James Smythe - The Testimony

Katy Kasher, high school student, Orlando

Have you ever heard of The Holy Land? It was this theme park down the road from the House of Mouse in Orlando, and they tried to compete, but it was no frigging contest. They had a room where you could see evolution – you started in the Garden of Eden, where humans lived with dinosaurs – and a ride that took you through the plagues from the Old Testament, like a ghost train. And they had this show twice a day, like the Main Street Parade but infinitely more gay, where some douche dressed up as Jesus, walked through the crowd and did a mock crucifixion on these huge polystyrene rocks, and you could watch the show while you did rock-climbing up the wall carved out to be the face of Jesus, like Mount Rushmore. We used to go three or four times a year, all the family, because Mom and Dad thought it would bring us all closer together. All us kids, me and my cousins, we just wanted to go to Disney instead, or Universal, because the Holy Land didn’t even have those giant turkey legs, or churros, or anything. The Broadcast came again on Grammy’s birthday, and Mom had us up at stupid o’clock – seriously, it was still totally dark outside – just to drive up there, get there super-early. We were putting everything into the car when it happened, and Mom and Dad stopped, looked up, smiling, and then she turned to me and said, Wasn’t that wonderful? And I was all, Wasn’t what wonderful? I hadn’t heard it the first time, because I was asleep, we thought; this time, I think I ruined her day.

Mei Hsüeh, professional gamer, Shanghai

We all heard it outside the game, of course, but then, five minutes after the second Broadcast , somebody – had to be one of the mods – set up something to play in-game, which was hilarious. I mean, we were still worried about what it meant, but it was totally relevant to then .

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

We were in The Danger Room, getting opinions on the best way to fight back against the bombings. Over the few hours previous we’d pieced together that they were from a terror cell we had pinpointed as working out of Iran, with rumoured ties to their government, but their government denied everything. They would, one of the joint chiefs said. We were talking about tactical strikes, targeted at training camps that we knew existed, zero civilian casualties. They were purely designed to show that we weren’t fucking around, and we had them ready to go. I mean, literally, POTUS said the word, they’d be launched from carriers in the Mediterranean, just off the coast of Turkey. POTUS needed reassuring, because he’d never done one of these before. We’d gotten to the point where some of the weapons we had were so exact that they were like an acne solution: you find a spot, you nuke that spot, the rest of the skin is clear. It wasn’t like the old days of towers of rubble and burning bodies, and the chance that they could go wrong. It’s a science, I said to him. Estimated casualties based on sat knowledge were in the low triple digits, and if the government turned over the heads of the faction, that would be it. War over.

The Broadcast came in just like before and we all heard it, clear as day. This time we got the signifiers, in the speech; it was all in English, with an accent we couldn’t pin down. POTUS was devastated. What does it mean? he asked the room, but none of us had an answer. We have to make a statement, I said, try and keep things under control. Jesus, Drew, he said, I just need to know what this means before I say anything. I need to think. Fine, I said to him – and I was snappy, because we didn’t have time for him to pussy out – I’ll tell you what it means: it means that there’s suddenly going to be a whole lot of very, very angry people out there that this happened again, and that it was only in English; it means you’re going to have US citizens suddenly asking what there is to be afraid of, and they’re all so on edge you’re going to have to reassure them that everything’s fine, even when you know it isn’t; and it means that you’re going to have to step the fuck up and lead this country, because we’re in trouble, here.

He stopped crying. Alright, he said, alright.

Theodor Fyodorov, unemployed, Moscow

The day after The Broadcast , Moscow fell apart in protest, the people wanting to know answers. There were many, many questions, and they had them written on their boards, and they chanted them in the streets. They wanted to know why we didn’t hear it in Russian (because not everybody spoke English, and some of the people – most of the people – didn’t even understand), and they wanted to know what there was that we should or shouldn’t be afraid of. They wanted to know why the church had not made a statement yet about The Broadcast , about what we should think of it. It was all over the television, the streets full of people marching toward the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, so when I woke up I told Anastasia that I wanted to get a better look, to go down and join them. Do you really care about this? she asked, and I said No, but that I wanted to see. I always like knowing what makes people tick, I said. She said that she wanted breakfast before she joined me, so I went by myself.

I used to live in Tula, but Anastasia got an apartment near Taganskya, which is right in the middle of the city, so I decided to move here, and move in with her. I didn’t know the city well, still, even though I had been there for weeks, so I decided to just go with the crowd. Everybody was walking so slowly because there were so many people, and it was like an army, left right, left right. After a while I saw some people I recognized, some of Anastasia’s friends from university, and they told me that the crowd was going to demand answers from the Patriarch right there and then. He has to tell us what’s going on, they said, you should come and help us. I explained that I didn’t have an interest – I didn’t believe in God back then – but that I would go anyway. I want to see what happens, I told them. Anastasia joined us a few minutes after that, and we marched. The crowd sang songs that I knew almost all of the words to, because there were versions with swearwords used at football matches, and we moved slowly, so slowly, but we kept going.

The television called this a riot, but it wasn’t like any riot that I had ever seen. The atmosphere was amazing, so friendly and happy, and everybody was so happy to be alive. I remember years and years ago there were riots in Manezh Square, seeing them on the TV, the burning cars, the hooligans, and they were nothing like this. This was so civil all the way. All I saw was people of all ages, in a spirit of camaraderie, a celebration of good news, they thought. We are not alone! some of them kept shouting; Through this all, we are not alone! Then, after a while, we started to get word that some of the people in the crowd, the ringleaders, they wanted to take the church back. Take it back from who? Anastasia’s friends asked. Take it from the church? I said that they should ignore that gossip. It’s probably Chinese whispers, I said, and then a man in front corrected me. No, he said, they want to take it back from the Orthodoxy, because they have lied to us for so long. What happens after that? I asked him. What’s left after that? Whatever comes next, he said.

The good spirits – the singing, the shuffling – carried on until we stopped suddenly. More whispers came through that we had been stopped by the police, and then others came through saying that the front of the crowd – which we couldn’t see – had reached the Cathedral, and that this was all that we would see. Anastasia’s feet were starting to hurt her, and Marcela and Alexei, her friends, decided that they wanted a drink, so they went into a shop we passed and bought a bottle of schnapps, because it was cheap. Other people got bottles as well, and they kept us going for the next hour. We couldn’t go forward, because we were still, and we couldn’t go backwards, because the streets were full behind us, so we drank and sang. We stayed there for another hour, and then people behind us started drifting off, and we realized that we weren’t getting through to the front. Whispers came from the other end then, that something had happened at the Cathedral, that the police were there. Where’s this coming from? we asked the whisperers, and they said it was from the television, so we agreed to meet back at Anastasia’s place to watch it. By the time I got there, pushing through the crowd, I had been split up from the others, and Ana was already there (because she’s so small, I think, which made it easier for her to slip through the people). You have to see this, she said before I had even taken my coat off. We sat and watched the footage of the Patriarch bleeding on the steps of the Cathedral, and the police rushing toward the man who shot him, and that man then shooting himself in the face. He had a sign with him that read God Doesn’t Care What We Do , and the news cameras kept focusing in on it, showing us the sign over and over even as his blood started to soak across the pavement and into the white cardboard. The crowd were heaving, pushing forwards, even when the police were smacking at them, telling them to stay back, and then another man, so angry, screaming, threw a bottle of something with a rag in the top, set on fire, and it smashed all over the church. The paint was a lacquer, and it went up like it was oil. Anastasia couldn’t stop crying, so I tried to turn over the channel but the same image was everywhere, so I just told her to shut her eyes tightly.