After a long period of waiting, deep thought, and all the hardships they knew they might have to face, Arif and his fellow young researchers finally decided it was time to put their plan into action. Arif told them that their strategy would move along three main tracks.
The first was open confrontation. They would face the three preachers—Shaher, Maher, and Kaher—directly and challenge them to scientific, logical debates, answering argument with argument and evidence with evidence instead of hiding behind secret meetings. Confrontation, Arif believed, was the cleanest remedy and the most effective solution. They already knew that the preachers' case was weak: neither their faith, nor their religion, nor the god they worshiped rested on logic or scientific evidence proving that such a deity—or such a religion—actually existed. Their faith had nothing to stand on but surrender, conviction without proof, and a willingness to accept claims without evidence or demonstration.
Arif and the others expected the three preachers to dodge the debates whenever possible. They knew how fragile their position was before reason, science, and rational evidence. And if they accepted the challenge, they would probably resort to patchwork arguments, evasions, and intellectual sleight of hand. That would become obvious before the believers, and the hidden machinery beneath the preaching would finally be exposed. Arif and his friends would then be able to weaken the preachers' standing in the eyes of the believing servants of Antar—and perhaps persuade some of them to abandon the religion and their faith altogether.
Either way, the researchers believed they had the advantage. If the preachers accepted the debates and tried to survive by stitching together logical fallacies and evasions, Arif and his team would tear those arguments apart in front of everyone. If they refused and ran from the debates, the fog would lift anyway, and the dark cloud of faith hanging over the minds of Antar's believing servants would begin to thin.
In both cases, the preachers would look like the weaker side. The mountain of fear they had built inside people's minds would begin to crumble.
The second track focused on the believers themselves. Arif and his friends would continue explaining the effects faith had on their lives and would show them the danger of surrendering to humiliation and oppression. What they were living under was not faith, they argued, but degradation. If the faith had truly been what its followers claimed, its advocates would never have needed such methods to defend it.
The third track was aimed directly at Antar's throne. They had to shake the false god's seat beneath him by tearing down the wall he leaned on with all his strength and placed all his trust in: the wealthy, powerful, and influential people who remained loyal to him.
Arif and his friends would try to win those people over by using the same basic strategy, but with one crucial difference. They would reach out to scientists, scientific institutions, inventors, technologists, and anyone connected with new discoveries. Science and technology, they would argue, were the real engines of future wealth. In the near future especially, scientific progress would make the rich richer, the powerful more powerful, and the influential even harder to challenge. Technology—not superstition—would give them a durable place in the future.
The coming age belonged to science. Anyone who refused to move with it would be run over by the train of scientific and technological progress. Real power, secure influence, and lasting status would belong to those who embraced scientific ideas, encouraged scientific thinking, and kept religious dogma out of public life—preferably out of practical life altogether.
They would court these influential figures through scientific circles, encouraging them to invest in what actually deserved investment: knowledge that served humanity, medicine that fought disease, and technology that could improve life. Religion would pass; faith-based superstition and worship were metaphysics, and metaphysics would not build their fortunes, strengthen their positions, or secure their influence. Science could.
Once they had them on their side, the first nail would be hammered into the coffin of Antar's throne.
One day Abu al-Hikma was seen riding the mule that always accompanied him. He called the animal "The Philosopher." With a large drum in one hand and a stick in the other, he rode through the streets and markets, beating the drum and shouting:
"People, listen up! Hear and obey! We urgently need a skilled patcher—someone truly qualified in the noble science and fine art of patching. Otherwise, beware! Your faith will collapse like a wall on top of you—and on top of your god!"
In those final days, after Arif's arguments with his grandfather, Abu al-Hikma had begun visiting their home every night. He was a close friend of Nasra, Arif's grandfather, and the old man's illness had grown worse. Nasra spent much of his time in bed, and Arif stayed up many nights caring for him.
Arif had become deeply afraid for his grandfather. He worried that the old man was suffering from the pain of separation—or perhaps was nearing the end of his life. Whenever Nasra fell asleep, Abu al-Hikma would spend the rest of the night talking with Arif.
Abu al-Hikma was fascinated by Arif's arguments. More than once, admiration lit up his eyes when Arif presented another piece of hard, logical, scientific evidence—evidence capable of smashing the fortress of faith that stood between a believer's mind and understanding, awareness, and thought.
And yet Abu al-Hikma was still Abu al-Hikma. He dodged, doubled back, and concealed more than he revealed, especially when speaking with Arif through his absurd jokes and crooked little paradoxes. His questions wandered like a badly designed road with too many intersections and no decent signs, pushing anyone who listened toward confusion, reflection, and the same old question: Was he really foolish, or was he simply pretending to be?
In the end, people treated him as half-crazy. But the more dangerous part of his speech was precisely what made him useful: he relieved pressure. He gave people a way to breathe. And that benefited the ruler as much as the ruled.
So Abu al-Hikma decided to become a voluntary agent of enlightenment—a helper in Arif's campaign—but in his own peculiar style.
He mounted his mule, lifted his drum, and began beating it among the passersby, calling urgently for a highly skilled patcher. Before long, people gathered around him. They came running, smiling and laughing. Their faces had been miserable for months, frightened by the grip of the powerful men who had tightened their hold on them.
"Why are you looking for a patcher?" one of the believers asked. "And what exactly is he supposed to patch? What does 'patching' even mean?"
Abu al-Hikma stared at him in astonishment.
"What? You claim to be a believer and you don't know the science of patching? Then your faith is incomplete—badly incomplete. Patching is a discipline of its own, a sacred craft every believer and every preacher must master. It must be studied, practiced, and perfected. In fact, it is one of the clearest signs that a person is a true believer.
"You think the pillars of religion and faith are limited to the usual things? You think they end with praying to Antar, pleading with him, declaring that he is a real god, believing his messengers are truly his messengers, doing charity for the poor so your god will be pleased with you, fasting from food and drink whenever your god commands it, and visiting his palace—the sacred house of your god—to circle around it?
"No, no, no. You are missing the sixth pillar. And it is perhaps the most important one: patching.
"To be a genuine believer, a person who understands his religion and clings to it, he must master the art of patching and become highly trained in its methods. That is how faith survives. And the god is pleased because your work is so great. With this powerful and ancient science, you cover your god's nakedness."
The believer stared at him.
"Why all that? What's the point?"
"Because of the criminal Sosou."
Abu al-Hikma meant the accursed Saman. He always called him "the criminal Sosou." The other believers gathered closer as he cleared his throat and continued.
"To make the matter clear: the criminal Sosou has decided to attend the great debates that will soon take place between the young researchers and one of the preachers—or perhaps one of the believers specially trained in the noble art of patching, by which I mean the art of patching their religion whenever it begins to tear.
"Since Sosou carries that wicked spirit that rejects faith, he will be there in spirit, standing beside those researchers. And as a believer devoted to protecting my faith, I fear that my faith may begin to weaken and wobble when Sosou and these researchers start using reason, logic, science, evidence, and scientific proof.
"These are destructive weapons. Dangerous weapons. Weapons that can tear faith to pieces. We must stand against them. We must fight them. They threaten the precious faith we hold dear.
"So, fellow believers, we urgently need a patcher—someone who can mend the worn-out garment of faith, excuse me, the precious garment of faith we all treasure. Our hearts and minds work tirelessly to protect and strengthen it, so we must patch it whenever it begins to rip.
"We need the arts of twisting, sidestepping, and talking in circles. These are deadly weapons. They keep the precious fabric of faith intact. We need a patcher immediately—someone trained in the science of patching, even if he just graduated and hasn't accumulated much practical experience.
"We are in trouble. We are in the middle of a crisis. We need a solution quickly because time is running out, and that is the one thing that is absolutely not on our side.
"What troubles me most is that I can already see the symptoms and side effects of faith fading from you. Their intensity has begun to disappear. You're not the same people you were only recently. Where has your religious enthusiasm gone? I want to see it return. I want its powerful spirit moving through you again, stronger than ever.
"We are at war. And this war may cut off the head of great faith itself—that sacred head. Imagine the disaster!"
Abu al-Hikma spent his days in the marketplace surrounded by passersby who gathered to hear his jokes. Whenever he asked someone one of Arif's questions—questions that, according to Abu al-Hikma, were capable of causing severe damage to the believer's spiritual health and sending faith into a divine illness from which it might never recover—the believer would swallow hard.
Then memory would do its work. He would remember his own brief rebellion against faith, or remember what had happened to a rebellious friend or neighbor at the hands of the powerful men who controlled their lives under Antar's permission.
Fear would rush in. And the believer would answer quickly, wrapping his response in the finest traditions of theological patchwork, perfumed with the fragrance of faith.
In an instant, the terrified believer would transform into a brilliant patcher—or, to put it more politely, a believer of complete and perfect faith.
The others would follow his example.
Abu al-Hikma would smile that familiar sarcastic smile, raise his hand, and applaud with blazing religious enthusiasm.
"Excellent! Wonderful! You have proved that you are believers in the truest and most deserving sense. This is the noble image of the true believer—the image in which genuine faith shines with complete clarity, sincerity, and an almost enviable religious enthusiasm.
"And I am delighted to announce that your spiritual health is in excellent condition. The proof is right in front of us: the symptoms and side effects of deep faith. And the most important of them—the first, in fact—is mastery of the ancient and immortal science of patching, without which no faith can ever be complete."
He kept applauding until people across the market could hear the sharp rhythm of his hands.
Arif was delighted. The first part of his plan was beginning to work.
Ibn Marra al-Hilwa then pressed on, arguing that the fossil record itself was a problem for evolution. If fossils were being used to support the theory, he claimed, they did not actually reveal the countless transitional forms the theory would seem to require. Whenever a supposedly transitional specimen appeared, he insisted, it was extraordinarily rare. If the theory were as certain as its advocates claimed, why had the fossil record not preserved enormous numbers of intermediate stages beneath the Earth's surface?
He continued along the same line, claiming that some researchers had even manipulated or falsified evidence to defend evolution. A fragment of an extinct animal, he argued, could be declared a human ancestor simply because someone wanted it to serve the theory. He mocked the argument from genetic similarity as well, insisting that resemblance between living things merely showed that the Creator was one and that biological similarity was a natural necessity of the food chain.
Then he turned to the familiar comparison between humans and chimpanzees. He claimed that the often-cited figure of roughly one percent genetic difference had later been exposed as misleading, and that the real difference was closer to five percent and possibly more. To him, this was proof that evolutionary scientists manipulated numbers to protect their theory.
His argument soon descended into comic exaggeration. "By your logic," he said, "I might be ninety percent mouse, eighty-five percent cow, or perhaps half banana, simply because bananas and humans share some DNA. What kind of twisted logic is that?"
The audience burst out laughing. Some laughed because they believed Ibn Marra al-Hilwa. Others laughed while quietly sympathizing with Arif and his friends, but fear of Antar's soldiers kept their true position hidden.
Among those present was Nasr, Arif's grandfather, who had come to witness the historic debate despite his illness. He leaned on the shoulder of his old friend Abu al-Hikma, who sat beside him. Whenever Arif scored a point against his opponent, the two exchanged amused glances and suppressed laughter. Yet as Ibn Marra al-Hilwa continued defending his faith and his Creator, anxiety returned to Nasr's face.
The old man glanced toward Arif. Arif met his eyes and gave him a confident smile, as if to say, Don't worry. I'm ready for him.
Abu al-Hikma, meanwhile, kept laughing under his breath at everything he heard, looking almost delighted by the spectacle.
Ibn Marra al-Hilwa cleared his throat and continued, with complete confidence:
"And here is something evolutionists never seem able to explain. How, exactly, does any language in the universe arise by blind chance and randomness?"
"Every code, every language, needs a sender and a receiver—or at the very least, an encoder. So what about the most complicated language of all: the genetic code, the DNA that is the foundation of life, the language of life itself? It is almost painfully absurd to imagine that such a system came from blind chance.
"And it gets worse. There is an extraordinarily complex mechanism for repairing errors in DNA. Evolutionary scientists, people like you, have no real explanation for that complexity except to say that it arose through chance, randomness, and mutation. What chance are you talking about?
"Respect the minds you claim to use. This mechanism is foundational. Without it, living organisms would not exist. How can all this complexity emerge from accident and randomness? How can the very system on which life depends appear through blind chance and mutation? Chance and randomness cannot simply produce a complete first life-form, nor can they casually assemble a sophisticated, interlocking system. Even science, at its most powerful, cannot simply manufacture the simplest form of life from scratch.
"And I see you avoiding the question of how life began in the first place. Why? Because life arising by pure accident and randomness is impossible. Even reason itself rejects it.
"One of the famous scenarios you evolutionists put forward is the idea that the first molecule of life arose by chance—the so-called RNA world. Yet, according to the research I rely on, that model lacks essential components and cannot account for the emergence of life. Science, you say, has shown that life requires a minimum set of genes, and that no living organism can exist with fewer than hundreds of genes. Hundreds of genes do not simply appear by accident. The odds are beyond imagination.
"Now I have two questions for you and for every enlightened atheist listening to us. First: why is the human being the only creature with consciousness, reason, awareness, and logic—and the only speaking animal? Second: is it logically possible for blind chance, randomness, and uncontrolled mutations to produce organs and functions of extraordinary precision, complexity, order, and sophistication? Surely something capable of doing that must be the Best of Creators."
He went on to attack evolutionary theory from another direction. Experimental science, he argued, rests on observation, direct examination, and experiment, whereas no one had ever watched one animal literally transform into another species. To him, that proved evolution was fundamentally wrong. He even claimed that some scientists who rejected religion and faith had rejected evolutionary theory as well because, in his view, it failed to answer too many questions—especially the origin of life and the origin of the first primitive cell.
"And to those atheists who cling to science," he continued, "remember that scientific conclusions can change. Science changes. There is no absolute truth in science, and many scientists like you have admitted that evolutionary theory may one day have to be revised or substantially changed. So why cling to it as if it were revealed truth?
"The simple answer is that science still does not know the secret behind the diversity of living things, and it has no material substitute for the missing explanation. The scientific community simply does not want to appear helpless before the mystery of biological diversity.
"And there is something else. The science you boast about does not use the word 'Creator.' If a scientist so much as suggests that the intricacy and precision of life require a Creator, he risks losing his position. That is why many scientists, in your world, choose silence."
At that point the debate reached a fever pitch. The audience surged and roared. Anxiety settled heavily over Grandfather Nasr, and his coughing grew louder, though his broken coughs were almost swallowed by the uproar. The debate moderator finally silenced the crowd and handed the floor back to Arif. Ibn Marra al-Hilwa's allotted time was over.
Arif took the microphone with the calm confidence of a man who knew exactly where he wanted to go.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "this is what we have come to expect from the faithful when their belief system is cornered. To satisfy their doctrine, they are prepared not merely to sell their minds and surrender them to an unseen metaphysical deity, but to patch, fabricate, distort, and even falsify whatever needs patching in order to protect their faith.
"They will not taste the sweetness of faith—or the approval of their merciful master—until they give up everything reasonable and logical. In fact, according to the logic we've just heard, a believer must be stupid. Yes: to become a genuine believer, apparently, you have to be stupid. I apologize for using the word, because I am not attacking the person. I am describing the position.
"Our friend Ibn Marra al-Hilwa has built his entire defense around famous logical fallacies, then presented those fallacies as science, reason, and rational thought.
"The first is confirmation bias. He started from the assumption that his religion, his god, and his beliefs are established facts and then went looking for material that would support them. He has a sacred book he assumes came from a god and therefore cannot be a human fabrication. He searches through everything he reads and selects whatever appears to support his position. He then patches it, trims it, and fits it to his belief while ignoring theories and evidence that contradict him. He gives special attention to evidence he thinks supports his worldview and almost none to what challenges it. That's confirmation bias: supporting without seriously attempting to falsify.
"We can also call what he is doing an appeal to ignorance. He assumes his beliefs are true simply because no one has proved them false. I intend to show why that reasoning collapses.
"You said evolution is incomplete and wrong. Fine. But let me ask you something. You mock the idea that human beings are related to ancient organisms and call it absurd to imagine that life changed through long biological processes. Yet do you consider it rational to tell your believing servants that humanity began with a single first man made from sticky clay—a first terrestrial human from whom all humans descended—and that a woman was produced from his crooked rib?
"Where is the logic in that? Where is the evidence?
"If your god is truly all-powerful, why would he use a primitive method worthy of a child playing with modeling clay—shape a lump, leave it to dry, then breathe into it so it becomes human? Why not simply command life into existence?
"What kind of intelligence is being celebrated here? Where is the alleged power? If an omnipotent deity can say 'Be,' why resort to such an elaborate and primitive manufacturing process? Is your god incapable—or does your theory of creation still have missing pieces?
"And then there is your treatment of women. Your religious system has elevated the male and diminished the female, portraying the male as superior in rank before a male god. According to your story, woman herself was made from that crooked rib of the first man.
"Beyond the obvious contempt for women in that narrative, the story has another problem: there is not a single piece of evidence—not one hair from this alleged first human, not a trace of his body, not even a grave—that demonstrates he ever existed."
[Draft note in the original manuscript: Arif answers Ibn Marra al-Hilwa through three logical fallacies—the first being confirmation bias; the second, cherry-picking scientific statements while ignoring contrary evidence; and the third, the straw-man fallacy, by falsely claiming that atheists believe the universe appeared through simple blind chance. The note further instructs Arif to contrast scientific inquiry with metaphysical claims and to use examples discussed in the manuscript about evolution and human biology.]
Arif resumed in the spirit of that argument, stressing that scientific uncertainty is not the same thing as religious evasion. "You accuse scientists of running away from questions," he said. "They do not run. Science has only one obligation: intellectual honesty. When science does not know, it says it does not know. That is not cowardice. That is integrity.
"What you call evasion is caution, precision, and scientific conscience. Science does not need theological patchwork. When there is no reliable evidence, it does not invent an answer merely to make a story feel complete. Silence while the evidence is investigated is not evasion. It is method.
"And when you say that the universe is too complicated to exist without a Creator, you are again making the same leap: complexity, therefore God. That's the believer's favorite shortcut. Whenever there is a gap in knowledge, you place a supernatural being inside it and call the problem solved.
"Science does not use 'Creator' as a scientific explanation because the word itself cannot be tested, measured, observed, or subjected to experiment. It is a metaphysical conclusion, not a scientific instrument.
"And if you insist that evolution violates scientific principles because parts of its story remain under investigation, then you cannot turn around and demand that we accept your god as a scientific conclusion. You cannot demand evidence, observation, and experiment from science while granting faith a free pass from all three.
"Which one is inconsistent here?"
Arif then returned to the evolution debate and to the claim that life requires a designer simply because it is complex.
"Is it really rational to imagine that human beings are the deliberate products of a supernatural sculptor who sat down with clay and manufactured the first person as if he were making a toy? Where is the evidence that this first human ever lived? Bring me even one hair. Bring me a fragment of his body. Show me a grave, a tool, a trace, anything.
"And do not confuse 'we do not yet know' with 'therefore your god did it.' Those are two completely different statements.
"The natural history of life is not a simple message passed from sender to receiver. The mechanisms of inheritance, variation, mutation, selection, and accumulation are immensely richer than that analogy. The living world is not a machine assembled in one sitting. It is the result of processes unfolding over immense spans of time.
"Yes, life is complicated. But complexity alone does not prove a supernatural designer. If that were enough, every unsolved problem would automatically become evidence for whatever deity someone prefers.
"And that brings us back to your favorite escape route: when science reaches the edge of current knowledge, you rush in with your god. But the edge of knowledge is not a throne reserved for a deity. It is simply where the next question begins."
Arif continued by challenging the religious argument from the supposedly perfect design of the human body. He argued that many features of human anatomy look less like the work of an all-powerful engineer and more like the imperfect products of a long biological history.
"The human eye, for example," he said, "is not the flawless masterpiece you keep praising. Its structure includes serious constraints, including a blind spot created by the way the optic nerve connects to the retina. A truly unconstrained designer could have routed the wiring without sacrificing part of the visual field.
"Yet we are asked to call this perfect design. Imagine a factory producing cameras with a permanent hole in the image. You would not praise the factory for its genius. You would send the product back.
"And the problem does not end there. Human vision itself is limited. There are regions of space we cannot see, and our brains must reconstruct what reaches us. What we experience as a solid external world is in part the brain's interpretation of sensory information.
"Perhaps I should even excuse your god here," Arif said with a dry smile. "Maybe he was distracted when he designed the eye. Maybe he was having a bad day. After all, even a supposedly omnipotent deity apparently has deadlines."
He went further, listing features of the human body that, in his sarcastic reading, hardly looked like evidence of flawless engineering: a tiny piece of food can block the airway and kill a person; the reproductive, urinary, and digestive systems occupy neighboring territory; the spine is vulnerable to injury; the body deteriorates, ages, becomes ill, and eventually dies.
"Is this the 'intelligent design' you want us to kneel before?" he asked. "A product so fragile that carrying a heavy load can damage the spine? A body that can die from choking on a grain of rice? A body in which different waste and reproductive functions operate in astonishingly close quarters?
"And yet we are told that every defect must be sacred because the designer is sacred. His mistakes become miracles. His limitations become mysteries. His failures become tests. His product may break, but we are still required to praise the manufacturer.
"Even the insects you consider harmful become part of this so-called perfect design. Humans spend enormous effort fighting organisms that cause disease. We protect ourselves from them with medicine and technology. Yet somehow their existence is offered as another reason to kneel before the very designer supposedly responsible for making them.
"Then comes the usual challenge: 'Can you create a fly? Can you create a mouse?' What does that prove? The fly and the mouse are biological organisms, not evidence of divine perfection. And we humans have no special reason to manufacture another living thing merely to win a theological argument.
"Life dies. Organisms age, eat, sleep, reproduce, excrete, become sick, and decay. None of this proves divinity. It proves biology.
"The striking thing is that nature never announced itself as an all-wise monarch. Nature never claimed to be omniscient, perfect, merciful, or morally flawless. So when nature produces an imperfect organism, no contradiction appears. But when you attribute every biological feature to an all-powerful, all-wise designer, you make yourself responsible for explaining every flaw as well as every strength.
"Human beings, through science, have learned to fight many of the diseases caused by harmful organisms. We develop medicines, vaccines, treatments, and technologies that reduce suffering. We do not need to call ourselves gods to do it.
"In fact, we are doing your god a favor when we deny that he exists. We are saving him from a responsibility your own theology loads onto his shoulders.
"You insist that he created everything, including a body full of weaknesses, disease, pain, and biological vulnerability. Then you call the design intelligent and demand that we worship the designer. But every time you attribute another defect to him, you make his case worse.
"You do not realize it, but you are the ones humiliating the god you claim to worship."
Arif continued his attack on the idea of "intelligent design." He pointed to the human eye as one of his favorite examples.
"Look at the eye. Its wiring is so strangely arranged that it creates a blind spot. A supposedly perfect designer could have avoided that. Instead, part of the optic nerve passes through the retina in a way that leaves an area without usable vision. In practical terms, it is a design flaw. If a factory produced a camera with a hole in the middle of the image, would you call the manufacturer brilliant?
"The problem is even more striking when you remember that human beings do not experience the world exactly as an objective camera would record it. The brain interprets and reconstructs the signals it receives. What you experience as the world around you is partly a model built inside your own head. The sky appears blue, the grass appears green, and the brain turns those signals into the reality you experience.
"Perhaps we should be generous and excuse the divine designer. Maybe he was distracted while making the eye. Maybe his mood was terrible that day. Perhaps this was simply the best he could manage. After all, we are being asked to believe that this supposedly unlimited intelligence somehow produced a system with very obvious limitations.
"And then comes the extraordinary part. After producing this supposedly sacred human 'product' for the purpose of worshiping him, the designer becomes angry when the product fails to worship correctly. He sends messengers, punishes it, threatens it, and condemns it.
"The quality of the product does not matter. The failures do not matter. The fact that the product is fragile, vulnerable, diseased, and poorly engineered does not matter. One thing alone matters: worship the manufacturer.
"His mistakes become sacred. His failures become mysteries. His defects are explained away. He can apparently do whatever he likes without ever being held responsible for the consequences, simply because he has been declared a god.
"Take the human body. A tiny grain of food can block the airway and kill a person. The reproductive, urinary, and digestive systems are packed into the same general neighborhood, as if someone designed a house by putting the garbage chute beside the flower garden and then congratulated himself on the efficiency of the floor plan.
"The spine can be damaged merely by carrying too much weight. A fragile body can suffer terrible injury because it was not built to withstand what everyday life asks of it. Yet if that injury prevents a person from kneeling in worship, we are told that this is no excuse. Lie on your sickbed and keep worshiping. The only thing that matters is satisfying the designer's ego.
"And then the familiar challenge appears: 'Can you create a fly? Can you create a mouse?' No. But why would that prove anything? The fact that we do not manufacture living organisms for sport does not make another organism proof of divine perfection. Flies spread disease. Mice spread disease. Nature contains organisms that harm other organisms. None of that requires a deity to explain it.
"Humans, meanwhile, use science to fight disease, reduce suffering, and repair the damage caused by biology. We make medicines and technologies that protect us from organisms that injure us.
"Nature never claimed to be an omnipotent king, a perfect engineer, or a merciful deity. It never promised perfection. So nature's imperfections are not a logical contradiction. The contradiction appears when you claim that an all-wise, all-powerful, all-merciful god deliberately designed every weakness and every defect.
"In fact, when we deny this god exists, we are doing you a favor. We are rescuing him from a burden that, according to your own theology, he cannot carry. You keep stuffing this god into every gap in our knowledge and then act surprised when the result looks ridiculous.
"You are not defending your god. You are humiliating him."
Arif then returned to the old dilemma of evil. He argued that if the god of the story knows everything in advance, controls everything, and permits everything, then Saman—the supposed embodiment of evil—could not be an independent enemy at all.
"If Saman does evil only because the god permits him to, then the god ultimately permits every act Saman commits. If he already knew what Saman would do, then he knew it before Saman did it. If Saman whispers evil into human minds under the god's supervision, then the god is not merely watching the operation. He is allowing it, authorizing it, and—under your own assumptions—knowing exactly where it will lead.
"So what is Saman? An employee.
"And what kind of accounting system is this? The manager gives the employee permission to do something, then punishes the employee and everyone else for the result.
"Perhaps the deity spent so much time and effort preparing hell that he now needs people to keep doing evil so the place does not go to waste. Perhaps that is why evil is permitted and encouraged, only to be punished later forever.
"Then we are told that humans have free will, but also that nothing happens unless the deity wills it. We are told that the god knows everything in advance, yet he still becomes surprised and furious when his servants do what he already knew they would do.
"Tell me: whom exactly are you worshiping? A perfect being—or a ruler who has somehow arranged the universe so that he can be angry at people for doing what he permitted them to do?"
The debate ended in a storm of reactions. Some listeners believed Arif; others rejected him angrily. Many were caught between doubt and fear.
Ibn Marra al-Hilwa had struggled to answer, using every piece of theological patchwork he could find, every logical fallacy, every carefully selected quotation. But Arif was waiting for him at every turn. Each patched argument was pulled apart on the floor of the debate like a badly sewn cloth.
The battlefield was not being decided by shouting. Its weapons were evidence, facts, science, and logic. Against them stood an opponent who survived by patching, illusion, and fabrication—changing colors like a chameleon whenever danger came close.
And that was how the last of his theological patches began to tear.
Chapter Fifteen
THE TRIAL OF ALI BABA
The debate had been so explosive that its echo seemed to reach every corner of Antartoto. The population split into believers and skeptics, the convinced and the unconvinced, the bewildered and the furious.
Some accepted Arif's arguments and became convinced that he had a point. Many already knew that Arif was educated, that he cared about knowledge, and that he valued the search for facts. They began quietly retreating from their old beliefs.
But fear sealed their mouths.
Many people secretly visited Arif and his friends wearing masks so no one would recognize them. They told them that they had become convinced that Antar could never be a god and that there was no evidence proving the existence of any deity, Antar or anyone else. They said that if science ever produced convincing evidence for a creator, they would reconsider—but belief should never be demanded without evidence.
Yet Antar's terror remained. His soldiers, spies, and informants—whom he called his angels—filled the streets and reported every development to him. Antar continued holding daily meetings in the grand conference room of his palace with Minister Qandil and the magician Samson.
His hopes for the previous debate had been much greater than the result. Preacher Shaher had promised him that Ibn Marra al-Hilwa was an expert in the sacred art of theological patching, that he knew how to combine science with faith, and that he would soon expose Arif's arguments. Antar had believed him because everyone knew Arif cared deeply about science, research, and learning.
The result, however, had been almost the opposite.
Meanwhile, Arif and the young researchers continued meeting inside the great library where they had first met and formed their group. They prepared for whatever Antar and his followers might do next, including intimidation and retaliation against anyone who questioned the god-ruler's faith.
At one meeting, one of the researchers proposed putting Antar himself on trial. He would be brought under scrutiny and forced to answer the questions directed at him.
Another researcher immediately objected.
"How can we do that? Antar still sits on his throne. He still has power. He can imprison us, torture us, or kill us whenever he wants. We spent all this time hiding for a reason. And if he agreed to the earlier debate, it was only because he wanted to display a carefully staged version of democracy. His followers and Minister Qandil encouraged him to dress his religion in scientific language so his false divinity would look civilized and modern.
"But his violence is real. We must not forget that."
Others agreed. Fear spread through the room.
Arif, however, had a different view.
"Things have changed," he said. "The debate created confusion and divided the believers. Some cling to Antar because they fear him. Others cling to him because they want the rewards he promises after death.
"I explained that science has found no evidence that a human consciousness survives death in the form promised by religion. The body returns to the natural cycle. What remains may become part of nature—water, plants, soil, bones, and the endless processes of matter.
"Still, fear makes people hedge their bets. If Antar's threats are real, they do not want to risk hell. So they believe just in case. They gamble their lives on the possibility that the promise is real.
"And if it is not real? They tell themselves they have lost nothing—except the time they spent surrendering their lives to an imaginary god.
"Meanwhile, that blind faith turns societies into consumers living at the bottom of the world's hierarchy, while those who abandon superstition and embrace reason, science, and education move ahead.
"That is our opening."
The researchers listened as Arif described the deeper plan.
"We do not need an army of people in the streets. We need an army of ideas. The real revolution begins inside the human mind."
One researcher looked puzzled.
"How?"
"We use what the people already use," Arif answered. "Technology. Social media. The tools that have spread across Antartoto over the past decades.
"Even the religious preachers use them. Qaher, for example, has been exploiting social media to gather followers and broadcast his rigid doctrine. He claims he disagrees with the other preachers, that they do not understand the true worship of Antar, and that his interpretation alone is authentic. They pretend to fight with one another, but beneath the performance they are playing the same game: keep the population divided and distracted, with Antar's approval.
"So we answer them with the same weapon.
"Hashtag for hashtag.
"Tweet for tweet.
"Post for post.
"But we will not imitate their deception. We will use modern communication honestly—short arguments, questions, evidence, and satire. We will expose the fraud behind the religious system and make people think again.
"Our goal is not a street riot. It is an intellectual uprising."
Arif paused, then continued with greater force.
"A crowd screaming in a square is not necessarily a revolution. Sometimes it is just noise. A real revolution is a person changing his own mind. It is reason replacing superstition, logic replacing inherited fear, and knowledge replacing slogans.
"We need a revolution with no armies, no bombs, and no fire. Its fuel is science. Its leader is reason. Its battlefield is the human mind.
"The researchers agreed enthusiastically.
"They began creating anonymous accounts and pages so Antar's spies could not easily identify them. They published short, sharp posts about religion, Antar's practices, and the behavior of his preachers.
"One post demanded, in mockery: 'Urgently needed: professional patchers to save faith before it collapses.'
"Another challenged the persecution of anyone who abandoned religion and dared to think.
"They created hashtags such as: 'Your faith is your horse—keep it bridled,' and 'Believer, guilty with prior intent.'
"Soon the hashtags spread through the region and across Antartoto.
"One of the most popular slogans was: 'Reason is the enemy of faith—watch yourself, believer.'
"They published satirical posts, anonymous articles, and audio broadcasts without images, ending with sharp criticism of Antar's supposed divinity. How could an allegedly omnipotent god calmly watch all this suffering while claiming to control everything? Was he powerless, cruel, or simply fictional?
"Everything came from anonymous accounts, email addresses, and pages. Even people who were afraid began sharing the material behind fake names.
"The posts traveled across the entire planet, crossing regions and continents. Eventually they had small networks of anonymous accounts and audio channels broadcasting from different places.
"These messages quietly forced people to reconsider Antar's disappearance. Why was the god hiding? Why did he never appear? Was hiding really a divine quality? Was invisibility the same thing as godhood?
"Abu al-Hikma became one of the movement's earliest satirical rebels. He turned the absurdities into jokes.
"He created the hashtag 'Coffee of the Gods,' mocking the contradictory descriptions of Antar contained in the three sections of the sacred Antarian book. Every faction had its own version of the deity, and every version contradicted the others.
"The hashtag caught fire. Someone even began calling his shop 'Gods' Coffeehouse,' until Antar's followers arrested him and shut the place down.
"Other hashtags followed: 'The Trial of Ali Baba,' mocking the believers who had sold their minds and let them rust while the three preachers bought them for almost nothing; 'Old Minds for Sale'; and the wildly popular 'May Sosou Be Damned,' mocking the convenient villain Saman.
"The latter became especially powerful because people started asking questions they had never dared to ask before. What if Saman had never done any of the things Antar accused him of? What if he had once been a loyal servant working diligently in the palace?
"What if Antar turned him into an enemy only after Saman refused one of his demands for fraud and manipulation?
"Then the whole story of the evil enemy might have been invented by Antar himself—a paper hero creating a paper villain. Antar cast himself as the champion of good and assigned all the evil to Saman, making Saman a dark reflection of the evil already inside Antar.
"In that reading, the two are simply two sides of the same coin.
"Abu al-Hikma understood the power of the joke and never wasted an opportunity. His satire became a major part of the quiet revolution taking place inside people's minds.
"He played two roles. First, he encouraged people to think through laughter. But he was careful not to tell frightened believers too directly that there was no hell, no eternal punishment, and no paradise. That might make them abandon faith too quickly, and then the entire system could collapse before the population was ready.
"His jokes acted like a safety valve. They released pressure without immediately triggering an explosion.
"His favorite image was the donkey chasing the carrot while fearing the stick.
"'Be careful,' he would warn his friends. 'Never cut the rope connecting the carrot to the stick. If the donkey ever realizes the trick, the carrot falls, the stick breaks, and the donkey stops being a donkey.'
"The laughter spread. People turned the joke into slogans of their own: 'The rebellious donkey,' 'The Donkey Revolt,' 'Donkeys Against Donkeys,' 'The Donkey, the Stick, and the Carrot,' 'Chains for Sale,' 'Slavery for the Highest Bidder,' and even 'Learn How to Become a God' and 'A Donkey for Every God.'
"Antar could do very little about Abu al-Hikma. As furious as he was, he knew that Qandil and Samson had a point: everyone expected Abu al-Hikma to be half-mad. No one seriously blamed a fool for what he said.
"And he was useful.
"He was the palace clown and the pressure valve. He absorbed people's anger and converted it into laughter. Instead of attacking the god openly, they laughed at the clown.
"Antar and Samson considered this a fortunate arrangement. As long as Abu al-Hikma kept absorbing the pressure, the population might laugh instead of revolt.
"But beneath the laughter, something else was happening. More and more believers were reading, thinking, discussing, and questioning the material circulating online. Some even began communicating with Arif's group without knowing their identities.
"Antar's security apparatus tightened its surveillance across the entire region. Anyone who seemed suspicious—especially someone using an anonymous account—could become a target.
Antar's surveillance tightened further. Anyone suspected of using an anonymous account, posting a critical hashtag, or leaving even the slightest trace of opposition could be arrested immediately. His followers and soldiers—the "angels" of his divine police force—would punish the accused publicly, so that everyone else would learn to be afraid and the electronic uprising would quiet down.
The preachers supported the crackdown enthusiastically. They were, after all, the perfect marriage of politics and religion. A ruler needed preachers to cook up laws, adjust their ingredients, and season them with the magic words "lawful" and "forbidden." Once something had been stamped with divine approval, who would dare argue with it? Who would dare oppose God?
And who could play the role better than a preacher speaking in God's voice—a man whose tongue had supposedly grown weary from scolding the misguided masses who had wandered from the sacred path? The preachers had become partners in Antar's control of Antartoto. They searched for "criminals," "traitors," and "infidels," becoming spies in secret.
Inside places of worship, they watched for anyone who prayed less, skipped preaching sessions, or made suspicious comments during Abu al-Hikma's evening gatherings. Sometimes the preacher himself would infiltrate those gatherings in disguise, listening for anyone who revealed information about a forbidden hashtag, an anonymous page, or some online trend that mocked Antar.
The religious centers had effectively become intelligence offices. Houses of worship were now places for surveillance, recruitment of informants, and entrapment—a religious intelligence service operating on behalf of the god-ruler and his associates.
Arif reacted quickly. He called the researchers together for an emergency meeting. The situation had deteriorated. People who had recently begun thinking, analyzing, debating, and speaking with courage were retreating into silence. The electronic uprising was losing momentum. Hashtags and posts were appearing less frequently because everyone feared arrest.
Many people stayed home rather than visit the preaching halls. Fear once again covered Antartoto in silence.
But Arif refused to believe the fire had gone out. He knew the uprising he had helped ignite was not something that could be extinguished so easily. This was only a pause before the storm, a temporary stillness while minds regrouped and planned.
Once a person has learned to read, think, and question, Arif believed, it is difficult to make that person illiterate again.
"We must begin destabilizing the false divine regime from inside," Arif told his companions. "Not just from the outside. We will not succeed unless we tighten the net around Antar and his followers. And the best way to do that is to turn one of his own men—especially Minister Qandil."
"How?" one researcher asked. "Qandil is the palace minister. He is Antar's right hand."
Arif's voice deepened.
"That right hand has reached its expiration date. It's time to cut it off and replace it with a stronger one—one that works for us, not for Antar."
One of Arif's friends had heard rumors of growing conflict between Qandil and the supposed god. Despite his fear of Antar, Qandil had begun losing patience with the arrests ordered by the preachers. He believed the policy of repression would only increase resentment and anger among the believers, especially now that people had begun to think for themselves.
Qandil favored a softer approach: patience, rewards for loyalty, and selective tolerance. Perhaps those methods would work better than Antar's brutality.
But tolerance was never part of Antar's nature. "Merciful" and "compassionate" were decorations he had attached to himself after claiming divinity. His behavior was the opposite. The disagreement between ruler and minister was growing, and Qandil's own spirit of rebellion was slowly awakening.
Arif listened carefully.
"I feel another hidden hand is moving in the dark," he said. "Someone is manipulating even Antar, and Qandil knows that hand exists. We need to find out who—or what—it is.
"So yes. We bring Qandil to our side. His disagreement with Antar may be the key that lets us tighten the noose around the entire regime."
"Exactly," Arif said. "That is what I have been thinking."
A few days later, Qandil was walking through a side street in Antartoto with a small group of guards and soldiers—the men Antar called his angels. He had been ordered to inspect the population and monitor anyone whose behavior suggested sympathy for the new intellectual movement.
The soldiers watched for anyone carrying forbidden books, scientific papers, or anything that might encourage the "crime" of thinking.
This had become Antar's newest strategy after he failed to identify the people behind the online revolution. Arif and his friends had hidden behind false names and anonymous pages, making it difficult to find them.
Qandil walked with a troubled expression. It was increasingly obvious to him that Antar's position was weakening. He was trapped in the same boat as the ruler, benefiting from the same system of power, but he was beginning to understand that the policy of repression was doomed.
Arif had been following him secretly.
When Qandil dismissed his soldiers in different directions to carry out inspections, Arif and three companions moved in. They surrounded him, subdued him with a substance that rendered him unconscious, and carried him away before anyone noticed.
They took him to the house of one of Arif's friends, who lived alone.
Chaos erupted in the palace when the soldiers returned without Qandil. They had assumed he had gone back ahead of them.
They were baffled because the minister normally kept them organized, told them where to gather, and led every patrol like a conductor directing an orchestra—or, more accurately, like a beekeeper managing a nervous hive.
After waiting in vain, they returned to the palace.
Antar's anger was immediate and enormous. Qandil had never disappeared without his permission. Yet the supposedly omniscient god could not discover where his own minister had gone. His divine knowledge had somehow failed to reveal the location of one of his closest "angels."
Antar cursed his guards, declared an emergency across Antartoto, and ordered an immediate search for the missing minister.
Then he summoned Samson.
The magician arrived quickly, as he always did whenever Antar found himself trapped in a crisis. By then the news of Qandil's disappearance had spread through the region.
And the public noticed something very inconvenient: Antar could not find his own minister.
If he was truly omnipotent, how could he fail to protect the man closest to him? How could he fail to know who had taken him? How could a god allow such chaos while sitting on his throne and watching in silence—and then still call himself just, merciful, and all-powerful?
The questions were devastating.
The hashtags returned, stronger than before.
The electronic revolt came roaring back.
People who had once been terrified of arrest and prison began asking a simple question: If Antar and his angels could not even locate their missing minister, what exactly was there to fear?
The believers' confidence began to crack. Doubt spread. The old fortress of faith started showing fractures.
Samson's anxiety grew as well. Antar looked frightened and helpless when the magician arrived.
Samson explained that he had already been on his way to the palace before Antar summoned him because the uproar was spreading rapidly. The technological revolt, which had seemed to weaken for a while, was burning again.
Meanwhile, Arif's group remained hidden with Qandil.
The minister had originally been terrified. But after long conversations with Arif, something changed in him.
Qandil admitted that the system had trapped him as surely as it had trapped everyone else. He had obeyed because of fear, position, money, and the interests he shared with Antar. Yet he had grown increasingly disgusted with the ruler he once served.
Arif confronted him directly.
"You have spent years helping Antar build this kingdom of fear. Now tell us what you know."
Qandil hesitated. His voice trembled.
"I swear to you, I did not write the laws willingly forever. I cursed Antar inside my head more times than I can count. I have grown sick of what he has become—especially lately."
Arif answered calmly that this was precisely why they had taken him. They had not kidnapped him to hurt him. They needed a chance to speak with the man who had stood beside Antar for years and had been entrusted with some of the regime's deepest secrets.
Qandil looked around at the researchers surrounding him.
"I am not the one you should be fighting," he said.
Arif frowned.
"What do you mean?"
Qandil finally whispered the name that had been buried beneath years of fear.
"Samson. The magician."
He called Samson the greatest hidden secret behind the entire system.
"He is the unseen force behind Antar. Antar is the face, but Samson is the mind moving behind the curtain.
"I have carried this secret inside me for years. I kept silent because I feared both of them. Samson's magic terrified me, and Antar's power trapped me. I became part of their corruption. By the time I understood what was happening, our interests were so entangled that I no longer knew how to escape.
"If you want proof, you will have to confront them yourselves."
Qandil described Samson as the mastermind behind the palace rituals, the false miracles, and the mythology that surrounded Antar.
He explained that Samson had learned to operate from the shadows. He preferred to remain invisible, manipulating others like puppets while enjoying the benefits of everything they did. He had learned magic from ancient books and turned invisibility into his greatest weapon.
Qandil revealed something even stranger.
Samson, he said, had not originally been human. He had been a strange creature, somewhere between an ape and a human, discovered in a barren part of Antartoto long before ordinary human beings appeared.
He had found an ancient book of magic and gradually mastered its spells. Over time he used those spells to transform himself into something increasingly human while keeping the ability to disappear from sight.
"How do you know all this?" Arif asked.
"Samson told me himself," Qandil replied. "He almost bragged about it. He knew I would never reveal his secret because I feared him, and because he knew Antar would never allow me to speak.
"Our interests were tied together. As long as Antar remained the ruler and Samson remained the hidden magician, I benefited too.
"But I hated them. I hated what they had done to me. They trapped me in their system with money, position, privilege, and fear. I became their obedient minister while anger kept boiling inside me."
Qandil explained that Samson had originally found a collection of magical dolls and statues. He learned how to animate them, then chose the largest one.
"That statue became Antar."
Samson turned the puppet into a living being, then into a ruler, and finally into a god. He built a population around him because a king could not rule an empty world. The planet was named Antartoto after Antar himself.
Samson remained behind the curtain, feeding Antar instructions, inventing rituals, and teaching him how to terrify the population. He was the hidden hand moving the puppet.
And that was how the system grew: a magician, a puppet king, a frightened minister, a collection of preachers, and an entire population taught to surrender its mind.
The revelation left Arif and his friends stunned.
They had always known Antar was not a real god. But they had never imagined that he might not even have been human.
Qandil lowered his head.
"I know what you will ask next. Why would Samson choose a puppet to rule instead of ruling himself?
"Because Samson preferred the shadows. Magic had taught him that the strongest hand is the invisible one. He wanted to pull the strings without becoming the string himself.
"He wanted a puppet he could command, while he remained the first beneficiary of everything that happened.
"So he created Antar, chose the largest puppet he had, and proudly called him 'the biggest.' Then he built a kingdom around him and moved him across the stage like a theater puppet.
"Everything Antar did—the rituals, the cruelty, the annual spectacles—came from Samson's plans.
"Eventually they both discovered that calling Antar a god was the most profitable illusion of all."
Qandil confessed that no one except himself had known the entire secret. Samson and Antar had only told him after they were certain he was deeply involved and could no longer walk away.
Arif listened, then said quietly:
"You should call it the power of science and reason. That is the power that is coming. It will eventually run over your religious myths, your manufactured sacredness, and your blind faith.
"Science does not promise certainty where none exists. It investigates. It tests. It searches. It corrects itself. That is what makes it stronger than superstition."
Arif then turned toward his friends with a thin, amused smile.
"So, gentlemen, you heard Qandil's story. According to him, we humans were originally made from the magical dolls of Samson—clay figures animated into life."
The researchers laughed.
Arif looked at Qandil.
"I am sorry, Minister, but science tells a very different story. Living things share common ancestry, and humans are part of the same natural history as other animals. None of us needs a magician standing behind the curtain pulling strings."
He reminded Qandil that the debate with Ibn Marra al-Hilwa had already shaken Antar's regime. The ruler's fear had increased, his meetings with Samson had become more frequent, and the supposedly omnipotent god was showing all the signs of a frightened tyrant.
Qandil admitted that he was now ready to believe Arif—not because Arif held the stronger political position, but because his arguments were based on evidence, reason, and intellectual honesty rather than the fraud and superstition of Samson and Antar.
"And there is one more thing," Arif said. "Antar himself is the exception to your theory of evolution—because he never evolved.
"He was manufactured.
"He began as a statue, a puppet made by a magician who wanted to rule from the shadows. Samson created many such figures and turned them into competing cults across Antartoto. From those statues grew the three great religious traditions and all their later divisions.
"Your sacred books are simply the stories built around those old puppets.
"Qandil, your god is a product of a magician's workshop."
Qandil lowered his head. His face was full of shame, grief, exhaustion, and defeat.
They were still talking when the doorbell rang.
One of Arif's friends jumped to his feet, alarmed, but Arif calmed him.
"It is probably Abu al-Hikma. He is the only person I secretly told about our location because I needed news about my grandfather. He has been with him, caring for him while I am gone."
Arif approached the door cautiously. After listening for the agreed code phrase, he opened it.
Abu al-Hikma stood outside.
They embraced, but Arif immediately noticed the grief written across his friend's face.
"What happened to my grandfather?" Arif asked.
Abu al-Hikma was silent for a long moment.
"Your grandfather is in his final hours. The illness has taken almost everything from him. He insisted on seeing you. He sent me to bring you before—"
Abu al-Hikma could not finish.
Arif rushed out.
They left Qandil under the guard of the researchers and hurried through the night.
Arif reached the house and entered his grandfather's room with trembling steps. The short corridor seemed endless. Every step brought back memories of Nasr: the man who had raised him after the death of his parents, educated him, protected him, and devoted his life to making him the person he had become.
Arif fell beside the bed and kissed his grandfather's hands, begging him not to leave him alone.
Tears fell onto the old man's hands.
Nasr slowly lifted himself and patted Arif gently. A warm, reassuring smile appeared on his face.
"Listen to me, my dear boy. I spent my whole life caring for you. Now I have seen you become a man with knowledge, ideas, and the courage to argue for what you believe.
"I am no longer afraid for you in the way I once was.
"And now I can finally tell you the secret I kept in my heart after you told me you had rejected faith and religion.
"You were right."
Arif stared at him in disbelief.
Nasr raised a weak hand.
"Let me finish, my grandson.
"I am going to die. My craft will die with me—the pottery and the statues people have loved because they thought those objects could help them get closer to the powers they worshiped.
"That was my trade. People respected it and sought me out. But I know it will disappear. And with it will disappear many of the stories and myths you once called nonsense.
"I know you will never follow my profession. It no longer belongs to the world you are entering.
"I am the one leaving.
"You are the one arriving.
"The future belongs to you."
After saying his final words, Nasr took one long breath, followed by a bitter sigh.
Then he was gone.
Arif broke down. His tears fell onto the face and hands of the grandfather who had been father, mother, teacher, and protector to him.
Abu al-Hikma placed both hands on Arif's shoulders and tried to comfort him. He was grieving too; Nasr had been one of the closest and most loyal people in his life, the friend who understood his jokes and his bitter humor better than anyone.
"My son," Abu al-Hikma said through his own grief, "do not let sorrow destroy you. My pain is no less than yours.
"But there is something else you must remember. If Antar's people discover you are here, they will tear the world apart looking for you. We came secretly through the night. You must leave while darkness still protects you.
"Your grandfather's final wish was not for you to stop. It was for you to continue."
Arif wiped his tears.
He buried his grief beside the man he had lost and forced himself to stand.
He remembered the researchers waiting with Qandil.
They stayed until night covered the place completely. Near dawn, Arif and Abu al-Hikma buried Nasr in silence.
Arif cried over the grave for a long time.
When the burial was finished, Abu al-Hikma said goodbye and Arif slipped away in the darkness to rejoin his friends.
He found Qandil still bound, with the researchers taking turns guarding him.
Qandil had already made his choice.
He told them clearly that he was with them now—not against them—and that he would not betray them.
After they had satisfied themselves that Qandil was acting in good faith, Arif's friends offered their condolences on the death of his grandfather. Then they agreed with the minister on a new way to frighten Antar: they would launch a hashtag campaign threatening an attack on Antar's palace and promising to surround the palace, Antar, Samson the sorcerer, and everyone who served them—the soldiers Antar proudly called his angels, his preachers, his courtiers, and even his women.
Arif and the other researchers began by reaching out through anonymous accounts. Those accounts had already been posting videos and hashtags attacking Antar and his preachers, especially from people who had abandoned their faith in the so-called god Antar and rejected his religion—people the preachers had branded apostates and atheists. Arif and his friends contacted them through private messages, using aliases of their own. They gathered as many as they could, and those recruits in turn contacted others who shared the same ideas.
Soon they had built a quiet network of people who agreed on one point: this would be a technological uprising, not an armed one. Arif was convinced that science, reason, and logic had to win the argument. He refused to copy Antar's crude method of intimidation—the sword, the threats, the prisons, the bloodshed, the tyranny, and the theatrical announcement of a divinity nobody had ever seen.
They wanted a white revolution: a revolution without armies, without executions, without corpses. Real control, Arif believed, came from reason. You defeated the person in front of you with evidence, science, argument, and proof—not with steel.