THE_ALGORITHM_OF_FATE

System_Log: The_Meeting

The touch lasted only a second, but the static shock was enough to make them both pull back.

Aryan rubbed his thumb against his palm. It felt like he had just touched an exposed wire.
"We can't talk here," he said, his voice struggling to find its corporate, professional pitch. "People are staring."

It was true. The tea seller was watching them with wide eyes, holding the ladle of boiling milk mid-air. In Mumbai, a boy and a girl staring at each other in the rain was usually a scene from a movie or a fight.

"My car is parked there," Aryan pointed to his grey SUV. "I promise I'm not a psycho. I just... I need to show you the data."

Kavya hesitated. She looked at the crowded street, then back at Aryan’s ID card hanging from his neck: Senior Data Scientist, NeuralCore Systems.
"Okay," she whispered. "But if you try anything, I have a pepper spray in my bag, and I'm from Delhi originally. I know how to use it."

Aryan managed a weak smile. "Noted."

The Evidence

Inside the car, the silence was heavy. The rain drummed rhythmically on the roof. The air smelled of wet upholstery and Kavya’s perfume—something like jasmine and old books.

Aryan opened his laptop. The blue light illuminated their faces.
"Look," he said, turning the screen toward her.

He played the video loop.
The AI-generated woman—Kavya—looked out from the screen, mouthing the words: Find me in Kashi.

Kavya gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. Her breath fogged up the window.
"That’s... that’s my saree," she whispered. "My grandmother’s. I have it in my cupboard. I’ve never worn it. I’ve never posted a photo of it online. How does your computer know about it?"

"It doesn't," Aryan typed furiously, bringing up the source code. "That’s the problem. This model was trained on public stock images from 2024. You shouldn't exist in this dataset. Statistically, the chance of the AI hallucinating your exact face, scar and all, is one in a trillion."

"It's not a hallucination, Aryan," Kavya said softly. She wasn't looking at the screen anymore; she was looking at the rain. "It's a memory."

Aryan scoffed, his scientific brain kicking in. "Memories are chemical synapses in the brain. They don't leak into Python script."

"Don't they?" Kavya turned to him. Her eyes were dark, intense. "I’m a Historian, Aryan. I work at the museum in Kala Ghoda. I deal with the past every day. Sometimes, the past refuses to stay dead."

She reached into her bag and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook. She flipped it open to a page dated three days ago.
There was a sketch.
It was a rough charcoal drawing of a man falling off a horse. He was wearing heavy armor. An arrow was buried in his shoulder.

Aryan felt the blood drain from his face.
The face in the drawing was his.

"I drew this on Tuesday," Kavya said. "At 3:00 AM. I woke up crying. I felt... I felt like I had lost something I would never get back."

Aryan checked his logs.
"Tuesday," he muttered. "3:00 AM."
He pointed to a timestamp on his screen.
Error Log: Model Collapse. Timestamp: Tuesday, 03:00:01 AM.

The exact second she woke up crying was the exact second his AI started generating her face.

"Quantum entanglement?" Aryan whispered. "No, that’s impossible on a macro scale."

"Stop trying to solve it with math!" Kavya snapped. She touched the scar on her forehead. "This isn't math. This is Kismet. This scar? I was born with it. My mother says it's a birthmark. But in my dream... it's where the sword hit me."

The car fell silent.
Suddenly, the laptop gave a loud, piercing screech.
SCREEEEEE.

Aryan jumped. The screen flickered violently. The video loop of Kavya disappeared.
Instead, the code began to rewrite itself. Fast. Faster than any human could type. Green text cascaded down the black terminal.

"What is it doing?" Kavya asked, shrinking back against the door.

"I... I don't know. It's executing a search protocol I didn't write."

The scrolling stopped.
A single image loaded on the screen. It wasn't a face this time.
It was a map. A blurry, satellite view of a specific location in Varanasi.
Specifically, the Manikarnika Ghat—the burning ghat where bodies are cremated 24 hours a day.

Below the map, a single date appeared in red text.
DATE: 14th January, 1725.

Aryan stared at the screen. "1725? That’s..."

"The year the Maratha empire was expanding into the North," Kavya finished, her voice hollow. "The year of the Great Fire in Banaras."

She looked at Aryan, and for the first time, fear replaced the shock in her eyes.
"Aryan, we didn't just meet by accident. We died there. Both of us."

Aryan slammed the laptop shut. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"This is insane. I need a drink. Or a doctor."

"We have to go," Kavya said. It wasn't a suggestion.

"Go where? A psychiatrist?"

"No," Kavya said, looking out at the dark Mumbai night. "To Varanasi. The AI gave us a location. If we want this to stop... we have to go back to where it started."