The office of the Revenue Secretary was silent, save for the rhythmic clack-whirr of the ceiling fan.
On the large teak table sat the "Frankentool." It looked hideous—a mess of exposed wires, duct tape, and scavenged plastic. Mr. Kulkarni eyed it with deep skepticism.
"This," Kulkarni said, gesturing to the monstrosity, "is supposed to solve a problem that IBM told me would take ten years?"
"IBM tries to sell you computers, sir," Meera said, checking a connection. "We are selling you a solution. There is a difference."
Kulkarni grunted. He opened a drawer and pulled out a file. It wasn't just old; it was ancient.
The paper was brown and brittle, stained with water damage. It was a land record from 1920, written in a cramped, archaic dialect of Kannada that even human experts struggled to decipher.
"This is the 'Devil's Paper,'" Kulkarni said, sliding it across the table. "My clerks refuse to touch it. They say it crumbles if you look at it wrong. If your machine eats it, you are banned from this building forever. If it reads it... we talk."
Radha gasped softly. "Arjun... maybe we shouldn't..."
Arjun stepped forward. He activated [Scan].
[Object: Land Record (1920)]
[Structural Integrity: 15%]
[Damage Risk: High]
[System Advice: Reduce feeder speed by 40%. Increase optical contrast gain.]
"Meera," Arjun said quietly. "Drop the torque to level 2. Gain up."
Meera didn't ask why. She adjusted the dials on her custom control board. "Ready."
She gently fed the brittle edge of the paper into the machine.
The room held its breath.
Whirrr... click... click...
The machine didn't zip this time. It moved with the delicacy of a jeweler. The conveyor belt, made of soft rubber Meera had salvaged from a bicycle inner tube, gripped the paper without crushing it.
The paper emerged on the other side, intact.
Arjun spun the monitor around to face Kulkarni.
[Scanning Complete.]
[Text Confidence: 92%]
Original Text (Translated): The lands of Venkatappa, son of Muniyappa. Bounded by the river on the East...
Kulkarni leaned in.
He pulled out a magnifying glass from his pocket and compared the screen to the paper. He read the first line. He read the second.
He stopped at a smudge on the paper. It looked like an ink blot. The screen read it as "Survey Number 108".
"It guessed here," Kulkarni accused. "This is unreadable."
"It didn't guess," Arjun said. "It deduced. Based on the neighboring plots listed in the previous paragraph—106 and 107—and the geometric boundaries described, the missing number mathematically must be 108. The system cross-references the logic of the land, not just the ink on the page."
Kulkarni froze. He looked at the boy.
"It... cross-references?"
"It thinks, sir," Arjun said. "It understands that land records are a grid. If a piece is missing, it looks at the neighbors to fill the hole."
Kulkarni slowly took off his glasses. He looked at the ugly machine, then at the 12-year-old boy, then at the disheveled engineer.
"Do you have any idea," Kulkarni whispered, his voice trembling with the release of a decade of frustration, "how many lawsuits this will end? We have farmers killing each other over smudged survey numbers."
He sat down heavily in his chair.
"I want it," he said. "I want to deploy this in the Bangalore Rural district immediately."