James Smythe - The Testimony

Byron and I decided to stay, to help them all out. There were initiatives to get houses built, to get proper shelter sorted – and worse jobs, like organizing the landfills, but we stayed away from those, because I’m not sure that I would have been able to cope. We worked on projects to build some housing at the back of a Walmart, on their spare land that they donated, if you can believe that, and then Byron said, There must be other places that need this, so we went to some other towns in the area, found the same thing, only on a smaller scale, and we offered our help. We set up a company – Residence, we called it, and I say that we set it up as a company, but we just named it and started it, no paperwork, no fuss – and we started helping out families who were sleeping on floors, or worse. We run it, now, for people who need help, mostly; we organize the housing, run it. I don’t know, Byron says that it’s like guest-houses. We have a field and we grow vegetables, and we share that out. Byron jokes that we’re like the Amish.

Mei Hsüeh, professional gamer, Shanghai

Mr Ts’ao died a few weeks after everything finished, after life went back to normal. We don’t know why – and Mrs Ts’ao worried that it was the plague again, come back, because she kept saying, He was so healthy, he was so healthy! but he really wasn’t. He ate fried shrimp for almost every meal, and fried chicken when there wasn’t the shrimp to be had. And he drank so much milk! He’s got a taste for it, Mrs Ts’ao used to say. We both have, but after he died I never saw her with a glass of the stuff. We stuck together as well, and she asked me to go with her back to where she grew up, in Fuzhou, down the coast. She had a daughter, apparently, but they hadn’t spoken to her in years – an argument, they would not say what about – and she wanted to find her. We didn’t. I remember sitting in the offices of the police, reporting her as missing, but even the police didn’t seem optimistic. She’s probably dead, one of them told me when she was out of earshot, you should prepare her for that. I don’t think we’ll find the girl. I helped Mrs Ts’ao look for her for a few months, and finally we ended up going to her sister’s house, which is where I left her. I’m sorry, Mrs Ts’ao, I said, but I can’t stay here. It’s not for me. So I got a boat to Bali, of all places. I had always wanted to travel, and I went around all the countries I could that didn’t involve flying (which has always scared me too much). I didn’t see the cities, because, for the most part, I couldn’t; I saw the countrysides.

When that was done – when I got bored, as awful as that is to say – I went to Tokyo. Tokyo seemed exactly the same, like they were pretending that The Broadcast never happened. They were the least involved country out of us all, I think! The Japanese kept their noses clean, out of everybody’s business, and nobody shot at them. Whatever, Japan was fine, and thriving. After that I went back home, back to Shanghai. My apartment was gone, re-let, and I didn’t have any money, so I went to stay with some friends I knew from a forum. We had five of us in a three-bedroom apartment, but it was awesome. We put up fake walls with food boxes, fixed them in, had mattresses from bunk-beds on the floors. They had faster internet than my old connection, and I got back online. My character was still going, and my guild. They still hadn’t finished the game. We still haven’t.

Phil Gossard, sales executive, London

I go and visit their grave every month. It’s like a ritual: flowers for them both, tell them what’s been happening. Sooner or later it’ll become a yearly thing, I know, or when I feel like it, and that’ll be fine, because it’ll have to be. I don’t have a house yet, and I don’t know when I will. My mother and I are living together; I’m back in my old bedroom, which they had decorated into a spare room, but I’ve got some things in there to make it feel more like mine. My age, and back home. Jesus. My hand still twinges, and it still makes me think of Karen and Jess, every single time.

I don’t believe in God now, and if I ever did before all this, before The Broadcast , I can’t remember that either. Some bloke in a pub once said to me, when I was drunk, crying over everything I had lost, that God abandoned us and then came back. We’re His children, they told me, and no parent can every truly abandon their child. Could you? they asked, and I just fucking decked them.

Katy Kasher, high school student, Orlando

My mom and dad were still totally into God, and I wasn’t – my mom, when she thought I couldn’t hear, kept saying that it was Ally’s influence, that I had my faith until I met her or something, but she didn’t know. And we didn’t speak about why I didn’t hear The Broadcast , because I think she was worried about what it might mean. I wasn’t worried; Mark had a theory.

Mark Kirkman, unemployed, Boston

I think there were more than just us. I think that – I’m tempted to say that I know, but I don’t, and I never will – but I think – I’m sure – that The Broadcast wasn’t God, that it was something else, voices bouncing around off satellites, something else. How did people hear it in their heads? Maybe everybody became psychic for a second. Maybe it was some government experiment, and it worked, and they can’t own up to it, because it’s a weapon, and everything now is some great secret. Could have been anything. Aliens, that was a popular theory when it happened, and, you know, I’d totally buy that over it being God. As for why we didn’t hear it, I told Ally and Katy and Joe that I didn’t think it mattered. Why didn’t we get sick? Katy asked, and I said, Well, no idea. Maybe it was related to The Broadcast , maybe it wasn’t. Plenty of other people didn’t get sick either, and they all heard it. It didn’t seem worth worrying about.

Katy Kasher, high school student, Orlando

Mom and Dad decided that they wanted to go back home, because it was still okay, still standing, and well away from anywhere that had been affected by whatever. Life went back to normal, pretty much. School started back that fall, and pretty much nobody remembered that I didn’t hear anything, or if they did, nobody said anything. I got a boyfriend. I did my SATs, and my scores were okay. It was like it never happened.

Then, last weekend, my boyfriend and I went to The Holy Land theme park, for fun. It had been shut down since everything that happened, nobody to run it, I guess, so we jumped the fence. Everybody did it; it was a well-known party spot, because it had a pool, because the cops never went near it. We were the only ones there – that we saw, at least – and we found a bit on this hill and watched the stars, and then we started kissing and stuff, and I realized that that was the spot where they used to crucify the actor playing Christ, where they would put him on the cross and throw stuff at him as he sang, and I thought about how fucked up that was. We stopped, and I said I had to go, and when I got home I felt terrible, so I called Ally. It was the first time we’d spoken in ages, but it felt just like it did before, and she gave me some advice. My Mom asked who I was speaking to, and I lied, because I knew how she’d feel, but then I went with her to church, to one of the One True God services, and that made her so happy I thought she’d pass out.

Joseph Jessop, farmer, Colorado City

We left Mark and Ally and Katy a few months back, headed back toward home. We could have stayed – they asked us to stay with them, to see if we couldn’t all find more people like they were, like Joe was – but we knew we had to go back. We had to see what it was like there, because you never know. We got back into the RV and back onto the road, and it was alright, honestly. We were fine, and we knew that we could always return to Mark. Mark said as much; he said, There’s always a place here for you, and I believed him, I truly did.