If the café had an official soundtrack, it would have been the steady tap-tap of keys mixed with the hissing of the espresso machine and the occasional existential sigh.
Mehul Shah had already decided that the world was a poorly coded simulation held together by duct tape and caffeine. His personal mission was simple: test the boundaries of reality's firewall. The GST portal just happened to be his latest playground.
The screen in front of him blinked a warning:
"Connection Unstable. Retry?"
He stabbed the Enter key like it had personally offended him."Retry," he muttered. "We don't quit in this house. We debug."
A few students looked up from their laptops, then went back to pretending not to listen. Everyone in Byte Me knew Mehul by now—the barefoot beta who occupied the corner table and sometimes shouted encouragement at his code. He paid for coffee with cryptocurrency and life advice, both equally unstable.
The code scrolled beautifully—until the Wi-Fi sputtered again.Mehul groaned, drumming his fingers. "If the Internet dies, I die with it."
He opened the list of available networks. One caught his eye: BNB-Internal-AlphaNet.He grinned. A bank hotspot, unsecured. The universe provides.
Click. Connect. Success.
The screen immediately changed:
"Government Biometric Verification Required. Proceed?"
Mehul tilted his head. "That's new."The corner of his mouth quirked upward. "Alright, Big Brother. Let's dance."He pressed YES.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then lines of encrypted text appeared, cascading like a waterfall of bureaucracy. He cracked his knuckles and began typing commands, his fingers moving with the rhythm of someone who lived one bad decision away from genius.
The café door slammed open hard enough to make the hanging plants tremble.
Every head turned toward the newcomer: a tall man in a charcoal suit, radiating the sort of authority that made people instinctively check if they had paid their taxes.
He surveyed the café once, eyes narrowing like a sniper locking target, then marched toward Mehul. Laptop in one hand, righteous indignation in the other.
"Step away from that router!" the man barked.
Without looking up, Mehul said, "Relax, uncle, I'm doing cyber-seva."
"Uncle?" the man echoed. "I'm thirty-two."
"Exactly. Peak uncle age."Mehul kept typing, the corner of his mouth twitching with amusement. "Now move aside, I'm liberating your data from capitalism."
The suited man—Nacikate Rao, if the badge on his chest could be believed—leaned forward, voice clipped and precise."You're breaching a restricted government interface linked to Bharat National Bank's compliance network. That's a criminal offence under—"
"—Section whatever, punishable by boredom?" Mehul interrupted cheerfully. "Yeah, yeah. I read the pamphlet."
He reached for a pen drive lying beside his laptop, its casing covered in sticker residue. "Look, I'll prove it's harmless. See? Local sandbox."
He jabbed the drive into the bank laptop with the theatrical flair of a magician producing a rabbit.
There was a tiny click.Then a faint metallic scent of blood from a half-healed cut on his finger.
The laptop screen blinked white. Text scrolled. A chime sounded.
AUTHENTICATION SUCCESSFUL.NEW BUSINESS ENTITY REGISTERED: SHAH–RAO ASSOCIATES PVT LTD.
Mehul froze. "Huh."Nacikate stared. "What did you just—"
Another pop-up appeared:
"Welcome, newly bonded partners! Your joint GSTIN has been activated."
Someone in the café whistled. Someone else clapped. The barista muttered, "Finally, some entertainment."
Nacikate's jaw tightened. "Undo it. Now."
Mehul shrugged, half-amused, half-horrified. "Undo what? The patriarchy? The economy?"
"The bond," Nacikate hissed. "Whatever the system just did."
"Oh, that." Mehul squinted at the screen. "Looks like we're legally married to the tax department."
Nacikate's left eye twitched. "You absolute data goblin."
"Thank you," Mehul said brightly. "Compliment accepted."
The café owner wandered over, waving the bill. "Sir, are you two shooting a movie? If not, pay for the Wi-Fi explosion."
Neither responded. They were too busy watching their phones light up with identical notifications:
"Congratulations on your partnership. Your next filing period begins immediately."
Nacikate closed his eyes, inhaled through his nose, and said in the calm voice of a man trying not to strangle someone in public, "You're coming with me."
"Field trip?" Mehul asked.
"Damage control."
Nacikate grabbed the back of Mehul's hoodie and hauled him upright. Cables clattered to the floor like defeated snakes.
"Fine, fine," Mehul said, collecting his laptops. "But I'm ordering another samosa on your corporate card."