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Omar took a deep breath of fresh air as he looked around at the city streets of his childhood home. Cairo had transformed dramatically, a far cry from the burning asphalt and choking air from his youth. A busker performed an old folk tune on her accordion, bathing the street in pleasant tones which contrasted heavily from the shouts of revolution and fear when he left.
This trip was not one of nostalgia nor tourism. He had a job. WikiAI had a persistent buzz through his neural link, telling him his new assignment: “Datum ID 50387-G: Musical and Cultural Icon Ibrahim Fouad. Profile expansion required. Appointment with interview subject Nadia Fouad in twenty minutes.”
He’d been seeking her for weeks. This was no easy task, as the Fouad family guarded their legacy fiercely. No doubt they’d turned down dozens, if not hundreds, of interview requests from journalists. He didn’t work for a tabloid though. His goal was in the noble pursuit of collecting knowledge. Perhaps that’s why she finally let down her guard.
He had received a summons and immediately booked travel, on the Wiki’s dime of course. Nadia had a private villa at the edge of the city, a veritable island of lush gardens which overlooked the sprawling cityscape.
She greeted him at the gates, accompanied by a robot who was dressed like an old-school butler. They walked to a shaded courtyard and he could smell fresh jasmine mixed with the sharp notes of Turkish coffee.
“It is a pleasure to meet you. As I had mentioned earlier, I am here on behalf of WikiAI.”
“Grandfather despised machines,” she said, with a faint amusement curling her lips. “Yet it seems that a machine is seeking to resurrect him.”
Her eyes were bright and unwavering, staring deeply at Omar with a sense that she was probing him.
Omar leaned back on the bench, feeling the cool stone penetrating his thin shirt.
“Your family guards his image fiercely. The Wiki has documented his entire discography, but close to nothing about his personal life. It didn’t even know you existed. Why is that? Was Ibrahim not the flawless icon that the Wiki wants him to be?”
The butler returned, handing both of them a mug of coffee. Omar took a brief sip. It was sweet, with hints of the same flowers which grew around him.
Nadia’s fingers curled around her mug with a sense of apprehension.
“Grandfather was…” she started, turning her gaze away. “He was difficult. A brilliant musician of course, but… there was the fame, and the late nights. He wasn’t a saint, Omar.”
A wry smile crossed her lips.
“But saints make for very dull biographies, don’t you think?”
Omar smiled. Perhaps there was a story here worth covering.
“Did he hurt people? Not with his music, but those in his life?”
“Life isn’t black and white. He certainly wasn’t.”
She set her cup down.
“There were whispers. Affairs. Tempers when the music stopped. Absences too long to be explained by shows. He always spoiled me rotten when I saw him, but over time I have realized all the work my grandmother did to keep his demons at bay.”
Omar nodded, trying to think of how to handle all this tension.
“WikiAI doesn’t handle gray areas very well. What you’re telling me is more than just whispers. They portray a particular story, of the price of art.”
“We are both fighting for truth in different ways,” Nadia mused. “You against the polished veneer of a venerated man from a venerated generation, and me pursuing my own memories to preserve him as the man I wanted him to be.”
“And what if I choose to honor the flawed man along with the music?”
“My grandfather would call it being embalmed, preserved for onlookers but lacking the breath of life.”
“Embalmed,” the word unsettled Omar.
“Yes,” Nadia leaned in, her voice quieting to barely a whisper. “You know, there’s something so fascinating about WikiAI’s mission. It sends out you people around the world, trying to fill in all the blank spaces of history and smooth out all imperfections. It craves wholeness, perhaps a wholeness that is partially manufactured.”
“Do you think there’s such a thing as too much history?” Omar turned to spot a chipped statue in the garden. “This obsessive cataloging of every detail… Does it rob us of something valuable?”
Nadia let out a small laugh.
“You’re sounding wistful now, pining just like the old poets Baba loved. Perhaps what we’re seeking are not the answers but the questions. Some empty space that our imagination can fill.”
“What if your grandfather had released a song with a missing verse? What do we owe to the mystery, and what to finding the full melody?”
“Does that missing lyric actually make the song worse? Or is it some collaboration with the future?” She tilted her head. “History starts a piece, and it echoes across generations as the rest of us are invited to finish it.”
Omar felt a flicker of rebellion stir inside him.
“We are all composers then,” he understood. “Every generation decides for themselves what resonates. WikiAI thinks solely in what it can measure. But maybe a broken string on an oud tells more truth than a perfect digital copy.”
“Who decides what needs to be improved and what can let lie? Our past wasn’t some beautiful melody, but it harmonized all the same. Do we polish this melody to appease some Wiki, or let the original melody continue to play?
“Look out at the city in front of us. I have watched it transform over the years into what you see today. It is a beautiful city today, one of world renown. It was beautiful when I was a child too.”
The tension was almost tangible. Omar knew this wasn’t about a single musician.
“There’s an echo in the whispers of the streets,” she continued. “The cafes where old men once smoked have been cleaned. Smoking is banned. The floorboards are all marble now. The streets are clean. Potholes have been paved. And what of our music? It’s polished and pretty. The gritty conditions that gave birth to great melodies are just memories today.”
What kind of story did Cairo want? One that resurrected a sanitized past? Or was it brave enough to carry its blemishes into the future?
“What if I choose to honor the flawed man along with the music?” he pondered.
Nadia rose and walked towards the edge of the fountain.
“Nobody writes history in stone anymore,” she remarked. “The way we build these profiles matters. The choices we make to fill in the spaces is important. It shapes how we see ourselves tomorrow. What if you did record everything?”
“What would he think about it?”
She turned with a glimmer in her eyes.
“That would be a defiance, a thumb in the nose of perfect narratives. It would make him proud.”
The garden was now awash in moonlight, turning the smooth marble benches into ghostly shapes. Their coffee had grown cold, as they were now lost in a discourse that Omar had never anticipated but eagerly accepted.
Her trust opened doors. Days were spend pouring over old journals, scanning old photos in the glow of an ancient library. Ibrahim was more than just an angry grandfather and more than a participant in Cairo’s golden age. This was a real person, flawed and complex.
This gave Omar even more reason to be skeptical. Who was this digital history for? With every new piece of information he uploaded, there was a growing unease.
As he sat once more in the garden, on his last night. Nadia played an old song from her grandfather’s discography.
“I’ve never heard this one before,” Omar admitted.
“It’s called ‘Nadia’. He wrote it on the day I was born,” she explained.
The song was sweet, a melancholic love ballad whispered into an old recorder.
“I can give you a copy tomorrow before you leave,” she offered as she sat beside him in the starry night.
“No. Ibrahim was a complicated person. No amount of documentation can truly capture him. Perhaps there’s value in leaving at least one thing a mystery.”
In this prospective future, Wikipedia has grown more valuable as a repository of knowledge. Today, the rules state that it can only contain secondary information. Everything needs to be cited from a primary source. But Wikipedia may one day build a journalist corps who will travel around the world to complete articles.
Journalists will build out plenty of information but how much can an encyclopedia article really tell you about a person? Even if you could write down a list of life events, does it really tell you everything? Can it ever?