James Smythe: The Testimony

The internet didn’t want to wait, though. People who knew things, people who worked for the company and hated what they had done, people with vested interests: they all stepped forward under the internet’s veil of anonymity, and they told others how to do it. They leaked firmware, software, instructions; things that somehow they had got their hands on, that they shouldn’t have had. Cloak and dagger, they explained that the Machine could be used to create a new persona in the damaged. It could build them up again, as they were, based on who they were. It could be achieved through talk, through photographs and videos. It was better if you had the recordings of their original sessions. They got together in clandestine meetings, organized themselves to do work for this: on the technology, the software, the work itself. Eventually they had their own case study, their own version of Shaun: a lady called Marcela. She was from Eastern Europe, and Beth didn’t understand what she was saying but she got the gist. Marcela was herself again, in that she smiled and she waved at the camera and the person behind it, and they bent past the lens and leaned in to kiss her and she kissed his bearded face back, and he gave a thumbs-up to the camera.

We used the original recordings to help Marcela, the video said, and that sold it to Beth. Because she couldn’t wait. This was too important to her, and to Vic. When Beth opens her eyes, the on-screen bar is finished: only it says that the files have been moved, not copied. She looks at the hard drive and it’s empty, but it doesn’t matter. Vic’s memories are in the Machine now, and where they should be.

James Smythe was born in London in 1980. Since completing a PhD at Cardiff University he has worked as a computer game writer and currently teaches creative writing. He also writes a fortnightly blog for the Guardian Online . The Testimony is his second novel. Other novels include The Machine, and The Explorer (published by Voyager). He lives in West Sussex. He can be found on Twitter @jpsmythe

The Explorer

‘[An] utterly gripping and highly original debut novel… a tour de force of virtuoso writing that explodes off the page’

‘As if Philip K Dick and David Mitchell had collaborated on an episode of The West Wing … unsettling, gripping and hugely thought-provoking’

‘A fiercely-imagined dystopia of the near future. Intelligent, visionary and compulsively readable’

‘A literary post-apocalyptic novel built around a clever conceit’

‘[A] high-impact, big-concept, apocalyptic thriller’

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Blue Door

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First published by Harper CollinsPublishers 2012

Copyright © James Smythe 2013

James Smythe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007467723

Ebook Edition © 2013

ISBN: 9780007427918

Version 1

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