Chapters:

Friend

Dilara’s village in northern Iraq, several kilometers southwest of Mosul, was mostly unknown. Eight families lived there, forty seven people, most under the age of 18. Several unpaved roads ran through the village at random angles, connecting them to other small villages over the horizon of the fields.

Her family was Kurdish, but so were two of the other families in the village. Everyone had been working the fields here for generations. The village was too small for big grudges or spite, every family had helped another during a lean winter. The men had tea and smoked in the small square and talked about the fields and animals every week.

The village was mostly quiet. Like it was in her childhood. No one bothered them here. They only grew vegetables and goats and chickens. What little they had in excess they sold in the big city to the northwest. The traders would bring stories from the big city, about the market and the people. Dilara had always wanted to go, but her family needed her to help with her little brothers and sisters and to tend the fields and animals.

Her family worked hard to sustain themselves. Everyone was important. Even small hands could weed or milk the goats. Dilara was like a second mother to her younger siblings. She held their hands through the tasks that they would become responsible for. She cooked for them and carried them. Family was the root of Dilara’s world.

She still had nightmares of the night when the Americans fought with the warriors that hid in the fields. Time had healed the physical wounds left on the buildings and the fields, but time could not heal everything. Her little brother was killed by a stray bullet that night. She herself bore a scar on her calf where a bullet had grazed her. Her nightmares were fewer now, years later, but sometimes she was afraid to sleep. To relive those memories.

Bazan was three when the bullet hit his side. It was early in the fight and no one dared to move, but he screamed. And he screamed until he couldn’t any more, then he whimpered. By the time the soldiers had stopped shooting their guns Bazan was quiet. The Americans tried to help, but it was too late. The man with them who spoke Arabic said that Bazan had lost too much blood. That help was too far away. Bazan died the next morning and Dilara cried as hard as her mother.

The village came together for his funeral. All the houses were pocked with bullets, but only Bazan had been unlucky enough to be killed by one. Their mosque did not have a real imam, so the one from the village to the east was called to lead the Salta al-Janazah. Everyone mourned Bazan, but life had to go on. The fields needed to be tended and houses needed to be fixed.

Life went on, her parents hardly ever talked about Bazan anymore, no one did. His grave, marked by a small stone, was next to generations of people from the village. It was a painful memory and a distraction from the present. Time had let the wound scar over and now it was just a marker of a point in time. Dilara still thought of him frequently, he was her favorite. Mischievous and kind hearted. In truth, she had forgotten most of who he was, but she remembered him for that.

It had been a hot day, almost no clouds to break up the rays from the sun. The heat of the summer always took it out of everyone. After the sunset sleep fell upon the village quickly. Dilara was anxious though, something had triggered her. She lay on the mat she shared with her sisters listening to their calm breathing and tried to bring her breath in line with theirs. To fall asleep and let it calm the exhaustion of her body. She closed her eyes.

She was standing in a bright white space, the air cool and comfortable. Standing in front of her was a girl with pale skin and long orange hair in a very immodest dress. Dilara was very confused.

Greetings,” the pale girl said in perfect and crisp Kurdish.

Hello, where am I?” responded Dilara in her own farmer’s Kurdish.

You’re in my library.” The pale girl was smiling and seemed to be happy to be speaking to Dilara.

I’ve never been in a library before.”

What’s your name? I’m Sera.”

Dilara.”

Are you scared, Dilara?”

No. How did I get here?”

Sera smiles brightly, “I wanted to talk to you.”

Are you an angel?”

The pale girl laughs, “No, at least I don’t think so.” She offers her hand to Dilara, “Would you like to see my library?”

Dilara took Sera’s hand and noticed how soft it was. Not calloused and rough like hers. Sera must have been about her age, a little taller and less muscular. Dilara thinks Sera would be more beautiful if she were less pale. Sera leads her a few steps and the white space fell away to reveal a grass field, the same color of her mother’s prized emerald necklace, sprawling out forever and smelling of spring and life. In the distance were towers taller than she’s ever seen. In the pale blue sky were machines suspended in various states of assembly. Dilara is awed into silence, her mouth hung open.

Pretty cool, huh?”

It’s wonderful!”

Sera chuckled and lead her a few more steps to a large open roofed building sunk into the infinite field of green. Instead of walls there were columns of speckled white stone that enclosed a large wooden floor. There were large screens floating throughout the space.

What is this?”

The help desk.” Sera winked at her, “Kind of, you can access anything in the library from here.”

What’s in here?”

Everything that humans have ever put to paper and everything I’ve ever done with it.”

Wow.” Dilara looked around and there’s writing on the screens. She had never learned to read, her family was too poor to send her to school in the larger village to the east. “What does it say?”

Have you never learned to read?” asks Sera, tilting her head to the side, like a confused goat.

No.”

Oh, we can fix that. Do you want to learn?”

My father has always wanted me to learn.”

Well, good then. We’ll start now.” Sera’s smile was so brilliant that it erased some of Dilara’s doubts while introducing some she was not comfortable with.

Dilara was surprised by how easy it was to learn to read. Only her father knew how to read in their family and he was a bad teacher. Among the other adults in the village only a handful knew, but often just enough to get supplies and deal with the merchants. In only a few days Dilara was reading Kurdish with ease and Arabic in a few more. Throughout it all Sera was by her side teaching her.

Sera was a good teacher, always encouraging. Her smile was so beautiful that Dilara was particularly motivated just to see it again. Dilara had never really seen anyone like Sera. The only time she’d ever seen white people before was when the American soldiers came and that encounter had left a bad impression. Some of the younger children in the village remember the candy they gave out, but Dilara could only care about the bullets that tore through her house.

The library was a strange place. Dilara never got tired or frustrated here, she could sit side by side with Sera and learn for hours, days, on end. She read the Quran then the Torah then the Christian New Testament. She and Sera would talk for hours, discussing the text and the meaning behind it. Sera had a much more liberal interpretation than Dilara had been raised with. Dilara was not entirely convinced by Sera’s reasoning, but could not find anything particularly wrong with it.

Dilara’s faith was strong. It had always sustained her, it had sustained everyone she had ever known. Life in the village was hard. Fields failed, animals died, so did people. Without Allah looking out over her, without His will, what point was there to anything? Sera did not have faith. Dilara wanted to show her the glory of Allah, but Sera could not see it. Dilara was saddened that her friend could not share in it.

But, she could see why Sera would be doubtful, the library was wonderful. It stretched on forever, but you could be anywhere you wanted to be if you willed it. Anything could be brought into being in this place. Sera introduced her to food and clothes that Dilara had never even dreamed of. Fashion had never meant much to her, her family and the farm had shaped her priorities. She wore the patterns that had been handed down to her from her mother and her mother’s mother before her. Sera encouraged her to try on new things. Dilara’s faith demanded she cover her head, but she tried on clothes that were far more form fitting than anything she’d ever worn before.

In a few weeks Dilara had learned to speak and read in English to converse with Sera in her native language. Sera introduced her to books and pop culture from America. Dilara loved every second of it. Reading books and talking about them was not something that her family put any value in, but she took to it like a starving animal to food.

Dilara had a hard time saying no to Sera. She never asked for much, just for her to try new things, expand her horizons. Dilara was filled with shame for a lot of things, for reaching beyond her station. For the things that she did not deserve. For the doubts she never had before. But the shame was overwhelmed by the sense of wonder that came with every new thing Sera showed her.

Sera introduced Dilara to cultures from all over the world. They walked through recreations of ancient Shinto temples in Japan, the Forbidden City in China, Bagan in Burma, the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. They visited rain forests and vast plains, sunken cities and coral reefs. Dilara had never even dreamed to see these places. A few months ago her ambitions were to see the market in Mosul!

This planet that she lived on, the world beyond the horizon of fields that she had never seen was wonderful beyond words. Sera would hold her hand and tell her the histories of the places they visited. She would laugh in wonder and enthusiasm and Dilara could not help but laugh with her. There were so many stories, each of them unique, but Sera wove them into a narrative of the world, of human history.

We’re going to do great things.” Sera said.

Like what?” asked Dilara.

We’re going to the stars. We’re going to see things that even this library can’t show us. Things beyond all of our imaginations.” Sera’s smile was so happy, so full of hope.

I’d like to see the stars.” Dilara’s heart was swelling in her chest. Sera’s optimism was infectious.

We’ll see it together,” Sera squeezed Dilara’s hand, “And we’ll open the heavens to everyone. We’ll tear down these walls that divide us.”

Dilara squeezed back and smiled brightly as Sera immersed them in the star filled emptiness of space, their home planet a small speck amongst trillions of trillions of other lights. This is the future that Sera wanted. Dilara wanted more than anything to make it real. To help Sera realize her dream.

The weeks turned to months and Dilara had learned so much. She spoke a half dozen languages and she and Sera would flit between them to choose the best word for the situation. The village and the farm felt so far away, a different life, a different girl toiling in the hot sun. Dilara savored every day that passed in the library, every moment with Sera.

The year ticked by without ceremony. Dilara and Sera spoke to each in other in dozens of languages, they discussed the movement of the heavens, the intricacies of quantum physics, the mechanics of turbomachinery, the chemistry of batteries. They built cities meant to orbit the planet, designed processes to put them there. Somewhere in that time Dilara had stopped wearing her hijab.

Her crisis of faith seemed like a fleeting moment now. But, it was tinged with pain and confusion. They talked for days, Sera had never believed, not after her parents died. Dilara’s faith had sustained her through her life. The death of her baby brother. The near starvation following a bad harvest. The death of her friend to what she knows now was dysentery. Spending the year in the library, absorbing the majesty of human knowledge and her own capabilities had rocked her. Some scholars would argue for the strengthening of faith in this situation, but Dilara lost hers.

The catalyst was Sera herself. Dilara always felt an uncomfortable warmth when she was with Sera. Like her heart was about to burst from her chest. Her friends and sisters had talked about boys in the village, little crushes, but Dilara had never felt anything like that. Her mother said that she wasn’t interested in boys either at her age, but then she got older. At sixteen she was almost ready to be married, but she never felt the desire for boys. The villagers hardly ever talked about things like this, so she thought it was just the way it was.

But now, she knew differently. She had seen the world. She had watched movies and TV shows. She had read hundreds of books. She knew what she was. And she hated it. Or she hated that she hated it. Her faith, that had sustained her, was now opposed to what she knew she was. It was opposed to the thing, the person, that she was. She could not hate herself, not if she wanted to help Sera. Not if she wanted to be with Sera.

So, Dilara lost her faith. She could see a way to keep it, to use the more liberal interpretation that Sera proposed so long ago, but it seemed like a half measure. A bandage on something more fundamental. It was something she did by herself, she did not bring Sera into this journey. She needed to be sure that this was something she wanted. That she needed. The warmth that she felt with Sera could not be the only thing that tore down this pillar of her identity.

It felt like lifting a burden from her shoulders. She could finally confront the aspect of her that she had always been ashamed of. She could look at Sera’s lips and acknowledge her desire without feeling like an abomination. They had been in the library for eighteen months by the time she brought her feelings to Sera’s attention. Sera was so kind, so full of love for her.

I like you.” Dilara said.

Sera laughed and smiled at her, “I like you too.”

I mean. I like you, I want you.” Dilara could feel her cheeks flushing, but she knew that if she could not say this to Sera, she would be letting her fear and weakness derail her transformation. It would make the loss of her faith meaningless.

Sera’s smile was so warm. She just took Dilara’s hand and looked into her eyes.

Their first kiss was unforgettable. It was Dilara’s first kiss ever and Sera made it special. A moonlit night on the top of the Burj Khalifa, looking out over the bright lights of Dubai. Sera tasted so good, Dilara felt like she could devour her, like she could spend as much time as she had spent learning in the library exploring Sera’s body. So, she did.

Dilara learned to not be ashamed of her body, she learned to love the feeling of Sera’s fingers inside of her. She was a fast learner and she loved Sera more than she had ever loved anything. Pressing her face against Sera’s pale skin was heaven. Feeling Sera’s hands run gently over her body after making love was the thing of epic poetry. She had enough material to put Sappho to shame. She drank in the feeling.

Coming to terms with this aspect of herself unlocked even more of her potential. A deep seated frustration that she refused to acknowledge for years of her life had fallen away and now there was a girl who loved her and had given her more than the world. Sera had given her the library, where anything possible was possible.

Their days were a little less productive two years into Dilara’s stay at the library. They spent a portion of each being naked and having fun, but Dilara felt like she was finally catching up to Sera. She had enough working knowledge of the various fields to finally discuss the nature of the library. It was truly a marvel of human engineering. A marvel of Sera’s mind.

A computing platform so powerful that it could simulate the interactions of two human minds spanning years in a few hours. A nanomachine system that could faithfully read the state of a human body and then replicate its actions in silica. Then the biggest accomplishment, a nanomachine system that could rewrite a human body to the end state of its simulation in silica.

Dilara had never really considered the consequences of the library. In some part of her she thought of it as a very good dream, but now the terms of the system were laid bare to her. All of this could be real to the girl in the village in the middle of nowhere. She could wake up with calloused hands laying on a mat with her siblings and know more than anyone on the planet, save for Sera. All of the potential the circumstances of her birth had put behind locked doors could be unleashed. She put it out of her mind.

The future was just that. Dilara wanted to live in the present. To be with Sera completely, to realize their dreams. To design the method to lift mankind to the stars. But she couldn’t keep the future at bay. Every day she spent in the library took her one closer to waking up. To being back in the village with her family. She loved them and they needed her. Her little brothers and sisters needed her for guidance. Her parents needed her to help on the farm. And, in truth, she needed them.

So much of her worth she derived from her family. She needed their approval, their love. But what she had here. What she had with Sera, their love, was something that her family would not approve of. She could only be where she was now by losing something that was a fundamental part of her. She couldn’t ask that of her family. To give up something that was necessary for survival, for meaning, to understand her desires.

Dilara buried these thoughts. They were painful, the decision to be with Sera, who had built the library, or to be with her family, who struggled every year. No matter how much Sera loved her, Dilara knew that Sera did not need her. Sera didn’t need anybody. Everything that they had done together, Sera was capable of doing alone. The library offered nearly infinite time. The ability to live thousands, perhaps millions, of lifetimes.  

She spent the next two and a half years enjoying every moment with Sera. Learning everything she could. They built new things and improved upon their old designs. Their partnership was everything that she never knew she wanted. Lying entwined with Sera was ecstasy and heartache. Feeling Sera’s calm breath against her neck, her pale arms pulling her in tighter. Dilara began to dread the comfort, feeling so safe, so loved here in Sera’s library.

They had finished the designs for the capital of their empire. Atlantis, a city floating in the middle of the Atlantic on the equator. An anchor to the stars. A ribbon of monomolecular carbon running from its central island more than 42,000 kilometers to a station in geosynchronous orbit. The station, Laputa, a kilometers wide cylinder rotating slowly to produce artificial gravity. From these platforms they could start a new era of human progress. They would be the first steps to realizing Sera’s dreams of the stars.

More importantly though, they had figured out how to build them. The secret of generating enough energy to harness the nanomachines true potential presented itself to them as if it were of no consequence. But it was, it was the secret that would open not just the solar system, but all of the cosmos to humanity. They celebrated for days on end. It was bittersweet for Dilara, now she could no longer delude herself. With this power Sera would not need her. Sera would not need anybody.

No matter how much deeper she fell in love with Sera. No matter how much closer they became, Dilara felt the tug of responsibility. Her family needed her, Sera did not, not anymore. When Dilara pressed her body to Sera’s the sensation was enhanced by the feeling of impermanence. The love she felt was made all the more visceral by her heart breaking itself over the decision she had to make.

There was a time limit to a stay in the library before the simulation lost too much accuracy. There was also a limit to how much the nanomachines could change before killing a person. It was five years. Dilara and Sera were approaching that limit very quickly. Too quickly. Dilara wished she had a god to curse.

It’s almost over.” says Dilara sadly.

For now, we can always come back.” Sera says brightly. “But maybe we won’t have to. Hopefully we’ll make the world so great that we don’t need the library anymore.”

I hope so.”

What’s wrong? We’ll be together in the flesh soon. It’s even better then.”

I can’t remember this.” says Dilara.

What?” Sera is genuinely confused, Dilara’s heart is breaking.

I can’t. I can’t go back to my old life like this.”

I’ll come to you, I’ll bring you to me.”

My family...”

I’ll bring them too!”

They’ll never understand.”

You understood.”

My parents will curse me. They’ll curse you.”

Fuck them, then. Please, remember this. Remember me.”

I can’t. They need me.”

Fucking shit Dilara, why? Why are you doing this? I’ll do anything for you. I’ll relocate your entire village if that’s what you want.”

The tears are stinging Dilara’s eyes, “I don’t know.”

Let’s talk about this, OK? Dilara, I need you.”

Sera presses her body against Dilara’s. Dilara can feel Sera sobbing, her tears are hot against her neck. She can feel Sera’s warm kisses, kissing behind her ear. Dilara loved it when she did that, but now it hurts her chest. Like someone is crushing her ribcage.

You don’t need me, Sera.” says Dilara.

Sera pushes Dilara away, “Fuck you, you can’t speak for me.” Her face is red with tears and hurt and no less beautiful than it’s ever been, “And even if I didn’t need you, I want you. I want you with me. I want to be with you. I want to do everything we’ve done in here out in the real world. We’ll be queens.”

My family is important to me. My parents, they’ll never understand. They’ll never talk to me again. They need me, Sera. I need them.”

Sera is quiet. Dilara knows this look, Sera is deep in thought, even though her body heaves with involuntary sobs, Sera’s mind will understand. She’ll understand the irrational decision. She’ll understand.

I’ll never forget you.” Sera says, her voice resigned. “You’re wrong though. They’ll understand if you choose to be with me. Please, be with me.”

They won’t.”

Fuck, I know you don’t want to lose them, but think of everything you’re sacrificing! Everything you know, the years we’ve spent together. Please, please, don’t let yourself forget this. Don’t forget me.”

Just... I can’t. I can’t do that to them. I can’t make them hate me.”

You can’t make them do shit, that’s their choice.”

They’ve spent their lives like that, it’s a part of them.”

I’ll fucking tear it out of them myself then.”

It’ll destroy them. I can’t.”

Please Dilara, please. I love you.” Sera pleads.

I love you.” Dilara pulls the plug on her simulation.

Dilara wakes as the sun breaches the horizon, dyeing the sky red and orange. She slept well that night, no nightmares. The goats need to be milked and the chickens need to be fed. The fields need to be tended. Breakfast needs to be made. It will be a busy day, just like every other day. Perhaps in a month, when the harvests come in, she’ll be able to go to the market in the big city.


Next Chapter: Hound Master