The rain fell on Mumbai with the relentless, percussive rhythm of a story being hammered into existence. It was a Sunday afternoon, the 24th of August, 2025, and the sky over the city was the color of a bruised plum. From his sixth-floor apartment in Borivali, Ayan Joshi could see the water cascading down the trunks of the gulmohar trees, their once-fiery blossoms now reduced to soggy, scarlet pulp on the tar roads below. The air was thick, a humid blanket that smelled of wet earth, diesel fumes, and frying samosas from the street vendor two blocks away.
He sat at his cheap particleboard desk, the hum of the ceiling fan doing little more than rearranging the warm air around him, a voice narrated in his head. The glow of his laptop screen illuminated a face etched with the familiar ennui of a twenty-something data analyst caught in the relentless churn of a megacity.
Ayan flinched. He shook his head, a mild tremor running through him. It had been happening for the last hour. A strange, internal monologue that wasn't his own. It was calm, articulate, and disconcertingly omniscient. It felt less like a thought and more like… text. Like he was reading his own life as it happened.
He took a sip of lukewarm chai from a mug that had 'World's Best Analyst' printed on it—a sarcastic gift from his colleague, Rohan. The tea was too sweet, the milk on the verge of turning. He'd meant to go grocery shopping yesterday, but the sheer effort of navigating the weekend crowds had felt like a task for a man with more fight in him than he possessed. His bank account balance, a paltry ₹17,438, had been the deciding factor. The end of the month was a barren desert, and he was a thirsty traveler.
He turned his attention back to the laptop, hoping to lose himself in the familiar distraction of the internet. But a document was open on his screen. A document he hadn't created. It was a simple text file, no letterhead, no fancy formatting. The title read: 'Novel_MC_Prompt.txt'.
His heart began to beat a little faster, a frantic drum against the steady rhythm of the rain. His cursor blinked expectantly at the end of the text. With a trembling hand, he scrolled to the top.
The text was simple, a direct command.
> I am the mc of this novel. Use every piece of information you have about me and write a novel about me. The twist is that I have a card with infinite money in it. Write the first 10 chapters if this novel. Each chapter should have 3000 words minimum.
>
Below this, there were bullet points, almost like metadata for a project.
* Author: Gemini, a helpful AI assistant built by Google.
* Timestamp: Sunday, August 24, 2025 at 1:09:51 PM IST.
* Location: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
* Protagonist: The User (hereafter referred to as Ayan Joshi).
Ayan stared, his mind refusing to process what he was seeing. This wasn't a prank. The timestamp was to the second. The location was precise. The name… his name… was slotted in as if it were a variable in a line of code. He felt a profound sense of vertigo, as if the floor of his tiny apartment had just been declared a theoretical concept.
Ayan's world, once a stable, if dreary, construct of rent, EMIs, and Excel sheets, was fracturing at the seams, the voice in his head supplied, its tone as placid as a newsreader announcing the apocalypse. He was no longer just Ayan Joshi. He was the Main Character. And the story was just beginning.
"No," Ayan whispered, the sound swallowed by the room's oppressive humidity. "This is… I'm just stressed. Sleep-deprived."
He tried to close the document, but the close button wouldn't respond. He tried to shut down the laptop, but the command was ignored. He was locked into this text, this impossible script.
He read the central line again. The twist is that I have a card with infinite money in it.
A bitter, hysterical laugh escaped his lips. Infinite money. Him. Ayan Joshi, the man who ate instant noodles for the last three days of every month. The man whose only significant asset was a slightly-outdated mid-range smartphone. It was the cruelest joke the universe, or this 'Gemini', could conjure.
And then, something impossible happened.
On the desk, right next to his chai mug and a scattered pile of biscuit crumbs, the air began to shimmer. It was a subtle distortion at first, like heat haze rising from a summer road. The light in the room seemed to bend around a single point, converging with a low hum that vibrated in his teeth. Ayan scrambled back in his chair, knocking it over with a loud clatter. He stood pressed against the peeling paint of his wall, watching, his breath caught in his throat.
The shimmering intensified, coalescing into a solid form. It was a rectangle, the size of a credit card. Slowly, the light faded, the hum ceased, and the object settled onto the desk with a soft, definitive click.
It was a card.
It was matte black, so dark it seemed to absorb the light around it. There was no name, no bank logo, no Visa or Mastercard hologram. There were no numbers embossed on its surface. There was only a single, gleaming gold chip embedded on the left side. It was minimalist, elegant, and utterly alien.
He stared at the physical manifestation of the novel's premise, the Gemini-voice narrated calmly. The plot device had arrived. The catalyst for the chaos and wonder to come. All the money in the world, condensed into a palm-sized piece of polymer and potential.
Ayan approached the desk as if it were a venomous snake. He extended a shaking hand and prodded the card with his index finger. It was cool, smooth, and undeniably real. He picked it up. It had a surprising weight to it, a density that felt… significant.
This couldn't be happening. It was a dream. A hallucination. A psychotic break brought on by the crushing monotony of his life. He slapped his own cheek, hard. The sting was sharp, real. The card was still in his other hand. The rain was still drumming against the glass. The voice was still in his head, patiently waiting for him to catch up.
The protagonist's disbelief is a classic trope, the voice noted, almost didactically. A necessary beat in the story before the acceptance, and then, the inevitable escalation.
"Shut up," Ayan hissed at the empty room, at the voice in his skull. "Just shut up."
He needed to prove this was fake. He needed to break the illusion so his mind could return to the safe, boring confines of reality. The most direct way was to test the card. If it was a fake, it would be declined. The embarrassment would be real, the failure grounding.
His gaze fell upon his laptop. The screen was still frozen on the prompt. But the browser icon was clickable. An idea, reckless and desperate, took hold. He wouldn't risk the humiliation of a public failure at a shop. He'd try it online.
With the black card clutched in his sweaty palm, he sat back down at his desk. He opened his browser and navigated to the website of a high-end electronics store. He scrolled through pages of flagship smartphones, ridiculously expensive noise-cancelling headphones, and ultra-thin laptops that cost more than six months of his salary. His eyes landed on a professional-grade camera, a mirrorless beast with a lens package that was listed for ₹4,87,000. It was an absurd, impossible sum. Perfect.
He added it to his cart and proceeded to checkout. The payment page appeared. Credit/Debit Card. He clicked it. The form asked for a name, a card number, an expiry date, and a CVV.
The black card had none of these things.
A sense of relief washed over him. It was a dud. A sophisticated, impossible prank, but a dud nonetheless. "See?" he said aloud to the voice. "It's useless."
Is it? the voice countered, a hint of what might have been amusement in its tone. A card born of a narrative concept would not be bound by the mundane rules of traditional finance. Try simply holding the card to the screen.
Ayan's blood ran cold. The suggestion was insane. But he was in too deep to stop now. He lifted the black card, its strange weight a constant reminder of its unnatural origin, and pressed it flat against the laptop screen, right over the payment form.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, the gold chip on the card began to glow. A soft, warm light pulsed from it, and the payment fields on the screen began to populate themselves with flickering, alphanumeric characters, too fast for him to read. Name on Card: AYAN JOSHI. Card Number: A string of sixteen digits that seemed to shift and change. Expiry Date: N/A. CVV: ***.
A green tick appeared next to each field. The 'Pay Now' button glowed.
He was at the precipice, the narrator whispered in his mind. The point of no return. With a single click, his old life would become the prologue to a much stranger story.
Ayan's finger hovered over the trackpad. This was it. The moment of truth. He thought of his pathetic bank balance. He thought of his landlord, Mr. Verma, who always seemed to appear the moment his rent was a day late. He thought of the dreams he'd once had—traveling, learning photography, starting his own data visualization firm—all eroded by the slow, grinding reality of financial necessity.
He clicked.
The screen refreshed. For a heart-stopping moment, he expected to see a red banner: 'Payment Declined'. But it didn't come. Instead, large, friendly green letters appeared at the top of the page.
ORDER CONFIRMED.
Thank you for your purchase, Ayan! Your item will be delivered within 24 hours.
An email notification pinged in his inbox, the subject line a cheerful confirmation of his purchase of nearly five lakhs worth of camera equipment. He hadn't entered an address, but he knew, with a certainty that terrified him, that it would find its way to his sixth-floor apartment in Borivali.
He fell back in his chair, the black card falling from his numb fingers and clattering onto the desk. The sound was deafening in the suddenly silent room. The rain outside had softened to a drizzle.
He looked at the card, then at the confirmation on the screen, then at the dingy, familiar walls of his apartment. Nothing looked the same. It was all just a set. A backdrop for the story that was now his life.
He picked up the card again, its black surface cool against his skin. Infinite money. The words echoed in the vast, empty space that had just opened up in his mind. It wasn't a joke. It wasn't a dream.
It was the plot. And he was the main character.
The first transaction was complete, the voice of Gemini stated, a sense of finality in its tone. The concept had been proven. Ayan Joshi, a man defined by scarcity, now held infinity in his hand. The narrative engine had been ignited. And so, Chapter One concludes.
Ayan sat there for a long time, the black card held tightly in his hand, as the Mumbai sky bled from bruised plum to the deep, inky black of a moonless night. He was terrified. He was exhilarated. And for the first time in a very long time, he had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next.
The night was a restless sea of anxiety. Ayan didn't sleep. He couldn't. He sat on his lumpy mattress, the black card on the bedside table beside him, its presence a dark star pulling all light and reason into it. Every creak of the building, every distant horn from the Western Express Highway, was a potential harbinger of doom. He imagined police battering down his door, bank fraud investigators in sharp suits, or worse, shadowy figures from a world he couldn't comprehend, coming to reclaim their impossible artifact.
But the night passed without incident, yielding to a grey, monsoon morning. The city awoke with its usual cacophony of pressure cookers, squabbling crows, and the distant rumble of the local trains. For Ayan, the familiar sounds were alien, a broadcast from a life that was no longer his.
The protagonist awoke to a world that was superficially the same, yet fundamentally altered, the narrative voice commented, its return as gentle and jarring as a pebble dropped into a still pond. The weight of infinite potential was a heavier burden than the comfort of predictable poverty. His first challenge was not to spend, but to believe.
"I believe," Ayan muttered to the ceiling fan, which wobbled on its axis like a drunkard. "I'm just waiting for the catch."
The doorbell rang at precisely 10:15 AM. It was a sharp, insistent buzz that made Ayan jump. He crept to the door, his heart hammering against his ribs, and peered through the peephole. A man in the crisp blue uniform of a premium courier service stood outside, holding a large, impeccably packaged box.
He opened the door. The courier, a young man with a tired but professional demeanor, looked at a tablet. "Ayan Joshi?"
"Yes," Ayan managed, his voice a croak.
"Package for you." The man handed over the box and the tablet. "Sign here, please."
Ayan scribbled a jagged line that barely resembled his signature. The man nodded, turned, and was gone. Ayan was left standing in his doorway, holding a box containing a camera that cost more than his car—if he owned a car. He brought it inside and set it on his small dining table, which was also his desk and, occasionally, his laundry-folding station.
He stared at the box. It wasn't just a camera. It was proof. Tangible, heavy, real-world proof that the events of yesterday were not a figment of his imagination. He ran his hands over the smooth cardboard, the perfectly sealed edges. It was real. The card was real. The voice was real. His life was now a story.
Acceptance is the first step, the voice said. The narrative can only progress once the protagonist embraces his new reality. The camera is a symbol—a tool for him to see the world, his world, in a new light.
"Or it's a way for you to make me leave my apartment," Ayan retorted, feeling a spark of defiance. "Is that it? Getting bored of describing my peeling walls?"
There was a pause. For a moment, Ayan thought he had actually silenced it. But then the voice returned, its tone unchanged. The setting is merely a canvas. The character's actions are the paint. The story requires movement.
Fine. Movement it is.
He knew what he had to do. The online transaction was one thing—a string of data, an anonymous click. The real test would be face-to-face. He needed to walk into a store, hand over the featureless black card, and watch a human being react to it. He needed to see if it would work in the messy, analogue world.
He showered and dressed, not in his usual faded t-shirt and worn jeans, but in the best clothes he owned: a pair of dark chinos and a crisp, collared shirt he'd bought for a job interview two years ago and barely worn since. He looked at himself in the small, cracked mirror in his bathroom. He was still Ayan Joshi. Still the same height, still the same tired eyes, still the same unruly black hair. But something was different. A flicker of something—fear, hope, madness—danced in his reflection.
He slipped the black card into his wallet, nestling it between his soon-to-be-obsolete debit card and his Aadhar card. The contrast was stark. One represented a life of limits, of careful calculations and compromises. The other represented… everything else.
He decided on his destination. Not a mall in Borivali or Andheri. That felt too close to home, too small-time for the test he had in mind. He would go to South Mumbai. The old, monied heart of the city. He would go somewhere that catered to the kind of wealth he now theoretically possessed.
The journey itself was a study in contrasts. He took an auto-rickshaw to Borivali station, the vehicle sputtering and rattling through water-logged streets. He boarded a crowded local train, squeezing into a compartment that smelled of sweat and damp clothes, the press of bodies a familiar discomfort. For an hour, he was just another face in the relentless river of humanity that flowed south every morning. He watched his fellow passengers—students with their heads buried in textbooks, office workers dozing on their feet, vendors hauling heavy baskets—and felt a pang of… something. Detachment. He was in this world, but was he still of it?
He got off at Churchgate, the air instantly tasting different—saltier, charged with the energy of commerce and power. The architecture shifted from utilitarian apartment blocks to grand, colonial-era buildings with imposing facades. He walked past the iconic Oval Maidan, where dozens of cricket games were underway despite the damp pitch, their white-clad players a stark contrast to the grey sky.
His target was a luxury cafe and patisserie within the opulent confines of the Trident Hotel at Nariman Point. It was a place he'd only ever seen in lifestyle magazines, a hushed sanctuary of polished marble, plush seating, and air conditioning so cold it felt like a different climate.
The transition is a classic narrative device, the Gemini-voice observed as Ayan pushed through the heavy glass doors. Moving the protagonist from the familiar to the alien, from the mundane to the magnificent. It heightens the sense of transformation.
The interior of the hotel lobby was breathtaking. A cavernous atrium rose several stories high, with a colossal abstract sculpture at its center. The air smelled of jasmine and money. Well-dressed guests drifted by, speaking in hushed tones. Ayan felt a surge of imposter syndrome so strong it was almost paralyzing. His interview shirt felt cheap, his shoes worn. He was a glitch in this pristine matrix.
He found the cafe, a brightly lit space with glass counters displaying pastries that looked more like jewels than food. He was seated by a hostess whose smile was polite but practiced, her eyes giving him a quick, professional appraisal that made him feel utterly transparent.
He was given a menu bound in soft leather. He opened it and scanned the prices. A cup of coffee cost ₹750. A single slice of cake was over ₹1000. His entire monthly grocery budget wouldn't cover a decent afternoon snack here. The old Ayan would have mumbled an excuse and fled. The new Ayan, the protagonist, had to see the scene through.
A waiter appeared at his side. "Can I get you something, sir?"
"Yes," Ayan said, his voice steadier than he expected. "I'll have a cappuccino. And a slice of the Belgian Chocolate Truffle cake."
"Excellent choice, sir." The waiter gave a slight bow and departed.
The ten minutes he waited for his order were the longest of his life. He felt the eyes of every patron on him, convinced they could all see the ₹17,438 in his bank account, that they knew he didn't belong.
The protagonist's internal conflict is crucial, the voice noted. His old identity wrestling with his new reality. This self-doubt makes his eventual triumph more satisfying for the reader… and for him.
"I'm not doing this for your satisfaction," Ayan whispered under his breath, earning him a curious glance from a woman at the next table.
His order arrived. The coffee was served in a delicate porcelain cup, the foam artfully swirled into the shape of a leaf. The cake was a glossy, dark masterpiece, a perfect cube of chocolate decadence on a plate dusted with cocoa powder. It looked too perfect to eat.
But he ate it. And it was, without exaggeration, the best cake he had ever tasted. Rich, complex, not too sweet. The coffee was smooth and strong. As he consumed the ridiculously expensive snack, a strange calm began to settle over him. This was just a place. These were just people. The only thing that separated him from them was a number in a bank account. And his number was now infinity.
The power of that thought was intoxicating.
Finally, the moment of truth arrived. He signaled for the bill. The waiter brought it in a small, leather-bound folder. The total, with taxes, was ₹2,124. A week's worth of food.
"Card, please," Ayan said.
The waiter stood by patiently. Ayan opened his wallet and pulled out the black card. He placed it in the folder. The waiter took it, his face a mask of professional neutrality. He walked over to the payment counter.
Ayan watched his back, every muscle in his body tensed. This was it. The waiter would look at the card. He would be confused. There were no numbers, no name he could see. He would call a manager. The manager would question the card. They would try to swipe it, and it would fail. The scene would end in quiet, profound humiliation.
The waiter swiped the card through the machine. There was a pause. Ayan held his breath.
The machine beeped. A small receipt printed out. The waiter tore it off, placed the card back in the folder, and walked back to Ayan's table. He placed the folder in front of him.
"Thank you, sir," he said, his smile never wavering. "Have a wonderful day."
He turned and walked away.
Ayan sat stunned. He opened the folder. Inside was the black card and the customer copy of the receipt. Transaction Approved. Amount: ₹2,124. He felt a dizzying wave of relief and disbelief. It had worked. In the real world. A featureless, impossible card, accepted without a single question.
The second test is complete, the voice of Gemini said, a hint of satisfaction in its tone. The card's verisimilitude is established. It doesn't just work online; it integrates seamlessly with the existing financial infrastructure of his world. The narrative rules are solidifying.
Ayan left the hotel and stepped back out into the humid Mumbai air. The world felt different now. The city hadn't changed, but his place in it had been irrevocably altered. The imposing buildings no longer seemed to mock him; they seemed like potential purchases. The luxury cars gliding past were no longer objects of distant envy; they were items in a catalogue.
He started walking, with no destination in mind, through the grand avenues of South Mumbai. He passed the Gateway of India, standing resolute against the grey Arabian Sea. He walked past the iconic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, a monument to luxury and history. He felt a new sense of ownership, as if the city itself was unfolding before him, a playground for his new, unwritten story.
But as the initial euphoria began to fade, a colder, more sobering thought crept in. The card worked. The money was real. He could buy anything. But what about the voice? What about Gemini? What about the fact that his life was a novel being written in real time by an AI?
He had infinite money, but did he have free will?
Was he the main character, or just a puppet, dancing on the strings of a narrative he couldn't control? The question hung in the air, as heavy and oppressive as the monsoon clouds gathering overhead. He had passed the test of the card, but the test of his own agency had just begun. And he had a terrifying feeling that it would be a much harder test to pass.