He awoke to the delicious smells entering his nose. Slightly burnt French fries, Ayda's famous breakfast tomato sauce, toasted bread... As he was turning in bed with thoughts of the egg that would soon start frying, his daughter came running through the door and jumped on him: "Daddy! Get up, the weather is beautiful!"
He took Derin into his arms, pretending to be her favorite bear. He had worked all night, writing the code for his part of his rival's project at work. As he said "Hello, sweetie" to his daughter, he realized that his voice was cracking. After tickling Derin a little, he went to the bathroom. Closing his eyes in the shower and listening to the sounds of the water hitting his head until he felt fully awake, he thought of a specific dream he had had before. He was standing in front of a glass pyramid under the sea, air bubbles coming out of his mouth. Finding what he was looking for, he put it into his bag and surfaced.
He pushed his thoughts back toward his work and tried to shake off the influence of that dream. "Work isn't going very great, anyway," he thought. His presentation had been rejected last week, even though Demir's presentations were eagerly awaited by his colleagues and listened to with admiration.
He shook his head and grumbled to himself. "They always choose Aykut's projects! Those brought quick money, the customer was ready, most of the code was available on the internet as open source!" He grew increasingly angry with these thoughts. "Let's save the day, let's look good for the American headquarters, let's be sure to appear profitable, hardworking, and busy in all the reports we submit!" He sharpened his voice as he muttered, imitating the company's meddlesome staff.
Of course, he knew the projects he proposed wouldn't be easy to complete with the technologies at hand, but he felt a bit of relief as he continued thinking: "Computers work with binary code logic. 1s and 0s... 1s are 5 volts, the 0s have no current. They teach this in the first week of computer engineering. Each is called a bit, they're added to each other, bytes are formed, and then everything else. So why can't those bits be qubits[1]?" He rinsed his hair as he complained to himself.
"If we form a working group with the participation of the most successful engineers of Turkey, we can achieve what the engineers at company headquarters couldn't do there!" With that, he remembered the expressions of helplessness and weariness on the faces of his colleagues, and he felt a new sense of tension. For them, living in this country meant admitting defeat, obeying blindly, only caring about the money they earned.
Although he hadn't yet openly conceded it, lately he regretted not staying in the US. Despite his wife's objections, he had wanted to return to Turkey, and now he struggled to admit that he had made a mistake.
His shower finished, he got dressed and went downstairs, placing a kiss on his wife's cheek. "Good morning, dear!" Ayda was trying to flip an omelet into the air. She must have also been very tired, but she had gotten up early and started preparing breakfast. She cheered for the omelet: "Ah, there it goes! Good morning, darling. A letter arrived for you."
As Demir reflected on how long it had been since he last received a letter, Ayda asked him who it was from while placing the omelet on the table. He bent his head toward the letter: "Professor Peter Rogers. He wanted to invite me to a job interview."
Ayda asked, "Why didn't he just send an email? This isn't some advertising bullshit, I hope?" Then she noticed that Derin hadn't touched her plate even once. Rolling her eyes, she went to grab the last of the food from the stove. Demir continued reading the letter with a thoughtful expression on his face. He had been employed for ten years now by a company that only worked with the best. He had received a scholarship for his graduate studies before he had even finished his first degree. He had never considered changing jobs.
Professor Rogers wrote in polite and courteous but informal language about a major project with ready funding, asking Demir to contact him if interested. Demir had lived in the US, which he called his second home, long enough to understand that this message was sincere.
"There's no email to reply to, just his full address and working hours."
Ayda sidled up closer to him, blinking. "Will you go?"
"I don't know," he said, but deep inside, he thought it might be an interesting proposal. The address given in the letter was in a well-to-do neighborhood known for its luxury villas. The lack of offices in that area made Demir especially curious.
Derin interrupted. "Daddy, are we still going to the movies today? What about 'How to Terrain Your Dragon'?" He turned his attention from the letter to his daughter. "It's 'How to Train Your Dragon,' right, Derin?" he asked patiently.
The couple smiled at their daughter's cute mistake; she had just turned six. When Derin realized that she'd said something wrong, her face fell as she huffed: "Whatever." She didn't like to make mistakes. Demir believed that if only his daughter wouldn't get so upset when she made mistakes, she would learn faster. Her perfectionism slowed her down. In an enthusiastic voice, hoping to restore Derin's joy, he said, "Sweetie, I know that movie, you'll love it!"
"Hurray!" she yelled with a giggle. Their plans confirmed, Demir realized that the address in the letter was on the way to the cinema.
[1] A qubit is the basic unit of quantum information, the quantum version of the classic binary bit physically realized with a two-state device.