Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology

Finally, Anand made up his mind and took a deep breath before stepping forward.

The moment he stepped into the room, Anand heard the click of the door being gently closed behind him. As he hesitantly turned his head to the right, he could see the emperor sitting in the principal's chair, looking at him with a smile.

"Y-Y-Y-Your Ma-Majesty!" He quickly did a namaskara.

Vijay, looking at him, smiled because the description he had read about Anand Binoy completely matched the actual person—an extremely intelligent genius in physics and mathematics but with very low emotional intelligence and a little awkward with people.

"Come, sit down," Vijay said. This brought back a lot of memories. He had dealt with people like Anand in his last life when he was the chief director of the Mars mission, where he gathered the top minds of the Republic of India, so he knew how to handle people like Anand.

Anand Binoy hesitantly sat down and did not speak, lowering his gaze and keeping his eyes fixed on a certain part of the table. Normally, avoiding eye contact while speaking could be seen as disrespectful, but in this case, he knew it was not intentional, so he did not mind and directly got to the main topic.

"Anand, excellent work with the invention, but the reason I called you is—do you have any idea about what you would like to do in the future?"

Anand nodded hesitantly and replied, "Your Majesty, I would like to join the Pillai Research Institute."

"Oh!" Vijay was not expecting this answer. He had previously thought that Anand would either stay at the university as an assistant professor and gradually increase his rank or join the Nalanda Institute of Fundamental Sciences, the pinnacle of the empire's theoretical mathematics and physics. "Can I know why?" he asked, a little curious.

Anand did not hide anything and immediately told Vijay his idea, "Your Majesty, it is mainly because, along with the promise from Mr Ghana Patra Pillai to let me lead my own research team, he also promised that he would be willing to support me with a monthly funding of 150,000 Varaha and a salary of 120,000 Varaha per annum."

"Your Majesty, although my family does not have any problems with livelihood, I am still not from a rich family, and the allowance my family gave me when I joined the university has all been used up. I spent it to buy the two metal poles along with the materials needed for the experiment." He paused briefly, his face becoming hesitant as if he were deliberating whether to reveal the matter or not. In the end, he chose to reveal it.

"Also, Your Majesty, one of the main reasons is that apart from energy, I am also very interested in light. A couple of months ago, I had an epiphany that made me believe that light acts as both a particle and a wave, but unfortunately, I have no way to prove it. So, I am looking forward to seeing if there is any way I could do it at the Pillai Research Institute since it is one of the most advanced optics research centers in the world."

This time, it was Vijay's turn to be speechless. His eyes widened, and his mouth was slightly open. He never expected that the boy sitting opposite him would actually theorize the dual nature of light—one of the most important concepts not only in physics but in science in general. Fortunately, he was not a rookie politician who didn't know how to control his emotions. He had been the leader of the empire for over 13 years, so he quickly regained his composure and fell into deep thought.

He had originally wanted to recruit Anand Binoy to the Raya Research Center, but now it seemed that pushing a genius like this into an existing research center wouldn't be too efficient. Within a split second, he had to come up with a totally different plan.

He looked up at the boy with a smile and said, "Would you like to lead your own research institute?"

Anand was taken aback and immediately looked up at Vijay's face in surprise. But unexpectedly, he shook his head. "No, I don't want to."

"Why?!" Vijay asked, confused.

"I don't know how to run a research institute, and I do not want to deal with the financial aspects of it."

"Oh."

"In that case, I will set up the research institute, and you can become its chief researcher. I will also give you 35% of its stake along with 20% of the monetary benefits from the research and inventions you create, given that they are developed using the resources of the research institute. However, if the research results are mostly theoretical, without requiring any experimentation, then you can keep up to 70% of all the results. You don't have to manage the institute or worry about its finances—I will handle everything for you. As for the salary, how does 500,000 Varaha per annum sound?"

Anand's eyes brightened. This was a really good offer, but he became hesitant. "Your Majesty, what should I research?" He looked worried because if he was forced to research something he did not like, he would rather not join.

Vijay thought about it and answered, "Anything you are interested in. There will be no constraints in what you can research, but I will ask for certain things occasionally."

"For example, for now, let us set up a generator research lab within the research institute in order to research a device capable of generating the Vidyut you have discovered. You mentioned that it can be converted from one form to another, didn't you? So, see if you can use this principle to invent devices that can run with Vidyut."

"While you were giving your thesis, I suddenly had a thought. Vidyut works majorly because of positive and negative powers, very similar to a magnet. So, could these two different things be correlated? And if they are really correlated, could you find a way to create electricity by researching the functions of magnets?"

"I can also arrange for you to become a part-time researcher at Nalanda Institute of Fundamental Science so that if you want to research the properties of light, you could do it there."

"What do you think?"

Anand was greatly excited. "I will do as you said, Your Majesty. I will join the research institute." Not to mention the Nalanda Institute of Fundamental Sciences which held great appeal to him. The idea of using magnets to generate electricity, from the way His Majesty had mentioned it alone, made him unable to stand still.

In such a way, Binoy Research Institute, one of the most influential research institutes in the history of the Bharatiya Empire, was born.

After Anand left, Vijay called in Katappa and ordered him in a serious voice, "Increase his security standard to S-tier."

Katappa was immediately taken aback, but looking at His Majesty's serious expression, he immediately nodded.

He couldn't help but be shocked in his heart because S-tier protection was only provided for a handful of scientific talents in the empire. 'Is that boy so impressive?' he muttered with amazement.

Looking at Katappa leaving, Vijay's expression was thoughtful. His actions might look like he was overreacting to anyone who knew of them, but only he knew how important a talent like Anand Binoy was. Anand was able to discover not only the concept of electricity but also the concepts of conductance and resistance by himself—not to mention that he even proposed the law of conservation of energy, one of the cornerstones of physics.

People did not yet understand the significance of electricity in this era, even after the newspapers had dumbed down the concept a lot for the general audience. But what about in the future? The Europeans had not yet gotten a hold of the information since news took at least a month to travel between the subcontinent and the European continent. But when the news reached them, he couldn't tell how they would react when they found out that there was yet another world-class genius in the Bharatiya Empire.

The constant innovation and technological development of the Bharatiya Empire was not without any reaction. Most European countries had already started paying attention to talent development. Completely different from the Europe he knew in his first life, scientific minds like Newton, Descartes, René, Huygens, Christiaan, Bacon, Francis, Wren, Christopher, Boyle, Robert, Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, and others had already attracted the attention of the ruling class, and they were being continuously funded with resources in order to make progress and keep up with his empire. Not to mention, espionage activities had only become more intense.

Even though the number of agents in the Bharatiya Internal Pragya had snowballed to over 10,000, it was still unable to defend against all espionage attacks thrown by the Europeans. It was always easier to hide than to defend.

In such a situation, Vijay had to protect his own top scientists so that the things that had happened in his last life—where he got assassinated by Vikram, whom he thought was a close friend and associate—would not happen again.