Istanbul, September 1896
The first summer of the academy passed in a blaze of progress. Istanbul's nights no longer ended with the setting sun, for electric lamps cast their glow across the streets of Pera and Galata. Factories ran longer shifts under their cold light. Students filled lecture halls late into the night, poring over texts of chemistry and mathematics. Ships docked along the Bosphorus carried oil and steel, but also journals, books, and scientific instruments. The empire pulsed with a new rhythm: the heartbeat of knowledge.
But where new light rose, shadows thickened. Resistance began quietly, in whispers from pulpits. Some imams warned congregations that lightning machines were the work of devils, that rays piercing flesh violated divine order. In the Balkans, priests printed secret primers in Greek and Serbian, urging parents to resist sending their children to Turkish schools. In Aleppo and Mosul, foreign missionaries opened small schools promising to teach "true faith" while secretly undermining the Sultan's decrees. These were not armies with rifles but ideas with tongues and pens. And Abdulhamid knew that ideas could be as dangerous as any cannon.
One Friday, after prayers in the imperial mosque, Abdulhamid summoned his council. The marble chamber was heavy with incense, but the Sultan's tone was cold steel. "We have seen the first sparks of rebellion—not with muskets, but with words. Some call our academy blasphemy, our language reforms tyranny. They are not fools. They are enemies. And enemies do not whisper without masters. Europe breathes behind their words."
Selim stepped forward, laying reports before the council. Crescent Eyes had tracked the trail: gold coins traced to Russian Orthodox clerics in Macedonia, French pamphlets smuggled into Beirut, British agents slipping into Mosul disguised as merchants. "Majesty," Selim said, "these are not isolated fires. They are sparks scattered by foreign hands. They hope the empire's new unity will collapse beneath its own weight."
Abdulhamid's gaze hardened. "Then we will smother their sparks before they ignite. Crescent Eyes will infiltrate every pulpit, every press. If a priest or imam preaches rebellion, his flock will find him replaced by dawn. If a pamphlet spreads lies, the press that prints it will burn by midnight. We will fight words with silence, shadows with shadows."
And so it began: a shadow war in the heart of the empire. Crescent Eyes worked with ruthless precision. Priests disappeared in Macedonia. Secret printing presses in Salonika were raided, their operators vanished. In Mosul, British missionaries who had whispered of rebellion were found dead in alleys, their throats cut with Ottoman blades. Rumors spread faster than facts: that Crescent Eyes saw all, that no plot could survive the Sultan's gaze. Fear itself became a weapon, binding villages tighter than chains.
But Abdulhamid was not content with repression alone. He knew that fear could silence the present, but only hope could shape the future. For every press that Crescent Eyes destroyed, the Sultan ordered two new schools to rise. For every preacher silenced, he sent teachers fluent in Turkish to villages, teaching children the new alphabet, the new sciences. In Bosnia, classrooms filled with both Muslim and Christian children, their tongues stumbling over the same Turkish words. In Baghdad, Arab families reluctantly sent their sons, who returned home correcting their fathers' grammar in Latin Turkish. Assimilation was slow, but it was relentless, as steady as the ticking of a clock.
Abdulhamid tied assimilation to prosperity. Families who sent children to Turkish schools received tax exemptions. Soldiers' sons who mastered Latin Turkish were fast-tracked into officer academies. Merchants who published ledgers in Turkish gained lucrative contracts with the railways and refineries. Language became not just a decree but a ladder—those who climbed it rose, those who resisted fell behind. In the Balkans, even hostile priests could not prevent ambitious fathers from sending children to the empire's schools. A boy who spoke Turkish had a future; one who clung to Greek or Serbian did not.
Still, resistance sometimes turned to open defiance. In 1896, a textile factory in Bursa—one of the first powered by oil-fueled engines—was set aflame by agitators. Crescent Eyes discovered Serbian hands behind the act, funded by Austrian agents. Abdulhamid traveled personally to Bursa, standing before the smoking ruins as workers gathered around him. "They burn our factories because they fear our strength," he told them, his voice carrying over the crowd. "But fire cannot stop steel. For every factory they destroy, we will build three more. For every enemy they send, Allah will give us ten sons. Stand with me, and no foreigner will ever chain us again." His words ignited a new fire—not of destruction but of loyalty. Workers volunteered to guard factories by night. Villages offered their sons to labor brigades. What had begun as sabotage became, by the Sultan's will, another stone in the empire's foundation.
The scientific academy became both symbol and weapon. Journals in Latin Turkish spread across the provinces, filled with articles on electricity, oil, and medicine. Even those who resisted the language could not deny the allure of knowledge. Farmers copied Turkish words for machines they hoped to one day use. Doctors in Damascus began practicing with Röntgen's rays. Young men in the Balkans whispered not of rebellion but of the strange lightning in Istanbul's laboratories. Science itself became propaganda, its wonders seducing even those who hated the empire's reforms.
Tesla, ever restless, presented new visions to the Sultan: wireless transmission of power, machines guided by remote signals. Abdulhamid listened, nodding, but always cautious. He remembered from his first life how many of Tesla's dreams ended in ruin. Still, he allowed experiments, for even failure might plant seeds. "Dream," he told Tesla, "but never forget this is not America. Here, the empire pays for results." Tesla bowed, his eyes still alight with impossible visions.
Curie's work proved more dangerous. The glowing minerals fascinated her students, who marveled at their light. But Abdulhamid, alone at night, remembered Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the firestorms of an age yet to come. He alone knew the abyss that lay at the end of such research. And yet—he did not stop her. Instead, he quietly ordered Crescent Eyes to guard her labs with utmost secrecy, and to ensure no foreign hand touched her discoveries. Knowledge could not be stopped. It could only be contained until the empire was ready.
As 1896 waned, Abdulhamid gathered his ministers once more. On the map before them, railways stretched farther, schools multiplied, refineries glowed with fire. "We are not yet complete," he told them. "Europe still calls us the Sick Man. But each factory, each school, each child who speaks Turkish, each invention we master—this is another nail in the coffin of their arrogance. We will not merely survive. We will lead." His gaze turned to Selim. "And if they resist, we will break them."
That night, alone in his chambers, Abdulhamid stood by the window, the Bosphorus glittering below. He thought of the Balkans, where Crescent Eyes still battled whispers and pamphlets. He thought of Mesopotamia, where oil flowed but Arab tongues still resisted Turkish words. He thought of the scientists now in his service, their discoveries both gift and curse. Above all, he thought of the secret he bore—that none of them knew, that none of them could ever know. The visions of trenches, of tanks, of bombs yet to be invented haunted his sleep. He was the only man alive who carried the memory of the twentieth century, and he would use it to shape a different one.
He clenched his fists, whispering into the night: "Allah gave me this second life, not for comfort, but for duty. I will build an empire of steel and knowledge. I will unite these people as one. And I will not falter."
And somewhere in the darkness, the lamps of the academy flickered, glowing like the stars of a new constellation. The Ottoman Empire had entered the age of science—not timidly, not as a student of Europe, but as a master in its own right. And every enemy who resisted, whether in pulpits or presses, would be silenced until only one voice remained: the voice of the Sultan.