Walker in Modern World

He reached his hotel room and took out his phone. The salesman had been very friendly and had already set everything up. Sanjay also added Maya's contact information, texted her, and informed her of his new number.

He knew that, with the amount of gold he had, he would need a reliable middleman, and Maya seemed like the best option for now. However, he would need to renegotiate their terms next time, especially after he understood this world's metric system and pricing.

The gold biscuit he had sold to her would likely fetch at least five million quarks instead of the one million quarks he had received.

The phone came with a pre-installed AI, so he didn't need to type—he only had to ask the AI, and it would respond with accurate results.

After checking the current gold price, he looked up information about augmentation.

Hundreds of companies were listed, offering thousands of different augmentations. After specifying what he needed for his body, the AI filtered the results to show only the top companies and their costs.

The best augmentation package cost around 70 million quarks. It included gene editing, a neural interface for direct communication with external hardware and its own built-in AI, and, most importantly, nanobots. The nanobots could repair tissues, deliver drugs, and fight diseases at the cellular level.

This meant killing him would become extremely difficult, as the nanobots would automatically repair any damage. Moreover, none of this required additional energy beyond what his body already consumed. Essentially, he would become stronger, faster, and smarter without any external power source.

Of course, the cost was a significant factor. At 70 million quarks, it was an amount only the elite of society could afford. As such, these companies took security very seriously—it was nearly impossible to hack their systems.

The AI that came with the package had petabytes of preloaded data. Even without connecting to the internet, it could fetch information. Unless the host chose to connect to external devices or networks, there was no need for it. And once connected, phone calls, internet searches, and other tasks could be performed seamlessly through the interface.

"Well, this is interesting. I should get it as soon as I can," Sanjay thought.

After finishing his research, Sanjay opened the AR helmet box. Inside was a simple helmet—no wires or power source included. He checked the packaging again, but there was nothing else. The only visible feature on the helmet was a red switch at the back.

Sanjay pressed the switch, and the strips on the helmet began to glow.

"Cool," he thought.

Without overthinking how it was powered, Sanjay wore the helmet.

The world before his eyes turned completely black, startling him. He was about to rip the helmet off when a message appeared:

[ID verifying...]

[Verification complete]

[Welcome, Sanjay. Please select your username and avatar.]

Instantly, an avatar resembling him appeared on the screen. Sanjay was shocked. He had only worn the helmet—it wasn't like he'd allowed it to scan him, nor was he wearing a full-body suit.

"How did it know my face? Did it pull information from a database or something? My photo, perhaps?" he wondered. But he hadn't even provided his ID. This was baffling, and he made a mental note to research it later.

After selecting his original name and making a few minor changes to his avatar, he entered the virtual world.

Within seconds, the black void disappeared, and he found himself standing on a massive platform bustling with activity. People of various ethnicities and some who didn't even look human—likely custom avatars—were coming and going.

Above him, thousands of colorful billboards filled the sky. It seemed chaotic, but somehow, everyone navigated without confusion.

Sanjay stepped off the platform and found himself in a grand technological city, far more advanced than even the 23rd-century world. Thousands of people moved about without bumping into one another, emphasizing just how enormous the place was. He noticed some people disappearing after pressing something on their wrists.

He looked down and found a wristband attached to his arm. Curious, he tapped it, and a holographic screen materialized.

"Oh, what is this?"

The hologram displayed multiple sections like Games, Merchant, Employer, Entertainment, News, and more—clearly some sort of apps. He selected the Games section, and a new screen appeared.

It resembled a gaming website, with a banner at the top advertising the "Top Offer" and its best-selling game. There were multiple games listed, each having won awards in different categories. The games seemed to allow players to fully immerse themselves as first-person participants.

Sanjay purchased the best-selling game, a fantasy magic world, and entered it.

A few hours later, he exited the game and sat on his hotel bed with a smile on his face. Today, he had experienced every gamer's dream of entering a VR game. It was on another level entirely. He now understood why the magic world was the top seller—who wouldn't want to experience throwing fireballs?

The game itself was engaging as well; otherwise, people would have already grown tired of the novelty of magic. He hadn't played much, only getting past the novice village, but the feeling of killing monsters with magic was a completely unique experience.

Realizing it was already morning, Sanjay took a bath in the hotel room and disappeared once again.

This time, he reappeared at home, lying on his bed. Checking his hand, he noticed that only one streak had disappeared.

"Huh, with so much traveling back and forth, only one streak disappeared," Sanjay muttered, unable to understand the reason for it.

Without wasting any more time, he quickly grabbed his bicycle and headed to the warehouse he had rented. The space was nearly overflowing with steel and bags of gold, leaving barely enough room for him to move around.

He grabbed one bag containing around twenty kilograms of gold. Though he could carry more, he also needed to deliver it discreetly to Maya from the hotel, and lugging more than one bag at a time would be impractical.

"Maybe I should rent a warehouse on the other side as well," Sanjay thought. "It could come in handy for future endeavors."

After securing one bag of gold, he delivered it to his hotel room and locked up the warehouse for now.

A few minutes later, in his hotel room, Sanjay struggled to carry the bag with all his strength.

"Maybe I should start going to the gym," he muttered to himself, feeling the strain of the hard work.

After calling a taxi, and with considerable effort, he finally arrived at Maya's shop.

Maya was visibly shocked when she saw the amount of gold.

"Well, there's twenty kilograms of gold here, but I want four million for it," Sanjay demanded firmly.

Realizing that Sanjay now understood the true value of gold, Maya frowned.

"Two million."

"Four million," Sanjay repeated, standing his ground.

"Okay, three million. I can't offer more than that."

"Three and a half million," Sanjay countered. "Even then, you'll still make a profit. I have more than one hundred kilograms of it."

Maya's eyes widened in astonishment.

"One hundred kilograms?!" she thought, calculating how much money she could make from it.

After a brief pause, she said, "Agreed."

They shook hands, sealing the deal. Maya explained that she would handle the money transfer through shell companies overseas, utilizing her contacts to ensure it was untraceable.

Even in an era with AI systems and quantum computing, humans still found ways to cheat the system. That was human nature, Sanjay thought. Perhaps the loopholes were intentionally left there for such purposes.

A few hours later, while Sanjay was immersed in the VR world, he received a notification about money being deposited as dividends from a company he had never heard of. The amount was 65 million quarks.

"Where did the extra five million go?" Sanjay wondered and sent a text to Maya for clarification.

Maya explained that the deduction was for broker fees and taxes in the country where the shell company was registered. Just like in India, the Orion Nation had laws ensuring that if taxes were already paid in the foreign nation, there was no need to pay them a second time.

Hearing this, Sanjay relaxed. "Still better than nothing," he thought.

He quickly initiated the next phase of his plan: delivering the remaining one hundred kilograms of gold to Maya. Using his phone, he rented a new warehouse for storage. Maya had made the process simple but had listed his age as twenty without asking him.

In the current era, with genetic modifications, people could appear much younger than their actual age, making it difficult to guess someone's age accurately. Maya assumed, based on Sanjay's speech patterns, that he must be twenty years old—or perhaps she found it easier to build a background for him with this age. Sanjay only learned about this detail later when reading the rental agreement on the pendrive.

Once he received confirmation of the successful rental, Sanjay hailed a taxi and went to inspect the place.

He was stunned by what he saw. The facility was completely automated. Hundreds of drones were constantly flying in and out, transporting goods between warehouses without any human intervention. The only people he saw were a few staff members moving around in automated cars.

Seeing such a massive facility, Sanjay didn't know what to do next. He simply stood still, taking it all in.

A sleek car approached and stopped next to him. He looked at it curiously.

[Please scan the QR code to travel.]

"QR code?" Sanjay muttered, wondering if it was the same one he had received with the confirmation.

He pulled out his phone and displayed the QR code through the car's black glass, unable to find any visible place to scan or insert it.

[Confirmed. Please enter.]

The door slowly opened, rising vertically. Sanjay stepped inside, marveling at the design.

"Wow, if even a simple warehouse car is this advanced and automated..." Sanjay thought. Tesla had already been working on similar technology in his world, but the speed and precision of this car—used solely for warehouse operations—made him imagine just how far automobile technology had advanced in this world.

In mere seconds, the car zipped through the maze-like facility, efficiently navigating its path before stopping in front of his rented warehouse.

As Sanjay stood before the warehouse gate, a camera scanned his face for recognition. The system promptly verified his identity, and the massive doors slid open automatically.

The warehouse was enormous, covering fifty thousand square feet. Sanjay had deliberately chosen a large space, thinking ahead to potential future needs. His previous warehouse, which was only one hundred square feet, had become far too small for his operations. Maybe this time he had gone a little overboard, but he didn't mind.

"I'll make more money once I sell the gold anyway," he reassured himself as he stepped inside and closed the doors.

It took him nearly five trips to transport all one hundred kilograms of gold into the warehouse. There was even more gold left to retrieve, but he decided to save that for another day—he was completely drained of energy for now.

The gold he brought with him was only a fraction of what he had obtained from the medieval world. The rest of it was buried in the village where he had first landed.

Only the village chief, whom Sanjay had helped significantly after becoming wealthy, knew about the buried gold. Sanjay planned to recover it once he was fully settled and had established a stable footing in that timeline.