Continued from Part 1
It was a journal with handwritten letters messily scribbled across the pages. I sat down on the chair next to the bookshelf and began to read. When I looked up much later, I noticed from the cabin window that the sun was beginning to set. I still hadn’t finished reading the book. I looked around. No one had been to the cabin in a long time. They wouldn’t miss it. I tucked it into my pocket, and started my journey back home with the annoying bugs.
When I made it to the city limits, I slipped under the wired border and past the big red “Danger! City border ends” sign. The last train station was not too far ahead. I climbed the stairs and begged a stranger to pay for me. Seeing my scratched up pants and my desperation, they asked no questions as they ordered their screen to pay my fare.
I cracked open the front door, tiptoeing into my home as quietly as possible.
“Why are you trying to sneak in? Mom isn’t home,” Kira said, sitting on the couch. I straightened and sighed in relief. “Did you get your screen fixed?”
“No, it’s a long story. I’ll get it fixed tomorrow for sure though.”
“Okay…” Kira eyed me, head to toe, with raised eyebrows. “Anyway, your nerd friend was looking for you at school. It was embarrassing. You need to hurry up and come back to school so your friends stay away from me.”
“My apologies for the inconvenience. I don’t know how you survived the day,” I shot back, before turning on my heel and racing up the stairs. “I’m going to bed, and I’m not hungry,” I hollered, slamming my bedroom door shut. I sat on my bed and continued to read the journal the rest of the night.
The following days started with me waking up before the crack of dawn and jetting out the house, hijacking through the train faregates, over the city border, and back to the cabin. I had finished the journal within two days. I learned it had belonged to an old Muslim, who must have lived in the cabin. Hungry for more information, I moved on to reading the other books that lined his bookshelf. The subjects ranged from Islamic history to psychology. Despite his vast collection, the owner didn’t seem to be a scholar. In his journal he had detailed his role as a store clerk before screen technology took his job. I found his world fascinating, and all the information that he had had access to. It was from a time before religious books had been removed from the digitized book library. Congress had passed a law against religious text for “community safety and protection of common ancestry.” Their words, not mine. The owner had written of his displeasure when that law had passed. He wrote of the value of differences. I found myself agreeing. Each page I read of his writing fueled a fire I didn’t even know I had. What happened for us to become the way we are? I felt more and more questions arising.
After a morning spent reading, I sat on the rug, my back against the chair. I flipped the page of a book on Prophetic listening, munching on an apple.
“So, this is where you’ve been hiding,” Kira said, standing in the doorway.
A piece of apple lodged in my throat and I began to cough uncontrollably. “What are you doing here?” I gasped for air between racking coughs.
“What am I doing here? What are you doing, Ailani? You haven’t been at school all week, you’ve been really dodgy lately, and most importantly you haven’t got your screen fixed.” Kira remained at the door, but her eyes were on the bookshelf next to me.
“I’ve been reading these journals and books that were left behind by someone,” I said.
“Books?”
“Yes, books! Kira, look. These are actual physical books, with pages,” I stood up and rushed to show her the pages in my hand. “This man who must have lived here was Muslim, and he left behind so much. I’ve been reading and I even found old pictures.” I rushed away to the bookshelf pulling out a book that had a small stack of pictures shoved between the pages.
“Look,” I said, shuffling through the yellowed pictures as she came to stand next to me. I pointed at one. “This is a mosque! We’ve never seen one. The Muslim guy wrote that religious buildings slowly started to disappear with mosques being the last ones to falter to screen technology. And look at this one, it’s him at a Quran recitation competition. Who do we know that has memorized the Quran, anymore?”
Kira shoved the pictures out of my hands and took a step away from me. Her slack jawed expression and vacant eyes made her look less human and more like the screen inside of her. Her arms and hands were rigid straight. The only sounds in the cabin was the air whistling through the cracks in the wood.
“Ailani, you have to stop,” she said, her tone flat. “There’s a reason why they banned books and got rid of religious institutions.”
“It doesn’t make sense though. If they’re so bad, then why are we still wearing the hijab? Why is there still a Friday service through our screens? Think about it, Kira,” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“Are we getting the same types of sermons these people used to have?”
“I don’t know–”
“Think about it. They pick and choose what they want us to know. They’re controlling us with accessibility. Just look at how much I’ve learned from reading books. Imagine how much more there is out there. Imagine what would happen if people knew the truth -”
“No,” Kira snapped, coming out of whatever trance she was in. “No Ailani, I don’t want to imagine.”
I shoved the pictures in her direction again, “But look-”
“No, you look, Ailani. Look around you. No one is going to believe you and you’ll only get yourself in trouble. You’ll get me in trouble. You’ll condemn our entire family with this nonsense. Forget about all of this, okay. Just forget what you saw here and don’t ever speak of it to anyone again.” Kira turned and marched towards the door.
“I can’t,” I whispered, quietly but with a strength I could feel rising up in me. They’re all wrong. Kira was wrong. “He wrote that there would come a time where no one prayed and the Quran became just words. Astagfirullah-”
Kira whipped back to look at me, her beautiful face twisted in revulsion. “Are you listening to yourself right now?”
“People need to know, and I can’t go back to how things used to be.” I pushed past her through the doorway, pushing her arms away as she tried to stop me. I could hear her calling after me. My footsteps quickened as I felt her on my heels. I sprinted across the field and through the train barn. Just when I thought I had lost her, Kira launched at me from my right side over the metal tracks. My head missed the edge, smacking against the dirt. She grabbed onto my shirt, flipping me over. My head was spinning, and my vision swam with her face inches away from mine, screaming at me to stop and pounding my back into the ground. We heard the screech of an approaching train and froze. I took advantage of her distraction, kicking her in the stomach and across the tracks. The force caused her to let go as her body flew into the dirt. We both stood up just as the train flew past us, our eyes meeting in between the traincars.
“Don’t do this, Ailani!”
I turned, not looking back, and began to run. As I made for the fence, I scrambled into a climb and pulled myself over. I landed on the other side, and felt something hard against my knee. Fisting through the dirt, my hands found a long pipe wrench lodged into the ground. I held it up and an idea formed in my mind.
“They need to know.” My heart trembled. “Ya Allah, give me strength to see this through,” I whispered, and a calm covered the storm in my heart.
I ran back into the city, ducking under the wired fence and down the block. A city screen projected a hologram welcoming people on the street. I reeled back the wrench and swung with all my strength into the screen. The hologram glitched and tried to reboot. I began to swing even harder, breaking it a little more each time. I could hear Kira’s shouts becoming louder, catching up with me and demanding me to stop. I broke into a sprint, continuing to ram the wrench into every screen within reach. Every building, every street corner had a screen hologram projection and I started to break every one of them. People screamed and fled at the sight of me. I heard the sirens and tires screeching against the pavement towards me.
I ran harder. I swung faster. I dashed around the corner, swinging the wrench into the side of the building that had a screen surrounding it and dragging it across the glass.
“This is the city police. Stop and put your weapon down!”
I kept running and swung at another Screen, ignoring the blaring over the city intercom. My face lit up the remaining city screens as live footage of my actions aired across the city.
“They’re controlling you,” I screamed. I smashed another hologram before turning the corner. A cop came running at me down the block. I spun around and fled back the way I had come, but another cop car was right there. I was cornered. I staggered back as they zeroed in on me. My back hit the building wall and I looked up. The main city center sign was blocking my view. A crowd had formed behind the police to watch.
“They’re lying to you. To all of us,” I screamed again, my voice hoarse from the running, the smashing, the screaming. Still, I couldn’t stop. Not now. “The Screens are a weapon to control us. The technology is a weapon. You have to understand. They’re controlling us.”
I turned and cocked the wrench back, one last time. As the police leaped for me, I swung it with the remaining force left in me. It smashed into the city center screen. Cracks spread up the screen, my image glitching in the remnants. The cops tackled me to the ground and cuffed me. My eyes searched among the shocked crowd for Kira. Her body kneeled on the ground weeping amongst the bodies.
