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Statement of Karina Almon, regarding her missing brother and his technophobia. Original statement given February 4th, 2000. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute.
Statement begins.
I don’t exactly know why I’m here. I know there’s no point. I guess – well, I guess I still have a little bit of hope, as stupid as that probably sounds. But no need to preface, I suppose. Might as well just start somewhere. You know how a lot of people were nervous about the end of the world, or at least the end of tech in December with Y2K and all that? Well, I knew it was a load of crap right from the beginning. The people who build and program computers are smart, and the computers are smart, so I had absolute faith in them. But my brother… well, he’s a couple years older than me and he’s always been a bit of a luddite. He was honestly terrified at the notion of planes falling from the sky and mass power outages and the like. Even though I’m younger, I’ve always tried to look out for him a bit when I could, especially because he refuses to do things like get an email or a cell phone, for god’s sake.
I wasn’t seriously concerned about him until I saw him for brunch in November. We are pretty close, have been since our mum died, and we try to keep in touch as often as we can. He’s been divorced for a year and I know he’s pretty lonely, so I try to reassure him that I’m not going anywhere. Anyway, we were standing inside at a bakery and I was rattling on about my work. I’m a freelance writer. You’ve probably read some of my stuff and haven’t even known it. Used to ghost write some short stories and help edit columns and the like, but that doesn’t really pertain to this, I guess. He seemed unusually tense. He’s a bit of an introvert if you hadn’t assumed so already, and he doesn’t do the best in crowds, but it wasn’t that busy when we were there. It was 11 am on a Saturday, so the early birds were long gone and there wasn’t likely to be a large lunchtime rush at a place like that. I tried to ask him what was wrong, but he just shook his head, his eyes darting around a bit. We bought our food and he was putting his change back in his wallet when someone in the kitchen turned the radio on and he jumped. He dropped his change and apologized as he went to pick it up, his hands shaking slightly.
I rather forcefully convinced him to take a seat at a table in the corner, and asked him to come clean with me. I was getting concerned that he had started taking drugs or something, but he assured me that it was nothing of the sort. I waited patiently for him to nibble away at his danish, finishing my own long before he had made a sizable dent in his own. He realized that he was testing my patience, and finally decided to speak. He looked guilty as he described that he hadn’t really been trying to use the old computer I had gotten him for his birthday the year before, but I knew he hadn’t and it wasn’t really a problem to me, as much as it was my wallet, but that’s what I got for trying to motivate him to use something he didn’t trust. It wasn’t as if it was a state of the art product anyway. I had gotten it secondhand, and the guy I bought it from had been an overly chipper gentleman who said he was looking for an upgrade, something to christen in the new age.
Apparently, though, the thing had been giving Kamal – my brother – some trouble recently. I asked if he wanted me to come over and show him how to use it again, how to use the internet and everything, but he politely refused and told me it was evil. I blinked at that. How on earth could a piece of machinery be evil? I asked him this, and he darted his eyes around the shop conspiratorially. He confided that it had started turning on at random times and doing things. I asked him to give me an example. He said occasionally rows of numbers would flash across the screen, sometimes it would play music or emit high pitched sounds, and sometimes it would play videos. I furrowed my brows and asked him to clarify. He said that if he were watching television, the thing tended to mirror whatever he was watching. If he listened to the radio, it would mimic the music back in distorted ways. It was making him uncomfortable, he said, and he wondered if I would be okay taking it back.
At this point I was rather fed up with him and his persistence, so I said no, and if it continued to give him trouble he should just unplug it. He looked at his hands for a moment before admitting that he already had. Now he was just speaking nonsense. I told him it was impossible for it to be doing anything if it weren’t plugged in to a power supply, but he just shook his head at me and stood by his unshakable belief that his computer was evil. Eventually we moved on to other topics, how his work was going, shows we both watched, and he did seem to relax just a bit. But I was still worried about him when we parted, and I decided I’d pay him a visit soon to check in on him and his cursed computer.
After a couple weeks without hearing from him, I decided to give him a call. He didn’t respond, but that wasn’t so strange. I tried the next day, twice, and he still didn’t pick up. I told myself I was being crazy, but I couldn’t help but be worried about him. It wasn’t like him to ignore the phone. I wasn’t doing anything that afternoon except getting groceries, so I decided to stop by his house before doing so to check in on him. The lights were all off when I arrived, even though it was too dim to be enjoying any natural light. I would’ve wondered if he was home if it weren’t for his car still being parked in the driveway. I approached the door and rang the doorbell. I didn’t hear any movement from inside for a moment, so I rang it again and called out his name. I was starting to worry, though I also knew he could just be taking a nap. Thankfully the door opened before I had to consider doing anything drastic. Kamal stood in the doorway, but he looked awful. He had deep bags under his eyes, and his face was drawn. He looked ecstatic to see me though, and immediately invited me in.
Now, we are not religious in any way. Our parents didn’t raise us with religion, as they were not strongly religious themselves and wanted us to choose our own path. I had never really found comfort in any of them myself, and to my knowledge, neither had Kamal, but strewn throughout the house were crosses. Lots and lots of crosses. There were also stars of David, hamsa amulets, and an assortment of other protective symbols from numerous religions and belief systems. I was utterly shocked at the sight, and absolutely baffled at how he managed to obtain all of these things. As we moved into the living room I saw that the greatest concentration of these symbols was set up around the doorway to his side room, where I had set up his computer. I had been utterly silent during my entry into his home, merely turning on lights and observing the changes, but if he were put off by it, he didn’t say so. Slowly I crept forward to stick my head through the doorway to the side room, afraid of what I might find in there. To my surprise, the room was fairly bare and dusty, as if it hadn’t been used in a while. No signs of religious paraphernalia were in here, and the monitor was dark.
“It screams almost constantly now, but I’ve gotten used to it.” He said suddenly from behind me as if we had been talking about it. I remember his words perfectly because of how casually he said it, as if he were talking about the weather or a pet. His brown eyes were glossed over, and they seemed much too shiny. I nodded with mounting concern and began to ask him how he was doing. He said he was better now, though I realized that he seemed to have lost some weight. I entered his kitchen as he spoke about mundane things and looked through his fridge. It was nearly empty, and the items he did have were old and did not go together. I asked him what he had been eating and he said he was on a diet, but he said it with the same emotionless tone as the rest of his words. I thought it would be good for him to leave the house, as it didn’t seem like he’d been anywhere recently, so I took him shopping with me and brought back lots of food for him. I prepped a meal and we had dinner together there. He was almost acting normally at this point, laughing at my bad jokes like usual. I suggested we watch some TV after he had been quiet for some time, and he appeared reluctant but agreed nonetheless.
We moved to the couch and he turned the TV on. It came onto the history channel. It was a special on doomsday events, it appeared, but Kamal didn’t even seem to notice. I quickly changed the channel until I found a sitcom that seemed unobtrusive, and I stayed for another hour so before I decided it was time to go. When I reached for the remote to shut off the show, Kamal reached out and grabbed my wrist. I looked up at him in confusion, but his face was calm. He told me not to shut it off yet, as he was still listening to what it had to say. I moved my hand back without resistance, and first assumed he meant the show, but then I saw his gaze focused on the room behind me, and I looked around to see him staring through the open door at the dead computer. I had had enough at that point and got up to go. He didn’t react as I stood and gathered my things, but I made sure to stand between him and the computer before I left and made him promise to answer the phone next time I called. He agreed somewhat sheepishly, and I was relieved to see clear recognition on his face.
I tried to leave him alone for a while after that and focus on my own work. He did start answering my calls again, which was great for my nerves. To be honest, with getting ready for family events and Hanukkah at our dad’s place, I had all but forgotten about how intently Kamal could obsess about something. By late December I was sure he would have moved on. I had gotten home from a friend’s relatively late near the end of the year and came home to the phone ringing. I rushed to put my things down and answer the call. It was Kamal, and he sounded stressed. He was nearly incomprehensible with how quickly he was speaking, and I had to tell him multiple times to slow down and breathe before he finally listened. When he spoke again, his voice didn’t quite sound like his own, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell you exactly what was off about it. He was trying to warn me about the end of times. He honestly sounded like a lunatic. He told me I should try to protect myself, find a religion, come to terms with the end of my life. I would have been insulted if I weren’t solely focused on making sure he was okay. He said he wasn’t scared of the end, but he was frightened that something else was coming. I tried to figure out what he meant, but he only said the world wasn’t going to be ours much longer, that we didn’t deserve it. I told him to wait a bit and I’d be right over. I thew my coat back on and headed out to my car. I didn’t know who else I’d contact in this situation. I didn’t want to send him to a hospital. He was fine, just extremely paranoid.
By the time I got to his house, it was empty. The door was wide open, with snow blowing lazily inside, and the lights were off. I ran in and searched around, but he was nowhere to be found. The computer room was just as empty as always, unchanged save for the plain blue screen that illuminated it. There was no sign that Kamal had packed a bag, and there was no note. It was too late at night for me to bother calling our dad, so I just searched around and outside the house a bit and then fell asleep on his couch. I didn’t hear anything all night, and when I woke in the morning, I immediately went to file a missing person’s case. He still hasn’t been found, and I have no happy ideas about what could have happened to him. I just can’t figure out why he didn’t try to destroy that damned computer; I would’ve preferred that to him disappearing. Even if it wasn’t cursed, whatever effect it had on him was definitely real.
Statement ends.
Honestly, I’m really not sure how this statement ended up here, or why it wants to be taken seriously. This sounds like nothing more than a paranoid technophobe who ran away from a rapidly changing society. I –
[Door opens]
Hey, Jon –
Martin.
Oh, sorry! I didn’t know you were in the middle of one.
Yes, well, there’s not a lot I need to add here anyway. This was rather a waste of time.
Oh, okay. Well, I got you some tea.
Thank you.
Yeah, of course!
Is there something else?
Oh, right, well, Tim and Sasha and I were going to go out tonight to get some drinks, and we didn’t know if you wanted to come with us, maybe?
Didn’t you and Tim go out on Wednesday night as well?
Well. Yeah, but I mean, it’s not like we got drunk. It’s just, you know, friendly, uh, a friendly outing.
Right. Well thank you for the invitation, but I have other work to do.
You can’t spend all your time here, Jon. It’s not good for you. You need to take breaks.
I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, Martin.
I know, I just –
Thank you for the tea.
Right. Right, okay. So it’s a maybe, then?
Martin.
OK, bye!
[Door closes]
[Sigh]
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