Isfahan. Zayin (ז)

The Entropy of Choice

11 Aban 1401 (November 2, 2022)

Isfahan breathed the chill of approaching winter. In the morning light filtering through the dusty windshield of the Peugeot, the world seemed two-dimensional, devoid of volume and warmth. Zahra drove, but she felt less like a driver and more like a particle moving along a predetermined trajectory, and every turn of the wheel seemed a metaphor: right to the laboratory, left to home, straight into the unknown. In the rearview mirror, the faces of other drivers flickered, and in each one, she imagined suspicion. The decision from last night, which had seemed the only correct one, the only way out of a closed labyrinth, now, in the light of day, had taken on an ugly geometry.

Betrayal.

The word had a physical weight. It pressed on her chest, made it hard to breathe. What was betrayal? A shift in the vector of loyalty? Or simply the choice of a different frame of reference, one in which her family was the fixed point, and everything else—country, work, duty—revolved around it? All her life she had constructed equations where the state was a constant. But what if it was a variable, trending toward decay, and dragging everything she held dear along with it?

She imagined them leading her from her home. Amirkhan’s face—a mixture of incomprehension, shame, and fear. Her daughters’ faces. Nasrin, in whose eyes not terror but a terrible, searing understanding would flash. And Zeynab, whose faith in the order of the world would be shattered forever. That picture was more unbearable than any physical torture.

But what is betrayal? Violating an oath to a state that arrests children? Or silent complicity in creating a weapon that could incinerate those same children? Physics had taught her that every system has a bifurcation point—a moment when the slightest influence determines its future path. She felt that point was near.

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white.

In the laboratory, the hum of the cooling systems absorbed all other sounds, creating a vacuum in which thoughts became deafeningly loud. Rustam approached her desk, holding two cups of tea.

“I’m leaving tomorrow. For Fordow,” he said, placing one of the cups in front of her. “A new series of experiments with the cascades.”

Fordow. A fortress of a word. A nuclear facility carved into the heart of a mountain, invulnerable to bombs and prying eyes. A symbol of defiance.

“Equipment check?” Zahra asked, wrapping her fingers around the hot glass.
“And souls,” Rustam chuckled. “They were talking about the IAEA again yesterday. Sometimes I think we’re not arguing about physics, but philosophy.”
“And aren’t they the same thing?” Zahra looked at him. “We search for the fundamental laws of the universe. They search for proof of our intentions. But how can you measure intention? It’s like trying to weigh a shadow.”
“They don’t want to weigh it, Zahra. They want to be sure the shadow doesn’t belong to a monster. They see our science as a library where we collect books. And they’re not afraid of the number of volumes, but that in one of those books, we will write a word that will burn the whole world.”
“But does the librarian have the right to tell the author what to write about?” she countered. “They don’t want to control our actions, but the very possibility of thought. They want our universe to be predictable, a place where no new stars—or black holes—are born.”

Rustam took a sip of tea, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond the wall.

“Perhaps they are not afraid of the book we are writing, but of the one we have already read, but which they do not know about…”
“Did you read the latest report?” he continued, pushing his empty cup aside. “They write about a ‘possible military dimension.’ Possible! As if the mere possibility is already a crime. By that logic, every kitchen knife is a potential murder weapon.”
“But a knife is made for cutting bread. And centrifuges…”
“And centrifuges are made for separating isotopes. What we do with them after that is a matter of choice. Or do you believe we shouldn’t have a choice?”

After work, Zahra didn’t go home. She turned toward Imam Square and parked a few blocks from the Grand Bazaar.

The bazaar was another world, living by its own laws—a vast, breathing organism where the official reality of Iran thinned, giving way to a labyrinth of shadows and whispers. The scents of saffron, leather, and cardamom mixed with the smell of soldering flux and machine oil drifting from dark alleys. She walked past stalls of turquoise and carpets, past coppersmiths hammering out patterns, delving deeper and deeper, to where they traded not in the past, but in the future. Contraband, illegal, hacked.

She found the right nook by subtle signs: satellite dishes hidden under tarpaulins, the quiet hum of a generator. In a tiny shop cluttered with dismantled phones and coils of wire, sat a young man in his twenties. His fingers flew over the keyboard with the same speed his ancestors’ fingers had woven Persian carpets.

“I need a netbook. A small one. On Linux,” Zahra said, trying to keep her voice steady.

He disappeared into the back of the shop and returned with a nondescript, unmarked box.

“Chinese. Good processor. Encrypted memory. Nineteen million rials.”

Expensive for such a device. But she wasn’t paying for the hardware; she was paying for his silence.

“No papers needed?”
“What papers?” he shrugged. “You bought a phone case from me… if anyone asks.”

He wrapped the netbook in an old newspaper. The transaction took no more than a minute.

Back in the car, she sat for a few moments, holding the bundle. It was warm, almost alive. It wasn’t just a computer. It was an instrument for committing a sin. Or for salvation. A prayer mat and a scaffold, all at once.

She opened the car’s first-aid kit. A white cross on a green background. Bandages, iodine, painkillers—everything needed to treat physical wounds. She pushed aside the sterile packets and placed the netbook at the bottom, under a tourniquet.

Snapping the lid shut, she started the engine. The doubts hadn’t gone away. But now they had a physical weight and a specific location. She had just placed the disease and the cure in the same box. And now she had to find out which would prove stronger.

At home, Amirkhan was watching the news. The anchor was talking about new sanctions, about attempts to strangle the country’s economy. Nasrin was doing her homework. Zeynab was drawing something that looked like an atomic structure—circles within circles.

“How was your day?” her husband asked, his eyes fixed on the screen.
“The usual. Calibration. Measurements. Routine.”

Khet (ח): Digital Calligraphy