The hidden world of 21st century

Cryptocurrencies, Metaverse, AR/VR have all been the talks of the 21st century and have forced people to start thinking that all the sci-fi movies they watched can be a reality now. Many people have even started believing that the black mirror show is just a replica of the coming few years. Amidst all this came Squid game, filled up of dark and deep world existing within but surprisingly, people enjoyed the show and liked whatever games/stuff was happening there. No surprise to me, as humankind is also an animal-filled up with deep and dark secrets.

Opening scene –

It’s the year 2025, A guy sitting with one gun in his hand, one smoke in his right hand. He is seemingly 25 years of age, has specs, and a bit wheatish complexion. In one of the most expensive hotels of Mumbai, India. The hotel room was very classy aesthetic-wise. He moves up from his desk, lights his cigarette, and watches outside the window, chaos everywhere, riots, people fighting. He opens the television, same thing everywhere “ The dark era” “Kalyug aagaya” and whatnot. He puts the gun to his head and says I’m sorry ……….. But wait, what’s happening here and what is this dark era that is coming on the television. To understand this, we need to look four years ago in the year 2021 in Bangalore.

Amidst all this that’s happening here, let’s dive into one of the apartments of Bangalore, the hub of all the techies in India. In the house lives four people; one of the guys had just recently moved in, and he’s a fresher from one of the prestigious IITs. I am writing this story from the perspective of the fresher from now onwards.

I entered the building, having left my small home in the small town of India. The building was huge, and everywhere I could see young people. It was 10 am in the morning, many were leaving for their work with a bag in hand, several people were rushing, zomato swiggy guys going in and out. It was like entering a completely different world. I was about to stay with 3 of my college seniors with whom I enjoyed a lot and I haven’t really interacted with them since last 2 years. As I move to the lift, one very hot girl comes out, and I just dropped my jaw there. As I move to 18th floor, I saw a lot of smoke coming out of the house, I feared that there is a fire in the house and something is wrong, I knocked neighbor’s door immediately, and two girls came out with a sutta in their hand. I told them that it’s a fire. They took a smell and were like, “ganja fuk rahe hoge”, just go in. I knocked and sachin bhaiya came out and started hugging me saying I am the best. His eyes were all red and he seemed so happy. I said hi to Rohan and Arpit bhaiya and they started laughing. I couldn’t understand what was going on. I simply asked where is my room. They all looked at each other and started laughing again. Then sachin bhaiya said “yar sorry sab high hai“, you go in this room. I entered my room and damn it was very dirty. Everywhere spider webs were there, alcohol bottles under my bed, and a few packets of condoms. I didn’t clean the room, kept my bags and ran from the house thinking what mistake I have done coming here. I went to the park and called my mom to say that I miss them and did a video call.

I moved back to the building. The same two girls were with me in the lift now. I said I’m Rahul recently shifted here and started working at xyz firm. Those girls gave me a look, and one of them said, Hi I’m Sonam and this is shruti di. We have been living here for the last 1 year, will see you on your fresher’s rave. I asked what? They said oho you are very new. How could Sachin not tell him about this? Shruti said that go to your house and ask Sachin about this and say shruti is angry. Sonam said, taunting her, “kabhi to gussa mat hua karo unse”. I sensed that these two were in a relationship. As I moved back to the flat, everyone has dizzied off now. One psychedelic video was playing on the hall tv, and they were all very silent using their phones.

Rohan said, Rahul come here and sit. He asked if I had any problem with them smoking, I said no but please don’t smoke inside my room, I’m allergic(to save my skin). I asked, bro what is this fresher’s rave, he said that bhai sorry we forgot to tell you but it’s one of the traditions we follow every year where all the new joinees of June and July on their first job will face some kind of ragging and will also go through some of the best moment of their life. The party will be at rooftop today night. Wear something good. I didn’t have something good, so I asked them like, they said at least formals, take mine. Take the iron from Sonam, I went to next door and took iron from here. She asked laughingly, do you even know how to iron, I said no and then she said come in.

The girl's flat was a 2 BHK and its aesthetic was so good in all sense. The smell of their house and it felt like I should just stay here and not go anywhere. Sonam made me some juice. She was wearing a pink top with white leggings and she was looking super cute with her specs. I asked here where does she work, she told me that she work at xyz however, she’s looking to switch the role right now as it’s not a very good pay for her. I also said that I want to retire before 30, making so much money that I can turn it into passive income sources so that I won’t have to work for someone in my life. She started laughing and said, until unless I start cutting people’s wallets this is impossible and she laughed a lot. Her laugh was the first thing that made me feel like home today.

I came back to my flat and saw Sachin, Rohan and Arpit smoking again. What’s surprising to me is that they were not like this in college so what really changed and I thought that whatever it is I won’t change myself to this state. I went back to my room and cleaned everything for next 2 hours and it was 8 PM so we all ordered some pizza from zomato as we had a party late tonight so didn’t cook anything.

It was 10 PM, I got dressed up and asked Rohan that I’ll be coming with him. Rohan said no, all freshers are supposed to come by themselves. I went to the roof. The scene was super partiiish, people dancing on the floor, some guy putting an apple on his head and asking people to use dart on it. Probably a crazy case there. I entered through the door. A guy came with a glass and gave it to me. I took the glass. Emptied it down the walls later. I moved on to find some familiar faces and there she was my Sonam. I went to her and said Hi. She said oh hi, this is tina my colleague. Tina turned her head up from her mobile and damn she was so pretty and I realized that this is the first thing that made me feel like home today again. So I went forward to say hi to my tina now. She was just super pretty with a black dress looking all smoking hot and all boys were looking at just her. She simply said hi to me and then went away with Sonam

. I felt like a complete idiot. An announcement happened that all newbies to come to the right side area. There were 20 of us. It all felt like going back to first year at IIT. Surprisingly shruti di was the one on stage so I thought that I know her already so she won’t do a thing to me. I was quite happy inside then. And now also she was smoking a cig and her lips all black, like a devil. She took the mic and said all boys strip your shirts and all girls pick up the stick next to you, there were 6 girls amongst us. The task was that boys had to face these girls shirtless and girls had to beat them with sticks. The 6 boys who stay till the end will get a chance to go on date with one of the girl who beat him the most. Obviously, they gave us chance to back out of the competition. 3 girls remained and 8boys. I don’t know why but I stayed there and was out with just two stick beating. So our seniors were generous enough to offer us another task. This was more of an entrepreneurship thing. They said that we have to empty our wallets and make 1 lac Rs there and then in the next 1 hr. It was obviously impossible and could not have been achieved if it weren’t for Sonam and tina. The price was that I can ask any girl on date from a ledger. On this ledger all single girls had given their consent so it was purely legal. I went to the bar and asked for a non-alcoholic drink to which the bartender said sorry, we don’t have those here—only alcoholic drinks.

Tina and Sonam were behind my back, and they said “ Kab tak nahi peeoge”, tina took a glass and passed it to me, and I just couldn’t say no and I drank it in a single go. She said so aren’t you working on that 1lakh rs, I said I can’t do it rn as it is impossible to get money from these drunks and techies less hippies more. She said, see you know your customer exactly. She’s working as a product manager at a fintech firm. She said that she and Sonam can help me if I’m willing to cross the line a bit, I said yeah I’m cool just to impress tina. She said that all these people have a big problem of getting drugs in here like weed, LSD etc as their payments are tracked, it’s not safe anywhere and it’s highly illegal so if I can promise them weed delivery by the next 1 week they will all give me orders. I said but then how will I get it, Tina said that she will hook me up with someone so I trusted her like an idiot and went on collecting orders and to my surprise I made orders worth 15lakhs.

Now comes the worst part, I came back to my room after the party was finished and I realized what the fuck have I done and I’m stuck in a huge mess. I went to Sonam's house at 3 AM. Shruti opened the door, she laughed and said you two are fucking? I said non nonnononononoooooooo just friends. I went to her room, the door was unlocked, Sonam was dressed up like a robot. It felt like some sexy porn script but I said sorry wtf. She was embarrassed and she closed the door on my face

Next morning, she knocked on my door and asked if she can come in. I took her to my room and there she sat, she said she’s embarrassed by yesterday, I said no I should have knocked. She said she hasn’t felt like friends with someone for a long time so she wants to explain and I said ok. She told me that it was a virtual game where people across the globe comes in for roleplay games. Did I say, adult? She said there are both types of content, but yesterday she was just doing normal acting script as a robot about ending the world. I said wow looks like our Sonam is quite dark. She smiled and said aren’t we all. She started going through my room and found those condoms which I found earlier. She was like who is hiding things now. So you have a girlfriend. I said no it’s from the previous guy. But whatever she said had intrigued my interest towards hidden discoveries of the internet. I said how will tina help with that dealer. She said to call him

Ring ring ring!!

Me – Hi, Um Tina is it?

Tina – Yes who’s it?

Me – The dealer guy from yesterday night?

Tina – oh hey sorry! I was just joking, You didn't really take orders from people there right

Me - How could you wtffffffffff. I hung up the call

Sonam called tina and Tina didn’t pick up, she called again and tina said stop talking to me about these things, you know how the police are good with tracking people these days and you better ask your friends to fulfill those orders or else those people will definitely beat the shit out of him and hung up the call.

I said what should I do, Sonam said talk to Sachin bhaiya. We both went outside and told him everything

Sachin – “Bhai chutya hai kya tu”

Sachin – Now we will have to do something or else tina is right and bro please start thinking from the thing between your head before doing anything and not from the thing between your legs

Me – Sorry bhaiya, I won’t do it again. What to do now?

Sachin – think first and then come to me, I have a lot of work now but I’ll help

Arpit – Rahul, come in

Me and Sonam went to his room

Arpit- You both have entered into something serious because you will now have to look for many things to complete the order even if you manage to arrange drugs.

Arpit was kind of the guy who was a lot into crime fiction, tv-series, serial killers, and dark web stuff.

He opened his laptop and accessed the dark web and said you can simply order the stuff from here and then deliver to those people one by one safely but take all the payments in crypto and nothing in cash as you won’t be able to justify this cash into your account. Sonam was pretty freaked out but we both said okay okay and came back to my room. Sonam said this is some next-level thing and it could help us make money as well and you could retire too, I couldn’t believe that she was saying those things but it all made sense to me and I think I had already started liking her more. She suggested that we both do some research and come back with a solid plan late at night. I didn’t step out of my room and ate pizza slices from last night again.

Sonam walked through my door and I got embarrassed now as I was masturbating so I closed the door in shame and then came out and said we both kept on saying sorry again and again to each other and finally started laughing as if we both know all of each other's secret now. Sonam said that she had an idea to build a market place on dark web where payments are driven through crypto only and it is completely peer to peer market place but the concept is not only limited to drugs but to other stuff as well like lust, needs, fantasies and people can do everything. Nowadays accessing dark web is just a few google searches away.

We worked for 4days to make that marketplace and went live with all security measures that no one can find us. It all sounded fun as we thought we are just earning some extra money and helping adult people fulfill their fantasies. I processed all those orders through our marketplace only and we slept together in my messy room. We didn’t do anything but we just slept together because of all the hard work. Sachin, Rohan and Arpit had no idea how I did what I did. I did not go back to look at the site for next 1 month and Arpit asked me all of a sudden, bro where did you get all that stuff last time, I want some. I said like from 3rd person view that there is a website on dark web that allows peer-to-peer help through crypto transactions and you can get literally anything. I opened the website, and It was flooding up with people having strange demands apart from drugs like

- Someone wanted to drink o- blood, someone was ready to offer him from his body

- Someone had huge desires romantically, worse than 50shades of grey with same sex and he found a seller too.

People were there doing things for money and all sorts of things. I had no idea that I was creating a google of dark web. I went running to Sonam and told her everything. She got scared and then she took a breath and said it’s fine no one is gonna know that it is us until unless we lower the security firewalls. I suggest we start taking a commission on each transaction now so that we both can be rich. I was driven by her idea now and we implemented this feature to the market place. We both had no idea what were we entering into. We soon became rich and left our jobs and went on to a trip where we had a lot of fun and we made out also entered in a relationship.

Fast forward down to 2023

The crime rate in the country had increased by a huge percentage and whosoever they took in told them that it’s some underworld on darkweb but the police were not able to shut us down.

And this is exactly when we caught the eyes of Raghav Singh, senior IPS Mumbai. Raghav lost his son to a drug overdose and he made his life mission to find the guys behind this dark web stuff. Raghav formed a team hoping that we are also part of the sellers network, and he made vast requests of drugs, offering huge money on the network but always ended up catching people who were just doing business and had nothing to do with the website. After a few months, Raghav was tired up and he gave all hopes of finding just when a new lead turned up for him. As he has caught several of the cartels which he already knew existed. Someone told him that once there was a small kid who delivered orders to us from this website. Raghav was so deep in the investigation that he found one of my oldest customers from fresher’s rave and that was when he decided to bring me in.

I was called to the station and was asked on what I do and I told them that I run a small store in Mumbai these days with my partner Sonam and we have left corporate lives. He left us there as he had no proof against us but as we were speaking in the police station a team of Raghav's associates were in my apartment going through our laptops and stuff but they couldn’t find a thing so he had to let us go. We both were scared as we came home. We were like we have to get rid of the laptops with source codes and everything and we have to do something to protect us. That was when we lowered the firewalls in order to give police to investigate something on and waste their time. The moment we dropped firewallls, police was able to know more details of buyers and sellers and they were a lot confused. Investigating deep into this for high price orders, they realized that big govt officers, celebrities and everyone was on the network demanding different things to fulfil their fantasies and to their surprise people were doing all those things. Raghav wanted to find the people behind this and wanted to shoot him there and then only.

I and Sonam were having the life we always wanted but we didn’t realize that we left so many things in between for police to track us when we lowered the firewall and it became clear that the first order on the network was fulfilled by me only. We got a notification that someone was trying to hack into our systems and then I made a public release to the network that owners are being threatened and we are shutting the network.

Jan 2025, It’s been 3months since the network has been shut. The world has changed in terms of people's behavior, people were resigning from their jobs, and suicides were increasing as they all had become addicted to their fantasies. That’s when we relaunched the network and realized that this is now free will vs ideal humanity of world and we made debate forums there. People came into our support that if police were to capture us then they would do riots etc but we both thought that this is just nonsense; these people won’t do a thing in reality.

Knock on the door, 10 police officers coming in taking me and Sonam both in and then everything was on tv from next day about dark web, kalyug etc. People started doing riots as we both killed the network again as we were arrested because we saw the police through cctv cams. World was a messy place now, riots were happening all over world now and not just in india. People demanded our bail and some made us gods of free will. Police had to take us out under a house arrest. I was discussing with Sonam about what will we do and what have we done. I realized the moment I first came to blore and this is definitely not why. She kissed me said and, everything will be alright people love us. She was still asleep. I woke up in the morning and took out a gun from the drawer, and decided to shoot myself to be free from all this nonsense going on as I realized that I can’t bear it now.

………………..

To present,

Stopppp. Don’t do it

Sonam – Just think of your parents and me. She said a lot of things to me to make me stop. She said that she will also die from jumping here the moment I pull that trigger. And then she said finally that she is pregnant with my child

Me – Are you saying the truth?

Sonam – Yes

Me – I went to hug her and kissed her and said that we need to sort everything and help make world a better place

Sonam – Yes

To be continued…………………………………….