The constant influx of future destruction had become a relentless assault on Arjun's mind. His digital archive of impending doom swelled with more devastating visions: forgotten super-volcanoes stirring beneath ancient crusts, orbital debris raining down on unsuspecting cities, resource wars igniting across arid lands, and more unsettling glimpses of the "gate" widening, its shadows stretching. He wasn't just seeing snippets anymore; he was witnessing multi-stage catastrophes, often with unnerving clarity and crushing emotional impact.
His digital control, once a source of immense power, now felt like a secondary tool, useful for managing the present world, but almost useless against the future he was forced to witness. The visions were random, overwhelming. He'd be trying to analyze a network vulnerability, and suddenly, he'd be plunged into the screams of a collapsing skyscraper, or the terrifying silence of a pandemic-stricken ghost town. He was a passive, terrified spectator to humanity's unraveling.
The thought struck him with desperate clarity: if he was to truly fight this, he couldn't afford to be just a receiver of random horrors. He needed to control this Seer power. Just as he had learned to navigate the internet's vastness, he needed to learn to navigate the currents of time. He needed to see the future of specific places he willed to see, to focus on particular threats, to gain actionable intelligence, not just overwhelming dread.
He began a new, grueling regimen, even more mentally taxing than his digital mastery. He started by trying to link his Seer power to his digital maps. He would focus intensely on a particular city displayed on his screen – say, London – and try to will a vision of its future. Sometimes, it would remain stubbornly blank. Other times, he'd be flooded with irrelevant data, or a random vision of a distant, unrelated flood.
He experimented with different mental anchors. He'd hold a specific image in his mind – a satellite view of a nuclear power plant, a geographical map of a known seismic zone, a picture of a bustling port. He tried to project his consciousness forward in time to that specific location.
Slowly, agonizingly, he began to develop a technique. It was less about 'pulling' the future to him, and more about 'tuning' his mind, like adjusting a complex radio dial. He found that focusing on a specific city's digital footprint – its network pulse, its energy consumption patterns, its media flow – helped to anchor his temporal perception. When he combined this with a strong mental image of the physical location, the random visions began to subside, replaced by focused, albeit still horrifying, glimpses.
He started with smaller, mundane things. The future of a street corner in Jaipur. The stock fluctuations of a local company. Then he moved to more significant events he knew would occur, using them as benchmarks. A political rally. A major sporting event. He learned to 'fast forward' and 'rewind' within limited temporal windows, refining the clarity and duration of his visions.