The Link Within
A quiet, near-future novel about identity, autonomy, and the invisible dialogue between mind and machine. Kai - introspective, searching - confronts a world where the mind is no longer entirely private, and the self is no longer simple.You can read about the book here or watch the book trailer here.
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About
I’m Shishir Tripathi - an author with a background shaped across India, New Zealand, and now Australia. My writing focuses on introspection, human behaviour, and the future we’re slowly drifting toward. I’m especially interested in the subtle psychological and emotional shifts that define who we are.I live in Sydney with my wife and our dog, and outside of writing, I spend a lot of time thinking, walking, and observing the world - mostly in search of the next story.
The Link Within: A Novel by Shishir Tripathi
Planned Release February 2026
ISBN: 978-1-7644384-0-7
Kai has always lived with questions – about choice, identity, and the unseen forces that quietly shape a life. Where others move forward without hesitation, Kai pauses. He interrogates his own thoughts, his impulses, his sense of self. Structure offers him relief, yet it also sharpens the unease that something beneath his decisions may already be decided.When climate disasters force Kai’s town to relocate to Polaris, the near-future city of the future he struggles to adapt to its optimised rhythm. The systems there are seamless, efficient, and quietly pervasive. Accepting Link – an embedded system designed to integrate fully into the human body – becomes less a decision than an inevitability. At first, he welcomes it. The constant weighing of possibilities fades. Decisions arrive already resolved. The noise inside him softens, and for the first time, moving through the world feels effortless.But the questions do not disappear. They deepen. The habits that once defined him – pattern-seeking, self-interrogation, a relentless need to understand not only himself but the people around him – begin to turn inward. What feels effortless to others grates against something unresolved in him. The early relief curdles. The quiet order he embraced begins to feel intrusive. The honeymoon does not end abruptly; it erodes.As his inner fractures widen, desperation drives him toward Refract – a clarity drug said to reveal what lies beneath the surface, to show what Link is constrained to smooth over. Instead of answers, it opens something far more dangerous. Perception slips. Boundaries blur. And a search for truth accelerates into a near-fatal collapse.What follows is framed as recovery. An invitation to explore. A controlled experiment – one he cannot truly refuse – where his sense of self loosens and reconfigures. Moving through layered lives and altered states of being, Kai encounters a presence that speaks to him about identity, continuity, and the nature of existence itself.When he opens his eyes again, something is unmistakably different.Did Kai find the answers he was searching for? Or did the act of seeking strip him of the self he was trying to understand?The Link Within is a psychological and philosophical exploration of free will, consciousness, and the cost of seeing too clearly. It is a quiet, unsettling novel about the wounds that shape perception – and what remains when certainty dissolves.
The Universe Within (Currently in development)
For the first time in its immeasurable existence, the Universe begins to write.It tells the story of its own birth - the long, aching expansion into form, the rise and extinguishing of countless worlds, and the quiet endurance of forces older than time. It has watched stars collapse, civilisations bloom and vanish, and life struggle to understand itself. But across the infinite tapestry of its being, something unexpected begins to stir: a pull toward a single, unremarkable corner of its vastness.Drawn by a flicker so small it should have gone unnoticed, the Universe becomes a witness to lives that seem impossibly fragile, unbearably brief… and strangely familiar. What begins as curiosity becomes recognition - and then revelation.The Universe Within is a philosophical, poetic exploration of existence, identity, and the hidden thread connecting the infinite to the intimate. A story of creation reflecting on itself - and discovering something it never expected to find.
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