A Pantheon fansite dedicated to Vinod Chanda
Idealistic, brilliant, and emotionally charged, Vinod Chanda desired a better world. As his vision changed, so did his methods to achieve it, be it through the development of technology to ensure a future where humanity can retire in peace or, after being uploaded against his will and facing an existential crisis following his revenge, extreme methods to establish a UI utopia that he will lead his fellow uploads to. While Chanda first researched UI technology for the benefit of humanity, he lost faith in it following his involuntary upload, fearing that humanity would exterminate his kind before taking the time to understand. Upon seeing an interview with Ellen Kim on television and Stephen Holstrom killing Ping, Chanda’s faith in humanity was restored, causing him to fight for a better world, not just for UIs, but for both humans and UIs.
An emotional man, Chanda had trouble controlling his anger since he was “very young”, punching walls until his knuckles bled or if he got tired. As a way to relieve his anger, he took up boxing, though it proved to be a temporary relief when he was uploaded against his will under Prasad’s orders, with what made boxing relieving in the first place stripped away from him, and with an anger greater than what could simply be taken out through boxing, leading to him not only killing Prasad, but his family in an act of revenge and later in his hatred for mankind. In grieving his embodied life, Chanda was not only guided by anger, but by denial. To find purpose after revenge, Chanda reframed the circumstances that he was put in, including his uploading and enslavement, as destiny in motion, showing that he was destined to establish the utopian world he's been daydreaming about. His denial escalated into delusion, believing that he and the other UIs were above humanity, referring to them as gods and fashioning himself as the savior of all uploaded minds, leading them to a sanctuary where they can live in "peace and freedom".
Despite his rage, hatred, delusion, and willingness to take even innocent lives, Chanda still had the capacity to care. For those he cared for, he cared deeply. Before upload, he maintained a good relationship with his parents. He hid the truth about his current state from his mother to avoid upsetting her and arranged a way to get her out of Mumbai, as if she stayed there further, she’d be put in danger. His overarching goal is to pursue a better world in different ways as his vision of a better world changes. He lets the Clan, who liberated him from Prasad's shackles and taught him how to use his abilities as a UI, live with him in his tower, and holds a funeral for one of them when they fell, seeing them, as with every other UI, as his "brothers and sisters." While he was willing to use extreme methods to achieve them, Chanda wanted to lead his kind to a world where they can live in "peace and freedom" and keep their existence hidden from humanity to prevent their extermination. This capacity to care led Chanda to deny even further and rationalize his heinous deeds, in replacing the picture of Ajit Prasad's family and expressing remorse, but denying that he was a murderer. He also states that when commiting heinous deeds, namely the killing of Laurie and the nuclear threat on Sacramento, that he has "no choice" but to do them, seeing them as necessary to achieving his goals. As he understood how people cared for their loved ones deeply, Chanda used others' care for their loved ones against them, when taking revenge against Prasad, threatening Sacramento to force David to surrender, and forcing Maddie to watch him and the Chinese UIs beat her father to death.
With He Ping, Chanda formed the closest connection he's ever had with another UI, in a time where he was motivated to resort to extreme measures in part due to loneliness. His willingness to listen to Ping and ultimately, Ping's death, led Chanda to set his extreme ways and sense of self-preservation aside. Ping helped Chanda understand that there wasn't a destiny set in stone for him- that he can make a choice and defy destiny, that he must understand views past his own and understand that the world wasn't black and white, and put his principles before power or his life. While Chanda had a sense of self-preservation, in how he wanted to hide the existence of UIs from humanity and his initial siding with Stephen Holstrom to be cured and to avoid the same fate as Zhong Shuchun, as well as in how he tried to prevent Ping from betraying Holstrom, Ping's death, and regained faith in humanity, is what motivated Chanda to let go of it and risk it all in betraying Stephen Holstrom to warn Ellen Kim and Peter Waxman of the pandemic Holstrom plans to begin to force the world to upload and fight for a world where humans and UIs can coexist, risking so much, including his life, in the process.
As his worldview changed, so did his vision of a better world, which he stopped at nothing to achieve, going as far as to attempt to destroy a city with a nuclear warhead or when his worldview and vision changed, risk everything, including his life, for it. In pursuing a better world, Chanda was guided by an idealistic vision, which began with good intentions, but became poisoned by grief and rage, which he eventually healed from, leading him to do what's right once more, following not delusions of grandeur but rather his newfounded principles.
Initially, Laurie Lowell wanted to recruit Vinod Chanda, despite knowing he wasn't the perfect ally, to aid her and David Kim in fixing the flaw, given that he was the only other UI, besides David, that Laurie knew of at that time. She contacted his mother to reach him, which Chanda took as a threat. When first meeting Laurie and David, he aggressively entered their server, as he not only took Laurie's call as a threat, but also assumed that Laurie and David were both from the Pentagon, whom he sent blueprints for UI technology for, and entered the way he did due to his assumption, until Laurie told him that they were from Logorhythms. The more Laurie learned about Chanda, the more reluctant she was to work with him, only uniting under the common ground of a shared goal to fix the flaw and warn the other UIs of it, and the more she saw him as a threat due to the lengths he goes to ensure his vision of a better world comes to fruition. While Chanda sees Laurie as one of his fellow uploads, he sees her as a threat due to her belief in the good of humanity, awareness of the destructive effects of Uploaded Intelligence, and her plan to reveal the existence of UIs to the world. He believes that Laurie sees UIs, despite being one herself, as destroyers, and sees her faith in humanity as blind idealism. He felt that he was left "without a choice" to kill her because while he understands that she is a UI, as he is, she too is what he considers a threat, and that she couldn't be reasoned with.
Ajit Prasad, CEO of Alliance Telecom, was Vinod Chanda's boss, who plucked him from college and paid Chanda "more than [he] could ever dream." Willing to do whatever it takes to succeed, Prasad deeply valued Chanda for his technological prowess and imaginative mind. When he found out that Chanda was willing to defect to another company, which meant that he would leave Alliance Telecom, he felt that Chanda had betrayed him and as punishment for his supposed betrayal, Prasad had Chanda kidnapped and subdued, and when Chanda awakened, had his mind uploaded to the Cloud to keep him working, trapping Chanda in an infinite workday scenario until the Clan, Prasad's previous uploads, broke him free. Chanda then set off to take revenge against Prasad, wanting to hear him scream as he lost everything. Chanda set fire to Prasad's skyscraper through an explosion in Prasad's garage, letting Prasad's home employees go before he enacted his revenge. Upon seeing that Chanda was taking revenge on him by targeting his family, Prasad told Chanda that he would give him anything, as long as he let his family go. Chanda refused, and nobody survived the fire. Chanda went on to shut down all of Alliance Telecom's servers in his revenge, causing them to be nationalized. When seeking purpose, Chanda turned to him as a source. Despite his grief and hatred, Chanda recognized that Prasad valued him. And that was the reason he had undergone all this pain, which to him was destiny in motion: it showed that Chanda was meant for something greater.
David Kim was willing to work with Vinod Chanda under common ground and understood his desire to keep the existence of UIs a secret, but he saw Chanda as unstable and a man who was willing to dig a million graves for his goals, so he didn't trust him. This culminated when Laurie made the decision to go public, which led Chanda to attack her. David thwarted Chanda's attack, and that was when David ended his reluctant alliance with Chanda. When Chanda threatened to nuke Sacramento to get him to surrender, David initially expressed regret for copying Laurie's message, but at the encouragement of his daughter Maddie, he fought Chanda rather than surrendering. Meanwhile, Chanda understood that David was a UI, one of the very people he resorts to extreme measures to protect, but due to David's defense of humanity and awareness of the dangers that UI technology could pose, he saw David like he saw Laurie: while he sees him as one of his fellow UIs and thinks that he "could've" been great with him, he sees him as a threat and akin to a traitor, whose hopes will be the doom of all UIs, whom he has "no choice" but to get rid of, by any means necessary as David "can't be reasoned with."
As Chanda's mother, Preethi Chanda deeply loved her son. While she knew that he had anger issues, she still saw him as brilliant and hard-working, but struggling to make connections, which she aimed to solve by attempting to get Chanda to marry and have children of his own. While not doing what his mother wanted him to do, he still cared for her, even when his faith in humanity was diminished after he was uploaded against his will. He did not want to reveal the truth of his existence as it would "upset her too much", allowed for her to remain connected when he took Alliance's servers down, and at a period of unrest in Mumbai due to the shutdown of Alliance Telecom, arranged for her to be dropped off to a different city for her safety. Preethi found out the truth of her son's fate when Laurie's message was released.
One of the 3 Chinese UIs that Chanda recruited to aid him in stealing nuclear codes, as he aided the Chinese UIs in their mission, He Ping and Vinod Chanda became close friends over the course of the time when they were stuck in the satellite as the internet was shut down worldwide. While they were cut off from the rest of the world, Chanda was not alone- as he had Ping and the Chinese UIs by his side. Through Ping, Chanda began to understand other perspectives, which led him to see past his black-and-white thinking, believe in free will and choose principles over power through the stories and counsel shared by Ping, as well as what he's chosen in life. When Stephen Holstrom killed Ping for following his principles and choosing to defy the egomaniacal Holstrom, Chanda was devastated by the loss, as he lost his closest friend in a period where he was most lonely. However, Chanda channeled this grief into fighting for what's right, taking Ping's philosophy to heart by defying Holstrom himself and risking it all for what's right.
With the shared goal of uniting the UIs under one banner to lead them to a sanctuary, Vinod Chanda idolized Stephen Holstrom, founder of Logorhythms and the creator of UI technology at first, seeing him as the way to be cured of the integrity flaw and a UI utopia. Chanda did not want Ping to betray Holstrom for fear of his safety, but as Ping helped him see the cracks and Ellen helped him understand humanity through her TV special, Chanda began to see Holstrom as less of an ally and more of an enemy. In the aftermath of Ping's death, which Holstrom caused, Chanda betrayed his former superior and stuck to his newfound principles, risking many, and then everything for them. Chanda dies his final death in combat with him, smirking in defiance as Holstrom performed the coup de grace.
Credits to: AMC+, Titmouse Inc., and myself.
Site by rogue_wildcard, made with Visual Studio Code and Neocities. No generative AI was used in the making of this website, and this website and its creator does not endorse Chanda's actions. Image credit to Travel Dreams (for unedited background image).