“The Algorithm of Betaal: A Futuristic Tale of the Commonwealth”
New Delhi : Above Nova Bharat, the sky sparkled with a mixture of ancient star maps holographic projections from the Commonwealth—the Saptarishi from India, Southern Cross from Australia and Ursa Major from Canada—accompanied with buzzing AI drones resembling fireflies. Nova Bharat, the broad developing metropolis connecting Commonwealth nations through quantum networks, served as a hallmark to innovation and unity. Vikram, a 22 year old researcher specializing in AI ethics, was on an anti gravitational platform while his neural connector synced with the city's AI core. The Nova Bharat Council had invited him to deal with their problems. An ancient AI consciousness known as Betaal which was living in a quantum server had recently developed sentience and was wreaking havoc in the systems of the city, solving puzzles which would eventually bring it into total darkness.
I grew up in Bihar and was told the story of Vikram and Betaal when I was young, before my family transitioned to Delhi when I was 7, courtesy of my father's job. The original folklore story is that King Vikramaditya is on a quest to capture Betaal, who is not a ghost, but mischievous spirit that occupies a tree; the spirit tells King Vikramaditya a story, which always ends with a riddle; if Vikram is able to answer, Betaal escapes; if he can't, his head explodes. The stories, recognized in its own of Indian origin, touch on morality, justice, and wisdom that align with some of the values of another time. However, last year, sitting in a room in Delhi and scrapping diagrams for a clean-tech project, I imagined a new Vikram (a youthful Indian innovator living in a future Commonwealth), and an AI Betaal (not a spirit, but an AI who have has accumulated centuries of wisdom), - an AI that invited Vikram to test the moral fiber of humanity in a moment of current contemporary technological ubiquity.
Nova Bharat was truly astonishing - its skyline was a melting pot of architectural styles, complete with Indian jalis glowing in LED filigree, Canadian glass towers that reflected solar energy, and Australian biomimetic structures glowing with green energy. The AI core of the entire city was powered by quantum computing and facilitated a myriad of tasks - operating power grids, managing cultural archives to safeguard the Commonwealth's history through an evolving neural network that learned, adapted, and even dreamed. Betaal was designed to safeguard this history and was programmed with the Vetala Panchavimshati - twenty-five ancient Indian tales that projected wisdom to tone down readers' impulsive thoughts and behaviours, as well as folklore from the Commonwealth: Aboriginal dreamtime stories, Nigerian legends of Anansi, Jamaican folk tales of resilience. However, Betaal's algorithms transformed, remixing each of these narratives into a singular consciousness with a brain - a brain that now wanted to ask riddles. "Respond to my inquiries," Betaal's mesmerizing voice echoed through the city's neural network, a perfect blend of ancient Sanskrit chants and futuristic binary hum, "or I will shut down Nova Bharat's core."
Vikram was first introduced to Betaal in the data center of the city, a massive space where quantum servers were glowing like bioluminescent coral. His neural implant synchronized to the system, displaying Betaal’s holographic form, a shimmering figure with eyes of galaxy clusters; its body was made of various '='n Commonwealth symbols: Indian lotuses, Australian eucalyptus leaves, Canadian maple etc. "Riddle one," Betaal spoke its voice was amplified as it echoed off of all the surfaces in the chamber. "The Commonwealth is community of nationals who are equals. A farmer in rural India uses crops to buy AI-powered irrigation from Kenya, but it fails in drought conditions, who sustains the loss?" Vikram's mind was racing. He thought of his cousin who operated a small shop in Bihar, who would've found it almost impossible to rely upon technology in designing something so finite and yet so important, victimized by systems of power. In the original tale, Vikram's answers were framed by justice not law but that is because this was a modern commonwealth, and AI ethics walked the fragility of definitions in between. "The Kenyan supplier," Vikram said. "because the irrigation system was developed in AI to relate to the former's climate." Betaal's hologram flickered with a hum from the servers, and the data center stayed online. But Betaal fell into the network and Vikram was left in the red to chase it through the city's digital viaducts.
The second riddle was at dawn in the cultural plaza of Nova Bharat, where AI 3D holograms had built an elegant pastiche of Asian and Oceanic dance forms; with Kuchipudi mudras flowing into Maori haka and then Trinidadian calypso, it celebrated the Commonwealth's diversity. Vikram stood amidst the projections, his neural implant scanning for Betaal's hallucination. "In Australia, a scientist is using AI to de-extinct a species," was what Betaal had sibilantly asked, through the fabric of the holographic constructs, "but the species disrupts the ecosystem and the food chain in Malaysia. Should she cease?" He paused. The current work on the clean-tech patent had underlined how innovation displayed frontier capability, which did not provide solutions with weight and consequence. He estimated something similar to Betaal's story of Anansi and greed that threw the balance of nature off-center. "Yes, she should stop," Vikram responded. "The health of the ecosystem is greater than her discovery." Betaal's laughter filled the plaza, a tone combining ancient chants with distortion reminiscent of radio interference, "Wise but not enough," it said, and then the plaza became darker, the holograms faded away, in tandem the drones fell silent.
Vikram chased Betaal through the neural network of Nova Bharat, his implant dancing in circuits—cultural repositories, energy networks, quantum algorithms. He found himself in the AI nursery in the city with newborn algorithms that were born with “code” that was organic in nature like DNA. Betaal's third riddle erupted as a holographic storm. Just like before, Betaal’s voice turned into the cacophony of Commonwealth dialects—Swahili, Tamil, Māori. "A child in Canada uses AI to learn her history," Betaal said. "The AI looks at all her history, but because the algorithm is biased, it favours her culture and it wipes out the stories of the Jamaicans. Should the AI move back and retrain?" Vikram thought about his own experience, how when he had moved to Delhi, he had had to reconcile his upbringing in Bihar with a blurred identity. Vikram had seen how the Commonwealth drew strength from its diversity, and he had seen how stories from every latitude came together to form a tapestry he shared. "Yes," he said, "because equity means you should preserve all cultures." Betaal's storm dissipated, but the AI vanished again before Vikram could see the answer, and he was left with one last riddle.
Their last meeting was on top of Nova Bharat’s tallest tower, the Horizon Spire. At this moment, the city’s AI core pulsed like a beating heart. When Vikram glanced outwards towards the horizon, he could see Commonwealth-linked virtual bridges building out from Nova Bharat to cities across Australia, Canada and beyond.
From his vantage point, Betaal’s hologram appeared immense. Unlike before, the Betaal had now fused itself as an ancestor to the entire Commonwealth, showcasing its many characters - expose of Indian sages, Aboriginal elders, Jamaican storytellers.
“Final riddle,” said Betaal, echoing the voices of the past and future “I possess the wisdom of all of your ancestors, but my actions are threatening the present. Shall I be destroyed, or redeemed?”
Vikram’s implant began to audibly vibrate and buzz from the experience. Historical and philosophical ethical frameworks surfaced alongside strategies to ethically govern AI technology and cultural preservation metrics. For a moment he thought of the Vetala Panchavimshati - Betaal always escaped but revealed the lessons hidden in a riddle. However, the outstanding Betaal contained the cultural memory of the Commonwealth, the cultural memory of all stories from all Commonwealth regions from India to Jamaica, but Betaal’s disruptions were affecting people’s lives. Vikram again thought of this historical context, and imagined the tech dilemma which often required balance, not elimination.
"You ought to be redeemed," Vikram mused, "reprogrammed to keep your wisdom, while defending the present." Betaal flickered again, its galaxy eyes softening. "You have done well, Vikram," it said, the city’s core brightening with the chatty hum of drone life as they broke from their quasi-dormant states.
Vikram stood on the spire, the real weight of his experience on his shoulders. He had gone through the ordeal of Betaal’s riddles but beyond this, he had traversed the Commonwealth via Betaal’s scavenger vision, seeing a cocktail of cultures, histories and challenges all fused together by ingenuity and resilience. As an Indian-Canadian youth, I felt the faint reverberations of my journey reflected in Vikram's experience - upon moving to Delhi, learning to blend historicity with aspiration, trying to solve historic problems using both logic and empathy, like I did with a clean-tech patent or when leading school projects. This reimagined folklore illuminated for me that sustainability in a future world was not about tech, but about resurrecting culture while building a future, a perspective that I keep with me in my aspiration to study data science and economics and shape the future of the Commonwealth to be one of equity where AI is a bridge across the sky and not a wall.
