The Testimony. James Smythe
a student in another department – as he fell. It was awful. I asked a girl there why he did it, and she said, I don’t know, he just kept saying, Sorry, sorry, apologizing for something, and then he jumped. They call it jumping; it’s not jumping, not when you just step off like that.
We all took that badly, but Patrice dealt with it the worst. He was already looking a bit ill before it happened, and then he just started crying. Oh my God, he kept saying, so we got David to watch him, check he was alright (David was huge, built like Andre the Giant or something, so we knew Patrice would be alright if he went off on one), and we tried to get back on with the work. I was so drunk by then it was pointless, and we pretty much went back and passed out, I think.
Meredith Lieberstein, retiree, New York City
The first suicide that I saw about was on the news, mentioned not because it was noteworthy, but because it happened just out of shot in Times Square. The reporter was conducting interviews in the crowd – and most of the mob at that point was religious, most of them there because it was a way of congregating, as people tended to do at times of stress, I suppose – and it was like New Year’s Eve, only without that horrible cheap glitter-ball; then somebody off-camera screamed, and the camera flipped just in time to catch the body hit the pavement. The reporter kept saying, Oh, oh, oh, shocked, so Leonard muted it. As if we need to hear that, he said.
Ten minutes later, he read on the internet that it might not have been a one-off case, and then, over the next hour, hundreds of reports started coming in that other people had followed suit. It wasn’t coincidental; it was a fact of circumstance. People had found proof for something that they either wanted or didn’t want, and they acted on it in a way that they thought was appropriate. Apparently a lot of inmates killed themselves, thinking that they had no chance for retribution. That was strange, because they should have waited, to see if there were going to be any more messages; stranger still, though, were the people who killed themselves because they were happy that God spoke to them. Leonard found somebody’s blog where they had left a post saying, essentially, I’m going to be with Our Father! Because, if there’s a God, there must be a Heaven, and if there’s a Heaven, it must be a better place.
Only, that wasn’t like anything that we knew, of course. We didn’t know anything. We knew that we all heard the words My Children in our heads, and whilst some of us might have chosen to believe that it was God speaking to us, we didn’t have any proof. And with the ones trying to avoid, I don’t know, The Rapture, maybe, it must have just been a catalyst. Guilt can make you do funny things; with those people, it set them unravelling.
Elijah Said, prisoner on Death Row, Chicago
The Broadcast invaded my dreams. In my dream-state I was a child, back with my mother, my father, but knowing then what I know now: how she would die, the man that he would become, the purpose he would feel in his heart, watched over by a loving God that he did not yet know existed. My father played with me in the street, throwing a baseball that looked like the moon; he promised me the world. I told him to not lie to me; and then I heard the voice. It creaked in as part of my father’s speech, at first: My Children, he said to me, and I was ready to protest, to say that I was their only child, unless – are there more secrets? Then I realized that I was awake, that I was on my cot, as always. I got out of bed, dressed myself, ignored the rest of the prisoners. What was their time? Mine was limited. Let us out, some of them shouted, we’re innocent. None of us were innocent, not on this corridor. You did not get to the corridor by being innocent.
What d’you reckon? Finkler stuck his hands through the bars of my cell, reaching across from his, flapping his hand like a flag alerting me to his presence. I mean, holy crow, he said, how in the hell did we all hear that? You think it was God? He seemed almost completely unaware of who I was, how little I related to him. He would snort through my prayers, when he bothered to hear them, and yet here he was, hand of friendship extended. Sounded like God, he said. I did not reply. I would ignore him, and he would retreat. He carried on talking: If it was God, do you think He’ll forgive us? I’ve never contemplated that part, you know? That we’re here, and we were going to die, sure, but I always assumed there was nothing after, nothing at all, just blackness, you know? I’m sure that I heard him smirk at that, a private joke, however unintentional. I was a rarity on the corridor, a prisoner that they couldn’t pigeonhole. I had education, which so many here did not; the crime I was here for wasn’t thoughtless, or without reason and logic. I was the spearhead of a sacrifice, which many did not try to understand, or did not care to. They saw me as just another man of colour, a brute, a thug: they offered me drugs, or expected that I had access to them; they assumed that I was willing to fight them, which I was, but not on their whims. Finkler persisted. I mean, sheesh, God! Wonder if He spoke to everybody or just us guys? Maybe He’s been on our side all along; maybe He knows I’m innocent. Finkler had killed six women over a twenty-year period: they caught him burying the seventh alive. His guilt was without question.
The alarms rang out, even in the corridor, where we were completely locked down. When our cells opened it was at the behest of armed guards, guns pointed at us. Those who are lost have nothing to lose, the governor said of us. The alarms seemed louder than we had ever heard them. Somebody’s kicking up a fuss, Finkler said, must have made a break for it. Or they’re fighting. I didn’t try to see. I sat on my cot and prayed, again, that I might see some way through this. Shit, Finkler said – and what I wouldn’t have given for him to shut his mouth – maybe they’ll stay our sentences, because, you know, God’s here! They won’t stay our sentences, I said to him, breaking my silence. Our sentences are not just in this world. Oh, sure, he said, but, you know, I’d rather face that one in forty years, when it’s actually my time. He fell quiet. In another life, I would have ended Finkler’s life in a heartbeat. Here, now, he sounded sad, the tragically hopeful murderer, rapist. He pleaded for pity and forgiveness, because his crime was thoughtless, driven by lust and desire, not the betterment of his people. He and I were nothing alike.
Mei Hsüeh, professional gamer, Shanghai
I was Teolis, my Dark Elf Necromancer (level 83, about two years’ worth of playtime), and the first dungeon we were hitting was in the Northern Lands. So, we dressed for snow – they rolled that out in the last update, having to adapt your armour for the environment – and I travelled up there on Hector, my winged horse. I gave Te’lest a ride. He was our guild’s best tank, a huge Orc, built to withstand whatever punishment could be thrown at him. We were trying to assemble the guild together, because we’d arranged the time a few days before, but most of them weren’t online. Fifteen out of thirty were offline, so we said we would wait. There’s a goblin newsreader in the Northern Lands who reads real-world stories out like he’s a town crier, and he was saying about the riots. He was the first person I remember seeing using the words The Broadcast, and at first I didn’t even know it wasn’t an in-game thing, and then I saw other people using it – this troll was trying to find somebody with the skills to carve it into his hammer, and another guy was making armour with it printed on the back – and I realized it was outside as well. I thought about logging off, and then all fifteen arrived, which was enough to do the first dungeon, easy, so we rolled off, and I forgot about it for a while.
Phil Gossard, sales executive, London
Karen and Jess got home ridiculously late because the roads, Karen said, were at a standstill with people parking outside churches. Not at the side of the road, either, she said, but right there in the middle of the road, if that was all they could find. You should have just ploughed through them, I said, show them who’s really boss. I didn’t mean that; it was a thoughtless thing to say. We stayed up and watched TV all night, and I tried to explain to Jess what The Broadcast could be if it wasn’t God. All her friends said that it was. She went to a church-affiliated school, and that was all they were talking about. Eventually I said that she had to go to bed, and that caused a tantrum, but she had school the next day. Can’t I stay home?