by James Smythe
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.
(Outside of it all: I had an apartment, and cupboards full of ramen noodles, which my mother hated, because she said I should eat Chinese noodles, and a fridge full of bottles of Mountain Dew and Red Bull, imported from this shop in the Bund. I had a 3gb fibre-optic line, which was the best I could get in my apartment, but I wanted an upgrade, so was thinking of going wireless, but hadn’t.)
We were mid-raid when we heard the static for the first time, and we didn’t know what to think – we did think it was something in-game, and they had been doing these events, heralding the arrival of the next expansion, and this new enemy, this dragon called The Redeemer – so we just got on after it finished. Some people said it was everywhere, and that was fine, because the dungeons weren’t going to raid themselves.
Dhruv Rawat, doctor, Bankipore
My biggest case that day, I remember, was a man with a swollen foot, so swollen he could barely even walk on it. I pricked it and it was swollen with yellow pus, so I sent him to the hospital, but he told me he wouldn’t go, that he didn’t have the time. Can you not do something for me here? he asked, so I did what I could, drained some of it, wrapped it up, sent him on his way. It’s infected, I told him, you have to take care of it, you have to go to a hospital. Okay, okay, he said, I will. After I saw to him I went back to my hotel, and to the restaurant. Mostly, in those days, I didn’t eat meat, and their menu had more vegetable dishes than most, so it suited me. I was eating my dinner when I heard a woman’s voice; it was the news reporter from before. Hello again, she said, you’re staying here as well, or just eating? No, I said, I’m staying here. I thought you lived here, she said. I do, I told her, but I don’t have a place. It’s a long story. I love it here, she said, which I thought must have been a lie, because there wasn’t very much to love, not really; the mountains, sure, and the cricket club, but she would never have been allowed in there – mostly that was for the richer men from Patna, though they had offered me membership when they heard that I had moved into the area, because they liked doctors. The people are so genuine. She said it with real conviction, and I suddenly had to believe her. I asked her why she was there, what she was filming for, and she told me, but I can’t remember now. I’m Adele, she said, and I introduced myself, and we shook hands over the table. That’s when we heard the static for the second time, and I carried on eating, and she watched me as if that was more interesting than the noise itself.
Elijah Said, prisoner on Death Row, Chicago
Even as everybody else scrabbled around in the mud, searching for the cause of the static, I was reading a letter informing me of the date of my impending death. The letter was delivered at its scheduled time, because all of these things had a schedule: when I would be told; when I would be given my time with friends and family; when I would be led to the chair. Usually, such an envelope brought a hush upon the corridor; the prisoner was led to the imminent room with the counsellor, and that only meant one thing, and the corridor would fall silent. Not so for my envelope, as only seconds after it was handed to me, the static began again. There was no counsellor. My clock remained ticking; I prayed to Allah as I read the date, the words that committed me for my past indiscretions.
Andrew Brubaker, White House Chief of Staff, Washington, DC
POTUS shouted over the static, Find out what the fuck this is, so I called Meany in R and D, even as it was still going on. We were in a car headed back toward Andrews, to get on the flight that we had abandoned only hours before, and the driver turned around instinctively, because he knew that we weren’t going anywhere. We’d had some intel from a source that it was – and I stress, intel is rarely accurate, never 100 per cent accurate, and frequently completely wrong, because it’s spun out of gossip and rumour itself, for the most part – but we’d had intel that it was some sort of weapon. I had that on a piece of paper handed to me as I got into the car, and I was expecting a briefing on it on the plane, so I knew next to nothing. Meany’s name was on the report, so I called him as soon as it started. Tell me this isn’t a weapon, I said, and he said, Sir, listen; this sounds like a warm-up. Bear in mind, I’ve got Meany in one ear, the damn static inside my head, so I’m shouting. It’s not warming up, it’s here, now, because I can hear it. Are you measuring this, taking readings, finding out where the fuck it’s coming from? Yeah, but there’s nothing, sir, he said. We’ve got oscilloscopes and digital audio stuff, and nothing’s getting picked up, but we can all hear it. And it’s happened twice now, so that might indicate that it’s warming up, or that the first time was a warm-up. I don’t know.
None of us knew. In the FBI – I came from the FBI, FBI to secret service desk job to politics, like that was a normal route – there’s a rule about serial killers. First time they kill it’s to see how it felt, or because it was an accident. The second kill was because they found something in the first that they liked, and they wanted to see if they could recreate that feeling, that high. It can still be a coincidence, and it’s not quite a pattern.
I heard POTUS on the phone to the First Lady, checking on her and the kids, and then … We know it wasn’t static now, right? It was that garbled, fragmented noise that you get when you drive out of a tunnel with the car radio on, as it becomes clearer, picks up the signal again. It suddenly went from noise to words. My Children, it said, and then faded back into the static as quickly as it came. Our driver, I forget his name, he looked like he was going to hurl. Pull over, I screamed at him, and he did. The agents in the vehicles flanking us ran from their cars, swarmed ours, and I threw open my door. Get him to the White House, I said, and then I saw POTUS, and he looked absolutely terrified. I’d seen this man face down talks about nuclear disarmament, negotiate peace treaties, win an election, for God’s sake, and he always looked calm. That was how he was going to be remembered, we always said during the campaign: the calm President, the cool one, the collected one.
In the FBI, it was one kill for a mistake, two because they liked it. We used to sit in the offices and pray that a third body never turned up, because if it did … Well, then you’ve got a real problem on your hands.
THE FIRST BROADCAST
Mark Kirkman, unemployed, Boston
I was getting ready to leave the bar – it was still open, daylight outside, or it just hadn’t shut, maybe, because Max was just as interested in watching the TV as the rest of us – when The Broadcast came, the My Children message. I didn’t know about it at first; I noticed that everybody in the bar suddenly went completely silent, and then I saw it on the TV, as the hosts did exactly the same. Can you hear this? one of them asked. Oh my God, can you hear this? Everybody had that same vacant look on their faces, and I was out of the loop again. I still didn’t hear a thing, and then it was over.
Simon Dabnall, Member of Parliament, London
That first day, we changed, as people. I am all too well aware how terribly melodramatic that sounds, but it’s a truth. Whatever it was that spoke to us during that first Broadcast, everybody – or nearly everybody, I always forget about those few that didn’t hear it – but nearly everybody was joined in something common. Regardless of the truth, it joined us for those brief moments that we were listening to it. If there was any doubt in the minds of the religious, that opening gambit, My Children … it was powerful.
I was hanging
around on the South Bank when it happened. It was just starting to rain, and all of a sudden we heard it, and as soon as it finished, there was this cheer, as if we had finally won the World Cup or something, coming from St Paul’s. I couldn’t even begin to head over there, because the streets were so busy, and everybody started rushing that way, as if they were trying to make up for all those years that they spent not praying. I stayed where I was, because I’m rational; because My Children could be the call of any one of billions of parents, not necessarily a deity.
I mean, maybe we’d just tapped into somebody’s angry mother, for a second?
Audrey Clave, linguistics postgraduate student, Marseilles
As soon as we heard the static start up again, I tried to write down every detail that I could hear, that I could pick out from it. I tried to write down the phonetics of the static, you see, to try and see if there was anything in it, running them by Patrice as they came out, to see if he agreed with them. He was off his game, I thought, but he did it, helped me out, and by the time that the voice spoke the page was full of noises and sounds, and then we heard My Children, and I wrote that down as well, and then it ended. We didn’t say anything for ages, not for the longest time, and then I realized that we had the punch line, finally; and maybe the stuff before it, the noises, the static, that was the joke, or the puzzle? I got the team around, said that we had to work on it, but all I really wanted to do was to call my parents (but I knew that they would be at church). It took us a minute or so before somebody remarked that the words were in English. We all understood English perfectly, so I didn’t really notice it, but it was English words that I’d written on the page, and English words that The Broadcast spoke. So then it became, well, why was it in English? Where did it come from?
Jacques Pasceau, linguistics expert, Marseilles
I laughed, and said that if it was English, it clearly wasn’t God, because He would speak in, I don’t know, Aramaic, probably, or something that we didn’t understand. (Or, even better, something that everybody in the whole world understood, their own language, like a magic trick.) Audrey snorted at that, because she wanted to believe that it was God so badly. Maybe it’s because most of the people who pray to Him now speak English? she said. So He chose that language to meet the majority of the people.
The most spoken language is Mandarin, I said, Why didn’t He choose that? Well, maybe He’s not Buddha, Audrey said. Maybe He’s actually our God?
Dominick Volker, drug dealer, Johannesburg
I was in the back of a car being taken to, I don’t know, one of the Jo’burg kêrel houses or other, I forget which. I had been caught taking my money from one of my dealers in Lavender Hill – well out of my usual area, but he had a lot on him, so I had to go down there – and they were taking me off, hoping to pin something on me afterwards. It wouldn’t stick, so I wasn’t worried. There was too much chaos that day for anything to stick.
We passed this group of bergies on the side of the road and the kêrel locks the doors – locks his doors, because all of a sudden he’s afraid! Rough area, this, he says, and I don’t answer. Not talking? You some sort of mompie? No, I tell him, I just don’t want to talk to you, eh? Then he gets a call and pulls over down the road, outside a house, and he comes back two minutes later with this grinning fucking kont, stinking of dagga. This guy laughs as he gets in the back next to me. He does that click thing with his teeth. Fuck’s sake, I say, do I have to sit next to this one? The policeman tells me to shut it, and he starts off again. We’re two minutes down the road – the guy next to me hasn’t stopped smiling the entire time – and then we all start to hear the static again. I thought this was over, the stoner says, and then it gets louder. The guy in front pulls over, stops the engine, and we all just listen, and then we hear it. God. Then the kêrel unlocks his door, gets out, and just walks off, leaving me and this fucking reefer-stinking loser just sitting there, doors locked, right down the road from them fucking bergies. It’s a bloody miracle we made it out alive.
Dhruv Rawat, doctor, Bankipore
It was first thing in the morning, which was my busiest time, because everybody came before they went to work. Lots of the jobs started early and ended earlier, so I was always busy, it seemed. This one day there wasn’t a queue, which was rare, or so it seemed; I never had a chance to actually look outside to see, but there was always somebody at the door as soon as one patient had left, always another waiting to tell me about their illnesses. That morning I had the man with the bad foot back in, and he had put it up on my table. I took care of it, he said, I swear to you, I swear. You didn’t, I said to him, because if you had, you wouldn’t be back here. Did you go to the hospital? I asked. No, he said. The parts where I had cut it, tested it, drained it, they were black around the holes; The flesh has turned necrotic, I told him. What does that mean? It means that you have to have it cut off; not the foot, just the dead flesh, before it spreads. You’ll have to go to the hospital right now; I’ll take you there myself if you can’t walk or drive. No, he said, no, it’s fine. You cut the dead flesh off yourself. I trust you. I told him that I wasn’t equipped, but he insisted, pointing at the scalpel that was in the medical kit on my desk. You can use that, I have a strong pain threshold, I can take it. I had lifted the scalpel, and I was dangling it over his foot – because I knew this man, and I knew that he wouldn’t leave until he was satisfied, or he would leave and he would hobble around on his rotting foot until it was forcibly removed from his body, which would be the eventual outcome – and then The Broadcast happened. I sat there with the scalpel against his skin and listened to it, and he went quiet as well, for a while. When it was done he said, Well? Are you going to cut it off then? I will, I told him, just later. I went out onto the street to see what was going on – because it was inconceivable that it was in my head, no matter what it felt like – and it was … It was like a fly, buzzing around. Everybody was looking around for it, looking up in the sky to see if there would be something there to give them answers.
Isabella Dulli, nun, Vatican City
After the static, because they didn’t know what it was, they stopped the tourists from going into the Basilica, and certainly from going down into the tomb. It is so fragile; they only let 200 people in every month, that is why it gets so busy, why the tourists are so desperate to see it when we do let them, why they queue all night, sometimes, travel from hundreds of miles away. The tour guides took them away from the queue, told them to head up to the square, that they would have to come back. Most of them said it was fine; some of them complained. There’s no way you can come in, because it might be unstable. Then, we didn’t know if it was just from the building, or the electrics. I went down into the Basilica anyway, because I had been looking forward to it for days. It smelled so old, still, even with all the cleaning that they did, for preservation. It smelled of stone and dust, and there were very few places I loved more in the world, partly because of that very smell. I went down into the darkness – because the lights are so dim, it is always dark in the tomb, and there are always guides, because the ground is still unstable, like a building site in so many ways – and I knelt in front of the tomb itself to pray to the father of our church. I wasn’t praying for anything at all; only praying as I always did, out of love. Then I heard it, His voice, so strong through the darkness, but not the darkness of the tomb, the darkness of my heart, of the world; it was not frightening, or threatening. It was just all that I could hear. I thought of all of the faithful written about through history who He spoke to, His voice so strong; and I thought, and me. I was joining those whom He loved the most, who He was so close to as to spread His word directly, to fortify belief and to set His awe in the minds of His people. I cried in the darkness; my tears patted the stone of the tomb, and I was so happy right then, knowing that this was the happiest moment of my life; everything built up to that, and I would never be alone again. It was me and my God, and we were together.
Tom Gibson, news anchor
, New York City
As senior anchor I had certain privileges. I got to pull rank on shifts, and as mine came to an end, after a very long day, My Children hit, and I decided that I wasn’t going anywhere. As soon as we heard what The Broadcast was saying, I knew that this could be the biggest news story of all time.
Meredith Lieberstein, retiree, New York City
The priests on the news after that first Broadcast looked so smug. There is nothing worse than a smug priest, Leonard said. He got so angry with one of them – I told you so, I said this was the case, the priest kept saying to the reporter; This is the Lord come back to speak to us – that he threw a tangerine at the television. It split all over the screen, burst like a water bomb. He cleaned it down – his temper never lasted for more than a single, regrettable second – but the apartment smelt of it all day, of that sharp citrus smell. It’s nice when it comes from a scented air freshener; it’s horrid to live with it all day when it’s not, so sweet and bitter and real.