by Alor Sahoo
This is extremely unfinished, but will eventually be in the MIT thesis library. But dive in! Feel free to send thoughts, vibes, and prayers.
In this realistic crime novel, protagonist Aaron Mirza-Mohanty, a sophomore at MIT, navigates the tensions between academic success, chronic illness, and perceived public image. He embodies the dark side of MIT's motto: mens et manus, mind and hand, weaponizing his intellect to engineer calculated chaos. Specifically, Aaron is a textbook psychopath who stops at nothing to exact cruel retribution against his enemies, whether for his own pleasure, as a means to an end, or both. Initially buoyed by his hatred of his ex, Katherine, Aaron serves as a speculative case study about just how much emotional, physical, and psychological damage a single, spite-fueled individual can inflict on a social ecosystem.