Istanbul, January 1902
The bells of the capital rang to mark the dawn of a new century. Their echoes mixed not only with the calls of the muezzins but with the whistles of trains and the hum of factories, for Istanbul in 1902 was a city unrecognizable to those who remembered it thirty years before. Where once minarets alone pierced the sky, chimneys now joined them, exhaling the smoke of oil-fed engines. The Bosphorus shimmered with steel-hulled ships that burned Mesopotamian fuel. The air itself smelled of both incense and industry.
In the grand atrium of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Industry, sunlight filtered through tall windows, glinting off marble floors. Abdulhamid II walked slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes scanning not the architecture but the students who filled the hallways.
They came from every corner of the empire: Bosnian sons of peasants, Macedonian daughters of artisans, Arab boys from Baghdad, Kurdish youths from Mosul. Ten years earlier, their fathers might have muttered rebellion in their homes, their mothers clung to older tongues. But here in the Academy, every mouth spoke the same language — Latin Turkish. The clean, sharp script adorned every chalkboard and textbook. Students corrected each other's grammar without hesitation, their accents blending into a single sound.
A professor bowed as Abdulhamid passed, continuing his lecture on mechanics. His voice rang out: "—and so, gentlemen, the efficiency of the oil-fueled turbine surpasses coal. Note the figures on the board. Efficiency is order, and order is strength."
The students scribbled notes in Turkish, murmuring calculations. Abdulhamid paused for a moment, watching. He felt a heaviness in his chest, not sorrow, but pride. In his first life, he had seen Ottoman sons travel abroad, to Paris, to Berlin, to London, where they returned speaking foreign tongues, loyal more to Europe than to their own state. Now, the opposite was true. Foreign sons came to Istanbul to learn, and Ottoman children left the Academy not as divided Greeks, Serbs, Arabs, or Kurds — but as Turks.
Selim, standing at his side as always, leaned closer. "Majesty, these are the reports from the Academy's first decade." He handed over a leather-bound dossier. Abdulhamid opened it, scanning the neat rows of figures.
Literacy rates across Anatolia, the Balkans, and Mesopotamia had risen by nearly half. Enrollment in Turkish schools was ten times higher than when he had taken the throne. The average Ottoman family now had more children than in generations past, encouraged by state tax cuts and public celebration of large households. In Bosnia alone, families with eight or more children were featured in newspapers as "patriots of the empire."
"Majesty," Selim said, reading the numbers aloud as Abdulhamid walked, "the first generation is reaching adulthood. In the Balkans, boys born under your reforms are now officers in the army. In Mosul, Arab youths are entering military academies fluent in Turkish. In Anatolia, birthrates are swelling. Our people grow — not only in number, but in loyalty."
Abdulhamid closed the dossier, his eyes on the students. "Good. Rebellion dies not when the old are crushed, but when their children forget their cause. This is the second generation. They are ours."
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The Sultan's tour continued through the laboratories. There, Nikola Tesla himself stood beside Ottoman apprentices, demonstrating a new experiment. Coils hummed with power, sending sparks of light that leapt through the air to illuminate lamps across the room. The students gasped in awe.
"With this, Majesty," Tesla said, bowing slightly, "we can send signals without wires. From Istanbul to Edirne, even further, across Anatolia. A nation bound not only by rail and road, but by the invisible current of the air."
Abdulhamid nodded. "Begin the towers. Quietly. Place them along the coasts, along the rail lines. Europe must not learn of their reach until it is too late."
Elsewhere, Wilhelm Röntgen supervised physicians in white coats, Ottoman doctors trained in the Academy's medical wing. They slid a soldier's broken arm beneath a strange device, and moments later, held up a glowing image of bone to the light.
"No longer must a man lose his arm for want of certainty," Röntgen explained. "We see beneath the flesh without the knife. Your hospitals will heal more soldiers than ever before."
Already, X-ray stations had been established in Istanbul, Baghdad, and Salonika. The empire's military hospitals now healed men who once would have been maimed, giving Abdulhamid not only soldiers saved, but morale strengthened.
In another chamber, Marie Curie's protégés worked with glowing minerals under the watchful eyes of Crescent Eyes agents. The work was dangerous, and Abdulhamid knew it was also dangerous in another way. He alone, with the memory of another century, understood what radiation could become — bombs that could level cities. That future he locked away in his own heart, revealing nothing, not even to Selim. For now, Curie's research was turned toward chemistry and medicine, kept under Ottoman guard.
Everywhere he walked, Abdulhamid saw not just science, but science in Turkish. The journals printed in Istanbul and Salonika were written in the Latin Turkish alphabet, carrying knowledge across the empire in the same language children recited in schools. Assimilation was not only cultural, but intellectual. To learn science was to learn Turkish. To speak Turkish was to join the empire.
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That evening, as lamps flickered across Yıldız Palace, Abdulhamid sat with Selim in his council chamber. Maps covered the table: the Balkans, now shaded in firm Ottoman red; Anatolia, thriving; Mesopotamia, threaded with railways and refineries.
Selim placed another dossier before him. "Majesty, reports on the second generation. The children of the Balkans are the most striking. Once, their fathers burned our schools. Now, their sons teach in them. In Macedonia, children correct their parents' accents. In Bosnia, Turkish is spoken in barracks as the only tongue."
Abdulhamid's lips curved in a faint smile. "Yes. It is as I intended. The empire is not divided by tongues now, but united by one. The language of faith, of science, of power. Turkish."
Selim hesitated. "And the Arabs of Mesopotamia? They resist still, quietly. But their children read Turkish books."
"Good," Abdulhamid said. "The children are the empire. Their fathers will fade. Their children will remain. And when the world asks them who they are, they will answer not Arab, not Kurd, not Greek — but Turk."
He rose, his hands resting on the edge of the map. "The Balkans are silent. Anatolia grows. Mesopotamia bleeds oil to fuel our engines. Science marches in Turkish script. The second generation is ours, Selim. And with them, the future."
Selim bowed deeply. "Then we no longer fight for survival, Majesty. We prepare for destiny."
Abdulhamid's gaze drifted eastward on the map, to Persia, to Central Asia, to the steppes where Turkic kin still waited under Russian chains. His eyes hardened.
"Yes," he whispered. "The engines are built. The empire breathes. Now it must spread its breath across the horizon."