Maybe it hadn’t been a great idea to let himself out of her apartment in the middle of the night. Fine, he’d stayed until morning, but she didn’t know that because he had left before she woke up.

He leaned back in his chair, away from the desk of his childhood. Painted by an artist in shapes and swirls to keep from looking like a place of study. One of the recommendations from a therapist to counter the ugly feelings he associated with schoolwork. It still made him a bit queasy to sit here. He yanked off his headphones and stood. In the end, text-to-speech was the real savior. And his memory, which could give an elephant a run for its money.

That didn’t mean all of it wasn’t exhausting.

Hari had been sending him every piece of demographic data he could find and compute about the homeless in the city. There was some information about education and past employment but not nearly enough. The segments with mental illness and addictions were the best documented. Yet again it struck Vansh how complex the problem was. Too many pieces to track and connect. History, economics, politicians treating people like pawns, people treating each other like nothing more than the money they could generate. But that wasn’t different from any other problem in the world.

His wallet sat on his nightstand. Flipping it open, he dug out a folded piece of paper. The words were faded, as though his superhuman dyslexic memory had soaked them right off the paper.

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

His friend Amara had slipped him the note one night after a gas explosion had killed fifteen people in their camp in Cambodia. A paraphrase of one of the teachings from her Jewish faith.

It had been a lantern in many a dark night.

As he always did when he thought of the note, he dropped Amara a text checking in on her. She was a young mother and the CIO of some hot tech start-up in Tel Aviv now, but she’d answer within seconds.

Thank you, my Indian prince.

Yup.

He sent her a broken-heart emoji. Then an eggplant, just because it had always made her laugh.

Another email chimed on his laptop, from Hari. He was working on a Sunday morning too. Having a task that involved numbers had already given Hari purpose and relief. Vansh couldn’t abandon him any more than he could destroy Naina’s project.

He dictated another text into his phone. This one to Jiggy, telling him they needed to talk some more about the terms of his coming on board at the Omnivore Foundation.