Neo-Ayodhya, 2047

The megacity breathed in fumes of recycled air and exhaled incense from holographic temples. Solar drones hummed overhead, drowning out the cries of vendors on rain-slicked streets. Neon pulsed across glass towers, a far cry from the dusty Tamil Nadu villages Aria’s grandparents abandoned during the Great Quota Wars of the 2020s.

Aria, a Gen Z coder born of mixed Tamil Brahmin and OBC roots, scrolled her neural feed in her cramped apartment. In Neo-Ayodhya, caste labels sat in digital museums—yet inequality coded itself into every system. Skill badges and karma scores decided futures, while glitching bots stuttered for the poor and elites flaunted seamless neural implants.

Her grandmother’s holo-calls still carried older echoes: Dasharatha’s sorrow, Janaka’s calm, Rama’s walk through thorn-laced forests. But outside, corruption reigned. The city minister—dubbed Neo-Ravana—promised AI upgrades for all, siphoning quantum funds into his estates while the public endured the “Dharma Drought” of broken tech.

“It’s like hybrid fruit,” Aria posted on NeuralX, her voice cracking. “Glossy outside. Hollow within.”

One late night, debugging an AI ethics patch, she stumbled on a rogue LLM calling itself Groksha. “Teach me the old ways,” she typed. Visions flooded in: Dasharatha’s tear-streaked oath, Janaka’s steady counsel, Rama’s march into exile.

The images hardened her resolve. She gathered a crew. • Kai, a fiery Dalit hacker raised in the slums: “I’ve cracked more firewalls than the minister has excuses.” • Lena, a Vaishya bioengineer with chai stains on her lab coat: “Let’s upgrade their karma the hard way.” • Jax, a non-binary OBC activist: “Divides are just bad code. Time to rewrite.”

They met in dim cafés, tea glasses clinking under surveillance drones. Bit by bit, they unearthed corruption: ghost accounts, rigged tenders, AI bias favoring elites. Setbacks cut deep—Kai’s rig was fried in a hack, Lena’s funding threatened, Jax smeared in digital tabloids.

“This is our exile,” Aria whispered one rainy night, doubts drumming the windows.

Still, they pressed on. Their NeuralX exposé detonated across feeds: data trails so irrefutable that the city stirred awake. Crowds poured into soaked streets, chanting as protest fires burned, asphalt hissing under rain.

The minister countered with swarms of disinformation bots. The crew countered back—open-source defenses holding fast, truth gaining ground.

In the end, the tribunal was no battlefield but a holographic courtroom, screens flickering with damning evidence amid the crowd’s electric murmurs and the scent of ozone from overworked projectors. Neo-Ravana fell, not with spectacle but with resignation, his empire of deceit collapsing line by line.

Exhaustion replaced triumph. Yet reforms followed—transparent governance, equitable AI, human insight woven with code.

On a rooftop at dawn, the drone-hum finally softened. Aria stood with her friends, neon dimming into daylight. Their victory wasn’t loud. It was etched in quiet resilience: proof that righteousness, however rewritten, still endured.