James Smythe: The Machine

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

We had a statement prepared that POTUS was going to go on air with. It was the fourth or fifth draft, maybe, and we never wrote that many. We were a two-draft administration – the writing staff getting one out, then I made changes, sometimes POTUS changed a word or two. That was usually it, but this one, POTUS insisted on going over everything himself. And it kept changing. The first draft was about how we didn’t have the right answers but we had our best men working on it; the second was about how the answer might not be the important thing, and maybe the question that it raised was what mattered; the third draft was about speculation being a dangerous thing (and that was aimed at both the press and every other country across the entire god-damned world); the fourth draft was just begging people to keep themselves under control. We had to face the rioting head on, we knew that. What we heard – the static, whatever – was still there, but suddenly we, as an administration, didn’t care as much what it was, because reports were coming in from LA, from Texas, from Chicago, reports about the people of America becoming restless.

You know, actually, that’s not true. They were restless before the static happened. We’d spent nearly twenty years going no lower than a Yellow alert level. That is, by definition, telling the people that there’s a Significant Risk of Terrorist Attacks . We went up to Orange for almost every holiday, it felt like, and that was High Risk . We even hit Red once, near the end of Obama’s first term, when we had intel about a much larger attack that never happened, something to do with our relationship with Iran. That wasn’t the only alert: every few years somebody stepped forward with a car bomb and a promise, threatening something worse, and they did their damage – sometimes only emotional, because we were fragile, as a nation – and we never heard from them again. We got coded messages, grainy cell-phone footage of somebody that they tried to make the new Bin Laden, but nothing ever stuck. All it did was make half the people nervous, the other half complacent. So, yeah, the natives were restless to begin with, and we didn’t have an excuse or an explanation for the static, not even close. POTUS’ statement was the best we could manage, asking people to stay calm, to try and get back to normality. He asked that the people going to worship stayed as civil as possible, and remembered that everybody had their own ways of worship, we were a multicultural society, you know the sort of thing. He said, If you think that there’s a chance you could be involved in a riotous act – I absolutely cringed, because we should have caught that word, stopped it sounding like he was talking about a fucking party – just walk away, and let the authorities deal with it. It was those riots we were most worried about, because they were starting up as reports of small groups breaking the front windows of shops, smashing up parked cars, but we knew how they ended.

When he had read the statement – straight down the line in the press briefing room, straight into Camera 1, just as he was trained to do – he took some questions, and one of the reporters asked him why he thought that people were rioting. We understand that hearing what we heard played with everybody’s emotions, she said to him, but why do you think some people have turned to violence? Shouldn’t we all be trying to get into God’s good books?

That raised a laugh around the room from everybody but POTUS. The first thing is, he said, we don’t know if it actually was a God, or indeed what it was. We’d be fools to jump to the conclusion that it’s any sort of higher power; it’s just as likely, if not more likely, to be something entirely explainable, and we’ve got our best people on it. I knew what was coming after that answer, so I made my way to the side of the room, tried to get somebody to get him off the podium, but it was too late. He was saying something about people and zealotry, and Jesus fucking Christ, that was going to hurt us, I knew, and then that same journalist asked the killer question, the one that we had danced around for so long. Mr President, she asked, do you believe in God? We had avoided it the whole way through the campaign, getting him to swear on Bibles and go to church and be a total hypocrite in service to his country – and we had the most right-wing running mate we could find, in bed with so many churches and anti-abortion clinics that it made most of us feel sick – but nobody had ever asked him outright. It was like Scooby-Doo ; we would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for that meddling journalist. Don’t answer, I said, over and over, but he did, because he was the President, and Presidents always answered questions honestly in times of strife, right?

I am not a man of faith, he said, and then all you could see or hear were flashbulbs and shouts of follow-ups. Looking back now, it helped: it moved the news cycle on past the riots, just for a second.

Phil Gossard, sales executive, London

When I finally left work I knew that the only way I’d make it home would be to walk. It was only a couple of miles as the crow flies, but London being London, walking that was going to be a trek. I kept trying to call Karen to see if she managed to pick up Jess from school but the phone lines were dead. I didn’t know this then, but there’s a lock that the government can put onto phone lines in states of emergency, like a terrorist attack, and that’s what I think the person with access to the on/off button thought. But, it could have just been New Year’s Eve syndrome, when the lines are clogged. No idea, and we never found out, of course.

There was a riot – although, it wasn’t so much a riot when you saw it as a protest, a gathering, but every protest has the possibility of turning nasty at a moment’s notice, that’s what they said on the news – so I avoided the centre as much as I could. I clung to the river until I reached World’s End, then cut north. Karen wasn’t there when I got home, and there weren’t any messages, so I started to make dinner, get it all ready to be cooked when they finally turned up.

What else do you do?

Meredith Lieberstein, retiree, New York City

Leonard was the sort of man who wanted to be a part of the action. He hated armchair plaudits. I have to be out there, he said, so I let him go, because there was no way that I could stop him, not when he was in that sort of mood. He wanted to see what it was like out there, he told me. That wouldn’t stop me worrying; didn’t stop me worrying twenty years ago, wouldn’t stop me worrying now. He liked to antagonize people as well, just having fun, but they didn’t always see it that way. He came back soaking wet half an hour later. Where were you? I asked, and he smirked. I went to St Philip’s, he said, and I spoke to some of the people there, and they put the fire extinguishers onto me. That damn smirk of his. I swear, he said, I didn’t say anything . We both knew he was lying, of course, but I let it go, because that’s why I loved him. I told him to take the sweater off so that I could wash it, but those white extinguisher-powder stains wouldn’t shift. I always assumed that the stuff was washable, but apparently not. At least, not from cashmere, it wasn’t.

Mei Hsüeh, professional gamer, Shanghai

We were raiding the tomb of the Night-King, one of the three Gods we hadn’t yet taken down, because you needed a party of at least twelve, preferably twenty or so, and our guild wasn’t one of the biggest, and most of the guild were from Europe, so getting together at the right time was a nightmare, because when I was on they were at work. I went professional a few years ago anyway, because I had some amazing instanced weapons, some armour, and I was forging my own stuff which I could sell to the noobs for an insane mark-up – like, the sort of price my old economics teacher would have been so proud of me for – so I was full-time online, never having to leave Barleycorn.