Save the Last Bullet for God (19 page)

Creating Something Together

In the morning, when I awoke, I felt
incredibly tired and all my joints rebelled against my movements.
My skin was dry and my bones protruded in my hands. When I saw my
face, it wasn’t the same. I didn’t recognize myself. My two
still-bright-blue eyes were the only features that resembled
me.

I just barely noticed the instructions on
the table.

Dear Competitors,

Our subject for this week’s contest is
“Creating Something Together.” The remaining three competitors will
create and present a brand new invention. The competitor with the
weakest contribution to the project will be eliminated—this week,
the public’s vote will count.

Good luck,

BBM Coordinator

Note: All the materials you will need for
your invention will be provided to you.

I wondered if they were aware of the
philosophical objections to what they proposed. Suddenly, the
picture of the Kaaba I had hung on the wall caught my attention.
Something had been written on it in a childish script:

If you’re reading this, I’ve managed to turn
you back.

GOOD LUCK

I looked at the image of the Kaaba. A
spot had been circled, and in it, in bold capital letters and
underlined was a single word:
WATER
. After thinking of the boy and what he’d
done, a sweet smile formed on my lips.

When I entered the lounge, the last two
competitors were sitting quietly. When they saw me, a bittersweet
joy swept over both of them. Unexpectedly, Feryal stood up, and
hugged me. “We’re happy you’re back,” she said.

Hıdır came over as well and put his hand on
my shoulder. “Welcome back, son. You scared us. When the boy said
he would disqualify himself and give you a chance, we tried very
hard to convince him otherwise, thinking that you would do the
same. But, he had already decided. But yes, we’re glad you’re
back.”

“Yes, and now we can end the competition
properly,” Feryal added.

I thanked them both and sat down to join in
their chat. “This week’s competition is really interesting. They
want the remaining three of us to invent something. They must be
wondering what will come from three such different
disciplines.”

“
I know one thing that won’t happen—we
can’t create food.” Dr. Özel smiled.

Hidir smiled as well and looked deep in
thought. I decided to follow Ender’s advice and move the
conversation to my work.

“While we think, would you be open to going
over my work?” I asked. “Maybe we will discover something new about
the code using all of our disciplines. Maybe we can show the
audience a different perspective and all that it offers,” I
continued.

“That will be very challenging, young man,”
Hidir said. “After all the billions of people and accumulation of
years, discovering something new will be very difficult.”

“But we need to try. We owe it to Ender to
try. Let me suggest a topic, and then we can see where the
conversation takes us.”

“You mean brainstorming,” Dr. Özel said.

I nodded my head.

The scientist and the cleric looked at each
other as if they were surprised and a little excited.

“Go on,” Hidir urged. “What is the
topic?”

“Water,” I said, starting the conversation.
“Water is a magnificent structure that gives life to all living
things; it is indispensable as well as mysterious, and something we
neglect since we always have it. After all, we only notice it when
we are in need of it.”

After a moment of silence, Feryal took on
her typical posture as lecturer. “A good start. Let me add to that.
Under normal conditions water is fluid. But at a full one hundred
degrees, it changes its form, suddenly becoming steam—a form that
has nothing to do with the previous one.”

“What is your point, professor?” Hidir
asked.

“If you were a fish whose entire life was
spent in water,” she explained, “you would bet that water didn’t
have any other characteristics and, since you would never be able
to see it, you would think that such a thing as steam was
impossible.”

Hidir and I nodded, pleased at her
explanation.

“Now think about it the other way,” she
continued. “At zero degrees, the same fluid—warm, odorless, and
transparent—becomes a crystal structure with an actual volume and
solid form that has lost its transparency. It is as if a magical
wand had touched it!

“Now let’s once again imagine ourselves as
beings in a body of water that has never dipped down to zero or
risen as high as one hundred degrees. No matter how broad-minded we
were, no matter how we used our minds to question the past or the
future, no matter how we combined our talents and knowledge as
living beings, it would never, ever cross our minds that the water
we knew could form such a structure, thus we wouldn’t predict
steam,” she explained.

Hidir jumped in then. “Yes, I think I
understand your meaning. You are saying that when someone who had
experienced steam tried to tell those beings in the water about it,
they might listen to him, but their brains would prevent them from
believing it because they would have never experienced it before.
Likewise, if another creature who’d experienced water in its solid
form told them about ice, they again would be skeptical.”

“Exactly,” Feryal said, clasping her hands
together. “But those three forms of water currently exist in our
world. The whole story of life relates to their existence, and our
minds allow us to create related metaphors. Still, if someone came
from another dimension or universe and said there was another form
of water, we, with our inexperienced states and weak minds, would
remain skeptical.

“Currently, the universe we observe and
perceive, and the laws governing it are like the fluid form of
water. However, time and various phenomena could turn the universe
into something governed by laws and characteristics that we don’t
yet know. However, unlike transformations of water, this transition
may occur suddenly when the appropriate conditions are provided.
But, as we have never seen it, we cannot predict what it is or
experiment with it. At this point, we come up against a brick
wall.”

There was a long silence after that as
Feryal sat back in her chair and Hidir and I pondered her argument.
I finally decided to add something.

“If I went to a man who lived a thousand
years ago with a CD in my hand and said, ‘All the knowledge you
need is written and recorded here,’ the man would not believe me.
No matter how hard I tried to explain it to him, I wouldn’t be able
to. I would struggle and finally give up. So I would probably say,
‘When the right time comes, you’ll understand.’ What I mean is
that, for certain conditions to happen, we need to evolve and the
infrastructure of our brain needs to develop so that we can notice
and understand something.”

“That’s true,” Feryal said, leaning forward
again. “If we go back to the example of water, note that all the
substances in the universe are formed by the same particles:
protons, neutrons, electrons, the bottom quark, the top quark, et
cetera. These particles form the same atoms but different
molecules. To repeat a frequently given example, in World War I,
chlorine gas was used, and it was so harmful and fatal that it is
now forbidden. And sodium on its own is a completely flammable
substance. But when these two volatile elements are combined, they
turn into table salt. The chlorine inside is the same toxic
chlorine that kills human beings and animals, but it becomes salt
with sodium.”

“Water is the same,” she continued. “Two
unrelated flammable and caustic gases are combined together and
form our source of life. Water is the same on the summit of the
mountains in Nepal as it is in a dewdrop on the grass in Istanbul.
It presents the same characteristics everywhere. It’s not important
where the main components forming it were before or what kind of
function they had—they are now water.”

“There is a Japanese researcher who even
claims that water has a memory. He claims it remembers all previous
situations and events and carries that data everywhere within
it—just like our DNA,” she added.

Hıdır joined the conversation again. “As you
know, human beings are 75 percent water. I have seen it myself how
water relieves people by absorbing the energy and serenity inside
during a prayer or invocation. It does so especially when the
Qur’an is read by a human voice. As you said, Feryal, water has a
memory, and a given drop of water may have passed through the gills
of a fish in the sea, the fog on top of a high mountain, and the
smoke of a factory chimney. Indeed, that drop embeds everything it
sees and experiences into its memories forever.”

Suddenly, the picture on my wall and Ender’s
note came back to my mind.

“I have a question,” I said, turning to
Hidir. “Water itself, as you say, is special, but can it be even
more special when it is holy water?” I asked. “Like the holy water
in Christianity: water with spiritual aspects—like the water in the
Kaaba!”

Hidir looked at me in astonishment. “Zamzam
water; it has been there since the Prophet Abraham.”

Feryal looked at us with a questioning
look.

Hidir explained. “There is some water in the
middle of the desert, of unknown origin, that gathers no moss,
never dries, and holds no microorganisms.”

“Okay. Special water, water with a special
characteristic—let’s call it Zamzam,” Feryal said. “How do you
think it could change its form?” she asked, now surprised and
excited.

It was my turn to explain. “It is
always said that the language of God should be spoken in a holy and
special frequency. It is the human larynx and the Qur’an
suras
that provide this frequency.
Furthermore,” I explained, “each different energy frequency can
turn water molecules into different forms by affecting each of them
differently. Thus, oscillation of each voice frequency could turn
water into a form we don’t know by entering into a resonance with
the water.”

Hidir and Feryal exchanged glances of
amazement. When I noticed the shine in their eyes, it was obvious
that we had already decided to give the experiment a try. There
were only a few days until the final episode, but we had a chance
to show the world something new.

The next days passed quickly as we set to
work. The cleric read each sura of the Qur’an carefully into a
special recording device. The program managers met our demands for
a sound-modulation system and brought along the supporting computer
equipment as well. Even our demand for pure Zamzam water was
accepted, though with some bewilderment. Dr. Feryal Özel’s demand
for particular scientific tools were answered without question. I
assumed that the excitement of the program managers was an
indicator of the mood of the audience. As we worked, we were
notified that December 21, 2012 was the day of the final show.

Concerns about whether we would finish on
time made us and the managers increasingly nervous. Right before
the show, Feryal was barely able to convince the managers to
provide her with a special magnetic resonance device with which to
perform the calibration process.

The complex machine was installed in my
room. As the machine was small, its isolation could be easily
maintained, and all the walls of my room had undergone a special
process for protection from any external influences.

The night of the show arrived.

Shortly before going on the air, we left the
Big Brother studios for the first time since our arrival. We
traveled by special vehicles with special security measures. We
went to a screening center where we entered a specially calibrated
MRI machine. With little time to waste, the calibration and the
magnetic proton spin resonance was preserved—as it was identical to
that of water. We then went back to the BBM studios accompanied by
the same security team. When we arrived, we went directly to my
room and to the safety of isolation. All the hustle and bustle made
it feel like we were in an action movie. Once we got inside, we
were finally alone, and we wished each other luck.

The recording of the final episode began.
The show was touted as the most exciting and suspenseful live
program in television history, and this only doubled the
tension.

Feryal’s machine began working with a slight
buzz and we watched the thin transparent tube with its tiny water
drop. Just as Feryal had said, the molecules in the drop of water
carried cohesive forces that had a certain limit, and when they
reached that limit, they would form the perfect water drop. That
was our cue to begin transmitting the suras of the Qur’an. From the
vibrations of the suras, the water drop appeared to resonate along
with the sound modulation formed by the different frequencies.

The tiny water drop completed its formation,
and it seemed about to fall down as expected. But instead, it hung
in the air for a while and then rose slightly. At the same time, it
transformed into a miraculous form of undefinable color, shape, and
brightness. This magnificent form remained suspended, and, soon
after, another water drop, following the previous one, started to
rise, vibrating and changing its shape and form as well. As light
passed through these transparent forms, some bright figures and
numbers appeared on the wall. As one water drop came close to the
other drop, the two merged together. Other water drops were now
moving toward the water drops already hanging in the air,
displaying colors and shapes that mankind had never before seen or
imagined.

As the suras continued being read, and the
number of drops changed by the suras’ resonances got closer to 114,
a figure began to appear in the middle of the room. It was a
hypercube, one that I’d heard about in books but could never
visualize, even in my dreams. The cube was four-dimensional cube
and formed by amazing colors. It looked like a computer that had
different pages of information on each plane. As this masterpiece
took shape right in front of our eyes, hanging in the air as if to
challenge all the laws of physics, we experienced a feeling beyond
astonishment.