Application 39

Ahmed Masoud

Smoke drifted out of Rayyan’s mouth as he dropped his jaw, turning it into soft, concentric circles. Poking his index finger through the middle of them, he turned to his friend, smiling: ‘It’s going to be OK, wallah, trust me.’ His eyes beamed with excitement. Not knowing how else to convince his friend, he leaned forwards and embraced him, ignoring his lack of reaction.

‘Relax, man. Trust me,’ he tried again as they began climbing the marble steps of the Gaza City Municipality Building, pausing half way to look back at the three lemon trees in the square below them. Their leaves looked so dry under that thin layer of dust it could have been autumn. But this was the khamaseen season, late-spring when the Sinai’s sand yellowed the city sky as it passed overhead, carried by the southern wind. At the top of the steps, a large, olive-wood door greeted them. Rayyan pressed a button and a red laser flickered across his face, before turning green. The door opened and he entered. Ismael, still looking perplexed, followed him just in time before the door purred shut behind them.

Inside the high-vaulted foyer, three long corridors stretched out in different directions. In the first, to their right, video screens lined the walls on both sides evidently showing live feeds from all over the city. Each screen had a tag: J1 and J2 fed from Jabalia Camp; G1 through G4 covered the major squares of Gaza City. And so on.

The middle corridor seemed to only contain a long series of lifts, with no buttons, just numbers above each one. These, Ismael was familiar with. He loved the faint quiver of excitement they sent through you whenever one of them opened its doors, knowing you had chosen it from the micro-movements you made yards before. The moment you stepped through, you were moving, plummeting downwards at a speed given on a small screen on the left-hand wall: usually 10 metres per second, before slowing and then surging sideways at 10, 20, 30. Lift-tunnels like these spider-webbed deep beneath the old city and beyond, spanning all of what was once called ‘the Strip’, and linking with another network of tunnels under what they used to call ‘the Bank’. If you had the correct entry visa, the lifts would speed you to your destination in minutes. This network had been the collective pride and joy of the independent republics who had pledged to build them in the so-called ‘New Dawn’ that followed the collapse of the Oslo Accord and the 2025 invasions, when each major Palestinian city had been forced to declare itself an independent state.

The third corridor ran alongside a series of small meeting rooms. As he walked past, Ismael could see each one was filled with men with moustaches or women with headscarves surrounded by news screens, typing frantically at their desks with each new development. In one room, a hologram of an Indian man in a border control uniform was giving a presentation on new software that could identify illegal immigrants through facial expressions.

By the time Rayyan reached the room at the end of the corridor, Ismael had caught up with him. They stood still for a moment as a small, hovering drone-cam emerged from the wall and performed a retinal scan, before the big olive-wood door slid open. The room was crowded; men in suits jostled with others in jellabiya and traditional dress. A young woman in a long, flowery skirt and reading glasses that wrapped around her entire head was looking down as they entered. The murmur in the room suddenly stopped.

‘Please be seated,’ the woman said, gesturing towards the bench in front of her. The two of them sat down in silence.

‘My name is Lamma El-Rayyes and I am chairing this emergency session,’ she began. ‘Gentlemen, your actions have had considerable consequences across the state, so, if I may, I would like to start by asking you to tell us the facts, as you understand them. We are not interested in the whys of the situation, just in what happened. First, which one of you submitted the application form?’

‘I did,’ Rayyan answered without a moment’s hesitation.

‘Well, actually, it was my idea,’ Ismael quickly added.

‘As I said, Mr Ismael, I am not interested in ideas. I just want to establish the facts. I will then report my findings to his excellency, the President of Gaza City, who will talk with his counterparts, the presidents of Khan Younis, Nusairat and the others …’ Lamma waved her hand in the air and a large display screen appeared on the wall behind her. She played around with the bright green buttons on her control pad and a document appeared.

‘Is that your signature at the bottom of the page?’ she asked, looking at neither of them.

Rayyan and Ismael looked a little bit confused.

‘No, of course not,’ Rayyan started. ‘This is the signature of our great leader, Mr Hamad Hamoud, as you know.’

‘Is this a trick question?’ Ismael asked.

‘No, it is not,’ Lamma fired back, fixing her stern gaze on them, ‘This is not an authentic signature. One of you has forged it.’

A murmur of disbelief spread through the room and a couple of men started heckling.

‘This is going to break the peace deal completely,’ someone muttered.

‘We’re doomed!’ shouted another. ‘We’re heading straight back to the rule of Hamas and Fateh.’

‘The Israelis won’t be happy either,’ observed an elderly man at the back.

Lamma cleared her throat and the whole room fell silent again. She had an air of natural authority that commanded the room’s respect, to the extent that Ismael found himself wondering how far her obvious ambitions might end up taking her.

She raised both hands in the air and continued, ‘I have to hand it to you; you are a couple of tricksters, it seems.’ She turned again to the facsimile looming large on the wall display. ‘So, you forge a document, purporting to be from our leader, apply to the International Olympic Committee for the State of Gaza to … host the 39th Summer Olympic Games in 2048.’

She turned to face them, and the room. ‘Now, let me ask you,’ she said, pausing for effect. ‘Are you out of your minds? This is only eight years from now.’

She stared at them for what felt like an eternity. Hearing the contents of the document being read out loud felt even more ridiculous than they had anticipated. They both knew the seriousness of the matter, of course. They could be hanged for treason, and the fire in Lamma’s eyes seemed to confirm they should expect nothing less. They both fell silent, not knowing what to say. They looked at each other, as if realising, for the first time, the reality of what they’d done.

The air of confidence that had filled Rayyan on the steps of the building just a few minutes earlier had entirely disappeared, replaced by a sheepish, apologetic look. Ismael’s mind wandered from the room, back to a time when they’d both been kids studying together at the UN refugee school. They were only ten years old when the war broke out in 2025. He didn’t remember much about how it all started, but he remembered the day the school was bombed as if it were yesterday. Smoke rose in all directions, shrouding the playground like a hood. Ambulance sirens filled the city, as he stood there watching everything unravel around him: all he wanted to do was run back home to his parents’ house in Beach Camp. But he was frozen. He wished his father was there to pluck him out of the chaos, people screaming and running in all directions. He wished his teacher was there to shout at him, and scare him into snapping out of it and running. But nothing happened: he just froze. The smoke got thicker and closer, until he could see nothing at all, and just as he closed his eyes, Rayyan grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him away.

They ended up in the El Ansar District in Gaza City. Israeli soldiers had already landed by sea, docking their heavily armoured ships at El Mina, Gaza’s only port. They were also bombing from the air, using advanced high-speed drones.

The two boys roamed the city for days before eventually settling on a bombed-out residential block on El-Farra Street as their shelter. To their delight, in one of the apartments, they found cans of sardines, humous and fava beans, which sustained them for a week until an old woman, a former resident, came looking for her belongings and found them. She brought them back to her new abode in a less bombed-out part of town, where she, her son and her daughter-in-law raised them as their own. They couldn’t return to their families in Beach Camp; the IDF had installed checkpoints everywhere, surrounding and besieging every city, town and village in the Strip, just as they had done in the Bank. Realising there was little hope of ever returning to their parents, Rayyan and Ismael stayed with their new adopted family. From then on, they were brothers.

The Palestinian cities, unable to physically connect with each other anymore, declared themselves independent states. Israel had taken control of all the roads between them, and air travel had not be possible since the end of the twentieth century, so the city-states had put everything into tunnelling back into contact with each other – starting with shabby old holes Hamas had first dug during its rule – holes that had proved utterly useless in thwarting the invasion when it came.

With time, the city-states grew apart, in outlook and habits, and ever stricter immigration policies were gradually introduced. On several occasions, tensions slid into open military confrontation, and warring Palestinian cities fired homemade rockets that flew high over the heads of Israeli soldiers, usually landing in the empty fields that acted as buffer zones around each city. The hostilities persisted until a peace deal between the states was signed in 2030, acknowledging the independence of each city-state and the integrity of its borders, even though these borders were very much still under Israeli control, a fact nobody seemed too keen to dwell upon.

*

‘We could be looking at another war, here.’ Lamma’s voice brought Ismael back with a jolt. ‘Either with Khan Younis, or Rafah, or even Ramallah. Their presidents will all think we didn’t consult them in this decision; that the Republic of Gaza City wanted to do this on its own, to steal the limelight. And don’t forget Israel! They will no doubt accuse us of breaking our agreements with them on this. Bombs will probably start raining on us because of this; not only on us but on all the other states. Where will this end?’

All Ismael wanted was to be out of that windowless room and in the open, enjoying the sandstorm. He looked at his friend, then mirrored him, staring back down at the floor. It felt like the whole room was watching him. But when Ismael eventually looked up again and caught the eye of one old man sitting at the back, his smile seemed genuine.

The truth of the matter was it had all been a joke, a game of dare which neither party had expected would go this far. Ismael was the first to suggest it and called it ‘Operation Application 39’. Rayyan said he would look after the paperwork and that was that. They submitted it online; not expecting it would even be read. The two men’s day jobs were in the municipality’s IT department, positions which gave them enough free time to develop a series of elaborate hacking schemes to entertain themselves in the long hours between reboot requests. At first, these consisted largely of hacking into local celebrities’ social media accounts, and playing practical jokes on their celebrity friends. But they grew bored of this, wanting something more challenging to pass the time. The International Olympic Committee’s computer system offered the perfect challenge, and hacking into it even allowed them to look at rival applications from other cities. ‘Just for research, you understand,’ Ismael, the better of the two hackers, giggled at the time. ‘So we don’t look like complete fools.’

The IOC’s reply, dated 12 January 2040, came addressed to the president and read: ‘The International Olympic Committee feels that the application is very strong and that by hosting the 36th Summer Olympic Games, Gaza City would be able to celebrate and further cement the peace deal signed ten years ago.’

‘I am sorry, Ms Lamma, it was just a bit of fun, we didn’t think it would actually lead to anything …’ Rayyan said with pleading eyes. Ismael looked at him with pity, all-too aware of how difficult it was for his friend to admit their mistake.

‘What do we do now?’ interjected someone from across the room.

‘We turn it down, of course,’ another answered.

A woman, who looked in her sixties, stood up. She was smartly dressed and wore a shawl around her shoulders.

‘Excuse me, Ms Lamma. I realise this is a reckless violation by two obviously irresponsible individuals, but we are here now and, I think, instead of wasting time revisiting how this was allowed to happen, we should instead be thinking of how we could make it work for us, how we can seize it as an opportunity for the whole republic – a chance to show the world how civilised we are. We may actually be able to get the other states to agree …’

The room erupted into a cacophony of agreement and dissent. One of the men in suits said the old woman was clearly crazy. ‘Show some respect, you ignoramus!’ a younger woman shouted at him. Rayyan leant towards Ismael and nodded towards her: ‘Asmaa Shawwa – she served in the Abbas government in the early 2000s.’

‘Enough!’ shouted Lamma, slamming her fist on the table; the room promptly fell silent. All eyes were now on her.

‘I think this is a decision for the president, not us. As I said, I just wanted to establish the facts and now that I am confident this was not an act of deliberate sabotage, I will take the matter to him and see what he says. Mr Hamoud will surely have the wisdom to see through this. We will adjourn the meeting and reconvene tomorrow morning. You two are coming to the president’s office now, with me.’

Rayyan and Ismael stared at each, terrified. They had never met a senator before, let alone a president; they were just two IT clerks at the municipality.

‘Do we have to?’ Ismael muttered but didn’t wait for an answer.

The room started to empty in silence, people walked out of the main door, each throwing a parting glance towards the two men.

In a soft, slightly robotic voice, Lamma ordered the room’s computer to shut down, and as they stepped outside the three of them were met by a small crowd of people waiting in the corridor for their lifts to arrive. A robotic assistant, with a painted-on suit, rolled towards Lamma, taking her bag and ushering the three of them towards an opening lift. Inside, there was only one button on the wall, which read ‘The Office of President Hamad Hamoud’. Lamma pressed it and within an instant the doors were shut, leaving the boy standing outside.

The lift plunged downwards and, after a minute or so of sideways acceleration, started ascending again. When the bell rang indicating it had arrived at its destination, a computerised female voice welcomed them to ‘The Office of President Hamad Hamoud’. ‘If you are carrying a weapon,’ it added, ‘you will be neutralised immediately.’

‘If only we had time for you to hack this motherfucker and de-smug her?’ Rayyan muttered, as they stepped out, into the bewildering light of a penthouse office.

As they entered, President Hamad Hamoud was busy going through a pile of paperwork behind a huge desk. He looked very tall even though he was sitting down. The two friends felt deeply intimidated by the surroundings and avoided direct eye contact as the president lifted his head up and greeted Lamma.

‘Ahlan, Lamma, how did the meeting go?’ the president smiled, before glancing back down at his papers.

‘Well, these two idiots are the ones who submitted the application and forged your signature …’

‘Can you hack her too?’ Rayyan whispered. ‘She’s rude …’ Ismael concentrated on keeping a straight face.

The president stopped reading and looked at the two of them. He stood up and removed his small glasses, placing them carefully on his desk, then stared once more at the two men still refusing to make eye contact.

‘I believe you understand the seriousness of your actions?’ he asked as he approached them.

‘Yes, sir,’ they answered in unison.

‘So, what shall I do with you now? Have you hanged for treason?’

The silence that followed was unbearable. They still couldn’t look the president in the eye. They were expecting soldiers to barge through the doors at any moment. Ismael’s hands were shaking, and Rayyan could see it.

‘Well, Lamma, we are where we are. I have been thinking a lot about this and I believe we should go ahead and host these games. These two goons might have actually brought us a gift –’

‘But, sir …’ Lamma interrupted.

‘Let me finish first, please …’ Mr Hamoud’s tone was serious. ‘The Republic of Gaza is a thoroughly modern city these days, both in terms of technology and infrastructure. Besides, this could be an opportunity to unite all the Palestinians states together.’

‘But sir, it could bring about war again, with everyone!’ Lamma responded sharply.

‘So be it, we will be ready for it …’ The president’s authoritative tone signalled the end of the conversation. He went back to his desk and paperwork. Lamma indicated to Rayyan and Ismael to follow her and, within seconds, they were out the door.

They followed her in silence as she marched back to the lift. The door was already open and, stepping inside, they found themselves instantly transported back to the municipality building, where they were ushered into a small meeting room followed by Lamma’s personal assistant, a small robot that glided along on two big wheels.

‘It’s the 30th of March 2040, this meeting will be recorded and minutes will be sent out directly to you half an hour after it’s finished. Please refrain from using offensive language, anything you say will go on your HR profile.’

‘Shukran, Tamir,’ Lamma addressed the robot which had moved to her side, and started scanning both Rayyan and Ismael.

‘OK, well … You are very lucky to be here right now despite the havoc you have caused. I am sure Mr Hamoud has made a huge mistake, but he is the president and his wishes must be followed. So … tell me, when you submitted this application, did you have the faintest clue how Gaza would actually be able to host these Games? How are we going to host a marathon, for instance, when the city’s only six kilometres wide? Or the water sports – rowing, sailing, long-distance swimming – when we only have a two-mile long stretch of coast?’

Lamma didn’t sound genuinely angry, more frustrated. She seemed to have accepted the decision, but she looked away as she reeled off her questions, not expecting an answer.

‘We could dig more tunnels,’ Ismael said.

‘What?’ she snapped.

‘The Israelis control all the land between our states, they control the airspace and the sea; only the earth beneath us remains unoccupied. We could build tunnels that circle the city deep underground – 2R – that gives us 31.42 kilometres, one and a third laps and you have a marathon!’ Ismael said enthusiastically. ‘We could build football pitches, velodromes … whatever we want down there!’

‘What about water sports, smart alec?’ Lamma cut him off.

‘Well, we have two miles of coast. We can do all the swimming stuff in there, set up lanes going along the coast, backwards and forwards; all we need to work out is how to stop the waves. I am sure a few rocks will do it. For diving, we can dig under the sea too. Make the seabed deeper. For water polo, we could use one the new water-tanks the World Bank donated to the camps. Why not?’

‘So basically what you are saying is that more tunnels and a few rocks in the sea are all we need?’ Rayyan asked sarcastically.

‘Yes, we know how to dig them, alright! We’ve been building them since the 90s, so why not now?’ Ismael had rediscovered his self-belief.

Lamma watched the two young men and wondered where they would have been if the situation was different, if the war never happened. Her own father had been killed defending Gaza City during the Israeli invasion fifteen years earlier. She’d been sixteen at the time. The day her father never came back was the day she decided to study politics and begin her long, remarkable pursuit of a political career. A lot of people admired her; several unlikely men had even proposed to her, apparently, but to Ismael she looked like someone too smart to jeopardise a career by allowing herself a private life.

*

Thus it was announced that Gaza City was to be the first Arab city to ever host an Olympic Games. Rayyan and Ismael walked out of the municipality building that day feeling elated. They didn’t say a word to each other as they walked through the long corridor towards the exit. But as they stepped down onto the street, surrounded by honking cars, the buzzing of delivery drones, the flickering of advertising screens, they began to laugh. Looking at each other, their laughter grew and for a moment they struggled to catch their breath.

They were through-the-looking-glass now; what had started as a joke had become a new reality, one with the potential to change the whole city’s future. After a century of being cut off from the world, now, suddenly, the world was going to come to them. To pay a visit to this prison, Ismael thought; its first ever, in order to watch people running, jumping and throwing things!

Neither Ismael nor Rayyan had ever set foot outside of Gaza City. Even getting into other coastal states within the Palestinian federation needed a visa and a string of transit permits which neither of them had ever succeeded in applying for. What they knew of the other states they had all learned from their grandparents. As teenagers, they’d dreamt of visiting the Republics of Ramallah and Nablus in the Bank, or to one day hike across the gentle hills of old Palestine, to breathe its fresh air, to take in the scent of olives in the groves that stretched, in their minds, all the way from Bethlehem to Jerusalem.

Collecting themselves from their momentary hysterics, Rayyan and Ismael set off down the hill towards Talatini Street, in the direction of home. As they passed Al Ahli Hospital, an Israeli drone flew low over their heads and landed nearby, only to then transform into a bipedal robot. With its oddly dog-like face, it began scanning the streets with its dark, translucent eyes, as pedestrians looked away.

The dog-robot then scanned Rayyan and Ismael, who knew to stand completely still and stare directly at it. Looking away would only get them tasered. On each side of its long, pointed face, just below each camera-eye, a screen flashed into life and began scrolling through the two men’s vital information: dates of birth, addresses, bank account numbers, professions, etc. Across its chest stretched the blue and white Israeli flag. Ismael wanted to punch it in its solar plexus, knowing it probably didn’t have one. Reading his friend’s thoughts, Rayyan put his arm around Ismael’s shoulder: ‘Look it’s one of your favourite breeds!’ he laughed, awkwardly. ‘Oh, but it’s been scrapping with other poodles,’ he added, noticing a horizontal scratch across the blue of its chest.

After a pause, the robot retransformed itself back into a drone and they both sighed with relief to see it fly away. Usually, when a robot stopped people like this in the street, someone was either tasered and arrested, or worse. The two men laughed at the day they were having. As they walked in the direction of the Rimal neighbourhood, a strange sense of invincibility lightened their steps.

*

Over the following four years, preparations got under way across the city for the vast infrastructure necessary to host such a colossal international event. Ismael’s idea of building most of the facilities underground was eventually accepted, and thanks to the unique expertise of Gazan builders in all things subterranean, the work was completed ahead of schedule. Most of the facilities were built within three years. The main challenge was how to build the athletes’ village, given that there wasn’t enough space left aboveground in the republic. The solution came from an expert in the United Kingdom of Saudi (which, since 2036, had assimilated all the other Gulf countries). A Dubai-based architect proposed using the rubble excavated from the tunnels to build a man-made island in the sea, just off the Gaza City shoreline.

Rayyan and Ismael were on the planning committee, chaired by Lamma, their original indiscretion long-since forgotten about. All members reported directly to the president who was, despite his old age, very keen to follow up on all the details. Mr Hamoud was also forever receiving delegations from the other Palestinian republics. Indeed every planning meeting had envoys from the other states in attendance; despite their fury in the early days for not having been consulted – in some cases even threatening war – now they pored over each decision in detail to make sure every shekel allocated by the Olympic Committee could be seen to be benefiting the federation as a whole.

One state had never forgiven Gaza, however. Salah Zourob, the president of Rafah, had been so furious about the application, he severed all diplomatic relations with Hamoud’s government, and closed down the lift-tunnel between the two states. It had been four years since any goods or individuals had travelled between them. Indeed recent noises heard travelling down that particular tunnel had been interpreted by military experts as the sound of troops gathering at the Rafah end.

The party that was most upset by it all was, of course, Israel. Tel Aviv had been trying to host the Olympic Games for decades. The Knesset contested the results, and took the International Olympic Committee to court, initially alleging corruption, but later changing their stance, claiming the bid had been an elaborate attempt to hoodwink the international community into unwittingly funding a new era of military tunnelling: what lobbyists called ‘the terror from beneath’. Unexpectedly these appeals failed to reverse the decision, although Israel, Russia and the Confederate States of America all declared they would boycott the Games the moment the appeal was overturned. Despite this, the Israeli government still took it upon itself to make sure the preparations for the Games failed, instructing all security agencies to gather more intelligence about the planning, and sending in a new swarm of microscopic drones to infiltrate each of the development sites. Aware of this, Mr Hamoud demanded the utmost secrecy, and only discussed plans through encrypted messaging systems. For some reason, he tasked Rayyan and Ismael with monitoring security protocols and attempted intelligence breaches by Israel directly. Israel, in turn, encouraged the president of Rafah to attack Gaza, giving President Zourob the intel, weapons and temporary access to what used to be called Salah Eldein Street – the now overgrown thoroughfare which once ran the entire length of the Strip.

With four years left to go, war loomed, and the dream of hosting the Games ‘without mishap’ grew ever more unlikely. After one particularly long day, the two friends sat down for a shisha-vape, in a café in El Rimal Park, near what used to be the Unknown Soldier Statue. The two men never needed much encouragement to reminisce about life at school before the devastation of April ’25, but these days every time they started to, their talk stuttered to a halt, both thinking about the further devastation that awaited them. Their conversations were increasingly given over to these long pauses, so much so that Ismael was relieved when today’s silence was broken by the sound of a large drone landing just a few feet away and transforming into a bipedal dog-headed robot. As it conducted its usual retinal scan and screen scroll of their vital information, Ismael noticed a horizontal scratch across its chest.

This time there was something different to the process. Both screens lit up and a pair of bulky metallic antennas extended from the machine’s shoulders, arcing round towards the two men, each holding a pair of self-locking handcuffs. ‘In accordance with Israeli Law,’ its dog-mouth intoned, ‘I am placing you both under arrest. Any attempt to escape will put your lives in danger.’ The two friends were wise enough to stretch their hands out willingly as the self-locking handcuffs flew to their wrists, snapping their hands together, before yanking them both to the ground. The dog-robot began its transformation back into a drone, ready to airlift Rayyan and Ismael into Ashkelon Prison, where they would no doubt be held indefinitely under ‘administrative detention’ laws.

But as the drone prepared to leave, its muzzle started to flinch oddly, its left leg suddenly jerked upwards, kneeing itself in the chest. Orders began to issue from its dog-mouth in an array of different languages: English, French, Chinese, and others the men didn’t recognise. Its cheek-screens scrolled through all kinds of images: schematics of missile launchers, satellite photography, maps of what appeared to be the location of Israeli troops just outside of the city’s perimeter fence. One screen froze on this last map, while the other continued scrolling through the names and mug shots of high ranking Gazans under the title ‘Assets’. Suddenly, smoke started rising from the dog-robot’s head until it stuttered to a complete standstill. The handcuffs sprung open.

Rayyan started running down the street. But his friend couldn’t tear his eyes away from the slumped head of the machine in front of him.

‘Come on, what are you waiting for?’ Rayyan yelled, stopping to turn round. Ismael didn’t move.

‘Did you see that?’

‘See what?’ Rayyan shouted, now running back towards him.

‘I didn’t just jam it,’ he said holding up a battered-looking handset he’d been clutching all along in his pocket. ‘It spilled its guts for me.’

‘As I always say, you’re a genius Ismael, and we need to mass market those things,’ Rayyan replied, physically grabbing Ismael by the upper arm. ‘But come on.’

‘Listen. The IDs it just scrolled through – that was its most valuable information. This little device’ – Ismael waved the handset again – ‘gave it a psychic stomach bug, and what it threw up was the most classified information it had access to. Don’t you see what this means, bro?’ Rayyan looked lost. ‘The AIs have a subconscious! It chose to share this, to confess this. It could have shared a million other data sets, but this was the one it was least comfortable with.’

‘It’s a trap,’ Rayyan said, without looking at his friend. ‘And even if it isn’t, what can we do with it. Drones are tracked; if we drag it off somewhere to download all that, the whole Israeli army will be knocking at our door …’

‘Not if we take it underground,’ Ismael replied still staring at his keypad. ‘It will lose its GPS signal. Look, this is a gift; we can’t just pass it up. Besides, they know about us already, clearly. They’ll just send another drone soon, and then what? Do you want us to keep running forever? Let’s just take this one; we have nothing to lose …’

Ismael pleaded with his friend, who just stood there trying to think. Rayyan knew that Ismael was right: there was no point in just running; they needed to go into hiding and they needed any advantage they could get. He didn’t relish the prospect of returning to a life on the streets, again, on the run.

‘OK, OK,’ Rayyan conceded, helping his friend to lift the robot’s heavy carcass into the back seat of his self-drive, parked across the street from the cafe. They instructed the car to travel at top speed. Ismael had long since hacked into its limiters, so they watched with some apprehension as the self-drive swerved round kids playing hologram football in the street and pedestrians on motorised skateboards. Five minutes later they were frantically carrying the machine up the steps of the municipality building and bundling it into the nearest lift. After taking a second lift a few moments later, they felt they were plunging deeper than they ever had gone before. Ismael had been the one choosing the lifts and the destinations. Every few minutes or so he would link his handset to the lift’s computer and name a new destination – usually the name of some long-lost village, that his grandmother had told him tales about – coupled with the phrase ‘but don’t alight’. This, he explained to Rayyan, was his way of making a longer journey, which combined with his handset’s masking hack, would make the journey untraceable in the lift’s records.

‘All those permit applications they rejected!’ Rayyan said, in awe. ‘We could have hacked our way out of Gaza all along.’

When the doors eventually opened, they came out into a platform marked ‘Amman Tunnel’. They had crossed the entirety of Palestine and now appeared to be in a different country altogether. The tunnel, Rayyan explained to Ismael, was strictly for emergencies, and for use by the president and his diplomats only.

‘What do we do now?’ Rayyan asked, contemplating the lifeless dog-robot on the floor of the platform beside them.

‘Well, now we reboot it and find out what it was trying to share with us. Believe me, I was born for this hack. Hey why don’t you go get us some food and coffee, and I’ll get started.’ Without even looking at his companion, Ismael started unzipping his backpack, opened up his laptop and patched it into the robot. Meanwhile, Rayyan headed up a flight of old-fashioned stairs to ground level. On their way here, he had shown Ismael the schematic of where the lift would come out, slap bang in the heart of Amman, opposite the Third Circle, not far from Rainbow Street. They had both heard stories about how crowded Amman was, being the only reliably peaceful country in the whole region. With the exception of the United Kingdom of Saudi, it was also the only country in the region that hadn’t been divided up into various states. When he returned an hour later, laden with falafel sandwiches and bottles of Coca-Cola, he couldn’t stop talking about what he’d seen: billboards advertising gadgets he’d never heard of, Israelis, Jordanians and Pal-refs laughing and joking with each other in the shops – clearly living side-by-side! Shops accepting shekels. So full was he with his own news, he barely noticed the beaming grin on his friend’s face, the lights pulsing behind the robot’s eyes, and the data streaming down the laptop’s screen.

‘Look at this!’ Ismael screeched.

‘Hey, what did I call you? Oh yes, “Balfour”! Hey Balfour, dance for us!’ The robot started twirling around, playing Hebrew music and gyrating the way you might expect a bipedal robot with a dog-shaped head to gyrate.

‘What the hell?’

‘It’s mine now – my own little pet. I have overridden all the IDF protocols and I can make it do whatever I want!’

‘This is dangerous,’ Rayyan muttered.

‘More dangerous than what we’ve done already? Why?’

‘Well, we get it to do anything we like? Any crime we want, any retaliation; it will make us invincible.’

‘Damn right!’ Ismael interjected. ‘The information it’s shared alone is game-changing. Man, I have details of President Zourob’s imminent attack against us. I have the names of people leading the forces, the names of Israeli officials supporting it. But, above all, this damn thing is somehow connected to the central database in Israel and, guess what, I have access to everyone’s details, including phone numbers in Palestine, Israel, Jordan and Egypt. I can send all of them a text message right now if I want to …’

‘What?’ the plastic bag with falafel sandwiches fell from Rayyan’s hands. ‘Wait, we need to take this back to the president. We need to let him know …’

Without thinking, Rayyan bundled the three of them back into the lift and hit a button on his handset. Their stomachs grumbled as they tunnelled sideways through the Judean mountain crust. Ismael in particular lamented over the image of the plastic bag, containing his falafel, abandoned on the platform. Eventually they arrived at the Gaza Municipality Building, and switched into the lift marked with what Ismael now recognised as the president’s seal. Lamma was already in the office, having received their message insisting on her attendance. She couldn’t believe her eyes when the two of them walked through the door, carrying the robot.

‘What the hell?’ she said, looking at Rayyan, and immediately called for her personal assistant to come in and apprehend the two visitors. ‘Are you Israeli agents now?’ she asked bluntly. Mr Hamoud side-stepped towards his desk, with thoughts of the panic button written all over his face.

‘No, wait … please don’t, Mr President, we can explain,’ Ismael did all the talking. Rayyan simply stood still, at first frozen with fear, but, after a moment, a little smile flickered across his face.

‘This machine came to arrest us this morning but it malfunctioned and we managed to hack it. It reports to me now, it does anything I want it to. Watch. Balfour become a drone!’ The machine instantly folded up its limbs, extended its antenna and began hovering towards the ceiling. ‘Balfour, tell Lamma who your master is and who your enemies are!’

‘My name is Balfour and my master is Mr Ismael. My enemies are the enemies of the Republic of Gaza City.’

Rayyan and Ismael explained everything about the leaked attack plans, the informants’ IDs, and most of all the databases.

‘Sir, this thing is tracked,’ Lamma interrupted. ‘We have to destroy it immediately. It could be relaying this conversation, and our location, to the Israelis right now.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Ismael smiled. ‘I’ve disabled that too. We’re safe – well, not Rayyan and me, because we’re still on their list – but you are.’

‘OK, you two need to be taken to a safe house,’ the president answered firmly. ‘I need to think about what I am going to do with this. Once more, it seems, you two bozos have brought us another gift without fully understanding it. Lamma, will you get me Senator Shawwa.’

*

Ms Shawwa was sweating as she re-read the final draft of the message that was going to be sent out to all citizens – over three hundred million people – across the entire region.

‘Mr President. It’s ready. Would you like to press the send button?’

Mr Hamoud stared over her shoulder, reading for what felt like the millionth time.

To all those who believe in justice, to those who still believe in the future, I, Mr Hamad Hamoud, President of the Republic of Gaza City, appeal to you to stand with us. When we won the privilege of hosting the Olympic Games, we saw it as an opportunity to redress decades of separation and a century of fighting – to come together as humans, no matter what our differences. However, it has recently come to our attention that the Israelis and the President of Rafah are planning to attack us with the express purpose of cancelling the Games. I appeal to you to rise tomorrow at midday, to come out in the streets, walk with your leaders, and declare your opposition to this. Let us make this a show of solidarity and a rejection of any further wars. Thank you, and may Allah bless you all.

Mr Hammoud cross-checked the Hebrew translation and then pressed the button. For a moment everyone stared at the floor in silence. Lamma eventually broke the spell by walking towards Ismael and Rayyan and patting them heartily on the shoulders. ‘You two brought so much trouble to this city, why couldn’t you be like everyone else and just live your lives?’

‘We chose none of this,’ Rayyan was quick to answer.

Lamma approached the president, who looked tired and anxious. ‘My fellow Palestinians,’ he addressed those in the room. ‘We’ve done what we can. Let’s see what happens. I am tired now. I need a rest. Tomorrow we will either wake up with peace or further trouble. Whichever it is, things will never be the same again. These two idiots may be what we’ve all been waiting for, for better or worse. Good night, Lamma. I hope you can lead this nation to peace after I’m gone.’

*

At 11:00 am the following morning, the president, Lamma, Rayyan, Ismael, Ms Asmaa and the entire municipality building staff stood outside the president’s office. A TV crew was recording the scene as Mr Hamoud declared the start of his ‘March for Peace’. Knowing that half of the city now surrounded the building, he spoke directly to the camera, asking the rest of Gaza’s citizens, those not yet out in the square, to walk with him, from here up to the northern most border point, then down to the southernmost, from the gates of Erez to the gates of Nusairat. ‘I believe that our fellow Palestinians will join us.’

As they started to march from the president’s office, whoever remained in their homes or offices came out and joined the throng. As the president’s march passed by El Wihda Street, the momentum was visibly gathering. People started closing their shops; others came out of the mosques to join in. By the time they reached El Jalaa Street, the march was already two hundred thousand strong, all chanting and calling for peace.

The march continued through El Saha, then upwards onto Omar El Mukhtar Street. By the time they got to Shujaia, the numbers had reached over three hundred thousand. The scene was overwhelming for Rayyan, who chanted louder and more excitedly at every new corner.

Everyone was marching peacefully until they reached the Sheikh Ejleen area by the beach, very close to the border with Nusairat. An Israeli drone appeared, transforming into a bipedal robot as it landed, effectively blocking the path of the march. It extended its shoulder-antenna and crossed them resolutely, staring at the advancing crowd.

‘Mr Hamoud,’ it announced, in its monotone, ‘it has been deemed that you are contravening Article 48A of the 2026 Peace Accord; I am hereby placing you under arrest.’

The crowd fell silent, as hundreds at the front tried their best to casually look away, look up or down, so the robot couldn’t scan them. The president, by contrast, walked straight up to the drone and stared directly into its lifeless eyes. He gave it a kick with his foot, and everyone cheered again.

‘Security unit under attack: engage now,’ the robot intoned, then fired a round of bullets directly between the president’s eyes.

The president’s body fell backwards sending up a small cloud of dust as it hit the ground. The cheering ceased and everyone stared dumbstruck at the pool of dusty blood spreading slowly from the back of their leader’s head. People started to scream and run towards the robot presumably to attack it. Metres before reaching it, they all found themselves fragmenting, midair, as the TV cameras automatically powered down.

More drones appeared in the sky and before too long, an army of metallic robots had assembled to face the angry protestors, who were undeterred and started running towards them. The robots opened fire across the promenade where the president had been shot, as well as across the beach where many protestors had fled. They continued to scour the area, spraying bullets in all directions, for a further forty-five minutes. When they eventually stopped, the air was thick with dark smoke. Waves lapped the shore with blood.

Thousands more, many of whom were at the rear of the march, managed to run away in all directions. Ismael was on the ground, crouching behind a vape kiosk. He had been shot in the knee, but, once the bullets had stopped, Ismael started hobbling back along the promenade to look for Rayyan. There was no sign of him.

His legs gave way and he collapsed, to his knees first, then his hands caught the ground before it slammed into his chest. All was silent, the whole city lay lifeless – only Ismael’s heavy breathing and the sound of waves could be heard. After a few moments, he tried crawling on all fours, then, slowly gathering strength, he got up, and began limping across a terrain strewn with corpses, dark gouts of blood crusting on the yellow sand. Ismael kept walking until he reached the border. He wanted the robots to come back, to shoot him. Two crows came into view and started cawing loudly as they circled the corpse of a woman. Ismael wondered whose body it was; she looked in her twenties, lying to her side with one hand clutching her stomach where the bullet had hit. He thought of the woman’s family and whether they were waiting for her at home or if they too were lying dead somewhere nearby. Ismael shut his eyes.

He woke up three days later in Al Ahli Hospital, his leg bandaged and his head spinning from the medication. Through blurred eyes, he tried to focus on the TV screen on the other side of the room. One headline declared the International Criminal Court would conduct an investigation into what had happened. Then another headline ran along the bottom of the screen about an emergency meeting that the IOC was holding in Zurich to determine whether to go ahead with the 39th Games in a new location or, for the first time in the modern era, to let the torch go out.