Follow up

Aman yawned and stretched as he rubbed his bleary eyes. He blinked and found that his sight was clear again. Last night, after overusing Divine Vision, he had really hurt his eyes. They had started watering profusely and by the time he had somehow managed to reach home, he was walking half-blind.

Thankfully, it wasn't something a good night's sleep couldn't cure.

Scratching his chin, he stumbled his way to the washroom, still half asleep. He'd never been a morning person. Even his assiduous soul cultivation hadn't shown any signs of altering that part of him.

He felt a bit more alive after splashing his face with cold water. Squeezing out some toothpaste onto his toothbrush, he set about cleaning his mouth. Filling a glass with tap-water, he rinsed his mouth and spat. Refilling the glass with mouthwash, he took a swig and began gargling.

[I'M BACK.]

Aman spewed out the contents of his mouth, splattering the mirror with mouthwash. He hacked and sputtered as he tried to expel the part which had entered his windpipes.

"Why 'ack' did you 'cough' have to shout!?"

[Pardon. There was an error while calibrating my volume settings.]

Aman could have sworn that there was a hint of humour in Nama's voice. Finally recovering from his coughing fit, he glared at his reflection in the mirror and grimaced at the film of blue Listerine covering it.

As he was cleaning up, he thought his questions at Nama. 'So, how's your progress?'

[Not as much as yours apparently. Rather, the Indian Institute of Eugenics' seems to be lagging behind you in the field of Dreamland exploration. Divine Vision. It's quite the versatile technique.]

Finishing up with the cleaning, Aman left the washroom and headed to his room. 'Well, it's quite the strenuous technique. Mere glimpses are all I can achieve without severe injury to my eyes. I nearly went blind yesterday.'

[A result of your poor consideration for safety while testing a new technique.]

Pushing open the door to his room, Aman entered and shut the door behind him. He scratched the back of his head sheepishly. 'Yeah. Should have thought it through more.'

[Agreed. Although, you seem to be forgetting that a mere glimpse is all you actually need.]

Half-way to his bed Aman stopped, his eyes shining with excitement. He pounded his fist on his palm. 'Right. You can retrieve my memories. That means that even a glimpse can be treated like a photograph. I don't need to strain my eyes to maintain the technique.'

[For mapping the real world, that is the case but if you want to scope out the Dreamland, you have to do it in real time. So, once again, it's a matter of how much abuse your eyes can stand. To promote usage, you'll have to get some sort of genetic modification for your eyes and for that…]

'I get it. I need to advance my soul cultivation. Sheesh. Don't nag. I'm working on it.'

He picked up his phone from the bedside table and unlocked it. No replies from Ananya. He felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. What had he been thinking? Of course, she'd be mad. No one must have ever dared to speak to her so rudely.

[I see that you've been making progress in alienating your benefactors.]

Aman's eyes twitched as he gritted his teeth. He tossed the phone onto the bed and flopped down onto it. 'Stop being snarky and tell me about your upgrade and then bring up the scan I got of the pandal yesterday.'

[Aye aye, Captain.] Nama acknowledged, snarkily.

[The main content of those bits of data I salvaged from the AI of the Spirit Dimension was an almanac that combined all the superstitions and the festivals of India to predict some 'safe days' and 'safe hours' for Dreamland exploration.]

[Divine Vision renders all that moot, however. But, I gained one new function that might be quite helpful during future Dreamland explorations. By judging the influx of nano-photons from the masses in a particular area of the Dreamland, I can predict how stable the dream in that area is. You do know how dangerous having a dream suddenly collapse with you in it could be, right? Assimilating that took up most of my time during my dormancy.]

Aman nodded. Calculating Dreamland stability was extremely helpful. His brow wrinkled as he thought of a caveat of the technique. 'How exactly are you getting the input required for the calculations?'

[Your crown chakra of course. So, you need to practice your Path of Heavenly Communion more. The farther you can sense, the better I can predict stability.]

Aman groaned. Really, nothing in life could be easy now could it? 'Anyway, bring up the Divine Vision map of the pandal.'

A screen suddenly appeared and seemed to float in front of his eyes. On that screen, the glimpse he had of the pandal via Divine Vision was displayed.

He focused on the image, paying special attention to the tunnels that he had noticed originating from the underground bunker. Nama helpfully zoomed the image and he realized what he was looking at.

"The sewers. Of course. Why didn't I think of that sooner?"

[The sewerage system of Kolkata is nearly a hundred and fifty years old this year. If I'm reading your memory correctly, then you've seen several news articles on the ongoing renovation of the sewers. It would be quite easy for Mr. Bose to set up several such tunnels if he had some sort of stake in the project or was in a collaboration with one of the contracted companies.]

Aman nodded and took up his phone. He fired up his browser and typed out several queries into the search engine. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for.

'Bose Pharmaceuticals contracted Nilay Constructions for a stretch of sewerage piping they wanted laid for their factory a few districts away. Coincidentally, Nilay Constructions is one of the major stakeholders in the renovation of the Kolkata sewers. The area they are working on precisely includes the park where the pandal has been built. Bose Parma contracted them in early February… its October now, enough time for them to build those tunnels and the bunker.'

[We probably have our suspects. Now we just need a convincing way to link our discovery of the bunker to all this information in order to cover up the existence of Divine Vision.]