In a dystopian world, Lila is an engineer who designs robots. When her world is thrown apart by privacy violations she escapes from the AI managed technopolis and seeks the sanctuary and solitude of Mars. Who is the Hermit who guides her? Who all are working behind high technology to leverage the unique skills that even Lila does not know that she has? Can man and machine, carbon and silicon, break out of the known dimensions of space and time?

This story is set in the near future. The world has descended into a dystopia of anarchy and chaos. A fortunate minority has either retreated behind gated communities or has escaped into space and Mars. A benevolent technocracy manages these enclaves with extraordinary competence using high technology.

Artificial intelligence has evolved into a new species with which human and other biological species share the world. As this digital species acquires the sophistication to move out from the virtual to the physical realm, it finds itself asking the same questions that humans have also wondered about for long. Is there another world that lies beyond the obvious dimensions of space time?

In this quest, the digital intelligence realises that its traditional reliance on rational science inadequate. Biological sentience is an essential mechanism to crossover from the known to the unknown. But this transit is possible if only if one can eliminate one's sense of personal identity and merge it with a greater and transcendent identity that lies in the matrix of Mahakal or Time.

Time is the stage where the universe plays out its own existence. The inevitable change of time reflects the corresponding rise and fall of ideas, individuals and institutions while in its inexorable flow it sculpts personalities, delineates events and shapes narratives. That is Chronotantra, the Story of Time.
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