And for a moment, all was well.

Within a week, the ringtone had spread. Vikram’s assistant downloaded it. Then the office receptionist. Then a stranger on the metro who heard it ring and asked, “Where can I get that?”

He was a sound engineer in his late thirties, the kind who could pick out a off-key synth pad from a hundred meters away. His phone, for the last decade, had been set to a brutalist, industrial buzz—efficient, ugly, and silent enough to miss every important call.