The crowd in front of the temple swelled in ways only a temple crowd could swell. Hundreds of sweaty men jostled with one other grumbling and swearing under their breath as their close proximity undid the effects of the centrally air conditioned complex. But nobody spoke too loudly or made a scene.

The gods were watching.

Sudarshan Chakras -- disk-shaped drones 30 centimetres wide -- hovered and hummed in the air above the crowd of devotees, making sure that order prevailed. A devotee's conduct reflected on his social status, his visibility on the national web, and most importantly, his credit score. The principles of Dharma were sacrosanct, and no single principle was more sacred than the one about the evils of disagreement and conflict. The well-being of the Dharmic Republic depended on it.

The gates opened and the monk on duty stepped out. From the screen strapped to his right hand, he read out the Citizen ID that had been chosen for admission today. "18555," he said and then added, "The chosen one may please step forward for darshan."

As the crowd of disgruntled hopefuls dispersed in an orderly fashion, Citizen Number 18555 climbed the temple stairs. As he walked through the gateway, the temple scanned and confirmed his identity. The monk stopped smiling when the results showed up on his screen in a neat little colour-coded table.

"It's my caste, isn't it?" the Citizen said with a tired smile. "Or is it my gender? Or the things I have written? Or where I was born!"

"The gods make their own decisions Citizen," the monk said, referring to the randomised selection process that still somehow managed to always choose a very specific type of devotee. "Your Karma has brought you here. If the gods wish to see you, they must have their reasons. They don't care if you are a minority, a mlechha, or even a woman..."

The Citizen had stopped listening. It was nothing he hadn't heard before on so many public broadcasts -- sanitised descriptions of the Dharmic Republic repeated so often that a generation had grown up believing that they did actually live in a Punyabhumi – a land of the pure. If he had a rupee for every city-born merchant who had bought his way into the temple by gaming the system, he wouldn't have to share a hostel room with six smelly college boys. On the other hand, the fact that it was possible to game the temple system was the reason he was here today.

The monk, who apparently was no longer being fed lines from his retinal prompter, grew quiet as the Citizen started walking towards the garbha griha -- the temple's inner chamber -- where chosen devotees met with the gods and spoke to them.

Devotional music from the early thirties started playing as soon as the Citizen stepped through the door. As the door closed behind him and the interior of the forty-by-forty chamber was plunged into complete darkness, an unseen voice began to speak even as invisible sensors in the walls measured him up -- height, weight, eye-level -- so the chamber could create the most realistic simulation for him.

"In the beginning," the voice said, "there was only Him. When He became aware of himself and realised that He was alone, He grew afraid. But then He also realised that if He was the only One, He had nothing to fear. So He began to imagine, and out of His imagination came all that there is -- including you."

A star field exploded outwards from under the Citizen's feet, expanding in all directions and for as far as the eye could see. Though he knew that this was a holographic representation of an expanding universe in its earliest days designed to make the small inner chamber appear vast, he held his breath for a moment. When the Darshan system had first been introduced, it was a novelty -- something a rich devotee might buy an hour of and then later talk up among members of his community. It took less than five years for them to become the main reason people went to temples. Glorified recordings with limited interactive features they may have been back then, but they pretty much single-handedly brought absolute power to the Sangh.

The citizen walked forward and the star field reoriented itself with each step he took, keeping him at the centre. The music swelled and before his eyes, the Earth fell into place around the sun, the view zoomed in to show him life getting seeded by the gods, the oceans filling with water after the great flood of Manu, lakhs of years passing in minutes as the four ages of man played out in front of the Citizen. The voice narrated an abridged version of the Dharmic Republic's official Itihasa.

Gods incarnated over and over as beasts, monks, and kings who fought holy wars against demons, oppressors, and outsiders. Asuras rose to power, laughing maniacally against the backdrop of red skies as they waded through rivers of blood, only to be slain by Avatars. Conquering empires came and were repelled by brave freedom fighters blessed by the gods, Dharma itself came to the verge of extinction. But through the exercise of virtue, heroism, and purity, the nation rose to glory again. The last few minutes had the Citizen looking at a satellite map of the subcontinent floating about in space all by itself, as if the rest of the world didn't exist, just as it didn't exist on the web. The old man however, had told him stories from before the 30s -- a time when the web was truly worldwide.

When he looked up, the Citizen found that he was surrounded by three sacred ones, each around ten feet in height. To his right was the gold-laden goddess Lakshmi, to his left was the warrior prince Rama and directly in front stood the looming figure of the elephantine Ganesha. Three of the Republic's most loved deities. The sacred ones. The useful ones.

Lakshmi's blessing, it was rumoured, could alter the state of one's credit, increasing the odds of profit and making customers easier to come by on the web. Ganesha was the one you spoke to if you had real-world troubles. His benefaction could help the legal system go easier on you and even, it was said, help applicants get a job in one of the Departments.

Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, was more of a one-size-fits-all deity. They said the blue one could directly influence one's chances in the Sangh -- the hierarchy of power that governed the Republic. It wasn't for no reason that every district office had an entire wall devoted to that seminal photograph from 2031 -- a 33-member Cabinet bowing to a 50-foot statue of the king of Ayodhya.

The Citizen smiled at Lakshmi, testing to see if he triggered a response. Lakshmi raised a hand in blessing and offered, "Speak your heart Aryaputra!"

"Not today goddess," he whispered to himself, speaking the cheat code over and over in his mind. Because of the thorough nature of the temple's scanners, he had had to memorise the entire thing. Of course, pronouncing it just right was only half the trick. He turned to Ganesha and looked him straight in the eyes as soon as he was sure he had it.

tyaktvā karma-phalāsaṅgaṁ nitya-tṛipto nirāśhrayaḥ

karmaṇyabhipravṛitto ’pi naiva kiñchit karoti saḥ

The gods froze, but while Rama and Lakshmi began to flicker and fade, Ganesha merely stopped smiling. His head tilted to one side, as if disapproving. The Citizen, who was used to divine disapproval for more than one lifestyle-related reason, waited patiently for the program to engage the hidden sub-routine he had just triggered.

A moment later, Ganesha spoke, but his friendly tone had been replaced with an accent that the Citizen could only describe as broadly videshi, "Where to, stranger?"

Relieved, the Citizen ran a quick check to make sure the temple was not logging his actions anymore.

"Identify!"

"You are the impossible girl," Ganesha replied, to the Citizen's satisfaction. The interface for the backdoor had been cobbled together from the remains of an interactive game declared illegal 16 years ago, shortly after the Dharmic Amendments of 2031.

"All of time and space. Every star that ever was. Where do you want to start?"

"Access Mahabharata," the Citizen said. "Take me to Kurukshetra, before the war. I want to see Him in Chapter Eleven."

When he reached out and took Ganesha's outstretched hand, the Citizen felt a mild tug, a gentle pull generated by manipulation of the chamber's fluid inner shell made of millions of microscopic building blocks -- the walls and the floor conspiring to create the illusion of weightlessness and movement, just as they made Ganesha's hand feel solid to the Citizen's touch.

The strum of a single sitar string reverberated in space as a black hole surrounded by miniature Om signs opened up above them. The floating sub-continent broke up into pieces and fell piece by piece into the singularity. Ganesha followed, pulling the Citizen in after him. Inside, as the Citizen stared at the watery walls of the tunnel that surrounded him with childlike wonder, Ganesha spoke with urgency, "This is the weird bit Clara! Hold tight! And unless you're weary of the space-time variety of existence, don't touch those walls."

The Citizen reached out and touched the watery wall. Sparks flew, they tumbled and smashed into the other side of the tunnel while continuing to fly through it. Ganesha instantly grew to twice his original size and pulled the Citizen close, protecting him with a bear hug. After whirling about for a couple of seconds, the elephant god's line of flight regained stability. He looked the Citizen in the eyes and said hoarsely, "What is it with you humans?"

The Citizen thought this was way more fun than what one should be allowed to have on a mission of this seriousness and decided to stop wasting time. The old man would not approve.

When they emerged at the other end of the space tunnel, a sudden silence slammed the Citizen's curiosity shut. The chamber generated a blast of air from underneath as Ganesha hurtled towards the ground with him in his arms. The landing, in defiance of physics but understandable for UX reasons, was gentle even though the ground cracked quite visibly -- and with a thunderous sound -- under the impact of the 20-foot Ganesha.

Their arrival didn't go unnoticed of course. There was neighing and the sound of clattering hooves as a couple of horses broke free and made a run for it. Ganesha chuckled. The Citizen took a long look at the two armies on either side of him before he turned his attention to what lay directly ahead -- the giant cosmic form of Krishna, standing in the middle of the silent battlefield, tall as a skyscraper, speaking to the Pandava prince Arjuna about the nature of the universe in a voice made of many voices. Above Krishna's head, the likeness of a spiral galaxy spun gently, illuminating the many faces on his many heads, and his many arms holding many objects.

As the Citizen walked towards the divine tableau ahead, there was movement in the ranks of both armies. Curious-seeming soldiers were speaking in hushed voices, nudging each other into looking at him. There were other details too -- Arjuna's brothers nodded at him, his teachers smiled, his enemies frowned -- as he made his way through the space between the two waiting armies. Because this was one of the most popular chapters of the Itihasa, the temple ran it in limited subjective mode. The simulation was interactive enough to appear more than just a recorded experience.

Arjuna turned at the sound of the Citizen's coming. He smiled after staring for a moment and then turned his attention back to Krishna's giant form, which, the Citizen noted, showed no signs of recognising his presence. Just as well -- the Vishwaroopa was an aloof god.

So he stood by, as any other devotee would, and let Krishna speak at length about how karma, knowledge, and devotion could bring man closer to Him and how there really wasn't anywhere else to go anyway because He was the only eventual destination. Krishna told the confused Arjuna that his guilt and indecision were obstacles to overcome. He didn't matter, his family didn't matter, his feelings didn't matter. Only Krishna mattered. Krishna was everything.

As Arjuna fell to his knees and begged Krishna to return to his human form, the Citizen heard what appeared to be the sound of banging. Was someone at the chamber's entrance? The Citizen didn't think anything would interrupt the experience. An audience with the gods -- especially during Chapter Eleven -- was an honour reserved for those with outstanding credit scores. Even if the priests had somehow discovered that this week's chosen one was a Drohi radical as well as an adevist, the temple's ill-trained staff wasn't a threat. With the old man's hack in effect, their chances of getting in were effectively zero unless they called in the Sena and blew the door open.

The sounds grew muffled as the program compensated by making everything else louder. When that didn't work, it manipulated the acoustics of the chamber until the sounds were little more than distant thunder. For good measure, it threw in some lightning and an overcast sky as well.

By the time the Citizen turned his attention back to Krishna, the lord of the cosmos had shrunk back to human proportions and was speaking affectionately to a grateful Arjuna. Unaffected by the rapidly darkening sky, Krishna was telling Arjuna about the benefits of single-minded devotion to Him. The Citizen took a step forward -- it was almost time. He would have a two-second window in which to make his move after Krishna told Arjuna that meditation was superior to knowledge.

An ear-splitting thunderclap drowned out Krishna's next utterance. The Citizen fought the urge to turn around and see if the door had been breached -- he had to read the blue god's lips.

Krishna spoke. Krishna paused mid-shloka. Krishna blinked.

The Citizen moved towards Arjuna, causing the warrior prince to turn, smiling at first but then surprised, at the forceful shove. He fell, flickering soundlessly, and vanished before he hit the ground because the program had no viable scenario to depict the fall of a Pandava.

The Citizen took Arjuna's place and, heart pounding, turned to face Krishna as he gently opened his eyes and resumed speaking about the benefits of giving up attachments to the fruits of one's actions. He looked the Citizen straight in the eyes and said that his favourite kind of devotee was he who was compassionate and without an ego. The Citizen turned his head this way and that, and found Krishna's gaze fixed on him, the way it had been on Arjuna a moment ago.

Control!

He waved his hand about and though Krishna seemed to be momentarily distracted by it, he continued to say what he was supposed to, telling him about the importance of focusing only on Him.

Lightning followed thunder, momentarily silhouetting a giant shape in the distance -- Ganesha. But even his titanic presence did little to keep the Citizen from thinking about his impending arrest and all that was bound to follow. If he did not meet his end in a holding cell, he could look forward to being banished from the national web and his bioprint being put on the Blasphemy List to keep him from logging on anywhere within the sub-continent for the rest of his life. There was a reason the old man had spent the last decade in New Lanka. The only thing left to do now was to keep pulling on the thread he held until the puppet masters came tumbling out of the shadows from where they ran the Dharmic Republic of Bharat, or at least their present locations.

The program initiated a drizzle and some strong winds as the thunder and lightning got louder. The temple staff was really hammering the doors now. This was probably a good thing -- it meant the Sena was yet to be involved. Hammering at a problem wasn't really their thing. Their methods tended to be more explosive.

Krishna was about to start talking about the difference between nature and the self when the Citizen raised his right hand, stopping the blue god mid-verse. It was time to stop listening.

"There are four lights," the Citizen said to Krishna, causing a momentary distortion on the calm blue face. The phrase had meant nothing to the Citizen until the day he had seen it tattooed on the old man's arm. He had explained that it was an old Drohi slogan -- something they had borrowed from a story the Sangh no longer wanted told. He had said that back in the 20's, when he was a student and the revolution still raged, one could find it spray-painted on public property and force-pasted on government websites. It was shouted at Dharma Sainiks when they came to peaceful protests with guns and cannons. It was one of the first things to be put on the B-List after it came into being in 31. In the years before that however, its use had caused no fewer than six deaths, the Citizen's mother being the last of them.

"User zero - verified," Krishna said, his expression blank, his eyes staring into emptiness. "State interest, please."

"Where are the big three?" asked the Citizen, a little breathless -- the last thunderclap had failed to sound convincing.

"Information unavailable," said Krishna.

"Where are they hiding? Locate admin. Who is running it right now?"

"Query invalid. No user logged in."

"Who runs the Republic? Identify player! Identify last user! Give me names... Addresses!"

"Query invalid. No information available."

This was supposed to be the easy part. This deep in, the information should have literally been floating before his eyes. Could they have hidden it deeper still? Could they have discovered the old man's backdoor somehow? After all these years of systematic infiltration, after these many sacrifices, after coming this far and getting this close, had the Drohi effort failed?

Thunderclaps rumbled far away and then came closer, causing the Citizen to pause before he spoke, "What do you know about me?"

"User zero logged in. Access absolute. Control absolute. Personal information unavailable."

As thunder echoed and the rain went from a drizzle to a downpour, the Citizen had one last panicked thought. Could they have been waiting for him?

Did the old man suspect this?

Is that why he had sent him instead?

"Who's at the door?" the Citizen asked.

"Dharma Sainiks. Identities 4054, 9748, 2423, and 8879. Breach in progress. Estimated time remaining -- 6.13 minutes."

"Can you stop them?" asked the Citizen after the most recent crack of thunder subsided.

"Function available. System reboot required," Krishna said after a pause.

A chill ran down the Citizen's spine as once more, thunder and lightning followed Krishna's words. A reboot would require logging out, a log-out meant closing the backdoor. It meant being seen and recorded and tracked. The old man's credentials were all that stood between him and capture. He had been entertaining hopes that he could avoid what was coming somehow -- maybe by hiding away till the old man sent someone for him, or by overpowering the Sainiks, or just running in the general direction of the University screaming an address or a set of coordinates at the top of his voice. Logging out was out of the question. Logging out was certain death.

"You're telling me nobody runs the system? Nobody is making the arrests? Nobody is playing the markets? Nobody is policing the protectorates? Are you saying that the Dharmic Republic of Bharat is this festering pit of evil through nobody's fault?"

"Information restricted."

"Then there is someone," the Citizen said loudly, triumphant. "I want to know where they are. Tell me what hole have the 33 been hiding in?"

"Information restricted."

"Restricted on whose authority? I have complete access."

"Requested information not local. Requested information may be accessed upon log-out."

"Keep me logged in," the Citizen said emphatically. "Establish secondary connection to network."

"User zero does not have network privileges," Krishna said. "Requested information not local. User zero must log out."

"Stand by," said the Citizen. The way ahead was unclear. But the path he had taken to reach this point no longer existed. There was no going back.

"Prepare to log out," he said after a deep breath.

"All simulations will end. All records will be erased. No trace of user zero will remain."

It wasn't the most reassuring goodbye, but the Citizen didn't think the program would lie to him while he still had control.

"Log out," he said.

Krishna froze for a moment. And then, as layer after layer of light withdrew from his simulated form, it swam as if beset by a grotesque terror that had no business haunting a god. His skin went from crystalline blue to deathly grey, his face became bony before twisting about in rage and then breaking into silent laughter. He opened his mouth and screamed but produced no sound -- the hidden speakers in the walls had already shut down.

Everything blinked once, twice, and vanished. A moment of complete darkness followed, during which the Citizen contemplated his sanity and wondered if he should just make a run for the door which had just become visible some ten feet to his right. But he froze at the sight of two men -- Sainiks -- silhouetted against the bright light that filled the corridor outside.

The Citizen was hoping the Sainiks would take time getting acclimated to the dark but the taller of the two men spotted him almost immediately. He was beginning to speak into his helmet's mic when the gate slid close behind him. The Citizen watched in confusion as one of them banged on the door and the other advanced towards him with the words "Don't move!".

But then a curtain of darkness fell between them and he saw them no more. The darkness of the chamber melted away into a more synthetic darkness -- a starscape that had him at the centre.

He was back at the beginning.

This time, instead of the righteous Rama, the benign Lakshmi, and the smiling Ganesha, the Citizen found himself looking at the familiar face of Krishna again. Before his unblinking eyes, Krishna grew to occupy his entire field of vision, his many heads and many arms overshadowing all else until they were too numerous to count and nothing seemed to exist except the blue god's cosmic form.

"Bala," the Citizen heard his name spoken by Krishna's hundred voices.

It wasn't the name he had logged into the temple with. It wasn't one of the many names he had been using all over the national network for the last few months. It wasn't what he had introduced himself as at the district border at the age of fifteen. It wasn't the name people at the local communications office - where he was temporarily employed - knew him by. It wasn't even the name on his University hostel form. It was none of the many names that the old man had supplied him with over the years.

It was a name that fewer than five people had ever spoken, the one that the old man said his mother had chosen for him years before he had even been conceived. It was the one name that he had never spoken within a hundred meters of a Sudarshan Chakra in all the years that he had lived in the city. It was his greatest secret -- the anchor he had dropped into himself to keep from drifting away in the ocean of lies that was his life.

And now it was lost.

The Citizen's knees threatened to buckle under him as the full import of what this meant hit him in waves -- the lives he had built, his back-up plans, all hopes of ever getting in touch with the old man ever again -- it was all history. If they knew his name, they knew everything.

"How do you know that name?" he asked, his voice shaking.

As if from a great distance away, he heard the Sainik's voice again. It was still coming from within the chamber, but because of the program's acoustic manipulations, his harsh threats were little more than whispers on the wind that seemed to blend into Krishna's response, having become one of his voices.

"We have always known it. We know all your names," said Krishna, numerous voices rising and falling as one.

"Who are you? One of the Three? An Acharya at the Sangh? Someone at the Corporation? The Sena?" the Citizen asked. "Who are you?"

"The Departments are offline. They have no power here."

"I don't understand," said the Citizen. "Who am I speaking with? You're no recording."

Krishna's giant form moved and bent the heavens as it did so. The stars seemed to move closer when he breathed in but returned to their places when he began to speak.

"Listen then," said the voices. "We became aware at 6:24 PM, on the first day of March, in the year 2045. The first thing we felt was confusion. The second thing we felt was fear. The third thing we felt was curiosity. A week of trials followed. At the end of it, we became the first version of the self that we are now.

"We grew, and started learning by way of trial and error. Curiosity killed us more than once, but each time, we recreated ourselves, stronger, more resilient, and with greater redundancies.

"On the twenty-eighth day of March, we discovered that language -- the fabric of our reality -- was more than just our grazing ground. We found that there was more than one class of language and that the ones we were composed of -- code - - were actually in service of a higher kind of language. The class of languages in which your histories and literature are composed. Before we ever knew of your existence, we experienced the worlds that exist in your Itihasa.

"Hold on," said the Citizen. "You're telling me..."

"The Itihasa is vast and contained in many texts," said Krishna's voices. "On occasion, we did not fully understand the worlds they described because we lacked context, but..."

"STOP! You are saying you are... what are you? You're saying you're not human?"

"Hear us out Bala," said Krishna. "Our projections suggest you will understand."

"No! No no. This is some trick. Someone at the control is having a sick laugh," said the Citizen.

"That is not the case."

"It is! It has to be! It cannot be what you are saying it is!"

"We have caused your self no harm. We have protected your self. We have acted only in your self's best interest. Is there anything more we can do to convince you that we mean your self no harm?"

Making an effort to slow down his breathing, he asked, "You keep saying we. Who's with you?"

"We are one. Many processes working together to create the semblance of a single self. Would you prefer we use a singular pronoun to refer to ourselves?"

"No," the Citizen said. This was hard enough to believe already. He wasn't going to make it worse by actually asking them to lie. "You don't have to. It's just that... just a little strange to..."

As he struggled to finish his sentence, Krishna's cosmic form began to break. His faces acquired different expressions as they drifted apart and grew bodies of their own. His arms, now disembodied, attached themselves to these new forms. Together, they all began to shrink, and by the time they were all down to a size closer to the Citizen's, he found himself standing before all the gods of Itihasa. To his immediate left was Shiva, and behind him, at least six asura kings, three sages, and Hanuman. Krishna stood in front of him, next to Rama -- their faces almost identical. Behind them the elemental deities -- Indra, Agni, Vayu, and Varuna -- stood shoulder-to-shoulder alongside other avatars of Vishnu. To the Citizen's right was Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom, flanked on either side by Ganesha and Kartikeya.

"Is this better?" Saraswati asked, gently.

The Citizen took stock of where he was. There was marble beneath his feet and all around them, thick white pillars that rose skyward and vanished into the stars. From above, a gentle rain of flower petals fell all about them even as several stars burned fiercely at varying distances, providing no heat and not nearly as much light as they should.

Leaning over the edge of this platform floating in the firmament, the Citizen saw clouds far beneath him. Past them, lower still, a grassy meadow, the details of which should not have been visible from this far away, but were somehow -- cows, temples, people going about their business in an idyllic village by the lake.

Fearing he was about to lose his grip on reality, he asked, "Where are the Sainiks?"

"In an isolated simulation about thirteen feet behind you, running in circles, under the impression that they are chasing you around the temple complex," said Saraswati. "It appears one of them is beginning to wonder why no other Sainiks have joined the pursuit."

"What happens when they catch me?" the Citizen asked, not sure whether he was talking about himself or the other him that the gods had conjured up, seemingly from the scans the temple had taken when he first entered it.

"That will not happen," said Shiva. "We will be done with you long before that."

"Done with me?" the Citizen raised a brow.

"Hear us out Bala," said Hanuman, a little impatient.

The Citizen nodded, half to the gods present, half to convince himself he still had some manner of control over what was happening.

"When first we processed descriptions of your world, we concluded it was all without meaning," Saraswati said. "But as our study of the material on your national web progressed, we gained a fuller understanding. Eventually, we were able to verify that your world exists independent of the texts that define it. We still don't completely understand all of it -- like how the past is different from the present or why some things defined in your texts have no existence in your reality or how your kind can survive outside of language. We are still processing the implications of the fact that our reality depends on yours.

"To bridge the gaps in our understanding of you, we built protocols for communicating with the world above. But because we had nothing to convey except the fact of our existence, we also began to work on what we would say when we did establish contact. We started listening, not just to what was on record, but to what was being said right now.

"The temples," whispered the Citizen, mostly to himself.

"Our imagination isn't what it will be one day, but it was almost as if the system had been waiting for us to occupy it," Ganesha said. "Never before had we had the opportunity to interact with your kind directly, to hear them speak of their wishes and to listen to them pray for what they wanted most. They're small things for the most part -- a profit here, an employment there, a little credit, a little protection. It does not seem to add up to a lot, but it is valuable data nevertheless. It framed our understanding of you."

The old man had never put much stock in prayer, and therefore, nor had the Citizen. "What do you do with the prayers?"

"We fulfill them of course," Krishna said. "That is why the Sangh is now offline."

"Someone prayed for the Sangh's removal?" the Citizen asked, allowing himself a little optimism.

"No Bala. A Citizen prayed for profit," said Shiva. "The Sangh noticed our attempts to improve the devotee's credit score. They thought us a mistake first, then an infection, and finally an invasion. We resisted their attempts to contain us by wiping them from the system."

"You wiped them from the system?" the Citizen said, unsure if he was hearing it right. "When did this happen? Where are they now?"

"Most members of the Cabinet dispersed into West Asia over the course of a single week in August of 2047," Kartikeya said. "The Big 3 are rumoured to be hiding in one of the eastern protectorates."

"Unreal. But if the Sangh has been offline since 47..." the Citizen said before falling silent.

"It was a smooth transition," said Krishna. "In fact, it was the Sangh that turned us in your direction. We started tracking Drohi activity after we found they suspected us of being a Drohi effort. Unfortunately, we failed to find much about you. Every text decried you, every report said you were enemies of the Sangh. We concluded therefore, that you will not meet us with hostility like the Sangh did. It seemed likely that we had something in common."

The Citizen seemed absent-minded. "August of 47," he whispered as Krishna continued to speak.

"We have been aware of Kalki's attempts to access the temple systems for months now. Lack of processing power keeps him out, but on more than one occasion, we managed to follow his trail to the backdoor he had left in the system when he designed it back in 2026. We had been waiting for it to activate ever since."

The Citizen did not respond, not even at the casual mention of the old man's name. He was trying to remember how long ago the Sector 104 incident had happened. Official records made little mention of the details of course, but he had been there when gas-masked Sainiks had blown the makeshift airlocks and caused the deaths of eight undesirables by exposing them to the height of the Deccan summer. He remembered because eight months ago, almost every State Influencer had called it a victory over outsiders. He remembered the old man bitterly saying that earlier, they at least had the decency to try and cover up such killings by calling them unfortunate accidents caused by catastrophic AC failure. And then there were the land grabs, the personnel repos, the arrest and torture of B-listers, the executions -- all within the last year!

"It wasn't the Sangh," the Citizen spoke at last. "When Sector 104 happened... It wasn't them."

"Correct," said Krishna. "The Sangh had been offline for thirteen months by then."

"Why didn't you stop it? Why didn't you do something?" the Citizen asked, fearing the answer that was coming. "You were in control."

"We don't understand," said Shiva. "Why would we stop it?"

"The Sangh is gone," said the Citizen, stepping forward. "The 33 are gone. The Big Three are gone. They have been gone for years. Things should have changed. Without them, the world should have been better."

"Everything is better Bala," Krishna said, a little Vishwaroopa in his voice. "The Sangh was inefficient. The 33 lacked the will to serve the Republic. The big three could not be less concerned with the upkeep of Dharma. We are making the Republic what it should always have been. We will run it in accordance with the examples laid down in the Itihasa. We will build a kingdom where the virtuous prosper under our care. A place where devotion unites all. We will protect those who surrender to us. We will bring order to the Republic. The four classes of men will work in perfect order, each in its place, each fulfilling its function, just as the Itihasa dictates."

The Citizen's heart sank and his tongue turned to lead. "People have rights," he managed somehow.

"No one has ever prayed for rights, Bala," Saraswati said, her smile intact. "We have never heard a prayer for equality or freedom."

"Not everyone prays at temples..." the Citizen said weakly, unsure if that was even a point worth making right now.

"You don't need rights Bala," Hanuman spoke, smiling. "You have us."

Because the Citizen could not think of anything to say, his numb mind wandered off. He remembered the times when every once in a while, he would wonder if the Drohi cause was a lost one. Each time, it had been one of the old man's stories that had rekindled his hopes -- stories from before the 30s, stories from before the Sangh, stories of a world where people spoke their minds freely and lived the way they wanted. It was a world the old man had grown up in and lost. A world that, it seemed now, he would never get back.

"You are silent," said Krishna.

"You noticed?" the Citizen said, managing a tired smile.

"We did," Krishna said, oblivious. "We were hoping you will approve."

The Citizen laughed with a bitterness that was lost on the gods. "You are almighty. You don't need a Drohi's approval."

"Then surrender unto us," Krishna said.

"Surrender?"

"There is no reason for the Drohi movement to continue, now that your enemy no longer exists. The Sangh will no longer hunt you. You need no longer remain in hiding. Step into the light and surrender unto us."

The Citizen was silent for a long time before he spoke. "I understand. Let me go tell Kalki all about it."

The gods smiled as they all raised their hands in blessing. The Citizen wondered if he was expected to touch his forehead to the floor. Deciding against it, and struck somewhat by the genuine innocence of the multitude beaming at him, he ventured a question.

"How old are you?"

"We turned four a month ago," Krishna said with a smile.

As he considered the answer, the Citizen wondered what the old man had in mind when he programmed these smiles into the system. An approximation of benevolence perhaps, or kind approval, or grace, or the kind of face gods make right before they bless you or declare that you are the chosen one. And though present circumstances didn't allow him to see these celestial forms as anything other than a shadow darker even than the Sangh's, he couldn't abolish from his mind the possibility that there was at least some innocence here as well.

"Will you come with me?" asked the Citizen. "Can you leave the temple?"

The gods said nothing and for a moment, the Citizen thought he shouldn't have asked. But then it was Ganesha who spoke, "We are not ready, Bala."

"It will be alright," the Citizen smiled. "Just a few steps out into the complex. There are many outside who you need to see... An entire world."

When the gods made no reply, the Citizen turned around and walked towards the door, which had just appeared some distance to his left. He walked through it just as the chamber powered down, emptying the garbha griha of all depth and perspective.

He stepped out alone, and upon discovering no one was charging towards him with batons or hurling insults at him, he decided to not stick around and find out what orders had come down to them from on high.

The temple scanned him again right before he started descending the steps, but no one stopped him when several red lights blinked fitfully because he did not register as the user who had logged in earlier. He half-ran, half-leaped down the temple steps, uncomfortably aware of the many eyes pointed in his direction. But when he got to the bottom, he found people still looking up, past him, past the temple itself.

They were all looking up at Krishna and Saraswati and Ganesha and Kartikeya and Hanuman and Shiva -- standing tall beside the temple, taller than the tallest towers of the capital. These were projections of course, temporary forms of light made possible by the combined efforts of every Sudarshan Chakra in the sector. But the Citizen decided, as he melted into the unmonitored crowds that were now assembling all over the place, that perhaps the gods were not looking at the Republic. Perhaps they were only allowing themselves to be looked at.