James Smythe - The Testimony

Mei Hsüeh, professional gamer, Shanghai

I was Teolis, my Dark Elf Necromancer (level 83, about two years’ worth of playtime), and the first dungeon we were hitting was in the Northern Lands. So, we dressed for snow – they rolled that out in the last update, having to adapt your armour for the environment – and I travelled up there on Hector, my winged horse. I gave Te’lest a ride. He was our guild’s best tank, a huge Orc, built to withstand whatever punishment could be thrown at him. We were trying to assemble the guild together, because we’d arranged the time a few days before, but most of them weren’t online. Fifteen out of thirty were offline, so we said we would wait. There’s a goblin newsreader in the Northern Lands who reads real-world stories out like he’s a town crier, and he was saying about the riots. He was the first person I remember seeing using the words The Broadcast , and at first I didn’t even know it wasn’t an in-game thing, and then I saw other people using it – this troll was trying to find somebody with the skills to carve it into his hammer, and another guy was making armour with it printed on the back – and I realized it was outside as well. I thought about logging off, and then all fifteen arrived, which was enough to do the first dungeon, easy, so we rolled off, and I forgot about it for a while.

Phil Gossard, sales executive, London

Karen and Jess got home ridiculously late because the roads, Karen said, were at a standstill with people parking outside churches. Not at the side of the road, either, she said, but right there in the middle of the road, if that was all they could find. You should have just ploughed through them, I said, show them who’s really boss. I didn’t mean that; it was a thoughtless thing to say. We stayed up and watched TV all night, and I tried to explain to Jess what The Broadcast could be if it wasn’t God. All her friends said that it was. She went to a church-affiliated school, and that was all they were talking about. Eventually I said that she had to go to bed, and that caused a tantrum, but she had school the next day. Can’t I stay home? she asked, and I said that she couldn’t. She hated school at the best of times. She was born with a vascular birthmark on her face, across her cheek, her nose, meeting her top lip on the left side. It got paler as she got older, but it was there all the same. She had a rough time of it with the other kids.

I went up to check on her ten minutes later, when they were cutting away to yet more talking heads, an easy way to fill the time. She was kneeling by the side of her bed, and I’d never seen her do that before. I’m praying, she said, and I asked her what for, and she said, I think I’m going to ask for a dog. I told her that God didn’t work like that. Fine, she said, I’ll pray that school is cancelled tomorrow. I think that’s more his sort of thing, I replied.

Audrey Clave, linguistics postgraduate student, Marseilles

Jacques and I ended up sleeping in this room off the language labs, somebody’s office, one that they gave to a professor with a title but not a real job, one of the codgers. There wasn’t really anything in the room; it was more like a big cupboard when you stood in it, with an empty desk and a cactus (because it couldn’t die) and some books on the shelves, all covered in dust. There was a rug on the floor, Turkish, it looked like, expensive, and it had barely been used. I should take that for our office, I said, and then Jacques moved the furniture over up against the window and we locked the door and lay down. That was the first night we slept together, had sex, whatever. Afterwards we were going to sleep, and I had just shut my eyes when we got woken up by David banging on the door. Open up, he shouted. It’s Patrice, he’s gone, and I don’t know where. We got dressed and Jacques ran with him to the green in the middle of the main buildings, to see if he was there or if anybody had seen him leaving. I went out the front to get some cigarettes from the machine – I could taste them on Jacques, and I suddenly missed them, that taste – and there were people out there staring up at the roof, just like with the guy before. Patrice was on the parapet, I could see his legs dangling. The building wasn’t exactly tall, only five storeys, but it was old, high ceilings, and he was just sitting there. He didn’t seem to be moving. I ran upstairs, praying to God that he would be there when I got to him, and he was. Don’t jump, I said. I just want to sit and talk, and he nodded and said that was fine, but he had been crying, and he looked so sick that I wondered if he had taken something, but I didn’t want to ask, not then.

He offered me a cigarette, like he could tell somehow that I wanted one, even though I hadn’t smoked in nearly six months, and I coughed my way through the first few drags, shuffling along the ledge with him. I didn’t look down. We didn’t talk as we smoked; we sat and swung our legs. When I had put mine out, smoked only halfway, because that was all I could manage, I asked him what he was doing. He lit a second one, which I thought was a good sign, and he said, Maybe, if I pray really hard, He might accept me back. Back? I asked him. What do you mean, Back? You haven’t gone anywhere. Besides, eh, it might not be Him. It might be anything. You want to be praying to a bunch of aliens? But I must have sounded fake to him, because I sounded fake to myself. I was sure that it was God. Come back inside with me, I said, we’ll go and have a coffee and talk this out, and he nodded, we both stood up, and he just stepped off the roof. I heard the crowd scream, but I didn’t look down, because I didn’t want to see that. I ran downstairs, I don’t remember screaming or crying, but apparently I was, and by the time I got there this one guy, a stoner I recognized because he was always sitting on the benches outside the offices, told me that Patrice was the third person he’d seen that day do it. I sat there and waited for the police with Jacques and David, who found me when they heard the crowd scream, but the police didn’t come until the next day, they were so busy.

Andrew Brubaker, White House Chief of Staff, Washington, DC

I kept asking Meany for updates on his theory about The Broadcast . If it’s a threat, we need to know. We’re doing research, he kept telling me, we’re working on it. Sometimes, that isn’t enough. We had all been awake for God-knows how many hours and we were all feeling it. POTUS had it worst: he was doing interviews, press ops, reassurances. And his reassurances had to sound real; the rest of us got to sit in the war room – we called it The Danger Room, POTUS’ special name for it, a joke, almost – and we got to say exactly how nervous we actually were. You factor in the stress, the tiredness gets that much worse. We had eye drops to help us function, and coffee. We even had a girl from the assistants’ pool do a run to the Starbucks.

There were whispers from sources – the same source that said it was a weapon, that the voice was some sort of weapon being used against us – that somebody was gearing up for another attack, as well. We didn’t have any more than that, other than that the rumour came from a source in Iran, so we moved the satellites to watch the countryside around there, covered Iraq, the Russian borders, China as best we could. If they see this, we’ll have hell to pay, one of the Joint Chiefs said, and I told them it was fine. I’d rather that than the alternative. We watched China move some of their troops along their borders; they had people stationed along the borders with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and then – and these were the real worries – India and Pakistan. It was when you saw nuclear powers edging toward each other, that was when you started to worry. Somebody in the room asked why they were moving – What have they got to gain from that? he asked – and I said, They’re just nervous. They’re probably worried that it’s a weapon. Just like we are, he said. POTUS didn’t say anything.