Neel Madhav Rao Chapter 1 – The Echo of Forgotten Names The city of New Delhi no longer breathed in silence. It hummed and pulsed like a living circuit board, streets strung with cables of light, towers crowned with translucent domes where advertisements and memory-feeds shimmered day and night. From Connaught Place to Dwarka, holographic billboards rippled against the heat-hazed sky, whispering promises to the millions who walked the streets below: Upload today. Secure tomorrow. Become more than flesh. Dr. Elara Vaughn had stopped listening to those voices long ago. She had seen too many patients who came clutching their…
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Rani Westwood Part 1 The sky had not been blue in seventeen years. People still talked about the last clear morning in whispers, like it was a folk tale passed down through ash-coated generations. They said the light used to feel warm, not searing. That clouds were once white and fluffy, not permanent smears of smoke stretching from one side of the horizon to the other. But I was born three years after the Last Sky, so to me, the world had always been grey. I adjusted the oxygen mask over my face and tightened the seals of my jacket.…