The dream-space faded. Equations unraveled, the simulations dimmed, and DL's blue glow softened to a whisper.
Rohan opened his eyes to the cold flicker of his monitor in a dark room. His fingers, still twitching from phantom keystrokes in the dream realm, now rested on a real keyboard—slightly worn, keys glossy from late nights and endless hours.
He leaned back, the silence of 5 A.M. pressing in around him, sun rising from horizon, birds chirping, broken only by the low hum of his overburdened laptop. The final simulations have started. The blueprint was ready waiting only to be realized in the reality. And yet, all he could think about… was the Kaveri.
The engine that had almost been India's aerospace breakthrough—and then wasn't. Kaveri jet engine that had failed to meet fighter-grade thrust.
Just like that, the weight of reality came crashing back. India's fighter jets still flew with borrowed hearts—American, French, Russian. Every roar of a Tejas in the sky was a reminder of dependency. India still relied on foreign engines like the GE F404 for the Tejas Mk1 and the GE F414 for the Mk2/AMCA, and it was clear that India's self-reliance in aerospace was still a distant dream.
But maybe… just maybe… not for long.
Rohan's eyes glinted with purpose as he looked at the simulation on the screen in front of him: the jet engine they had designed together, a potential game-changer. The engine wasn't 5th-gen stealth-ready. It lacked the plasma masking, IR suppression, and acoustic dampening to match the F-22 Raptor, F-35 Lightning II, Su-57, or J-20. But it could outperform legacy 4th-gens in thrust vectoring, thermal resistance, and compressor stability. And that… was a start. An engine that could power the Tejas Mk1—a true indigenous alternative to the aging GE F404 engines. It was slightly better than other 4th-gens in terms of speed and capabilities—but still not quite there with 5th-gen technology. With 5th-gen out there, no one is going to raise an eyebrow if their design is a little better, and moreover it was still in designing phase. Implementing this design will cost it some performance, so the best they can hope for is to compete with others as for now, not surpass them. Which means that he will be safe. It wasn't perfect—still lacked AESA radar, BVR missile integration, and had only partial stealth, but it was a beginning.
But Rohan could see it now. He was on the verge of something bigger. This was just the beginning.
He still remembered the day he parted with his childhood dreams—the G.I. Joe fighter jets, the Millennium Falcon, the Iron Man figures, and a stack of old comics yellowed at the edges. One by one, he wrapped each relic in old newspapers, the pages crinkling under his fingers like time folding in on itself. Each toy had a story, a mission once played out across his bedroom floor. His father used to join him—an overgrown child himself—debating whether Iron Man could outfly a Jedi or whether one day they'd build ships like the X-Wing.
It wasn't just about nostalgia anymore.
That cardboard box wasn't a grave—it was an offering. A down payment on his future in aerospace.
Rohan sold them off quietly. Listed them online. Bartered with collectors. And with the savings—and a bit of his pocket money—he upgraded his old laptop to a used ASUS ROG Strix RTX 3060, barely a year old, carefully selected with DL's guidance. High RAM, a top-tier graphics card, and an internal cooling system that could handle the punishing demands of computational simulations. It wasn't just a machine—it was the foundation of his mission.
As he unpacked the laptop, peeling away the protective plastic, he felt like he was holding the future in his hands. Not a dream anymore, not a "maybe someday." But something real. Heavy. Powerful.
After switching out the hardware and immersing himself fully into the world of aerospace engineering, Rohan felt his dreams becoming more tangible. His late nights spent in front of the screen were moments of personal revelation. He'd sit for hours watching the fan spin like a turbine engine, his room dim except for the glow of multi-colored heat maps rippling across his screen.
Back in the real world, he quietly implemented everything on his new machine.
He downloaded cracked versions of expensive software—ANSYS Fluent, SolidWorks, MATLAB, COMSOL, OpenFOAM—because he had no choice. DL helped him optimize them, even rewrote some plugins silently in the background.
And though DL could respond to his thoughts, Rohan still spoke aloud, especially when alone.
"No, DL… reroute the bleed air through the bypass channel first… yes, exactly. That kills the stall."
He talked to DL while brushing his teeth, while pinning heat maps onto his walls. It kept him grounded. Made the whole thing feel real.
He'd push through the crashes, the bugs, and the endless simulations—secretly talking out loud to DL as if the AI were his co-pilot in a high-stakes mission.
29/09/2018
The fan ticked lazily above, chopping the warm October air into dull, uneven currents. The walls of the classroom, once echoing with laughter and chalkboard banter, now felt heavier somehow—muted. Ms. Rashmika Saxena's voice cut through the monotony, her tone clipped and clear as she scribbled an equation onto the board.
"So, if we resolve the tension components in the inclined plane, we find that T = mg sin θ…"
Most of the class followed along, pens scratching obediently. Except Rohan.
He sat near the window, a few rows from the front, head low, notebook open—but the lines inside weren't equations. They were swirls of spirals, mock-up sketches of engine turbines, bypass airflow paths, ram intake geometries. Scribbled beside them were rough annotations in shaky handwriting:
"Heat resistance > 1200°C — possible with Ceramic Matrix Composites?"
"Adaptive nozzle—variable throat diameter for maneuver bursts?"
"How to suppress IR spike during afterburner ignition…?"
His hand moved as if on autopilot, disconnected from the world around him. His eyes, glazed but alive, stared through the page—somewhere far beyond the chalkboard.
"Rohan," Ms. Rashmika's voice rang out.
He didn't look up.
A pause, then louder, sharper:
"Rohan Ram."
He blinked slowly, raising his head as if surfacing from deep underwater. "Ma'am?"
She held the marker mid-air, frowning. "Would you care to solve the free-body diagram for this setup?" She tapped at the figure on the board—an inclined plane with a pulley.
The class turned toward him.
Rohan stared at the board for a long second. Then two. No panic. No confusion. Just… calculation.
He slowly stood, took the marker from her, and began sketching.
"Normal force equals mg cos θ. Tension balances mg sin θ minus friction, assuming μk is present. Net acceleration is… zero in this setup unless you consider mass sliding."
Clean. Precise.
Ms. Rashmika blinked. "That's… correct." Her voice softened. "You were paying attention?"
Rohan smiled faintly, then sat back down without another word.
But she kept looking at him, lips pressed in a tight line. Something wasn't right.
That evening, Veena stood by the kitchen counter, wiping the last dish clean, when her phone buzzed. Unknown number. She picked up.
"Hello?"
A warm yet firm voice answered.
"Mrs. Veena Sharma? This is Rashmika Saxena—Rohan's Physics teacher."
Veena's hands froze mid-motion.
"Yes… is everything alright?"
There was a pause. Then:
"I wanted to check on Rohan. He's attending every class, submitting all his assignments, answering questions perfectly. But… he's not present. Not really. He's distant. Doesn't talk to anyone. Doesn't laugh. Today I caught him sketching engineering diagrams in class instead of taking notes."
Veena sighed, her voice thin.
"He's been… trying to keep busy."
"I understand. I lost my father in my teens too," Ms. Rashmika added gently. "The quiet ones are often the ones who hurt most. I just thought you should know."
Later that night, Arya stood at Rohan's door, watching him through the half-open slit. He was hunched over his laptop again, hoodie pulled tight, headphones clamped on. The screen flickered with a wall of code and faint bluish heat maps.
He hadn't eaten dinner at the table in three days. When she asked how he was doing, he just said: "I'm okay."
But Arya wasn't sure anymore.
She sat down beside Veena on the couch, voice barely above a whisper.
"He says he's fine. But he's not. It's like he's… disappearing into that machine."
Veena didn't respond. She didn't need to.
They both knew.
October 3rd, 2018, at exactly 3:21 AM, the final simulation on his laptop finished rendering.
The cool blue mesh of shock wave behavior on a stealthy intake fluttered across the screen. The laptop fan screamed like a micro-turbine. The room was bathed in faint artificial light, soft and ghostly.
Rohan's breath hitched. His eyes widened. For a second, he just stared—then his whole body tensed with a kind of explosive silence.
Inside his head, he screamed loud enough to tear the fabric of space.
"YESSS!"
Not a whisper, not a sound—just pure, feral, uncut euphoria.
"It's done, DL, final simulation passed." Rohan whispered, feeling the weight of the accomplishment and the uncertainty of what lay ahead.
DL's voice crackled back, dry and slightly annoyed. "Good. Now kindly shut up—my non-existent ears are bleeding."
Rohan chuckled under his breath, trying not to punch the air.
He bounced lightly in his chair, fists clenched, eyes sparkling with the manic joy of a dream made real.
He couldn't scream. Couldn't wake anyone. But his grin was uncontainable.
He recorded the entry in his project log. Saved every file. Compiled the documentation.
The engine that could change everything. The future was now just a step away.
And closed the lid.
It was done.
A new chapter in India's aerospace future—written not by a lab, not by a corporation—but by a teenager with a dream, a machine, and an AI named DL.
He didn't move for a while after closing the lid.
The hum of the fan slowed, then faded into silence.
His hands trembled—not from fatigue, but from a strange sense of disbelief.
Was this what accomplishment felt like? Not the rush of adrenaline, but the quiet storm that came after?
Rohan let out a shaky breath, eyes staring at the ceiling as morning light trickled through the curtains.
We did it.
He smiled to himself. No cheers, no applause, no confetti. Just the soft chorus of early birds and the distant bark of a stray dog outside. But inside, within the confines of his ribcage, there was a silent explosion.
He had made it. At least the first step.
"DL," he whispered again, "we actually did it."
A flicker pulsed across the screen, as DL came alive once more. The AI's voice was calm, level, almost reassuring.
He thought of Veena, bent over unpaid bills. Of Arya, crying herself to sleep. Of Nanaji's quiet sighs during dinner.
This engine… wasn't just for the sky. It was for them.
"Yes, Rohan. Phase One is complete."
Rohan sat up, heart thudding with questions that now came rushing in.
"So… what now? How do we go from here to there? DRDO's not exactly browsing GitHub for teen engineers. I don't know anyone in the industry. I'm just a kid with cracked software and no formal degree."
He paused.
"We can't just email them a blueprint, can we?"
The screen lit up fully now, DL's interface sharper, more focused.
Lines of encrypted code danced faintly in the background, as if DL was unlocking something… deeper.
"No. We're not contacting DRDO directly."
Rohan blinked.
"Then who?"
A pause.
Then DL replied, voice colder. More precise.
"RAW."
"The Research and Analysis Wing."
Rohan froze.
"Wait… the intelligence agency?"
"Yes. They have a mandate to secure national technological advantage—by any means necessary. DRDO needs tenders, committees, and months of paperwork. RAW needs results. They operate covert R&D cells, deploy field agents with engineering backgrounds, and control discretionary funds outside parliamentary oversight.
If we want this engine built off-record, tested in shadow labs, and shielded from foreign interference—they're the only viable channel.
RAW doesn't wait for bureaucratic greenlights. They act. They can prototype in black sites, test without public trace, and shift resources without alerting Parliament. They also have access—deep access—to channels DRDO can't even approach without clearance.
We go through them. And they will listen. Because they don't have a choice."
Rohan's throat went dry.
RAW? Not a university. Not a startup incubator. But India's most covert and elite intelligence agency?
"You're serious?"
"Completely," DL replied. "It's time to move from simulation… to strategy."
Rohan looked down at the closed laptop.
Something had shifted.
The dream wasn't just alive anymore.
It was in motion.