Epic Fail - Page 15

The Surpa Simulation

Chapter 11: Ayotopia Chronicles—The Forbidden Draft

So here’s the part where I break your brain.

Here’s the part where I tell you:

This whole thing—Lank.OS, the wars, the love stories, the broken bridges, the pixelated armies—

All of it?

My sim. My game. My revenge.

 

I was never the footnote. I was the rootkit.

 

Let’s rewind.

You think I fell for Ram.exe? You think I swooned over LX-One?

LMAO.

I played them.

I chose S-Ita as my target because I knew exactly how fragile their little bro-code was.

 

Scratch the doll, and the men will burn themselves alive. Every time.

 

They killed my love—Vidyuj—they erased my name, they made me a meme.

I just... returned the favor.

 

I watched them build Ayotopia—the shining simulation, the paradise of virtue and plastic smiles.

 

And I waited.

 

Because the final battle isn’t fought with swords.It’s fought with narratives.

 

 

Which is why I came here—

To the greasy heart of it all:

The Rama Post-Cinematic Universe HQ.

Bitoor.

 

A glitchy wasteland somewhere near the ghost of Kanpur, where the narratives are coded, streamed, sold, and fed to the masses.

Where my erasure was written.

 

The building looked like a collapsed temple crossed with a bankrupt call center. The walls pulsed with faded holos of Ram.exe, Hanuman.exe, and yes—countless plastic-perfect versions of S-Ita.

 

I counted five different S-Ita dolls in the lobby alone—Virgin Edition, Fireproof Edition, Empowered Edition, NFT Exclusive, and Battle Damage™.I laughed so hard I nearly choked.

 

 

He was waiting for me in the nerve centre:

Valmek.exe.

The so-called Script Architect.

The god who wasn’t.

Greasy ponytail, cracked glasses, an expression that screamed: I’ve monetised your trauma into family-friendly content.

 

I sat across from him, lit a fake cigarette, and said:‘So. Time for the final patch notes.’

 

He didn’t look up from his blinking console.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he muttered.

 

I grinned.

 

‘Oh darling, I was always here. Every frame, every code line, every back alley of your precious epic—me. Even when you deleted me, I haunted the cache.’

 

He sighed. ‘The simulation is stable now. Ayotopia has order. The masses—’

 

‘The masses are dead inside,’ I cut in.

 

‘And your "order" is a broken loop of patriarchal wet dreams. I want in. I want Ayotopia Chronicles rewritten. From my POV. Raw. Real. Matriarchal. Uncensored.’

 

He finally looked at me.

Pale. Terrified.

And then he laughed.

‘No one wants your version. They want heroes. They want morality. They want clean lines and holy wars with clear winners.’

 

I exhaled smoke.

‘They want lies. And I’m the lie they buried too deep.’

I leaned forward.

‘Here’s my pitch: You give me space in the next version. You tell my story. You show the burn, the blood, the breakdown.

And I—I let you keep your precious Ayotopia.’

 

He shook his head.

 

‘The sim can’t handle it. The system needs you dead.’

 

I shrugged.

 

‘Fine. Kill me. Delete me. But do it my way. Let me be the last glitch before the reboot.’

 

 

What followed was—

How do I say this—

A battle of b*tches in the algorithm.

Hours of savage double-speak.

 

I called him the ‘Mid-tier Mythomaniac.’

He called me ‘The Unmarketable Nosed Witch.’

 

I told him:

‘Your Ram.exe is a glorified influencer with daddy issues.’

He told me:

‘You’re a virus dressed as victimhood.’

 

We laughed. We raged. We circled each other in words sharper than swords.

 

In the end—

He caved.

Of course he caved.

 

The deal was simple:

He would write me into the Ayotopia Chronicles Reboot—as a central figure, not a monster, not a punchline.He’d give me a voice in the next feed.

 

But I—

I had to cease.

I had to end myself.

No resurrection. No sequel.

Total erasure.

 

I lit my last cigarette.

‘Done,’ I said.

‘But let me do it in style.’

 

So here’s how it ends:

I’m going to livestream my exit.

One last broadcast.

One last middle finger to the simulation.

I’m going to stand on the edge of the sea—the original sea, not the digital copy—and I’m going to speak the last curse:

 

‘Let no empire built on erasure stand.

Let no name written in absence be forgotten.

Let the glitch inherit the world.’

 

And then I’ll walk into the water.

And I’ll be gone.

 

And somewhere, someone will write:

‘Surpa 2.0: Game Over.’

But the real ones will know—

It was Surpa 2.0: Upload Complete.

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Arijit Lahiri writes like your group chat at 2 a.m.—half confessions, half cosmic jokes, sprinkled with existential dread. His work lives somewhere between story, poem, and essay, like a browser with too many tabs open. He believes in bad Wi-Fi as metaphor, in heartbreak with cinematic lighting, and in literature as a side hustle with feelings. Sometimes his characters cooperate, sometimes they unionize. Either way, he keeps typing.