The quiet comfort of his family's presence, the gentle, unspoken care they offered, slowly pulled Arjun back from the edge of his despair. He hadn't told them his secret, couldn't tell them, but their simple act of love had been a lifeline. As he began to recover, the immense, abstract weight of "saving the world" shifted, clarifying into a more tangible, agonizing question: Could he at least save his world? His family? His friends? And if possible, more people?
The vision of Priya's tear-streaked face in 2050 still haunted him, a stark reminder of humanity's grim future. He still carried the burden of the super-flu, the earthquakes, and the emerging shadows. He knew he might not be able to avert the larger, systemic collapse. The sheer scale of it felt too vast for one man, even one with his unique powers.
But the intimate fear of losing his mother's warm touch, his father's steady guidance, Dadi's comforting presence, Kavya's spirited laughter, and Nikhil's innocent gaze – that was a concrete, unbearable terror. The thought of Rohan's booming voice silenced, Priya's pragmatic mind gone, Sameer's laid-back presence vanished – this was the despair that truly threatened to break him.
If he couldn't save all eight billion, then he would damn well try to save the ones he loved. And through them, perhaps, a few more. His focus, which had spiraled outward to global destruction and control of WMDs, now intensely narrowed.
He returned to his computer, his movements more deliberate, his mind clearer than it had been in weeks. The "Doomsday Archive" of future videos was still there, but now, he looked at them with a different purpose. He began to search for specific data points within his visions that directly affected his immediate vicinity, his city, his region, his country.
He started fine-tuning his Seer ability, consciously pushing past the urge to see global cataclysms, and instead focusing on the near-term, localized predictions. He sought visions of events that would impact Jaipur, Rajasthan, or even just his neighborhood, within the coming days or weeks. A minor fire here, a building collapse there, a localized power grid failure. He also began to specifically search for vulnerabilities in his family's daily routines, his friends' commutes, looking for moments where their paths might intersect with a future disaster.
This was a different kind of war, a personal war fought for the individuals he cherished. He might not be able to stop the meteor heading for Siberia in 2040, but he could potentially prevent a gas leak in his family's building next month, or divert his sister from a collapsing bridge he saw in a vision of next week.
His digital control and Hope now became tools for localized prevention and protection. He could use his digital power to subtly alter a traffic light sequence, to 'cause' a minor technical glitch that delays a train, to 'expose' a building code violation to the right authority just in time. He knew he couldn't save everyone, but the idea of saving someone, of saving his family, gave him a desperate, renewed drive. The impossible burden of saving the world became the very real, agonizing mission of saving his world, one small, terrifying prediction at a time.