Memories We Can’t See

Blurb

In a futuristic world, Memory Devices allow users to visit their past once again in striking detail. Leyla delves into her deepest memories to remember her late mother.

But only one visit remains.

And in that visit, Leyla discovers the true memories in between. The memories we can’t see.

An emotional sci-fi short story from veteran Muslim author S. H. Miah, tackling grief, the past, and the light at the end of regret.

Memories We Can't See

The Meeting Room had grey walls. Far too grey. The type of grey that one could stare into and be, somehow, eaten alive. Sucked into that grey. Feasted on, perhaps. Maybe intimidated. Maybe a little shaken—heartbeats counting every third of a second that passed whilst one's eyes bored an invisible hole in that grey.

Or perhaps it was all in Leyla's head. All in her mind, as all everything was nowadays. The grey of her life after her mother passed washing itself over every surface in sight.

That was the reason she was here, anyway, in the Meeting Room. Mentally trembling beyond her wits.

To meet her mother again.

Aside from the infinitely grey walls was an infinitely grey floor. Sleek. Not a speck of dust in sight. Like a surgically cleaned, sanitised hospital floor. Except it was grey instead of pure, innocent white. Sort of like a fresh slate roof, but not really. This wasn't a regular floor painted over with grey paint—no, this was sturdy grey metal melted and clamped into sheets before being laid upon the ground like a coffin at a funeral.

But what if the dead could be alive?

A question Leyla pondered as she sat outside the Meeting Room, in the waiting area, on a washed-out blue chair. Not comfy enough to ease her shaking. Fabric scratchy as plucked feathers. Its blue was probably meant to represent the skies of Leyla's childhood, before pollution caused the permanent Greying to take over. Before those in power neglected their duties, ignored the obvious science, and allowed the earth to dip itself into the ashes of overconsumption.

Leyla wasn't a modern child reading up on this history, in books and in schooling. She'd lived it. Breathed it. And that air of her childhood was far fresher than now.

Maybe that was why she was here to relive it.

She didn't know. Know herself anymore. Herself that was crumbling inside. Constantly on edge. Like a patient in a mental asylum drugged up a thousand ways till Friday.

It was Friday today. Receptionist to her left cracked a button. For what, Leyla didn't know. Receptionist then beeped in a phone call and spoke to a prospective client. Voice soft, alluring, promising riches that, perhaps, didn't exist.

Leyla was still searching for them, after all.

Receptionist said, “Yes yes. Yes, as vivid as it was originally. Perhaps even moreso—what, you ask about the Palaces? Why, yes you may explore the palace. Price? Cheap, for a service like this…very cheap. The cheapest in the entirety of Britain. Not a lie, always a truth…yes…yes…”

Leyla had worked as a sales person before, handling both emails and Transmit calls. Made her feel scummy, that job did. Not because of the job itself—but because she'd been selling a dream, not a product. A hope, more than anything. Clients, prospective ones who would later turn actual, would lament about lack of funds. How they needed a cheap service because, if not, they would no longer be able to rent at the ridiculous prices London flats were at now. Cost of living had spiralled out of control, especially after the Greying.

And Leyla had promised them the earth, the moon, every star in the observable and unobservable universe. Galaxies down to atoms. All of ‘em. And they'd been sold on the dream and signed up—

Hook, lie, and sinker.

Sinking into the Memory Palace that the Meeting Room was all about. That the receptionist to her right was now selling to another client.

Yes, Leyla had sold the exact service she was now hopelessly addicted to after her mother's passing.

And this would be her last time.

Because, after this, she would no longer have enough funds, just like the clients she'd sold to previously. She was already scraping by as it was, artificial food and house rents at prices artificially jacked up. She had to stop herself before she spiralled into a crazed delusion, where past and present merged not in a straight line but a tangled series of knots.

“...want to sign up now…of course, that's fine, take your time—memories are priceless, are they not? Worth everything in the world…well, yes, take care…yep, bye.”

Leyla wanted to stand and run over to the receptionist. Wanted to blow up at her for what she was doing, rendering someone to a lifetime of chasing a past they could not truly reach. But how could Leyla, when she'd done that same job before? How could she chastise someone for an immorality she had lived within for years and years?

So she did nothing, and let her legs bounce up and down beneath her abaya and scarf. Before, the Memory Palace required taking off your scarf so the chip could be inserted into your ear. And from there, the ‘magic’ of science would run its course. But now, with every infant born of a mother (and some incubated in a lab) having a chip invasively inserted into their brain—that was no longer an issue.

Back in Leyla's day, these mind chips were a sensational headline meant to fear monger. About some billionaire or other trying to control the minds of his workers through developing implants meant for their brains. Ultimate freedom, those supporting it had argued. Imagine being able to imagine something and then live it as a reality—your greatest, deepest, darkest fantasies would be as true as the scum of real life. Imagine the progress, the ideas that would fuel the world when those ideas could be lived out and tested and tried, all from the comfort of one's home.

Yet those against them understood the truth. That life wasn't eternal. Couldn't be replaced for something artificial or imaginary. Because, in the end, no matter how long someone lived in their mind's eye, their real ones would have to open. They'd have to eat, sleep, and dispose of the resulting waste.

That was a reality they couldn't avoid.

And not to mention those producing the technology—how could they be trusted? Private billionaires only sought one thing—profit. And when the service, a mind chip, was free, it meant the consumer was the product.

Another phone call to Leyla's left. Another prospective customer harrowed by the present, yearning for the past.

Another for these money-hungry vultures to dig their claws into and feast.

Leyla blocked the noise out. Too many flashbacks of herself preying upon a similar victim in the past. Instead, she focussed on the Meeting Room once again, and the man currently inside using the Memory Device to access his very own Memory Palace—The One of Your Dreams, Waiting Just For YOU!

He was an old man, clearly. The wrinkles across his face, flowing into each other like streams on old mountain faces, and the grey-turning-white hair were testaments to his long life. A life lived well, many memories to seek warmth in reliving. Another testament was the way his frail hands gripped the edges of the Memory Device wrapped over his head, as though simultaneously wishing to hold it in place and rip it off.

Of course, despite their real nature, memories could never truly be recovered.

Not that the man knew where his hands were placed in real life, regardless. He was ‘living’ the memory, unaware of reality. Not entirely. At least, for the moment. The science behind it all still confused Leyla—a miracle of Allah she would, perhaps, never understand.

Tears curled down those wrinkled tracks to reach his chin. Before falling onto a similarly creased beige jacket whose fabric was willing to accept the moisture like a warm hug from an old friend. And then, as though a clock had chimed the time, his brief tenure in the Memory Palace ended, and that Memory Device floated off his head with an elegance that didn't match how sudden the motion was. For the person who had their ‘reality’ ripped away from them, anyway.

The man turned, distraught in his eyes, and he unbuckled his seat. Jumped out with a youth he had probably dreamt about. Arms stretching for the Memory Device. But it dodged his grasp as though a seasoned boxer evading punches. Slipping every swipe of the man's fingers, with the grace of a swishing-away villain. And slowly, but surely, the Memory Device drifted into the grey wall and out of sight.

Waiting, patiently, for its next victim.

The name of whom was Leyla.

***

The Meeting Room itself wasn't much different from the reception waiting area outside. Same hollowed out feeling of the air. Same slate-like grey walls and infinitely grey floor. Same droning noise, although now a little dimmed beyond the door, of the receptionist roping another victim into the Memory Palace's schemes. Tapping her fingers too, in an incessant annoying way. The smell was of disinfectant, as though the occasional bad memory had to be surgically cleaned off every surface top to bottom.

Couldn't clean off the greyness, though. Like the skies outside, it was a permanent fixture in everyone's lives.

Leyla knew the procedure of entering one's Memory Palace well. Could probably do it with her eyes closed, mind thinking about something completely unrelated. Like old ice cream vans and how she had begged her father to buy her a double scoop instead of a single, with extra sprinkles.

But this was her last time, as the receptionist had kindly (or perhaps it had been with the melancholy of lost commission) told her before admitting her into the Meeting Room. So, for her last time, Leyla wanted to savour every part of the process, beginning to end. Including the current anticipation flowing through her every panted, rushed breath.

The walls stared a glare into her, as though threatening her to stay. As though gaslighting her into thinking that moving on wasn't a real concept. Couldn't be achieved. Could never be achieved. Not without Memory Inc's superb services—Ready When You Are!

But Leyla knew the truth, which she thought about as she strapped herself into the comfortable leather seat—just as grey as everything else—provided by Memory Inc. That being the company providing this life-changing—mostly for the worse—service.

Leyla knew the truth that moving on was possible—that the past didn't have to be constantly dwelled upon, ruminated, relived in different ways. Leyla hadn't always lived in a world where everyone born of a woman, and some birthed without, was constantly plugged into a system they had no knowledge of through brain chips.

She'd been born and once lived in a time where one could just exist as human without invasive technologies running through one's mind. One could breathe air fresh, not filtered. Smell flowers naturally bloomed, not artificially planted to never wilt or wither, never continue the cycle of its ancestors that ended after thousands of years. One could drink water from rivers and streams without it being tampered with due to millions of microplastics built up over the decades.

No one had listened to the scientists that time, either. They only listened to those who said what they wanted to hear, who pulled them right and left but never through to the truth. Everyone listened to those who confirmed their wishes, no matter how ill-sighted they were, and hated the other side without compromise.

That part of the world, at the very least, hadn't changed one bit after the Greying.

And with those thoughts, Leyla tied the small belt around her waist, strapped herself in, and leaned back, leather headrest jabbing the bun beneath her headscarf. At least now she didn't have to take her scarf off to use the Memory Device.

Small positives. That was what helped someone to move on from tragedy.

Small positives that, over time, if latched onto, outweighed the bad. Until eventually, life became more about living than surviving. And then, slowly, more about thriving than mere living.

And Leyla needed to move past surviving. For herself, and for her mother's memory.

“All ready,” she told the receptionist outside, who then flicked open a box beside her holo-computer. From there, she punched in a code with each number emitting a beeping sound, then she flicked a switch inside that box.

And immediately, the Memory Device began elegantly—elegance of a snake slithering amongst rock, moving without looking so—shifting out of the wall where it had rested. Pirouetting, almost, as it descended. Until it gripped her head tight. One probe prodding through her ear to attach at her mind chip, with her temples being squeezed by solid metal from both sides, a low frequency transmitted into her skull.

Then came the strangest part. Then, Leyla's eyes closed, and her body became almost entirely separated from reality. But not quite. Not quite at all, yet quite surreal all at once. It was more of a dream like state than anything else. Reality, yet not reality. Something in between, maybe not something at all.

An eternal blackness. Staring at her for the last time. This was not the blackness of closing one's eyes at night—that blackness at least had faint spots where lights pierced the sky from airplanes and satellites, perhaps a flashlight through a curtain.

No, this black was a pitch black. The darkest black Leyla had ever seen. Or perhaps, unseen would be the apt way to put it.

She'd once asked a colleague about how it all worked, back when working at Memory Inc to entice clients with the prospect of reliving greater moments. The colleague had looked at her oddly, as though such questions were not only illegal to ask but idiotic. Nothing worse than being an idiot in this new world. Illegal? Depended on if you were rich or not.

But thankfully, the colleague had explained anyway, likely assuming Leyla as the idiot she sometimes could be.

“See when you're sleeping night-night?” the colleague had said, red painted nails waving animatedly. “You could be dreaming ‘bout La-La-Land and all that rock, right?”

Leyla had said, “Right…”

“Well you don't start punching about in your sleep the way you do in your dreams, right?”

“Right…”

“Same thing, ain't it. 'Cept this time you're not sleeping, just being forced into something like sleeping.”

“So those people are all reliving memories,” Leyla had said, “as if dreaming whilst asleep? So even if they're moving in their ‘sleep,’ they're still in real life.”

“Right in one, am I right?” that colleague had said with a laugh. A hollow, corporate laugh. The kind to ward off snide remarks from coworkers or a snarky boss that you just weren't cheery enough around the office.

Leyla had hated that nonsense. Thank Allah she didn't have to relive that side of her memories. Instead, she was locked into the current blackness washing over her.

She still felt the remnants of her real body fighting her dream self for control. But this tug of war for control always happened, even if Leyla wasn’t truly in control. And, no matter how much she fought, the technology always won.

Same story as humanity over the last God knows how many years.

Seconds later, her Memory Palace jogged into view, glitching a few times before the image clarified. Of course, though it was called a Memory Palace, the place itself could take any form the dreamer wished it to be. After all, this was like a forced lucid dream, where the person could control what they saw. Except on a more vivid level with Memory Inc. The most vivid of levels. That was the service’s Unique Selling Point, after all.

USP—now that was a term Leyla hadn't said or thought about in a long time.

Her particular Memory Palace was of a mosque, beloved to her in her younger years before the Greying had caused every colour in the world to wash itself out. This mosque had been in East London, where Leyla had grown up. Back then, house prices weren’t through the roof, and communities, though working class, could work together for the greater good. That sense of camaraderie never faded. Everyone assisting each other. Small businesses still had chances to survive—no massive corporate overlords trying to take over and make everything into a bland nothingness for the sake of a bottom line.

Creativity was real. Not enforced by some artificial intelligence who’d ‘learnt’ from the creativity of others—stolen creativity, that was.

Life had flavour back then. Sure, the earth was supposed to be a prison for the believer, as the hadith said. But at least they were all in this prison together.

Now, though—humans were as scattered as planets in space. Some of them banding together in solar systems. But most solar systems were far apart from each other, never meeting each other, never helping each other in times of need. No gravitational pull between them. And there never would be.

Dog eat dog world. That corporate life had spilled out across the rest of humanity.

And the epicentre of the community Leyla had grown up in—it was that mosque, East London Mosque. Beautiful calligraphy of Allah’s name written above the front door, in this rich green that couldn’t be mistaken for any other random colour you’d see on the street. Three or four minarets reaching up into the sky, as if raised fingers during tashahhud signalling to the world that there is only One God, and that is Allah alone. Smells of oud and other atr scents wafted around the place, constantly reminding Leyla of her father’s musky scent, even after he had passed away.

In fact, many a time she walked past those shops on Whitechapel Road just to remember him. Just to smell him again, and let those memories wash over her mind. For free. Without paying money to a service that leveraged their technology to exploit vulnerable people’s addictions to the past.

Or maybe Leyla was just an addict who hated what they were addicted to. Maybe others used the service in a healthy way—and it was her who was the problem. Not the service itself.

Who, but Allah, truly knew?

In any case, that mosque returned as her Memory Palace. Standing tall before her now. As always, she blinked and glanced down, and found no body there. Weightless. Floating around. She could imagine herself a body, but it felt more comfortable to wade around the air. Bodies carried weight, and Leyla didn't want baggage holding her down.

Was this what dreams were really like? Or was Memory Inc feeding her these images, these scenes, salvaged from the back of her mind?

No one strolled across the pavement before the mosque, no one around to disrupt this personal time, and Leyla heard an utter silence. So silent, in fact, that she didn't even hear the usual ringing in her ears from regular silence. Nor the beat of her own heart.

She approached the mosque, as always, a trepidation in her chest, and pushed open the brown doors. Strange, really. The women's entrance wasn't even on this side. So she had no clue whether this dream state actually presented the reality of East London Mosque back then.

That was the issue with memories. They were vivid, but were they the true reality? Were the gaps in between accurately filled?

Did Memory Inc’s vivid memories only mask reality, instead of representing its truth from the brain? It was all a big secret—of course, what billionaire was going to reveal their secrets for the world to see? Any secrets revealed were carefully leaked, meant to manipulate, not inform. Deliberately messing with the minds of the masses.

Everything Memory Inc did was just as deliberate. As was the way the mosque’s doors opened to a green carpet and a shimmering white floor, golden lines sparkling in between the tiles. Despite floating, Leyla still felt like she walked across the carpet’s softness, tufts comforting her feet. She almost bent to take off her shoes and place them on the racks, before realising that she wasn’t truly here.

It was only a dream. A memory. Of a place she had never been to, strangely.

Instead of shoes along the racks, different holograms were displayed floating in each space. Each with a memory she could access and ‘live out’ again, should she so wish. Strange, really. But her addiction wasn’t so strange, and pulled her towards those shoe racks as though her mind controlled her, less she controlled her mind.

She browsed for a moment, as she always did. It was like flicking through channels of the old TV she used to watch—before holo-TVs came out and before every channel was just the same rendition of some other channel you’d already watched before. Before every show was just a rehash of a popular show in the past—only worse, without the spark that made the original so famous.

Back then, Leyla had flicked through every channel. Unsure of what to watch. So she searched more and more. Fingers tapping and tapping and tapping on that TV remote. And, in the end, she never picked anything.

And the same happened here, in her Memory Palace, every single time, when browsing her shoe rack of memories.

Luckily, Memory Inc weren’t stupid. They understood this analysis paralysis that most humans underwent. So they designed a feature that when someone called out—

“Instant Memory,” Leyla announced.

—the mind chip would bring up something of the past, something the algorithms believed the service user would enjoy seeing again. That’s what they were. Service users. Not human beings with feelings and emotions attached to those memories. Just service users. Clients. That was all.

A whirring sound finally broke the silence. Likely from some microscopic machine working in the background to find the perfect memory to entice Leyla to come back for more. Algorithms usually took no time at all, especially when searching for online content to hook people with. But this algorithm, developed and owned by Memory Inc, was the most powerful of them all. And had brought Leyla coming back time and time again.

But this time that algorithm would fail. Bringing her back? An impossible task, since this was, definitely, her last, final time in the Memory Palace.

This was the time that she’d truly say her farewells to her mother—even if only in memory. Even if her mother couldn’t actually hear her words, Leyla would know that she had said them. And, for her, that would be enough to move on.

At least, she hoped it would be.

The whirring sound continued around her, like a constant droning, as she waited in the main hall of the mosque, standing before the shoe racks a little aimlessly. Not that the shoe racks would ever judge her for it, and it wasn’t like she was blocking any other worshippers coming in.

It was her own Memory Palace, after all. And none had access to it besides her.

East London Mosque had always been packed to the brim, Leyla remembered. Especially during Ramadan, when Leyla had come here with her mother and father for Isha prayer as a child.

And, as if on cue, a thought burst into her brain. Of a memory with her mother, during Isha, one from when she was eight years old. And Leyla realised that, rather than letting some machine or artificial intelligence decide for her, she wanted to be in control for her last time in the Memory Palace.

So she ordered the algorithm to stop. Ordered it to find that memory of that day. The details were hazy, Leyla barely recalling the events herself. But she remembered the importance of it—remembered the feelings in her chest during that day.

And that—those dormant emotions—was what mattered the most.

And the whirring continued once more, and within a few seconds, a new floating memory appeared on the shoe rack before her. She reached out—though with no body, what she was reaching out with she hadn’t a clue—and pressed on the memory.

And, with a brilliant white flash that was equal parts dazzling as it was blinding, Leyla was transported, seemingly, into a different world entirely.

***

A world which slowly transformed from an infinite white into something with more substance, contours filling out into solid shapes, which then took on colour, which then took on a life that wasn’t quite life, yet was real enough to masquerade as it.

Masks, a masquerade—before, it was people who wore a mask to show the world a fake version of themself. Now, it was the world wearing a mask to show the people. Oh, how the turns had tabled.

Rather than being inside East London Mosque, Leyla had been transported outside of it in the memory. Standing still, no one around her, until people began popping up along this stretch of Whitechapel Road, just outside the train station.

All sorts of people—a multicultural London. Some wearing thobes, abayas, others sunglasses and expensive handbags, some speaking a rushed kind of Bangla Leyla didn’t quite understand, some rushing into the station whilst others leisurely walked out it. The drunkards and druggies, couldn’t forget them—East London was filled with them, unfortunately, now and back then.

And then, all of a sudden, though she didn’t have a body in this dream world—a hand found its way into Leyla’s. A warmth she hadn’t felt in so long, a warmth she always yearned for, the warmth of her mother’s touch.

And her head—or perhaps her vision without a head—flicked up from her memory’s eight year old self. And there, to her right and a metre or so higher—there she saw her mother again.

Wearing her customary black abaya, with scarf gently wrapping soft silky hair shown only to her family, Leyla's mother walked with a confidence Leyla could only hope to match. As though Leyla's mother knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Allah would be in her corner. Would have her back. Would never let her down. No matter what occurred in life. No matter what hardship befell her—and boy, did hardships befall her.

It was a trust in Allah—a level of tawakkul—that Leyla had never reached in all her long years of life. And perhaps she never would, for a mother's level of faith, of iman, was something always looked up towards, always out of reach.

At eight years of age, Leyla had been wearing a scarf which she now felt tickling her skin in the memory. Not a proper scarf like her mother's, but more of an easy-to-fit one with a cute glittering design along the top. Leyla herself had actually picked it out on a Green Street shopping spree, she now recalled. A few hairs spilled out the scarf, and Leyla remembered never managing to tuck them all back in no matter how hard she tried.

Old memories that now—that now felt new. Felt refreshed. Felt alive.

Her mother's face was what she treasured the most, though. Beautiful, her father had always said. Pretty, amazing, marvellous, and a host of other adjectives. But to Leyla, it wasn't just the beauty—it was her mother's kind smile she often reminisced. The kind of smile where the eyes shone just as much as the stars sparkling overhead during a clear night sky.

After the Greying, of course, those skies had faded into an angrily neutral grey.

And that beautiful face—the face that had filled Leyla's chest with an air she couldn't breathe on her own…that same face was in front of her now. Smiling at her, just like she had before. Dazzling in a strange ethereal way that only existed in a memory that tried to capture real life.

And the memory continued, and they were walking, and walking, and walking until—

***

A viewpoint glitching, near teleporting eight year old Leyla to this scene with her mother, one hand warm against her mother's palm, that warmth reaching round to share itself with Leyla's other fingers.

Walking, and walking, and walking until they reach the mosque in all its glory that Leyla remembers. Brown towers with a dome behind them welcoming her like beacons of light dazzling the sky, the faint smell of musk drifting across air, and Leyla’s mother leads her through the women's entrance and a few marble corridors and onto the soft carpet she loves to roll around on whenever she gets the chance.

Which is what she promptly does, as children so often do—finding play and wonder in the gaps of life that adults often miss. Finding something to smile about even though their little lives may crumble at the slightest touch.

The carpet rolls around with Leyla, playing with her as much as she's playing with it. She ignores the floating chatter as she plays, mind entering some other sort of zen-like concentration. After minutes that feel like hours, she stops and sits cross-legged on the green carpet, a little breathless but smiling up at her mother.

Leyla knows, even at this young age, that her mother's always watching, always listening, always there when she needs her.

That's what mothers are for, after all.

Some of her friends at school told her that their mums were always at work, and got home late at night. They even stay at school later because both their mum and dad are working all day, on weekdays. But because her friends have early bedtimes, they don't really see their mums or dads except for on the weekends.

And that fact makes Leyla sad to think about. She looks at her mother now, who's sitting next to her, and thinks about a life where she doesn't see her mother until late in the day. Until right as she's about to fall asleep out of exhaustion, at like eight or nine at night.

The thought makes her aghast, and she cuddles up to her mother's side as the carpet comforts her from below. Her mother wraps an arm around her, and the touch as always is warm like hot chocolate with a tiny snip of brown sugar.

“Never leave me, Mummy,” Leyla whispers, almost playfully, but perhaps her mother senses the underlying fear wrapped up in those words.

Because her mother then says, “I never will, dear. I can promise you that. Never ever.”

And they both say ever together, in a sassy way just like Leyla's favourite characters on the telly, and then they break out into fits of giggles.

After a while, the adhan is called, then they pray their sunnah. (Remember, Leyla—it's four rakats just like Mummy explained.) Then the main salah starts, the part that Leyla was looking forward to this entire time.

And this is one of those where the imam (you know, guy at the front with a tall, funny-looking hat) recites out loud. Leyla sees him through a telly that the mosque has set up to show what's happening on the men's side.

The imam raises his hands and starts the prayer, and soon after begins reciting the Qur'an, and Leyla is immediately entranced. Locked into some kind of spell, she stands beside her mother and listens to the words of Allah.

Sometimes, her mother plays a YouTube video of an imam reciting Qur'an, but it's nothing compared to the real thing in person. Where the voices swirl and echo across the walls and reverberate in your ears and make it seem like the words are not being merely recited, but sent down from the heavens.

Mesmerising in every way.

And, though Leyla doesn't know it yet, those words will come to encapsulate her life in a way she can never anticipate. In times of hardship and ease. When life gives lemons and lemonade. Times of strife and when life's a breeze.

Whether she views it all in real life or through a Memory Device.

The prayer finishes, and she turns to face her mother. And that smile on her mother's lips, that precious smile accompanied by a precious face and a precious soul, fills her with hope.

Because it is only then that she realises that she'll truly have her mother forever—in the world of this life, and that of the next. She'll never have to truly say goodbye. Never have to truly move on, with no prospect of seeing her again.

And she knows that…that a time may come when her mother is no longer with her, but that brief period is only temporary. Only fleeting in the grand scheme of existence. Only a blip in which her sadness can culminate into a greater striving to reach that promised end goal for those who are righteous.

The memories we can't see—those are the memories that don't last a lifetime, but last all time.

Leyla knows, Memory Device or not—as a Muslim, her good memories will last forever.

And, when all else seems bleak, that is the thought she must always hold onto.

JazakAllahu Khayran for reading!

Feel free to read any of my other free short stories, or click the all fiction tab above for info on where to find my longer works.