The Testimony

HOIST THAT RAG

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.

Dominick Volker, drug dealer, Johannesburg

By the time I got back to my old lady – she hated it when I called her that, because she said, I’m not old, I’m only twenty-six, and that made me laugh – she was already on the pipe. I told you, I said, don’t fucking do that stuff, I don’t want our kid to end up like a bloody retard. I worked hard to get us this, I said, don’t fuck it up now. We had a nice house, in a nice district, well away from the rest, because I made enough money to keep it there. She didn’t have to work, and we had two dogs, because that was what she wanted. She was pregnant, so big she was nearly bursting. She had wanted a baby for fucking ever, and I kept having to tell her she would fuck it up if she kept smoking, but she didn’t listen, so I had to do better rules. Nothing harder than pot, you hear? I hear, she had said, but I didn’t always believe her, because sometimes I wasn’t home for days, so I didn’t know what she would be getting up to. I asked her if she had been watching television, if she knew what was going on; Ag no, she said, nobody’s got a clue. She left it fifteen minutes or so before sparking up again, and I told her not to, but she ignored me. Poor fucking baby will be coughing up his lungs in there, I said.

She said, shouldn’t you be out selling? But I didn’t think people would be buying, not that day, not in my usual markets. They’ve got something better today, eh? I said.

Dhruv Rawat, doctor, Bankipore

I was up very early, even though I had so little sleep – I remember looking at my clock when I couldn’t sleep, getting upset with myself about it, turning over and over. The hotel didn’t have air conditioning, so my room was very hot, and that made me more uncomfortable. That’s another thing that I missed about Bangalore: the air conditioning. They had started putting it everywhere, something that my hometown was pitifully far behind in regards to. I bathed, made my prayers, did not eat breakfast. I was at work so early that I managed all of the week’s paperwork before I even had my first patient, which was the man with the foot again. He had wrapped it up in his own bandage, which was little more than a tea-towel; it wasn’t bleeding any more, and the wound was pink where the skin was getting better. It worked, he said, look, it’s getting much better. Good, good, I said. You’re an excellent doctor, he told me; I will tell your father how good you are at this. He stood up, ready to leave, and I asked him, Have you thought about The Broadcast like they are everywhere else in the world? What? he asked. Sorry, I said, I’m just wondering. Have you thought about what it was – who it was, maybe, I don’t know – that we all heard?

Well, yes, of course, he said. I have wondered if it was a form of God, somehow. That’s what all the English and the Americans believe, I think. You wondered that? I asked, and he said, again, Of course I did. Because who is to say that it wasn’t? What about the Vedas? I asked him, and he shrugged. If it is Brahma, somehow, thinking we should be spoken to – and don’t you think that sounds stupid just to say it? – but if it is Brahma, I don’t think it will matter that I wondered if it was. And if it isn’t, well, it probably isn’t real anyway.

Meredith Lieberstein, retiree, New York City

We woke up to the news that New York was under a curfew of sorts. It wasn’t called a curfew, that wasn’t how it was sold to us, but Leonard said that’s what it was. We’re requesting that you stay in your homes where possible, he read off the website. Requesting? You wait, they’ll turn it into an order before you can even blink, he said. There were little riots, panic-fuelled and disorganized, but for the most part people seemed happy staying in. They don’t want to even let people go to churches, Leonard said, because they’re worried that large groups of people like that equal some sort of target. That was Leonard; when they let you go to church he mocked you for wanting it, and when you couldn’t he wanted to stand up for your rights. He was a complicated man.

Regardless, people were panicking all over the country, all over the world. It was so ambiguous, The Broadcast, so open to interpretation. If you believed in God – and people did, far more readily than they had in the months before The Broadcast, that’s for sure – if you believed, then there was the question of what we should be afraid of. Most believers wrote it off as saying that we shouldn’t be scared of The Broadcast, of God’s presence, and they found comfort and solace in that. Some didn’t, and wondered if this wasn’t telling us in advance not to be afraid, not to be afraid of what was to come. And then those of us who didn’t believe, who were sitting on the fence or just plain stubborn, we were asking where it came from, still. We were saying, Well, there must be a scientific explanation for this, because there always is, because it’s never so ridiculous that you have to just make a wild leap into fantasy.

But then, we lived in New York. We were down the road from the bomb-site, only a ten-minute walk, and we could smell the ash on the air, so we were afraid almost constantly, and we wanted reassurance that we knew we couldn’t have. Leonard knew that it wasn’t God, but I… I didn’t.

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

The Broadcast was one of those situations where everybody heard what they wanted to hear. It was a Barnum statement. You ever hear that? The circus leader, P. T. Barnum, he used to have this theory about generic statements being taken over by people, hearing what they want to hear. That’s how cold readings work: they throw stuff out there, and as long as they hoist that rag into the air with enough conviction, the people it’s targeted at will believe it and read into it whatever it is that they’re looking for. It’s like horoscopes: they’re generic, but people believe them. For most people that was fine; for our enemies, that was an invitation.

Ed Meany, research and development scientist, Virginia

I met up with Sam Tate, one of the guys I’d been to college with. He worked in R and D, special projects, weapons and weaponization, stuff that I didn’t know about and didn’t want to, and he asked to have a coffee with me, talk through something. He looked nervous. They’ve told me I’m going on site somewhere, he said, and they’ve asked me to – I put my fingers in my ears. I don’t want to know, I told him. Alright, he said, so we sat in silence for the rest of the drink. When we were done I asked if he was alright about the Nevada bombing. I knew that he had friends out there, that he’d worked out there for a while. Yeah, he said, I hated working there. You really hated working there? I asked, and he said, You have no idea; at least now I’ll never have to think about it again, will I?

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

We pulled some staff from the DC office, told them to make their way to Ohio, to the silo there. We weren’t ready to launch them, not even close, and they hadn’t been tested, but we wanted them there in case. It never hurt, we reasoned, to have every eventuality covered. Of course, as soon as you start thinking Nuclear, it’s there the whole time, in every conversation that you have. But we were a long way from that.

Where we were was having conversations with the Supreme Leader of Iran about handing over the groups that he claimed didn’t even exist. We’ve got intelligence reports that name names, we said; he kept denying it. At this point, he said to POTUS, why wouldn’t we give them up to you? You know that we’ll be forced to retaliate, POTUS said. Believe me, Mr President, the Supreme Leader said, we do not want that. We had been off the phone for five minutes when reports came in of more bombings: a church in Reseda, a supermarket in Seattle. Fuck them, POTUS said, and we got back on the phone, told the Supreme Leader that we were going to tactically strike targets that we believed were associated with the terror cell. We didn’t take it to Congress; we didn’t tell the UN our intentions. We just did it. We hit three camps along the Iran/Afghanistan borders, places that we had heard were amassing weapons, training soldiers. It was going to be a game of Battleships, and we would win, and we would keep our hands clean because they struck first. We hit those camps and then waited; if they retaliated, we’d retaliate harder.

That afternoon we found a video on the internet, claiming to be made by a terror cell that our intelligence reports had previously linked to Iran, taking responsibility for the bombings. There was no face there, no Bin Laden or Hussein to get angry at, just a shot of one of the camps burning, flattened, almost, and a voice speaking, telling us that until we admitted that the voice heard around the world was an American hoax they would maintain attacks on American soil. Repent and you will be spared.

Dafni Haza, political speechwriter, Tel Aviv

Everybody knew about Iran, the threat it posed. For a while, when everything settled down in the so-called Middle East a decade or so before, it was all the international press seemed to talk about. America – in fact, no, the whole world – had been worrying for years about the potential that they had to attack, because it seemed that no amount of sanctions could stop them, or stop their people. When I was a little girl it had all been about Iraq. Now Iraq was a gentle ally, neutered in the eyes of the world, and their brother – who had been there for so long, biding his time, it seemed – became the real threat, only he did nothing. Rumours had surrounded them for over a decade that they were building weapons, but those same rumours surrounded us, even; there was something about Iran. Israel, of course, was estranged anyway, so as a people, as a government, we weren’t concerned when the Americans began their bombing. But it seemed rash, I think. When we saw the footage on the televisions, of the bomb-sites, then the terrorist cell video that appeared after it, it all became very real. Even those wars before, decades of conflict in this part of the world, they seemed like they would be brushed away, because this – the potential of this – was so much worse.

Piers Anderson, private military contractor, the Middle East

We were hundreds and hundreds of miles away, still in Turkey, so we didn’t see a thing, but it only took ten minutes before we knew about it on the TV, and only a few minutes after that word started trickling in that it was the Americans that had launched their attack. Are we at war? we asked the suit in charge of the mission, and he said that he didn’t have a clue whether we were, but the Americans almost certainly were. Are they ever not? he asked.

Phil Gossard, sales executive, London

I watched the footage of the Yank missiles – or, rather, of the aftermath of them, the satellite footage of smoking craters, then the video of the terrorist taken from the internet, or the supposed terrorist. It didn’t seem real enough; that a terrorist would just use YouTube? That seemed wrong, somehow. That was on every news station within a few minutes, but the presenters weren’t giving it a chance, not actually listening to what it was saying; like they were telling us, This isn’t a lie, that was the voice of our God. The biggest issue, and nobody was actually talking about it, it felt like, was who was actually right. We all were; none of us were. We didn’t know if it was God, aliens, technology, V’ger… Could have been anything. The Times said that, post-The Broadcast, 92 per cent of British citizens polled believed in the presence of a higher power. But that raised issues in itself, because there was no way that 92 per cent of the British population were Christians. There were Muslims and Hindus and Jews and Buddhists, so who the hell was actually right? The papers were going with the Christian God, and Christianity was the largest religion in the world, so most would be fine with that. But those people who weren’t Christian… Who was to say that they were wrong, that everything they believed was wrong?

My hand wasn’t getting better from where it had hit Bill as he fell. I wondered if there was a broken bone, maybe; the bruise ran right across the back of it. Karen wanted to get me in for X-rays but I told her to not worry about it. We had always agreed to keep her medical opinion out of the marriage; it made her a hypochondriac in some cases, made her shrug off real problems in others. I could still move my fingers so I knew it wasn’t totally ruinous, and it felt better, even as it looked worse. It’ll heal, I told her.

Mei Hsüeh, professional gamer, Shanghai

They started cutting off internet in some countries, trying to – this was the theory – constrain the flow of information. China was one of the first, and most of the people I knew went, but I got my internet from a private pipe, which cost me more, but was worth it – especially then, because everybody else lost all contact to anything that wasn’t government-controlled. So many people disappeared from the servers, but there were enough still going – most of the Americans, the Europeans. (I guess the local servers were emptier, particularly for places like China and Korea, but I didn’t touch those – the people who played on them were so snobby.) I still had mine, because my line came from a company who weren’t government-controlled, which was amazingly lucky, really. They filtered everything, and I picked them because they used proxy servers, hid it all from the government, so I got to stay online. Our guild was down to twelve all of a sudden, which meant we had just enough to do another dungeon, but only barely. It would be close.

Katy Kasher, high school student, Orlando

My Dad was a pilot, flew for Delta a few years back, then after that some smaller airlines, mostly doing shuttles between states, that kind of thing. He was grounded because the airports were all shut, and that made him angry. I think he was trying to forget that I hadn’t heard The Broadcast, whereas it was all Mom would talk about. She was full-on that it was the voice of God, and that because I didn’t hear it, He was testing me. She called up the local priest, and he came right over as soon as he heard why.

Mom told him that she was worried I had the devil in me or whatever, but he said that he was sure God had just decided that I wasn’t ready to hear from Him yet. She’ll hear as soon as she opens her heart to the Lord, he said, even though I was sitting right there with them. She just needs time; everybody will hear His call that wants to. (He didn’t ask if I wanted to, but I believed in God, so yeah, sure I wanted to, of course I did.) Mom then asked if there were others he had heard about, like me. (I think she wanted to lure us all into a Hot Topic and lock the doors or something.) He said that I was it, which made her look so sad. The priest kept smiling at me, which was a, pretty creepy, and b, made me keep thinking of that bit in the Exorcist remake from a couple of years back, where he talks to the girl and is all The Power Of Christ Compels You.

Dhruv Rawat, doctor, Bankipore

Later that afternoon, after I had watched the news about the missiles, I went to find Adele, because I wanted to apologize. I was not completely sure that it was my fault she was angry – what she had said came out of anger, that much was certain, and I assumed that it was because she was here and her family was there, and she was alone here (apart from her crew, who were as much strangers as anybody else, and me, who… We were still strangers. I didn’t even know her entire name). So it made sense that she was angry. In those situations, I always liked to apologize first; it showed strength of character. I went to the hotel and asked for her room number, because I didn’t know it, and they called her on the telephone, but she wasn’t there, or she didn’t answer. Can you tell me her room? I asked. I need to speak to her, and you’ll be closed maybe by the time she returns. I knew the girl on the reception desk – she was a cousin of one of my old friends, though he had left and moved to Malaysia, and I don’t think she remembered me from the time we had met – and I gave her my best smile. Sure, she said. She wrote the number down on a piece of paper. I went straight upstairs, tried knocking on the door, but there was no answer, so I went and sat with the newspaper – I wanted to read everything about the rest of the world, because it was so easy to forget when nobody was worried about it – and I watched on the news about America’s actions, which they were treating as the start of World War 3, accusing everybody of everything. I waited all night, and then I knocked on her door again, when she would have been going to bed, so surely would have been in, but there was no answer.

In the middle of the night I had a telephone call; it was Adele. She was crying, and drunk, I think. How can you be so laid back about this? How is this not just tearing you apart? All of you, you’re so fucking desperate, and yet this, you just let it be, as if it doesn’t even matter to you? Why don’t you even care? I told her, I do care, of course I care; it’s just, if this is all a plan of – you would say God – then we should just wait and see what it means to us all. Worrying about it means nothing, don’t you agree? She was absolutely silent. I’m so sorry for earlier, I said, for what I said. I should have been more understanding. And for this, I’m sorry: you shouldn’t have to be alone through all of this. What do you mean? she asked. I don’t understand what you mean. I mean, all I am saying is that if you don’t want to be alone, you don’t have to be. I think that’s why none of us are as scared as you are, maybe; because we’re never alone. I don’t know what you’re saying, Adele told me, and she hung up the telephone. I tried to call her back again, but there was no answer, so I went to her room for the third time that day, knocked on the door. Adele, I said, it’s Dhruv, please let me in. I want to explain. This has all turned out differently than I wanted.

She didn’t open the door. I went back to my room, turned off the light again, and I watched the telephone in case she called me back and wanted to accept my apology (for something that I did not do wrong in the first place).