The endless hours spent mentally mapping the global network of destruction, tracing the cold, impersonal logic of launch codes and arming sequences, brought Arjun to a chilling realization.
He could control the bombs, yes. He could, hypothetically, unleash hellfire with a thought. But what then? How would a nuclear deterrent stop a super-flu that silently killed millions? How would it close a gate from which unseen monsters emerged? How would it quell the Earth's tectonic fury?
His heart ached with a profound, terrifying loneliness.
The visions of future destruction, now meticulously documented in his digital archive, played constantly in his mind's eye. He saw the world on the brink, teetering on a precipice of multifaceted doom. And he knew, with crushing certainty, that he alone could not fight this.
He could delay, disrupt, perhaps even mitigate a single threat, but the sheer scale of what was coming demanded more. It demanded all of human civilization's support.
This thought brought with it a fresh wave of despair.
How could he possibly rally humanity?
If he told them about the future he saw – the earthquakes, the pandemics, the creatures – he knew the immediate reaction. They would call him delusional, a madman.
Who would believe a lone analyst from Jaipur claiming to see tomorrow's calamities and interdimensional beasts?
The scientific community would demand proof he couldn't provide without revealing his very self. The governments would dismiss him as a crank, or worse, a potential psychological weapon.
And if, by some miracle, they did believe his seer abilities, what about his digital control? The minute they understood he could literally fire nuclear weapons, that he could cripple global infrastructure, that he could manipulate their media, their fear would be immediate and absolute.
They wouldn't see him as a savior; they would see him as the single greatest threat to their existence.
They would try to contain him, control him, or eliminate him — not rally behind him.
He was caught in a cruel paradox.
To fight the destruction, he needed humanity's collective strength — its scientists, engineers, leaders, and people united.
But to get that support, he had to reveal powers that would instantly trigger fear and opposition, guaranteeing he'd be seen as a tyrant to be neutralized, not a leader to be followed.
His hands clenched into fists, staring at the complex schematics of a nuclear launch sequence on his screen.
He didn't want to destroy the world; he wanted to save it.
He didn't want to rule; he wanted to unite.
But how do you unite a species that is inherently distrustful, prone to division, and terrified of power it doesn't understand?
The answer remained elusive, a mocking ghost in the vast, interconnected network of his power.
He possessed the ultimate key, but the world was locked, and his mere existence might be the very thing that prevented true unity.
He felt the immense weight of this impossible decision.
He had the power to destroy, but all he truly desired was the power to convince, to warn, to make them see what he saw, and to fight alongside him.
The clock was ticking, and Arjun was trapped between a silent apocalypse and an impossible revelation.
The constant influx of future destruction had become a relentless assault on Arjun's mind.
His digital archive of impending doom swelled with more devastating visions: forgotten super-volcanoes stirring beneath ancient crusts, orbital debris raining down on unsuspecting cities, resource wars igniting across arid lands, and more unsettling glimpses of the "gate" widening, its shadows stretching.
He wasn't just seeing snippets anymore; he was witnessing multi-stage catastrophes, often with unnerving clarity and crushing emotional impact.
His digital control, once a source of immense power, now felt like a secondary tool — useful for managing the present world, but almost useless against the future he was forced to witness.
The visions were random, overwhelming.
He'd be trying to analyze a network vulnerability, and suddenly, he'd be plunged into the screams of a collapsing skyscraper, or the terrifying silence of a pandemic-stricken ghost town.
He was a passive, terrified spectator to humanity's unraveling.
The thought struck him with desperate clarity: if he was to truly fight this, he couldn't afford to be just a receiver of random horrors.
He needed to control this Seer power.
Just as he had learned to navigate the internet's vastness, he needed to learn to navigate the currents of time.
He needed to see the future of specific places he willed to see, to focus on particular threats, to gain actionable intelligence — not just overwhelming dread.
He began a new, grueling regimen, even more mentally taxing than his digital mastery.
He started by trying to link his Seer power to his digital maps.
He would focus intensely on a particular city displayed on his screen – say, London – and try to will a vision of its future.
Sometimes, it would remain stubbornly blank. Other times, he'd be flooded with irrelevant data, or a random vision of a distant, unrelated flood.
He experimented with different mental anchors.
He'd hold a specific image in his mind — a satellite view of a nuclear power plant, a geographical map of a known seismic zone, a picture of a bustling port.
He tried to project his consciousness forward in time to that specific location.
Slowly, agonizingly, he began to develop a technique.
It was less about 'pulling' the future to him, and more about 'tuning' his mind, like adjusting a complex radio dial.
He found that focusing on a specific city's digital footprint — its network pulse, its energy consumption patterns, its media flow — helped to anchor his temporal perception.
When he combined this with a strong mental image of the physical location, the random visions began to subside, replaced by focused, albeit still horrifying, glimpses.
He started with smaller, mundane things.
The future of a street corner in Jaipur. The stock fluctuations of a local company.
Then he moved to more significant events he knew would occur, using them as benchmarks.
A political rally. A major sporting event.
He learned to 'fast forward' and 'rewind' within limited temporal windows, refining the clarity and duration of his visions.
The overwhelming chaos of unsolicited precognition was slowly yielding to a terrifying, yet invaluable, form of controlled foresight.
One morning, while making his chai, a sudden, jarring flicker invaded his mind.
It was a brief, high-definition clip: a street vendor's cart, overturned, oranges scattering across the pavement, and the distant wail of a siren.
The vision lasted only a second, then vanished.
Later that day, on his walk to the bus stop, he saw it exactly as he'd envisioned it — the overturned cart, the scattered fruit, the siren.
It happened again.
Another sudden mental jolt, another short, silent video.
This time, a water pipe burst in a nearby apartment building, a small, localized flood spreading across a tiled floor.
A day later, he heard the plumbers talking about it in his building's hallway.
This was different from his previous, large-scale, often abstract visions.
These were immediate, concrete snippets of the near future — often just a day or two ahead.
They were sharp, tangible "video clips," appearing directly in his mind's eye without him willing them.
They weren't always global catastrophes; sometimes they were small accidents, a local fire, a minor traffic pile-up, a power flicker across a few city blocks.
The sheer unpredictability of it was disorienting.
He'd be trying to focus on tracking some cybercrime, and suddenly, his mind would be hijacked by a brief, vivid projection of a bus fender-bender tomorrow morning, or a small electrical fire in a nearby commercial complex.
The intrusion was constant, a digital strobe light flashing humanity's trivial and tragic moments directly into his consciousness.
He found he could, with effort, recall these mental video clips, replaying them in his mind.
Driven by a desperate need to make sense of this new influx of foresight, he started a new section in his encrypted computer archive.
After each vision, he would open his video editing software.
He'd then mentally 'reconstruct' the vision as a video file, pulling together stock footage, digital overlays, and text to mimic the exact scenes, sounds, and sometimes even the dates or times that flashed into his mind.
He'd label them meticulously: "Vision – Auto Accident, Sector 12 – June 7th, 10:15 AM."
His hard drive, already a chronicle of global digital threats, now became a chilling personal prophecy diary.
He was seeing the future, one disturbing, undeniable video clip at a time, and the weight of what he saw — even small destructions — continued to accumulate.
The world was not only his digital screen; it was now a constantly running preview of its own impending moments, and he was the unwilling, terrified audience.
The boundary between his mind and the flow of time was dissolving, leaving him increasingly exposed to the world's hidden, unfolding narrative.