Rahul sat on the edge of his bed, still wrapped in a fog of disbelief. The soft hum of the ceiling fan, the rustle of leaves outside the window, and the distant murmur of traffic were all so… ordinary. Painfully, vividly real. It didn't feel like a dream. And it certainly didn't feel like death.
He looked around the room again, but slower this time. The posters hadn't faded with time yet—an F-22 Raptor, a Concorde schematic, and a rough sketch of a blended-wing-body drone he'd once doodled in a bored frenzy. A stack of engineering books sat in the corner, dog-eared and heavily annotated. But what caught his eye most was the faint marker scrawl on the window pane: fragments of Schrödinger's equations from a long-forgotten study session.
The equations didn't belong to him.
He traced a line with his finger, recognizing Mei Lin's handwriting—his Chinese-Malaysian classmate from Tohoku University. Part brilliant, part alarmingly stupid, she had once insisted on scribbling out derivations all over their dorm's window during a pre-exam panic. He remembered telling her that glass wasn't a whiteboard. She had told him the universe wasn't deterministic.
That memory belonged in Sendai. But he was in Bengaluru.
It didn't make sense.
His phone was still unlocked. The date: March 11, 2013. The time: 7:48 AM.
If this wasn't a dream, if he really had come back ten years into the past, then he was at the start of his internship at IISc Bangalore. He remembered this day clearly. It was the day of a guest seminar at IISc—a one-off lecture he had almost skipped the first time around, thinking it wouldn't matter. This time, he knew better.
But today, this time, everything was different.
He glanced down at the coin.
It lay flat against his chest, unmoving now. Whatever anomaly caused it to spin earlier had settled. He picked it up gently and rolled it between his fingers. The texture was familiar—brushed brass with worn engravings along the rim. He remembered his grandmother's stories—half told in Mandarin, half in broken English—about a coin that always gave her good luck. She had pressed it into his hand when he was too young to understand sentiment.
He'd always kept it out of habit. Not belief.
But belief might be necessary now.
He stood up slowly and walked to the mirror. A younger version of himself stared back—sharper, leaner, and almost unfamiliar. At 15, Rahul had the wiry, agile build of someone who trained relentlessly—football drills, CrossFit circuits, and Krav Maga sessions had carved definition into every limb. He wasn't bulky, but he was athletic in the most efficient, functional way. His skin had the kind of natural fairness often commented on in school, though now kissed with a healthy tan from hours under the sun.
His hair—dark brown and soft, with sun-glinted golden strands—fell in unkempt waves across his forehead. It was the first thing he noticed. He reached up unconsciously, brushing it back, struck by how foreign the sensation felt after years of retreating hairlines and thinning density. His hazel eyes caught the light, shimmering faintly with a green-gold hue he hadn't seen reflected back in years. There was energy in that face, potential. No eye bags. No burnt-out gaze. No trace of unpaid overtime or nicotine fatigue.
Just a teenager who hadn't yet been buried in deadlines and disappointment.
He ran through a mental checklist:
Physical consistency? Check.
Sensory accuracy? Check.
Emotional recall? Alarmingly high.
Rational explanation? None.
His brow furrowed. That meant his next move was simple: observe.
He pulled out a notepad and began jotting down every detail he could verify. He noted the tactile data points, the coin's behavior, the ambient temperature, the exact messages on his phone, the time delay between muscle motion and tactile sensation—anything that could later help him determine the reliability of his perceptions.
But as he moved to slide the coin into his desk drawer, a peculiar instinct stopped him. He tossed it instead, just to see.
The coin flipped mid-air and landed neatly in his palm.
Heads.
He frowned.
"What does heads even mean?"
He flipped it again.
Heads.
Again.
Heads.
A chill pricked his spine. This wasn't probability. This wasn't chance. Not unless chance was suddenly rewriting basic statistics.
The fourth time, he whispered, "I want tails."
He flipped.
It landed—
Heads.
He stared at it for a long time.
No patterns. No messages. No system window or glowing pop-up. Just a silent coin.
Yet something had begun.
Rahul didn't know what. Not yet. But today, he would attend that seminar. He'd ask questions about Bitcoin. He'd talk to the professor from Nicosia. He wouldn't dismiss it this time.
Maybe it would be nothing.
But maybe it would be the first move that changed everything.
And for now, he'd keep flipping that coin.