New Delhi, India — August 15, 2025, 8:19 AM
The floor trembled.
At first, Aryan Sen Gupta assumed it was just another of Delhi's heavy metro lines passing underground. The vibrations were familiar: a gentle rattle of his ceramic cup, a low hum through the concrete. But the hum didn't stop. It grew deeper. Louder. Then the bookshelf toppled. The floor rolled under his feet. That's when he knew.
Earthquake.
The kind that doesn't just shake, but swallows.
Aryan darted toward the window of his 11th-floor apartment. From there, he had an almost ceremonial view of the city's bones: the domed head of Rashtrapati Bhavan to the west, the ancient pride of Purana Qila to the east. But today, something else ruled the skyline—panic. Sirens. Dust plumes. Shouts echoing from buildings that had stood since the Nehru era.
He staggered backward, fumbling for his phone—never made it.
CRACK.
A shriek of metal tore the air, and then the ceiling collapsed. A single beam, cold and fast, crushed his body beneath its weight. There was no time for last words. Just an unfinished breath.
And then—nothing.
Or not quite nothing.
He felt suspended—mind intact but bodiless, floating in a depthless dark. There was no pain, no breath, no sound except... a hum. Deep. Mechanical. Like a turbine powering up in the distance.
Then came a voice.
[Rebirth sequence initiated.][Subject: Aryan Sen Gupta.][Timeline divergence confirmed: Earth-PX011 / Sector: IND.][Mission Queue initializing...]
A pause. Then—
[Welcome, User. Your first mission is: Become the Prime Minister of India.]
Aryan should've panicked. But he didn't. The voice didn't feel like hallucination. It felt like clarity. Like purpose made audible.
Then, suddenly, light. A thousand white sparks flooded his vision.
And then—he screamed.
Or rather, cried.
India, 1958 — West Bengal, early morning
He was cold. Wet. Blinking against an explosion of light.
Voices shouted. He couldn't understand the language—not at first. His limbs flailed. Someone slapped his back. He gasped.
Then the realization struck harder than the earthquake.
He wasn't a man anymore.
He was a newborn.
An infant—alive and screaming—wrapped in a coarse white cloth, in the hands of a sweating midwife.
The woman's voice trembled with joy, "He's breathing! Aryan's breathing! Maa Durga has blessed him!"
They cheered. But Aryan wasn't cheering.
Inside his mind, twenty-seven years of memory from another life were pounding against the edges of a tiny skull. His past—college degrees, failed campaigns, late-night research, cynical articles, white papers buried in bureaucratic silence—it all poured in, but there was no way to express it.
No mouth that could speak of it. No hands that could hold it.
Just the blaring, inescapable truth:
He had died. And now, he was back. In 1958. In a different India. With a second chance.
He wept—not from confusion, but clarity.
The System spoke again.
[Welcome, User. You are now in a mirrored reality of post-independence India. Events will be similar, but not identical.][Your primary mission: Become the Prime Minister of India.][Unlock future missions and system rewards by solving critical national problems.]
[Warning: Time progression is real. System cannot reverse events. Choose actions wisely.]
Even in the chaos of his tiny, new form, Aryan thought only one thing:
"I'm not going to waste this life."
India had failed him once.
Now, he would build a new one.
Not from protest, not from papers.
From power.
From within.
And this time… he would not be ignored.