The Testimony

PUSH THE SLATE

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

People become ridiculous. Stress makes sense depart, makes the average man act in crazy ways. Rumours started wildly spinning out of control about what was going on in the hospitals, and the crowds in the streets, still clinging onto their protests even when they meant nothing, when they would impact nothing, they started listening. The only thing more dangerous than a crowd out for blood is one that’s fearing for their own life.

I was woken up by one of the security guys in my detail, telling me that I had to get out of the building. I had slept in the Lincoln Bedroom, because my eyes had been going, and I knew that I was slower than I should have been. Livvy told me to come home, when I called her, and I said that I couldn’t, but I promised to sleep, at the very least. Three hours I managed, and then they dragged me out of bed, told me to throw some clothes on, led me to the basement. There’s been a threat on the White House, they told me, and that was normal – it was the highest-profile target in America, and we received an average of three threats a week – but it hadn’t come from terrorists this time. There’s a group outside, and they’re at the gates. We’ve got the police out there, but there’s a lot of them. I didn’t see it until we got to the safe-house, in Georgetown, and I finally managed to get to a TV, but they weren’t joking about the numbers. The crowd was swollen, covering every bit of land they could, swarming the estate. They had pushed down the fence, and they were at the door, smashing the windows. The National Guard were on their way, or there already, but there were so many people in the crowd there was no way that this would end quietly.

The point of the safe-house was that nobody would know we were there, so the cars were sent away as soon as they dropped us off. The entire block was houses full of agents, so we were safe, we knew that much. POTUS and the First Lady were already in the house, already watching the footage. Was I really that bad a President? he asked, and I shook my head. (He was using the past tense then, and I knew he was going to quit after it was all over, whatever happened.) You were in a shitty situation, I told him, and you did what you had to do. In time, they’ll remember that you protected them. I opened this, though, he said, I attacked them, and they retaliated, and now people are dying, and I am going to go to hell for what I did. He had been drinking pretty heavily. The First Lady was wringing her hands; I suggested that she went to check on their kid, and she got the hint. Look, I said to POTUS when we were alone, you did what was right. There’s no shame in that. He was crying. I never believed in Him, he said, and then He turns up and everything ended up ruined. It took all of this, and Him leaving, before I realized that He was here all along, and that when I die, I won’t be able to explain myself to Him, to explain that I was doing what was right. He’s gone, Drew, and look at the mess I’ve made. You believe in Him now? I asked, and that made him cry harder. How can you not? he said. Just look at the evidence. Then he laughed at that, like it was a joke. But, you can’t, he said, because there isn’t any evidence, not a bit, not even a little bit. It’s all about plausible deniability, right? That set him off laughing again, and then crying. I should sleep, he said, because this is all on me, now, right? All this shit is just all on me?

I let him go to his wife, and they cried together, and then they went to bed. Security posted themselves outside their bedroom door; I sat downstairs and watched the news and drank Kool-aid that somebody had made and put in the fridge, told one of the security guys to go and get me a bottle of scotch. He came back, I drank most of it, I passed out with the footage of the protestors climbing in through the White House windows still playing. I didn’t wake up for a while, until I heard POTUS leaving his room, telling the man on his door he needed the bathroom. I heard him pat across the hallways, shut the bathroom door, and then went back to sleep. Next thing I knew I could hear the secret service guy beating on the door, shouting for him to open it, and then I heard the First Lady in the hallway. What’s wrong? she asked, and then she shouted through the bathroom door. I got to the bottom of the stairs, told them to break it down, so they did, one kick to the handle. He was sitting on the toilet. Fucking inglorious way to be found. He’s dead, the First Lady screamed, Oh my God, he’s dead! I ran up myself, checked his body, and he was, cold and pale, his eyes open, slumped forward. I called Meany, who spoke before I could tell him what had happened. Sir, the results have come back from bodies, he said, and there wasn’t anything in their systems. They died of illnesses, cancer, or pneumonia, or internal bleeding, or heart attacks. Heart attacks? I asked, and he said, Yeah, a few of them, their hearts just gave up. There’s nothing odd about any of this, apart from how many of them there are. You’re going to have another one coming to you in the next few minutes, I said, and it’ll be an urgent one. Why? Who died? he asked.

Tom Gibson, news anchor, New York City

Brubaker called us personally, which was odd, but we assumed it was an update on the riot. The White House was on fire, and the crews had only just turned up. We assumed that he wasn’t there any more, so we were expecting an update on their safety, information about where they were, a statement, maybe. My producer took the call, hit me to get my attention as he listened, scribbled in the air for me to give him a pen. He wrote on his briefing sheet as he listened, big letters. POTUS dead approx. 4:40AM, VP inducted later this morning. I ran to the production office, told them to stop everything. Push the slate, I said; the President’s dead.

Ed Meany, research and development scientist, Virginia

It’s the strangest feeling in the world, seeing the most powerful man you would ever know reduced to skin, under green sheets as he waits for you to supervise opening him up, peeking around inside him, seeing what stopped making him tick.

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

Ed Meany, research and development scientist, Virginia, called me three hours later to tell me that POTUS had a heart attack. There was some clotting around the arteries, he said, and so much adrenaline in his system. He just pushed himself too far. Same as the other heart attacks you’ve seen? I asked, and he said, No. I mean, some, sure, but one of them was an arrhythmia, a long-term problem, another was some sort of rupture in the walls. Find something that links them all together, I said, and he laughed, under his breath. Maybe it’s like they’ve been saying on the TV, he said: these people only got ill when The Broadcast said Goodbye, right? So maybe it’s that. We’ll find out what it is, he said, to reassure me, I guess. If there’s something in the air causing this, we can prove it, and then we can cure it. He didn’t sound convinced, but I didn’t push him.

Mei Hsüeh, professional gamer, Shanghai

It was the first suspicious death of an American President since the internet started, and it was barely noticed by the majority of people, because they all had other things going on. It came over the in-game chat as we hit the fifth stage of the fight against Droggs. He was in his second form: the elemental. I didn’t even look away from the screen.

Dafni Haza, political speechwriter, Tel Aviv

When they announced that the American President was dead, I called the Prime Minister again, using my clearance, which still worked, somehow. I think maybe they hadn’t had the time to update the protocols, or they didn’t care. She’s not here, I was told, she’s not in her office. Will she be back? Is there a number I can call her on? She’s not in the city, I was told, and you shouldn’t be either. That’s all the voice on the end of the phone said. What does that mean? I asked, but I think they had already hung up.

Mark Kirkman, unemployed, Boston

I had breakfast in my room, on a tray, because we – myself and the Jessops – had been told by the hotel that we were being kicked out. I hadn’t packed, and I was throwing my things into my bag when I put the TV on, saw that they were already inducting the new guy. He made a speech, subtle and delicately written, that effectively laid the blame for everything on his predecessor’s shoulders, and yet opened the door for further aggressive tactics. We all knew he was – for want of a better word – a warmonger. The President’s death, leaving America in a war-time situation? It just gave the Vice President an excuse. We started this with blood on their hands, he said, and we’ll end it the same way. This, that we will do, is right. They went to questions from the press, and the first journalist to stand up asked whether the President’s death was related to the epidemic – her word – of deaths around the rest of the world. He dealt with the question well – We don’t yet know the cause of any of those deaths, let alone the President’s, though I’m sure we’ll have the answer in due time, because our best men are working on it – and then fielded other, less interesting questions. When it was all done, flashes still blinking at the now-empty stage, they cut back to the studio, where that prick newsreader read numbers out from a sheet of paper. Three million, he said, and let it hang there before repeating it. Three million. That’s the estimated number of sick or dead people in our nation’s hospitals, as reported over the last twenty-four hours by our wonderful emergency servicemen and women. Three million. Over the rest of the world? Millions more.

Jacques Pasceau, linguistics expert, Marseilles

Audrey woke me up with coffee and juice and breads, though I wasn’t going to eat them. My mouth was full of blood when I woke up, my pillow smeared with a patch of the stuff where my face had been. It was dried around my lips. I ran my tongue across the hole and felt how angry it was, but I didn’t say anything to her about it. They’re talking on the news about the epidemic, she said, how bad it’s got. The President of America is dead! It’s crazy, eh? Sure, I said. She bounced onto the end of the bed like it was Christmas. Some people think it’s because God has gone, and they think we should all pray to Him to come back. What do you think? I think, I said, it’s fucking crazy. He never left because He never existed in the first place, so you’re wasting your time, hoping that He will come back, somehow make everything better. It’s worth looking into, at least, she said, and I reminded her that we were linguists, not theologians. You think this is important, I told her, you talk to somebody who might actually care about it, yeah?

Audrey Clave, linguistics postgraduate student, Marseilles

Jacques was being a prick, telling me that I was stupid, that my opinions meant nothing. He barely spoke to me all day after that; he was such a fucking child, sometimes.

Mei Hsüeh, professional gamer, Shanghai

I died trying to get Droggs to leave his pit, which was the penultimate step of the battle, and I was getting another drink from the fridge when I heard the sirens outside, in the courtyard. I looked out the window and saw the firemen taking bodies down the stairs, five or six of them, all wrapped up in their own sheets. I went Away From Keyboard for a few minutes, watched them from the balcony. On the balcony above, I heard Mr Ts’ao moaning about his throat and his back. I went back online, where the rest of the guild were luring Droggs out with flame-bait. Seemed to be working.

María Marcos Callas, housewife, Barcelona

Since He left, we all got ill. We knew, of course, what that meant; that we needed His light to hold us together. We were created by His hand, so it only made sense that when we were out from His touch, we might suffer. The scientists on the television admitted it themselves; they found no evidence, no proof of the alleged terrorist’s attack, so they were being forced to look to other avenues themselves. When in doubt of the truth, there He is, to show you the way.

Myself and the other people of my church decided that we were going to start having vigils to Him, in His glory, holding ourselves accountable for forcing Him to leave. Somebody has to be accountable, I told them all in an email, so we should step up on behalf of humanity and beg Him for forgiveness, that we might bathe in His almighty light. We sat in our church and we prayed, and all around the globe, hundreds of millions of followers did the same, and we prayed that He would return to us, heal us all, make us whole again. Over time, more and more of us got ill in the church, and occasionally, we lost one of the followers; but we stayed staunch and strong, the believers, we faithful, lucky few.

Benedict Tabu Tshisekedi, militia, Democratic Republic of Congo

We didn’t see Father Saul after the last Broadcast, because he disappeared somewhere, only coming back hours and hours later, after the white man that he shot had died during the night. We crowded around him and asked him what it meant, that our God had said goodbye to us, and he said that he didn’t know. It means… God has a plan for each of us, he said, which was something he always used to say when we were younger, and when we did not know that it meant he did not know the answer. He went and spoke to the American for a while, and then came back and looked around for a while, before asking me for my gun. I have to take this, he said – and he knew it was important to me, because it had been my father’s, and was all that I had to remind me of him until he returned – and then he said goodbye to me, and walked off out of the village and down the road. The American told us that he had missionary work to do. He told me to tell you, Remember when he started here? He came from Darfur? Well, now he’s gone somewhere else. I did not believe him, because we heard the gunshot a few minutes later, quiet, in the distance, but nothing else made that noise, and I knew that Father Saul had never shot an animal in his entire life, so it was not him hunting to survive.

Dafni Haza, political speechwriter, Tel Aviv

My work phone rang, and I had been drinking, but I answered. She needed me, finally: finally, I was a part of it again. Why do you enter politics in the first place? It’s to become a leader, a ruler, to dictate policy and meaning and change lives. That’s the goal. This was my chance. Hello, I said, expecting, I don’t know, an apology, maybe. It was a recorded message. All government departments are being issued City Order 17, the voice said, an evacuation warning. Please leave Tel Aviv for a designated safe house. For more information, call this number et cetera. It wasn’t meant for me, or it was an accident, because I still had the phone. I thought about driving into the city, to see the Prime Minister, because I wanted to be there when this went down, and when it picked itself up again afterwards. I didn’t. I got down the road – driving Lev’s car, some stupid American thing he insisted on because he liked big cars, big air-conditioned cars – and then turned around. My mother lived in Haifa. It wasn’t far. I could pick myself up there.

Dominick Volker, drug dealer, Johannesburg

I tried to call for the ambulance as soon as Candy went into labour – she said, Oh shit Dom, it feels like it’s coming, and that was the first we knew about it – but they didn’t answer, of course, because nobody did. So I said, I can take you to the hospital, but she shouted, I don’t think there’s time, this little one is coming now! We knew what to do, sort of. I got towels, because they said that, and she said, It hurts like I’m being stabbed, so I gave her some morphine from the stash, thinking that would help her out. I sat on the floor of the living room – she said, I’m going to ruin this carpet, and I said, I don’t give even half a shit, because this is more important, okay? – and I waited to catch it, telling her to push. It hurts so much, she said, so I gave her more morphine – not enough to hurt her, or the baby, but she shouldn’t have been able to feel a fucking thing – and told her to push again. Don’t remember how long it took, but I could see the baby. Ag fuck, I said, it’s coming! Push! She didn’t, and the baby didn’t make any noise, even when I realized she was quiet and her eyes were rolled back. I grabbed the baby by the head, trying to get his shoulders to pull him out, but he wasn’t moving either, and I couldn’t do a fucking thing. I kept trying for a while, and then I had to stop, because he was bruised around his head, and I remember thinking, now, whatever happened, this wouldn’t be right.

Meredith Lieberstein, retiree, New York City

I was a better sleeper than Leonard, when he had been alive. He always got up for the bathroom in the night, and then he would wake up as soon as it was light, and insist on turning the radio on, doing these exercises that he read about, designed to keep you living longer, keep you healthy. It’s when the air’s at the freshest, he would joke as he did it, and I would gradually wake up myself, by which point he would be done with the lunges and comedic tumbles that he used to signal the end of his act, and we would have breakfast.

That morning, when I woke up, it was to the birds and the light, and I had to switch the radio on myself. I lay there alone, on my side, and I listened to the announcer say that the number of people either dead or dying was rising, the estimates growing. The final numbers would be unfathomable, it seemed. We’re all losing loved ones, he said, losing those that matter the most. He didn’t say anything more, but you could hear it in his voice that he was mourning. He barely played any music at all – only the stuff like ‘Imagine’, sombre classics that barely felt like songs any more – and all I could think was, Leonard would have had such an issue trying to tumble to this.

Peter Johns, biologist, Auckland

Trigger called me out into the back room to show me his cut; the area around it was swollen and white, totally not the colour it should be. What the fuck happened? I asked him, and he shook. I dunno, he said, it was fine and then it just started hurting like a bugger. It wasn’t even like a peck any more. It was red and puckered and bleeding, almost like lips, and he couldn’t move it any more. Fucking hell, I said, we need to get you to a hospital. I’ll be fine, he told me, I’ve just got the bot, that’s all; get me some TCP, I’ll be fine in the morning. (We kept a load of drugs, antiseptics, that sort of thing, on the island for the animals. Nothing major, but sometimes they got infections, and they were treatable by us, so we kept stuff for that. Neither of us was a trained vet, per se – we had visits from them, if they were needed – but we had skills and knowledge, experience.) I helped him put it on the cut and he said, Come on, let’s get on with the day. I went back to check on the Tieke eggs, see how the incubation was working out; the little bugger that snapped at him was sleeping on the side. That’s all they did at first, but it looked healthy. It looks good, I shouted. Trig said that he was going to hose down the cages out the back – they needed cleaning properly every few weeks, washing and disinfecting – so I left him to it, did paperwork. After an hour or something I hadn’t heard a peep so I went back, shouted his name, no reply. I found him by the taps, on the floor, soaking wet, eyes rolled back, like he was having a fit, so I slapped him, tried to get him to focus on me, took his pulse, picked him up, ran him to the boat, but by the time I got the engine started he was already dead.

Phil Gossard, sales executive, London

My hand had been getting better. Karen hadn’t been home in… I don’t know, days, probably; but I had been flexing it more and more, using it. The bruise had turned yellow, moving away from black, and it hurt less to touch. It hadn’t been hurting at all when I didn’t move it, which was a definite improvement; and then I woke up that morning and it was swollen, fingertips to wrist, like a cartoon where somebody had stuck an air hose under my fingernail, and there it was, an inflatable balloon-hand, multicoloured, red and black and yellow. I couldn’t do anything with it, and I was poking it in the light of the kitchen windows when Jess came in, pulled a face. What happened? she asked, and I said, I have no idea. She looked at it closer, stuck her tongue out. Yuck, she said. Are you sick? I don’t know, I said. I feel alright. But I didn’t feel alright; I was sweaty, clammy, in that way you are hours before you come down with something.

I tried to call Karen, to ask her what I should do – it didn’t look bad enough to warrant a hospital, not when there were so many people dying – but nobody at her hospital answered the phone, which wasn’t a surprise, in retrospect.

Hameed Yusuf Ahmed, imam, Leeds

We lay in bed and watched about the hospitals on the television, which Samia had dragged in from the living room so that we could see it. I can’t sleep without knowing what’s happening, she said, which wasn’t true, because she was asleep hours before I was, and there weren’t any answers when she…

She said to me, before she went to sleep, Do you think it’s because of us? Do you think we’re the cause of this? What do you mean? I asked. Well, because we doubt. Do you think God has left us because we doubted Him, or because we, I don’t know, because we believed in the wrong God? She started crying. Do you think we’ve brought this on ourselves? I held her, even though the thought of what she had said made me feel sick to my stomach, and told her that I didn’t think so, that she shouldn’t think such things. That sounds so stupid, even to hear it said aloud, I told her. She went to sleep not long after that, and I lay there and watched them wheeling bodies into hospitals, not knowing that there was no way to save them, or even what was killing them; and I watched Samia sleep from behind, the rise of her shoulders, the way her head barely moved as she breathed. I don’t remember switching the television off; it was off when I woke up, hours later, feeling like I had barely slept at all. I got up first, because I always did, dressed myself, went to the kitchen, boiled water, squeezed lemon into it, drank it. When it was time to leave I thought about waking Samia to come with me, but thought better of it, thought that I should leave her to sleep. I was the only one at the mosque; I did the prayers as normal, because that was my role, even though the room was empty, and it was still dark outside. When I got home I made breakfast, and then went in to wake Samia. I don’t know when she died; if it was before I went or after, seconds after she went to sleep or seconds before I shook her shoulder, kissed her cheek. She wasn’t cold, I think; I’m sure I would remember it if she had been cold.

Simon Dabnall, Member of Parliament, London

Most of us humans have a shy acceptance of our lot in life; sure, there’s always going to be those idiots who cause a mess and run around like they’re on fire, but for the rest of us, we’re human, we accept who we are, we get on with it. Still only days after we first heard The Broadcast, after suicides and violence and looting and riots and wars and protests, it took the threat of death sneaking up on you, just taking you without you having a chance to say or do anything about it, it took that threat to break the human race. I always said that I wanted a natural death, that I didn’t care how it came as long as it was what was meant to happen; that I wanted to just drift off and that was that. Of course, I meant that I wanted to die in my sleep, surrounded by my loved ones. I said many things in my life, but then the reckoning – or whatever – came and I was forced to actually think about them. I realized how much of what I did, what I said, was actually about me. It wasn’t selfish; it was just the way that we, as humans, are.

No, wait. The way that we were.

The Catholics, Christians – the combined religions, believing in a God, not necessarily the one they believed in a week before, but one who had been here and now, suddenly, was gone – were playing out the idea that it wasn’t terrorists responsible for the deaths; that there wasn’t some horrific biological agent, but it was actually a consequence of God’s departure. People started latching onto it. There’s no cure to this mystery terrorist biological agent? We can’t even find it? It can’t be real, they decided. They went through the Bible to find passages about how God’s love keeps us alive, about how His strength saves us. We – the rational – know that the Bible isn’t real; that the hymns that we sang, the prayers that we said, they all meant nothing, written by people in lieu of fictions and poetry, a target to aim our love at.

So you split the opinions of the many into two camps: those who think that the strange things that have been happening are coincidence, and those who think that they’re examples of God’s something. I remember seeing an interview with some atheists around the time of this, and thinking how broken they looked, how utterly useless. The interviewer asked about if they thought that the deaths were linked to The Broadcast, and one of them said, verbatim, How could they not be? This thing is more powerful than anything we’ve ever seen or even thought – how can they not be linked? God is letting everybody die as a way of proving Himself. Proving Himself? asked the interviewer. How can He be proving anything if He’s left us, if people are dying because He’s gone?

He’s proved just how much we need him, stretched His muscles like a preening weightlifter, the atheist said – though, at that point, I don’t think you could call him that any more; he seemed to believe as much as anybody.