Basudeb Gupta

Pilgrim of the mirage Basudeb Gupta

Pilgrim of the Mirage depicts the journey of mankind from the chaotic, all-pervading infection of technology today into the final world of technological dystopia, where all power is concentrated in a single computer program run by a secret group. The perpetuation of civilization as we know it is uncertain. The story chronicles the odyssey of a fictitious Indian engineer, Tirtha, whose story starts in the 1970s. By a quirk of fate, he becomes the creator of the technological dystopia due to the ever aggressive application of computer software and artificial intelligence. A fictitious, ancient group, ORB, in the image of similar groups that exist, controls this unrestricted technical growth with the sole objective of creating and maintaining a pure world of a superior class of human beings, served by the rest of the humans whose job it is to toil and produce. As the world is finally controlled by ALGO, one single algorithm, it is vertically divided into the Supers and the Lowlys. To add to their misery, an asteroid comes very close to the earth, and mayhem destroys more than half of the planet. The Supermen decide to leave the world for their space colonies and destroy the rest with a nuclear holocaust. How Tirtha joins a group that resists the final destruction of humanity, beats them using technology amidst his train of personal tragedies at every step of his life is the story of this book.