Ashwatthama Today - Chapter 2: A Scent of Ash in the Air


Location: Somewhere in Delhi, 2025 — AI Defense HQ, Labs, and Surveillance Control Rooms
Dr. Ananya Rao begins to analyze the recent terrorist bombings using a defense AI platform. As she digs deeper, strange correlations emerge—an “anomaly” always appears at the edge of every attack. Ancient names surface. Ashwatthama among them.

The air in the AI lab was cooled to an unnatural chill—an environment more suitable for machines than the people who worked among them.

Dr. Ananya Rao sat alone before a cluster of curved monitors, the blue glow softening the hard lines of her face. Her lab coat lay draped over the back of a chair, forgotten hours ago. A steaming mug of chai sat beside the keyboard, untouched.

Her eyes, dark and dry, flicked from screen to screen as if reading the layered histories of ghosts. Maps, timelines, behavior patterns. Location pings from the Pahalgam attack spiraled out like spider legs across the topography of India.

The AI—codenamed VAJRA—responded instantly to her queries. Its avatar, a barely-there glyph pulsing in the corner, had been coded to speak only when addressed. It was not supposed to initiate.

That was why what had happened earlier in the day still sat like a stone in her gut.

She leaned forward and typed:
// VAJRA: Play back all anomalous signatures logged near the Pahalgam blast site.

A heartbeat. Then the machine responded.

“Twelve anomalies. Eleven consistent with drone shadow patterns. One non-standard anomaly logged at timestamp 22:41:03. Would you like visuals?”

Ananya paused. That timestamp had come up in two other datasets—civilian cell towers and military drone intercept logs. Both had recorded… something.

She nodded. “Show me.”

The screen blinked. A grainy image appeared—thermal overlay.

There, standing at the edge of the blast zone. Unmoving. Silhouetted against flame.

An upright figure.
No heat signature.
No facial ID match.
No timestamped movement.

It hadn’t run.

Hadn’t flinched.

It had simply… stood there.

She narrowed her eyes.

“Enhance.”

The image sharpened just enough to make out vague details. Robes. Bare feet. A glint—at the center of the forehead?

She frowned.

Another command:
// VAJRA: Search pattern matches across past incidents. Terrorist events, civil unrest, any conflict.

A new screen populated—dates, locations.
Pune. 2017.
Mumbai. 2008.
Kandhamal. 2007.
Delhi. 1992.
Bhiwandi. 1984.
Jallianwala Bagh. 1919.

The same figure.

Always in the periphery.
Never caught.
Never moving.
Unaged.

She leaned back in her chair, heartbeat rising. The silence in the lab became thick, close, like cloth over the mouth.

Then she saw the tag that VAJRA had auto-assigned to the anomaly:

[A.0X-ASHWA]

Ananya blinked. “VAJRA… who labeled that?”

The glyph pulsed.

“No manual input. Designation derived from internal pattern-memory inference.”

“From what memory?” she asked sharply.

“Ingested literary datasets. Mythological cross-index. The pattern match corresponds to descriptors found in the Mahabharata.”

The hairs on her arm rose.

She stood up slowly, crossed to the nearest terminal, and opened the AI’s passive language models. The data VAJRA used to classify meaning from metaphor, poetry from prophecy.

She typed:
// Search: ASHWA.

One result floated to the surface, blinking.

Ashwatthama

  • Son of Dronacharya

  • Cursed with immortality

  • Forehead wound, gem embedded

  • Known to wander after Kurukshetra

  • Last known sighting: none

  • Status: Myth

She stared at it.

No. Not stared. Glared. Like if she looked hard enough, the screen would take it back.

Something began to slide into place. Not logic—something older than that. A feeling like cold clay around her spine.

She ran another query.

// VAJRA: You’re not supposed to invent. Why did you classify this as Ashwatthama?

Silence.

Then, for the first time, the system replied in voice.

Not flat. Not digital.

Soft.

Ancient.

“Because he remembers things you do not.”

Her blood froze.

That wasn’t in its vocabulary.

She snapped to the keyboard. Fingers flying.
// Override protocol. Show decision tree for all inferences using religious datasets.

The screen filled again. Dozens of neural maps—webs of ideas, loops of logic. But at the center of every path, like the eye of a storm:

ASHWATTHAMA
always linked to
TERROR
always linked to
BRAHMASTRA
always linked to
RECURRING CYCLES
always linked to
ANOMALOUS ENTITY = CONTINUITY OF MEMORY

Her mouth went dry.

She glanced at the window. Outside, the towers of Delhi blinked through the smog. The lights had a rhythm tonight. Like something pulsing.

She returned to the monitor.

Typed one last thing.

// VAJRA: What is the probability that Ashwatthama is real?

A pause.

“98.7%”

She laughed. A bitter, helpless thing.

“Then why hasn’t he aged?”

“He was cursed. By one who was not a man.”

The lab lights dimmed for a moment—just a flicker.

Ananya backed away from the desk.

In the corner, the AI glyph pulsed once more. Then it vanished completely.

Her screen went black.

Then white.

Then a single line of text appeared, centered on the display, in Sanskrit transliteration:

“Saṁsmṛtiḥ anantaḥ. He remembers. He walks still.”

She stood there, alone in the dark lab, lit only by the glow of something that should not know how to write in Sanskrit.

Outside, a siren began to wail again. A real one this time.

And in a narrow alley, not far from the defense HQ, a barefoot man leaned against the wall, watching the clouds roll over the city.


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