Walker in Modern World

Last week, he checked the bag of gold he had left in the abandoned building. It had already been taken by someone. So, the person should have received it, and their one-week time was up.

Today, he stood in a different phone booth with a phone number he had noted down earlier.

Slowly, he dialed the number on the phone, and it connected.

After a few rings, someone picked up but didn't say anything.

"Ramesh?" Sanjay asked.

"It's you," the voice on the other side replied.

"Was it done?" Sanjay asked.

"Yes," Ramesh confirmed.

Hearing this, Sanjay felt satisfied. At least it was done. But this time, he didn't forget to ask the most important thing.

"How much was it?"

"It's 22 million after deducting my share," Ramesh said.

So much. At last, he was a millionaire.

Without saying anything more, he said, "Note down the account number. It's in National Bank."

"Okay," Sanjay quickly took out his notebook.

"The account number is 234058… and the password is 'Kingoftheworld,'" Ramesh said.

Such a weird password, Sanjay thought.

"Okay. Contact me if there's more business," Ramesh added.

"Wait, Ramesh," Sanjay said hurriedly before Ramesh could hang up the phone.

"I have more gold that needs to be exchanged," Sanjay said.

"How much?"

"The same—14karats gold, 11200 biscuits," Sanjay said.

"What?" The other side sounded shocked. "Did you rob a bank or something, man?" Ramesh asked.

"Can you do it?" Sanjay asked, avoiding any unnecessary chitchat.

"Yes, but the account will need to be an overseas account. Keeping this much money in a domestic account will immediately attract government scrutiny," Ramesh said thoughtfully.

"That works for me," Sanjay agreed.

"Okay, same place tonight?" Ramesh asked.

"Agreed," Sanjay said and hung up the phone.

Afterward, he went to the nearest cyber café and rented a computer with a private cabin.

He logged onto the National Bank website and entered the account number and password. He was worried it might be incorrect, but it worked, and he gained access to the account.

He checked the balance, and it was indeed twenty-two million Indian rupees.

"Yes!" Sanjay whispered, punching the air in triumph.

He quickly changed the password on the account. The account was registered under the name Suresh Sharma. It was a common name in India, and the photo showed a man with a poor appearance. Most likely, Ramesh had found someone impoverished and paid them some money to use their identity. Or, it might have been the identity of a deceased person.

Now it was time to use the money for himself. He checked online. Bitcoin hadn't been invented yet, and stocks seemed like the best way to earn money. However, he didn't remember much about short-term volatility. So, he decided he would need to invest for the long term only.

He was getting richer quickly this way, but his investments in India would decrease. More importantly, he needed to find a way to get money to his family without creating too much commotion.

"Okay, there is a way," he thought. Just because he only knew Python didn't mean he couldn't hire other people.

He posted an ad for a few developers on Elance—which later became Upwork—a platform that connects freelancers with employers. The ad was for an entire project with a budget of 25,000 dollars.

He wasn't planning on building Facebook or any other social media application. The internet was still in its early stages, so a simple software like an image or PDF reader would suffice.

However, he planned to integrate his own OCR system into it. OCR, or optical character recognition, wasn't widely adopted until 2005. It had the potential to create a storm in the market.

OCR technology could read numbers and words from images and PDF documents. Companies would likely pay large sums to use such an application.

To establish his rights to the idea, he decided to write a paper on it first. But before all that, he needed a laptop.

After posting the ad and planning everything, he contacted HP's customer care. He asked if he could purchase their top-of-the-line laptop and pay online. The customer care team happily accepted and provided him with the account number and the location of their nearest store in Guwahati.

He returned to the cyber café, transferred the money, and received email confirmation. HP informed him that they had already contacted the local store in Guwahati.

HP was eager to sell their premium products in India, so their customer service for such transactions was efficient. Within two hours, Sanjay had the laptop in his hands.

The laptop wasn't as advanced as those in 2025, but it was top-tier for 2003. It featured 512 MB of RAM, a 60 GB HDD, an Intel Pentium 4 processor, and Windows XP Professional. It cost him around 100,000 rupees.

He had all the necessary development tools installed at the store itself. After finishing everything, he rushed home to avoid getting scolded by his mother.

The next day, he returned to the cyber café. Like most people at the time, he didn't have an internet connection at home.

He checked the responses to his ad. Several teams had bid for the project. After reviewing their credentials and verifying their experience, he selected the team he believed could complete the project.

Sanjay had already drafted the entire project and its workflow. After getting on a voice call via Skype and emailing the documents, the team and he came to an agreement. Elance maintained an online contract system, so they finalized the deal by filling in their respective details.

Sanjay transferred half of the payment upfront—12,500 dollars—to get the work started. Seeing the advance payment created a sense of relief for the team, as they were assured of getting paid after completing the project.

Next on Sanjay's list was a generator. He couldn't operate in the other world without electricity. He contacted Honda and ordered a portable 5,000-watt diesel-powered generator. It would be enough to run a few essentials like a laptop, lights, and fans.

The medieval side wasn't too hot or cold, so air conditioners or heaters weren't necessary.

After paying, Honda informed him that they had one available in their warehouse in Guwahati and could deliver it the same day. This was excellent news for him.

Finally, he realized he needed a permanent base of operations in the modern world. He couldn't keep running around to manage everything.

Since he had money, he decided to lease a warehouse. However, when he approached brokers, many rejected him due to his age, as he wasn't of legal age to sign a lease without parental consent.

After much effort—and paying extra—he finally managed to secure a warehouse.

The warehouse wasn't very big, with only one hundred square feet of area. But it would suffice for now. After paying 100,000 rupees for six months, the broker handed him the keys and left.

Sanjay gave the generator delivery person this address. Since electricity was already available, he wouldn't have any issues charging his laptop and working until the generator was delivered. However, there was no internet because it required having a phone number, which could only be provided by a government agency. Without proper documentation, he knew his application would never be approved.

He opened his laptop. Python was already installed along with the necessary libraries. Beforehand, he had downloaded a few PDFs and images online to test his work.

He got to work immediately, starting with preprocessing the documents. His plan was to train the model using a neural network. Since neural network packages weren't available yet for direct use, he would need to build his own.

He began by creating general preprocessing steps for images: converting them to grayscale, applying binarization, and removing noise. Next, he planned to segment text into individual characters and extract features like pixel data or geometric patterns. He would then use template matching or a basic neural network to classify the characters, eventually assembling them into readable text.

The entire process would take about a week, but thankfully, he had the time and resources to make it happen.

Soon, the generator delivery arrived. Since it was already prepaid, Sanjay tipped the driver 500 rupees. The driver left with a wide smile.

The generator was nearly one meter in length and weighed around eighty kilograms.

Sanjay brought the generator home and instructed one of the servants to create a hole in the wall of a nearby room. The servant followed his instructions and used a hammer to create a fist-sized hole in the wall.

Sanjay returned to the adjacent room with the generator and placed it there. He connected the heavy-duty extension cables he had purchased earlier to the generator.

He carefully poured diesel into the generator and pulled the cord to start it.

After a few thudding sounds, the generator roared to life. It wasn't overly loud since it was designed for home use, but the noise was still noticeable. Thankfully, the generator wasn't in his room but in the adjacent one.

Sanjay plugged his laptop charger into one of the sockets on the extension cord. He was careful, fearing it might damage his laptop.

To his relief, nothing happened, and the laptop began charging without issue. He let out a sigh of relief.

He needed to rush home again. He couldn't stay out too long. After all, he had told his mother he was just going out for fresh air, but here he was, spending hours outside.

Sanjay locked the warehouse securely, even though there wasn't much inside, and hurried home. On the way, he stopped at the desolate building and placed the gold bag in the same spot as before.

When he reached home, his mother scolded him as usual. But slowly, she seemed to grow used to his absences. After some time, she stopped scolding or beating him and simply let him be. Sanjay realized that his family was becoming disappointed in him. But he was doing all of this for their future, even if they didn't understand it yet.

After taking a bath, he sat down at his study table. Looking at the books, he could slowly recall the questions he had been struggling with earlier. However, he knew there was still a gap if he wanted to achieve good results.

He also started following a healthier diet to maintain his energy and keep himself in good shape. After studying for a few hours, he noticed his momentum returning. Slowly, the streaks of productivity were coming back.

Finally, he decided it was time to return to the medieval world and complete his project.

P.S. I wrote the entire chapter last night for a bulk release tomorrow. Please leave a review if you like it.