The Testimony

by James Smythe

  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 calle
d 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).

  THINGS FALLING APART

  Simon Dabnall, Member of Parliament, London

  Petty bureaucracy reigned. The Deputy PM, elevated to power by virtue of resignation, decided that we needed to address the situation with the US, with where we stood. We haven’t been attacked, he said, and we don’t know all the facts. It was casual government at its finest, as he danced around and tried to be as non-committal as possible, but the message was clear: we weren’t going to help them. Frankly, I was relieved, because the Americans were getting into it so quickly that I didn’t know how long it would be before they were ankle deep with no way out. Usually these things – the process of terrorist attacks, of threats of retaliation, of that actually escalating to action – they took weeks. This time it could be counted in hours, and that put us all in a very dangerous situation indeed. There’s a real worry that we’ll actually manage to hold the country together in all this chaos, the Deputy PM said, so there’s no point in shitting in the bed just because we don’t want to go to sleep. (Some of the back-benchers laughed at that like naughty school-children, which only served to remind me, once again, how old I was.) We spoke about it, but there was a consensus: America was, for the time being, on their own with this one.

  And then there was the matter of the Church of England to deal with. Before The Broadcast, of course, Church and State were constitutionally separated (unless something required them to be curiously conjoined, in which case we treated them as one and the same). But in this case they were very much kept in their own paddocks. People spoke about the potential God being Christian, but what they really meant was that he was Catholic, or some derivation thereof. The C of E, for all its faults, was in a bit of a pickle. If it was God and he was the Catholic chap, their main source of funding – being the people of England and her provinces – was in serious danger of disappearing. Why invest in a company that’s failing, where the product has been proven faulty and the CEO was only invented 600 years ago to help clear up a messy divorce?

  I cried out of an afternoon sitting listening to archbishops selling their stock in favour of lunch, by myself, from the McDonald’s down by the Thames, a guilty pleasure of mine that I never tired of, and I had just noticed that the Wheel wasn’t turning when my telephone rang. It was Waitrose in Putney; my sister was there, collapsed at the till. She’s drunk, the man said, and I think she’s had an accident. He said that last part quietly, hushed. I didn’t know what he expected me to do about that; he was the one surrounded by shelves full of cleaning products.

  By the time I arrived Dotty was propped up on a chair at the side, under the telephone station. Come on old girl, I said, and that set her off crying. She wept the whole cab ride back, and I had to give the driver extra money to stop him worrying about her throwing up on his seats. He kept staring at us in the mirror, though, which I hate. When we got back I put her to bed, but she wouldn’t stay lying down. What the hell is the matter with you? I asked her, and she said, I just can’t deal with it, Sim. What? With this, she said, with it. She waved her hands above her head, then opened the top of her shirt to show me a crucifix on a gold chain, one of those overly detailed ones with the miniature body of Christ, tiny nails through His hands, tiny crown of thorns on His head. Lovely detailing. I never knew that He was real, she said, and she pulled the cross off her neck. I’ve done such things, so many things that He said we shouldn’t do. I didn’t dare ask any more, so I put her to bed again, told her I’d be back.

  I phoned Clive from the living room. Clive was her husband, and I wanted to know why on earth he wasn’t called, or if he had been called, why he didn’t get out to help her. He said that he didn’t have a clue that she was there. I thought she was at home all day, he said. Well, I told him, you really should come back here, because she’s a danger to herself like this. She needs to be looked after. He asked me to wait for him, so I said that I would. It took him nearly two hours to get back, even though he only worked in Hammersmith, only across the bridge, and when he walked in he absolutely stank of whisky.

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

  I was doing a conference, detailing the strikes we had made, talking about the fact that we were certain of a swift end to the conflict. I said something like, When the terror cells and the nations involved in harbouring the criminals involved come to their senses, see the opposition facing them, we’re confident that this will all be over swiftly; and the reporter from The Times piped up, interrupted – which wasn’t done, not in the press room, not during a statement – and asked me why we were even at war. We were attacked, our freedom was attacked, I said, and he said, Sure, but by what we can only assume are religious zealots. Why did the US retaliate against Iran? This guy thought he had something, and I wanted to prove to him that he didn’t, so I answered. The government of Iran refused to hand over the criminals responsible when we requested them, and we had warned them that if they didn’t, we would be forced to retaliate, and then we did. Yeah, and I understand that, he said, but did you have evidence that the government even had the criminals? Did you have actual proof? Because we’ve been doing this with Iran for years now, haven’t we? Assuming things? Was this just another case of the US government jumping to conclusions? I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t have an answer. He continued: Because, the terrorists, they were probably just jumping to conclusions as well, after The Broadcast. They probably just panicked, just scared that their entire belief system might be crumbling. It’s not totally unfair to think it could have been some sort of attack on them, right?

  That was where I chose to end the press conference, because he was right. He was completely right, but we were too fa
r gone for that sort of logic. As soon as I was out of the room I heard that the British had decided to refuse our call for solidarity, and that we were having issues with other members of the UN, countries who didn’t agree with our decision to jump in as quickly as we did. I prayed to whatever it was that spoke to us then that Iran didn’t fight back any more, that they gave us the terrorists, and that we could just end it all as quickly as it started.

  Meredith Lieberstein, retiree, New York City

  Leonard was so angry when the news started showing the British Deputy Prime Minister – apparently they were having some trouble with the real one, disappeared somewhere, the newsreaders said – when they showed him saying that the UK didn’t support our President’s decision to attack Iran. Leonard was so, so angry. I can’t believe that we asked for their help, he shouted, this situation shouldn’t have even existed! How dare we beg other people to get into this mess with us!

  New York was different to the rest of the US anyway, because we have a thing about terrorism. We band together in times of national stress; it’s what makes us unique, and that always appealed to Leonard, that New Yorkers had this built-in sense of a sort of protective morality. They’ll all know this is wrong, he said to me. I should organize something to show the government what we think of them. We were all too aware of the protests – which had turned to riots across the globe, as the situation in Moscow had shown – but Leonard wanted to make this one different. He went onto his blog – he kept a political blog, which I gather quite a few people used to read – and he started planning. As far as I was concerned it was a good project for him, something to keep him busy.