The Testimony

The Testimony
James Smythe

A global thriller presenting an apocalyptic vision of a world on the brink of despair and destruction.

What would you do if the world was brought to a standstill? If you heard deafening static followed by the words, ‘My children. Do not be afraid’?

Would you turn to God? Subscribe to the conspiracy theories? Or put your faith in science and a rational explanation?

The lives of all twenty-six people in this account are affected by the message. Most because they heard it. Some because they didn’t.

The Testimony – a gripping story of the world brought to its knees and of its people, confused and afraid.

JAMES SMYTHE

The Testimony

Copyright (#ulink_26f9d88f-ad92-50f7-b852-96a4c3447281)

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by Blue Door 2013

Copyright © James Smythe 2013

Cover photograph© Laura Pannack/Gallery Stock

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013

James Smythe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

2

Source ISBN: 9780007427901

Ebook Edition © November 2013 ISBN: 9780007427918

Version 3: 2017-05-24

Praise for The Testimony: (#ulink_252425e9-85bc-5644-86bd-f8a6a6352496)

‘[An] utterly gripping and highly original debut novel … a tour de force of virtuoso writing that explodes off the page’

Daily Mail

‘As if Philip K Dick and David Mitchell had collaborated on an episode of The West Wing … unsettling, gripping and hugely thought-provoking’

FHM

‘A fiercely-imagined dystopia of the near future. Intelligent, visionary and compulsively readable’ Alex Preston, author of

The Revelations

‘A literary post-apocalyptic novel built around a clever conceit’

Guardian

‘[A] high-impact, big-concept, apocalyptic thriller’

Daily Mirror

Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence.

Dr Carl Sagan

(on the potential existence of a deity, or extraterrestrial life)

Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence.

Donald Rumsfeld

(on the potential existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq)

Table of Contents

Cover (#ub5cdba21-8d9d-5ddd-a502-3439ee09e848)

Title Page (#u2a1b5cb7-a1b0-569d-b2ca-cbb42c98d916)

Copyright (#u9a4ff510-bf12-54ce-bdfd-66984f127075)

Praise for The Testimony (#u8eaaa943-8c37-5c45-932c-c5fe2daa67f8)

Epigraph (#uf1a042de-9ef2-5f09-97c5-044b3ce8f74c)

Static (#ua17004ac-7855-5739-b91f-118331bd30ad)

We’re Having Problems (#u8941b59e-1ce9-5ed5-8c13-12825f63cba8)