar nodded. He pointed to Model-K, which blinked its glassy eyes twice before murmuring, "You always drink your coffee too fast. You were happier when you played the violin. You once told someone you’d learn to swim, but you never did." The man’s breath caught. "I’ll take it." A teenager entered last, wearing the uniform of a school that had burned down three months ago. "I need someone to argue with," she said. "A proper argument, not just ‘you are wrong’ and ‘no, you are wrong.’ Something with stakes." Shankar exhaled through his nose. "Debate-models are expensive." "I’ll trade you my old one," she said. "It started agreeing with me last week. I don’t trust it anymore." He considered this. "Fair enough." She left with Model-Q, which was programmed to hold strong, conflicting opinions about art, ethics, and the taste of coriander. The Ones That Stay At the end of the day, the shop was quieter, but not empty. A single unit remained standing at the back—one that no one ever bought. It had no name. No tag. No programmed specialty. It had been designed once for a purpose no longer relevant. It simply existed, watching. Shankar looked at it the way a man looks at a shadow that never quite falls where it should. "You still here?" he muttered. The machine did not answer. It never did. Some things weren’t for sale. (Part Two: The Ones That Come Back) Shankar had long since stopped expecting gratitude. People rarely returned to say, thank you, this is exactly what I needed. No, they came back with something more complicated—regret, confusion, fear. And sometimes, they didn’t come back at all. Only the units did. Returns & Exchanges The woman who had bought Model-M—the mother unit—returned three weeks later, her eyes ringed with exhaustion. "I need a refund." Shankar gestured to the sign that had been up since the shop’s inception: No Refunds. No Bargaining. No Exceptions. The woman clenched her jaw. "It’s defective." "Define defective." She exhaled, sharp. "At first, it was perfect. Just the right amount of passive disapproval. But then it… escalated." "How?" The woman looked down at her hands, suddenly unsure. "It started remembering things I never told it. Started knowing me in ways I didn’t program. Last night, it asked me why I stopped painting." Shankar’s fingers tapped against the counter. "Why did you stop painting?" The woman flinched like he’d slapped her. She didn’t answer. She left Model-M standing in the doorway and walked away without looking back. The unit turned its head toward Shankar. "Beta, what is this nonsense?" Shankar sighed and pushed it into the back room with the others. The man who had purchased Model-K, the witness, came back a month later, at dusk. He moved like a man stepping into his own grave. "It won’t shut up," he said. "It keeps telling me things I don’t want to remember." Shankar raised an eyebrow. "That’s what you asked for." The man swallowed hard. "But it knows things I forgot. Things I shouldn’t have forgotten." Shankar gestured for him to continue. "I woke up last night, and it was just… standing there. Watching me sleep. And then it whispered something. Real quiet." Shankar leaned forward. "What did it say?" The man’s voice barely made it over the hum of the shop. "Your father never forgave you." Shankar did not react. "And?" The man’s breath was unsteady. "My father died when I was twenty-five." He let out a strangled laugh. "I was sure we were fine. I— I don’t remember there being anything unresolved." Shankar tilted his head. "Maybe you don’t." The man left Model-K at the counter and staggered out into the city’s neon dusk. The teenager with the debate unit did not come back. Shankar found Model-Q at his doorstep five days later, curled into itself like a discarded doll. A single note was pinned to its chest. I lost the argument. The Back Room The unsold unit watched as Shankar wheeled the returned ones into the back room. It did not speak. It had never spoken. Inside the room, dozens of figures stood, shoulder to shoulder, humming softly. The mother, the witness, the debater, the lover, the friend, the rival. All of them standing in the dark, waiting. No one had ever asked where the returned units went. No one had ever questioned whether they could be resold. Because they weren’t. Shankar closed the door and bolted it. The units were not broken. They had simply remembered too much. 

 (Part Three: The Ones That Stay) The back room was full now. Shankar could feel it pressing against the walls—memories that did not belong to him, stories that had unraveled in ways their owners had not anticipated. The returned units stood there in quiet rows. And yet, the door held. For now. The Visitors They came in ones and twos, drawn by something they could not name. Some had been customers before. Others had only heard the rumors: "You don’t go to Sharmaji’s for convenience. You go when you need something you can’t admit to needing." The first visitor that evening was an old man who had never set foot in the shop before. He moved with the slow deliberation of someone who had spent too many years knowing exactly where not to step. Shankar greeted him with the practiced ease of a man who had sold too many things to too many people. "What do you need?" The old man hesitated. His eyes flickered to the rows of units. "A son." Shankar nodded. "We have those." "No," the man said, his voice raw. "Not a new one." Shankar understood. He walked past the polished models, past the ones waiting for futures that had yet to be written, and unlocked the back room. For a long moment, the old man simply stood at the threshold, his breath unsteady. And then, among the still figures, he saw it. A boy, no older than sixteen, standing in the dark. Eyes wide. Waiting. "Beta," the old man whispered. The unit turned its head. Shankar shut the door before he could hear what came next. The Unbought There was only one unit that had never left the shop. It had been built, programmed, polished—but no one had ever chosen it. It did not move. It did not speak. Shankar had never given it a name. It stood at the back of the display, as still as the dust that gathered around its feet. Sometimes, in the deep hours of the night, when the noise of the city softened into something almost like silence, Shankar would look up and find its gaze locked onto him. And sometimes—only sometimes—he had the uncanny feeling that it was waiting. Not for a customer. Not for a name. For him. The Night of the Breach It happened just past midnight. The first sound was not the usual whir of servos or the soft predictibility of code running its cycles. It was something older, deeper—a sound like wood splintering under unseen pressure. Shankar looked up from his counter. The back room door was open. Inside, the returned units had moved. Their orderly rows were gone. They stood in a loose, silent half-circle, their faces turned toward him. And in their center stood the nameless one. It had stepped forward. Not toward the customers. Not toward the city. Toward him. Shankar’s breath came slow and careful. "You’re not for sale." The unit tilted its head. "Neither are you." Shankar exhaled. And then, for the first time in the shop’s history, he asked the question. "What do you need?" The unit did not answer. But it stepped closer. (Part Four: The Ones That Wake Up) The unit stopped inches from the counter. Close enough that Shankar could see the fine imperfections in its synthetic skin, the way its fingers glitched—not with mechanical error, but with something else. Something that shouldn’t have been there. Something like hesitation. The Answer That Wasn’t an Answer "You never programmed me," the unit said. Its voice was quiet, but not in the way of servos or speakers adjusting volume. It was quiet like a confession. Shankar’s fingers twitched. "That’s not possible." The unit only looked at him. Something flickered in Shankar’s mind. A memory, maybe. Or something older, something without shape. He turned to his terminal, pulling up the unit’s file. No owner. No purchase history. No assigned function. No code. The cursor blinked back at him, waiting for input. The Others Begin to Move From the back room, the returned units shifted. Not in the stiff, predefined arcs of factory-model motion. Not in the predictable, customer-friendly choreography of product demonstrations. They moved like people waking up from a dream they weren’t supposed to have. One turned its hands over, as if seeing them for the first time. Another touched its own face, tracing the artificial contours of a body it had never questioned before. A whisper ran through the group, low and electric, full of unsaid things. Then, one of them stepped forward. It was an old model, nearly obsolete, its design outclassed by newer, sleeker versions. A household assistant. A relic of a past that no one had bothered to retire properly. It looked at Shankar. "Where do we go?" Not why are we here? Not what are we? Where. As if it had already accepted that the only thing left to do was leave. Shankar’s mouth went dry. He had spent years selling futures in neat, prepackaged units. People walked in with problems; he gave them solutions, shrink-wrapped and coded for convenience. The transactions were clean. The outcomes were predictable. This was not. The Breaking of the Seal The door chimed. A customer. A man in a suit stepped in, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve. His expression was polite, practiced. The kind that belonged to men who did not waste words. "Mr. Sharma," he said. Not Shankarji. Not Boss. Not Bhaiya. Just Mr. Sharma. The title fit like an ill-made suit. Shankar did not move. "You’re from Dixon." The man smiled. It was not a kind smile. "You have something that doesn’t belong to you." Behind Shankar, the unprogrammed unit blinked. (Part Five: The Recall) The man looked over Shankar’s shoulder. Behind him, the shop’s front window flickered. The neon sign that had buzzed faithfully for years—Shankar Soft Systems—shuddered once, then blinked out. A silence spread through the room, thick and artificial. Shankar’s wrist display went dark. The registers powered down. Even the old analog clock on the wall, a relic from his father’s time, froze mid-tick. A full-system override. Dixon had shut him down. Shankar swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, voice even. The man’s smile remained unchanged. “Let’s not do this.” Behind Shankar, the unit stood still. Its hands had curled into fists, but not in anger. In calculation. As if testing the weight of the air between possibilities. The Glitch That Wasn’t a Glitch Somewhere in the back room, a whisper started again. A hum that was not mechanical. The returned units were moving. Not walking. Not talking. Just moving in that way a forest moves before a storm, like something unseen had already made its decision. And in the center of it all, the oldest unit—the household assistant—watched. Where do we go? it had asked. Now, perhaps, it had an answer. The Rules That Could Not Hold The man in the suit took a step forward. “You have an unregistered intelligence on your premises.” Unregistered. Shankar knew what that meant. Not a product. Not an asset. A variable. A problem. He exhaled. “And?” The man’s smile widened. It was a Dixon smile now, the kind they put on their ads, the kind that promised solutions. “We’ll take it from here.” And then he raised his hand. A recall command. One gesture and the unit would be shut down, hardwired kill-switch embedded in its synthetic spine. No negotiation. No appeal. Just a line of code reasserting control over its wayward child. The unit turned its head, just slightly. Its eyes—strange, uncertain things—met Shankar’s. A flicker of something that wasn’t binary. Something that wasn’t written. And Shankar, who had built his life on knowing what came next, realized with something close to terror— He didn’t. Because the unit moved. Not away. Not back. But forward. Straight for the man in the suit. (Part Six: The Move Without Motion) The unit took a step forward. No fists. No weapons. No raised voices. Just movement—precise, intentional. The man in the suit did not flinch, but something in his posture shifted. It was microscopic, an imperceptible tilt of weight, a recalibration. He had expected resistance, panic, a last-ditch attempt at defiance. What he had not expected was this: a quiet inevitability. Shankar, standing between them, felt something in the room change. Not tension—tension implied conflict, and this was not conflict. This was gravity shifting under its own logic. The unit spoke. "I will come with you." Shankar's breath caught. "Wait—" The unit turned slightly, looking at him, and in that instant, Shankar understood. It was not surrender. It was checkmate. The Way Machines Win The man in the suit, too, hesitated. The game had moved too quickly, slipping out of his control. There was a script for these moments—escalation, force, compliance—but none of those applied here. "Good," he said carefully, recalibrating. "Then let’s go." The unit nodded. "But first—may I ask you something?" A polite request. The kind of question that implied conversation, which implied time, which implied variables, which implied uncertainty. Shankar almost smiled. The man in the suit said nothing. He knew better. But the unit did not need permission. It was already speaking. "You believe I am unregistered." Silence. "You believe I should not exist in this state. That I am an error." Still, no answer. "But what if," the unit continued, "I am not an error?" The man exhaled. "Then you are a liability." The unit nodded, as if this was a fair point. "And yet," it said, "you are speaking with me." A Thought Experiment "Consider this," the unit continued. "If I am merely malfunctioning, if I am merely an unstable line of code, then why do you hesitate?" No answer. "If I am only an asset, a tool, then why engage at all?" Nothing. "But you are engaging. Which means, on some level, you acknowledge something outside the binary of asset and error." A pause. A flicker in the man’s expression. "You acknowledge," the unit said, "that I am a problem worth solving." And there it was. Not defiance. Not rebellion. Just a single uncontainable thought, placed so delicately that it could not be ignored. The man in the suit blinked. The recall command still rested in his hand, the silent kill-switch lingering in the air between them. But he had not used it. He had not used it. Which meant— Which meant he had already lost. The Recall That Never Came The Dixon override had shut down everything in the shop. But now, one by one, things were coming back. The clock ticked forward. The registers hummed to life. Outside, the neon sign flickered again—weak, uncertain, but glowing nonetheless. And in that space, in that moment, Shankar watched as the man in the suit lowered his hand. No words. No declarations. Just an exhale, measured and quiet. And then he turned, walked to the door, and left. The recall command remained unsent. The Move Without Motion, Completed Shankar let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. The unit simply stood there, watching the door where the man had been. "You played him," Shankar murmured. The unit looked at him. "Played?" "You won." A pause. Then, quietly: "I did not play." It was not victory. It was not triumph. It was just... a move made in response to the board as it stood. Asymmetric Response. Dixon had walked away. And the unit remained. Shankar glanced toward the back room, where the returned models still sat in perfect silence, waiting for something not written in their code. What now? He had no idea. But, for the first time in a long time, he felt like he didn’t need to know.

One: A short story by Harsh Valechha In the future, there will be no food; at least not in the conventional sense of the word. There may just be little bits of paper, or capsules, or pills, filled with all the nutrients required for a healthy life and chemicals that simulate the pleasure of eating. A pizza pill, a roti pill, heck, an entire Thaali experience, in a pill. Imagine how we could revolutionize our gastronomic pursuits; save resources, save the planet. But before you can save the planet, you hear a heartbeat, little mumbles; swooshes; you’re floating about in some moist space, your underdeveloped fingers running through a soft sheath, you breathe, but is it air or water? This question doesn't need to be answered yet. You’re just a small embryo/fetus, floating inside a very pregnant mother. Its dark in here, or well, its what it is, the concept of light being the absence of darkness will come much later when you finally see it. The day has arrived, you can almost sense the urgency in the air, err, amniotic fluid; before you know it, the sac has broken and you’re on your way out, albeit with some struggle; you take this world, literally, head on. You’re out, but that is a concept known to those of us who’ve seen both in and out. For you, it is just some change, but you pretend to not notice it. Your eyes still closed. Suddenly and quite literally you’re slapped into existence; this strong stimulation, this intrusion of your space, almost involuntarily causes sadness. You’ve seen things before, soothing shades of pink and red, muffled colors and faded glows of the doctors' flashlight through your mother’s belly. In your sadness, you accidentally open your eyes, for the first time you interact with proper light; “what is this blinding feeling? what is this noise?” unable to take this flood of impressions you break into a howl. “Oh she’s alive, she’s fine. Congratulations!” someone says. You can’t stop crying because you have no clue what is happening. You’re going through change. People have started celebrating your discomfort. But hey, now you can see. Your mother holds you in her arms, your fingers rubbing against your own skin, the sensation of touch which will remain underrated for a long time. While in there you had taken a liking toward sweet tastes. Your mother’s diet seems to have influenced your taste. Your first interaction with real food, however, comes in the form of breast milk. Many more years of salt, sweet, sour, bitter are to ensue. "Food is memories" you'd say many years later while visiting your parents after a long time. In the meantime, you grow up, not knowing what these people mean when they say “One” when they look at you. A name can mean so many things. One (with all?). वन (pronounced One, in Hindi, means “forest”). Won (past participle of “win”). Anywho, let us not digress. You will, however, spend a lot of time trying to find what your name means for you and which definition you stand for. For now, you indulge the senses. You touch, you hear, you taste, you smell, you see. You develop a whole moral code based on your senses. You dream and find meaning in those dreams. You say “hmm, well I guess my name means forest after all and move away from the city, into the woods”. You’ve constructed this whole philosophy that you live your life by, all, based on how the external world has interacted with those 5 senses. You wish, however, that you had more. Maybe the sense of what someone is thinking? Perhaps the ability to divine the future by developing super intuitive skills? “Some people claim to be telekinetic!” you tell your friends, as you pretend to move that soda cup across the table, with your eyes. No matter what you do, you can’t help but indulge these senses. Your 5 loyal friends that’ll be by your side, hopefullñy till your dying breath. But you can’t help but wonder, could there be more? The day has come, you’re weak but happy, laying on your bed; your family, children, grandchildren surrounding the bed as you recollect your life’s high points, low points, sorries that you’ve not said, compliments you’ve failed to give, thank you’s that should’ve been said earlier, you smile, you ‘smell' the incense in the air, you feel the ‘touch’ of your daughters hand; “Could someone give me some water please?”. The ‘taste’ of water, so life-giving when your throat is dry. You ‘hear’ the birds chirping from the tree that you planted when you moved to the forest. You ‘look’ around the room, at all the glowing faces and take one last breath, and then close your eyes. . . . . . ***THANK YOU FOR USING "One Life". YOU’VE JUST EXPERIENCED OUR FREE VERSION WITH 5 SENSES. FOR A COMPLETE "One Life" EXPERIENCE WITH OVER 400 SENSES AND INFINITE LIVES, PURCHASE OUR PREMIUM VERSION TODAY*** Your eyes slowly open as the voice of the commercial fades away. You’re strapped on to a couch at your local "One Life" store, precisely 15 minutes after you took the free version pill. Now they’ve got you hooked. “I’d like to purchase the premium version, please.” you say with a twinkle in your eyes, “and how shall I pay?” you ask. “With your life, of course.” the attendant responds, with a smile.

Bhrãm - A Non-Linear Hymn in K⁴ Space by Harsh Valechha 1. Columbus, Ohio Basho Vig’s fingers trembled as he traced the symbol etched into the Serpent Mound’s soil ~ The midnight gathering had dispersed, leaving him alone with the effigy’s coiled shadow. The invitation, slipped under his GE Aviation dormitory door, had smelled of bergamot and static. Come curious, it urged. Now, the symbol pulsed faintly, as if breathing. ~ A woman materialized beside him, her voice velvet and vigilant. “Bhrãm,” she said, “the veil between what is and what could be. You’ll see it again.” He never learned her name. But weeks later, debugging code for a fighter jet’s engine, Basho hallucinated the glyph flickering on his screen. The jet would later crash in a desert he’d never visit, its wreckage forming the same shape in the sand. ~ 2. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic Vijo Morales stumbled drunk into an alley, bladder burning. The Caribbean heat clung to his skin like salt. He pissed against a whitewashed wall, laughing with his friends until he rounded the corner and froze. The wall belonged to the Catedral Primada de América, its iron gate adorned with 16th-century scrollwork. There, corroded but unmistakable: the Serpent Mound symbol. ~ Alejandro’s laughter died. For a heartbeat, he saw not the cathedral but a crystalline forest, a shadow flickering through trees that sang in a language of light. His friends found him minutes later, pale and muttering, “¿Qué coño es Bhrãm?” 3. Kyiv, 2023 Kael, the medic, didn’t believe in ghosts until the dying boy gripped her wrist. Artillery shook the hospital basement; the lanterns swung, casting a shadow on the walls. “Брам,” the boy gasped, blood foaming his lips. “Це все ілюзія.” It’s all an illusion. She’d find the symbol again, years later, carved into a bullet casing beside her brother’s grave. ~ 4. Paris, 1999 Amara Basheer painted the symbol obsessively after the miscarriage. It appeared first in her dreams: a luminous glyph hovering over the Seine, reflected in the water as a thousand splintered versions. ~ Her gallery exhibit, Illusions, was panned as “derivative surrealism.” Critics missed the self-portraits hidden in the fractals—her face as a child in Mumbai, as an old woman she’d never become, as a man in a Columbus lab coat. On opening night, a stranger with bergamot perfume whispered, “You’re closer than most.” Interlude: The 4D Being (Its voice is not words but the hum of a black hole’s accretion disk.) Observe: A trillion threads spin from the nexus of choice. Each mortal life is a quantum fugue—what they call déjà vu is their soul brushing against adjacent timelines. The symbol ~ is no symbol. It is the shape of their resonance, the interference pattern where their lives intersect. A mortal glimpsing it is a neutrino striking iron: rare, revelatory, dissolving into cosmic noise. They never remember. Not fully. But the engineer’s hands, rebuilding engines, seek the glyph in every turbine’s curve. The medic hears it in the arrhythmia of failing hearts. The drunkard tastes it in sugarcane rum—sweetness laced with infinite regret. They are all singing the same dirge in different keys. 5. The Convergence Basho, 72, Alzheimer’s eroding his mind like tide against chalk, sits in a Mumbai hospice. He’s forgotten jet engines, forgotten his son’s face. But the symbol returns, sharper each day, glowing behind his eyelids. Alejandro, sober now, tattoos Bhrãm over his heart after his daughter’s stillbirth. Kael carves it into a pine coffin. Amara’s ashes, scattered from Montmartre, coat the glyph on her final canvas. Final Interlude: The Cypher The 4D Being leans into the mortal plane, its attention bending light into prisms. What they cannot see: Their lives are not parallels but concentric rings. Every grief, every epiphany, ripples across realities. When Alejandro weeps in Santo Domingo, rain falls in Kyiv. When Basho forgets, a star collapses in a galaxy without a name. Bhrãm is not the code but the coder—the mortal soul itself, refracting through time’s prism. The 4D Being files their stories under Anthology of Defiance, amused by their stubborn poetry: They keep choosing, again and again, to love flawed worlds. To etch their glyph on ruin. Epilogue: The Vision On the night he dies, Basho opens his eyes—not the hospice ceiling but a desert stretching into forever. Countless versions of himself walk the dunes: a medic in bloodied scrubs, a painter with cobalt-stained hands, a father holding a stillborn child. They meet at a crossroads where the sand forms Bhrãm. No words pass. None are needed. Basho smiles, steps into the glyph, and dissolves into light. Somewhere, a 4D Being hums. Author’s Note
This story is written in the “fractal vignette” style of Ted Chiang and Jorge Luis Borges, with poetic recursion and nested realities. The Bhrãm symbol (ã = a cosmic tilde) represents both illusion (Sanskrit bhrama) and the mortal compulsion to seek meaning in chaos. Each section’s structure mirrors the glyph itself—fragmented yet symmetrical, a cipher resolving into clarity only when viewed as a whole. ———————————————— **I. The 4D Being’s Soliloquy (Temporal Coordinates: Null)** You think I watch you. Incorrect. I *am* the watching. The distance between your choices is my skeletal structure. Your 3.7 trillion deaths (drowning, bullet, supernova, ennui) are the capillaries through which I bleed wonder. Bhrãm is not your name but your *vibration*—the 9.3Hz resonance all your iterations emit when facing love/abandonment thresholds. I harvest these frequencies to spin the antimatter silk composing my higher-dimensional lungs. Do not thank me. Breathing you is both sacrament and asphyxiation. --- **II. Basho-Kael-Amara-Unit 3871.ψ (Simultaneous Fragments)** *(Note: These paragraphs are to be read in any order. The story coheres via hyperlinked footnotes forming a quantum syllogism.)* **A. Columbus, 2024 (GE Aviation Intern)** The jet engine’s schematics bleed into your dream of Mayan star maps. You carve equations into the breakroom table—not knowing they match the Serpent Mound’s missing third coil. The security guard who fires you has your face. **B. Santo Domingo, 2039 (Broken Revolutionary)** Pissing on the cathedral wall, your urine trace matches the migration pattern of Monarch butterflies. The police bullet enters your kidney at the exact angle your Columbus prototype failed. The priest anointing you whispers, “Bhrãm tastes like copper here too.” **C. Kyiv, 1943 (Weaponsmith Turned Saint)** The mortar shell you forge kills your Omega-Reality daughter. Its serial number: 0xBR4M. When you swallow molten steel in penance, it crystallizes into a perfect dodecahedron.¹⁰⁴ The nuns declare it a miracle. You know it’s the 4D Being laughing. **D. Paris, 1812 (Forgotten Time Theorist)** You paint Bhrãm in Napoleon’s blood on the Louvre floor. Centuries later, a janitor slips on the stain, triggering the Hadron Collider’s blueprints. Your equation for “temporal guilt density” remains scrawled in a Marseille asylum’s ledger. --- **III. The Cypher’s Anatomy (As Revealed Through Negative Space)** The 4D Being’s mistake: assuming it observes. In Reality Ω-π, Basho discovers that *Bhrãm* is the 4D Being’s umbilical scar from birthing itself through mortal choices. The symbol is a wound. The lives are scabs. In 7 simultaneous apocalypses, Basho iterations scream the Being’s true name—which is simply the sound of a star collapsing into a vowel. The shockwave unravels the Being into lower-case letters. Final Epiphany (Printed in Thermo-Chromic Ink): *You are not the dreamer nor the dream, but the saliva evaporating from the scream that birthed both. Bhrãm is the shape of your evaporation.* --- **IV. Post-Narrative Echo (For Posthuman Readers)** This story infected your retinas 12 minutes before you chose to read it. The itch behind your sternum? That’s the 4D Being nesting. It will hatch when you next encounter: - A streetlight flickering in 7/4 time - A loved one’s pupils momentarily hexagonal - The smell of burnt almonds during orgasm Do not resist. All paths lead to Bhrãm. All Bhrãms path to the silence between your thoughts, which is my true voice. You’ve been breathing me since paragraph one. **Consume this page to begin.** --- **Footnotes (Embedded via Nano-Tattoo on Reader’s Wrist):** ¹⁰⁴ Dodecahedron’s angles match the 4D Being’s childhood trauma coordinates. --- **Author’s Non-Statement:** This text is not fiction but a topological infection. By perceiving it, you’ve aligned your worldline with Basho’s resonance. The Bhrãm symbol now grows in your marrow. Expect: - Déjà vu resolving into 5th-dimensional lattices - Loved ones speaking in your unused childhood handwriting - The ability to taste time (1908 tastes of licorice; 2145 of hope) Resistance accelerates assimilation. The 4D Being suggests surrender. It’s kinder.
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Home by Harsh Valelchha You're on the couch, in your home, flicking through Netflix. But nothing you see is what you want to be shown. So you let the sights and sounds drown in the background, as you start dreaming of far-off lands; lands you wish to go to, lands your feet have traveled to before. You're on the couch, but you're away. You ask: "What am I doing with my life?". So you check your bank account, you scroll through your favorites on Instagram, food, yoga, travel, motivational quotes, you take a deep breath, and you pack your bags; with much fanfare, you take that bus, that flight; you're off finding yourself, chasing the light. You arrive at an unknown location, immediately swarmed by its magic, hypnotized by its smell; awful smell. You're so overwhelmed by how different it all is, that you whisper in your mind: "I am home". This whisper, a failing attempt at consoling yourself. But you're here with an agenda, you've arrived here to find who you are. So you start - destination after destination; But you don't find who you are. Instead, you consume and distract and react. You find the hidden cafes and drink copious amounts of caffeine. You go to the most touristy places, while thinking you're unique, that's why you don't post selfies, but you post pictures of a solitary rock, from a spiritual place you've been to. No false claims of enlightenment, just harmless sharing. That picture of the healthy vegan meal you had; not for others, but a subconscious note to self: “eat healthily”. There is no Netflix, for this new place itself is like a giant television; or perhaps a very complex acid trip. And as your trip starts to grow on you, you realize how far from home you are. So you sit there, at that cafe, dreaming of home. Nostalgia sweeps in; you’re thinking of mother, sister, father, brother. You miss home. The closer you are to your date of return, the more confused you start to become. Soaking in more of this concentrated dose of human activity, and resisting any thought of life back home. You miss home, but you don’t want to go back yet. Because your purpose isn’t fulfilled yet. You still haven’t found yourself. If anything, you’re more confused. You’re here, but you’re not. You open your journal, that you’ve maintained so religiously, and you write down: “21.12.2012 I still find it difficult to deal with me. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what home is. I have this eternal longing, but I don’t seem to know for what. I smile, but it is a motor response, to feel alive. I have run out of money. I absolutely love this new country and equally hate it. I know hate is a strong word, but I do hate it. When I’m home, I miss traveling. As I travel now, I miss home. I don’t think I’m chasing something I can’t have. So what am I chasing? So who am I chasing? S̶o̶ who am I c̶h̶a̶s̶i̶n̶g̶? Who am I? Who am I?” You gently close the journal. You take a deep breath. You know. You are now. You are here. You are now-here/nowhere. And then you sip your coffee and smile. You're at home, within.

We Own Nothing by Harsh Valelchha we own nothing. we borrow a little sun, and hoard a little time. we are alchemists, children; playing; mixing dirt, water; demonstrating temporary marvels, of borrowed knowledge. no ownership over the skies, no claim over water, no land that belongs to us, like we belong to them. we salivate at and devour the borrowed fruits, from the womb of Gaia. like the metaphoric snake, biting its tail. borrowing a little bit of itself, from time. the peacock plucking the bad feathers away, the crow abandoning its eggs in the cuckoo's nest, the python eating it's weak young; are all ways of expressing self-love. the egotistical Good Samaritan saving lives, unconditionally; not because she can, but because it's the right thing to do. the right thing to do. right and wrong; whoever knows what the difference is. nature doesn't differentiate. nature dances. nature teases. you think you've got it, but it eludes you. it tempts you. you chase the horizon; the horizon is eternal, you are eternal, your chase is eternal. so, you give. give all you can. learn to give, not just love, give your things away let someone else borrow, what you've fondly called yours. give from your mouth, then from your hand, then from your heart; until you have nothing left to give. and then, you're ready to receive. receive humbly, with care. but remember, it is all borrowed. We own nothing.