by Jeff Noon
asleep.
~~~
The gentle blue-bronze light of the screen shimmered across her face.
Characters spoke to each other,
gently, covered in soft static,
unheard.
A clock ticked.
Outside Nola’s apartment block, the warm air stirred. The tangle of aerials and satellite dishes on the building’s roof reached for the moon that hung full but half hidden in clouds. Invisible waves of information moved through the air. Now and again, vehicles passed quietly along the avenue below, briefly disturbing this spectral glade of the capital.
A solitary nightbird flew across,
heading for the river.
Night gathered itself into the darkest hour, tilted over, and then began the long
measured
fade
towards dawn.
Nola barely stirred. She moaned once or twice, dreaming perhaps.
Dreaming that something moved just beneath her skin, some strange small creature of light and sound.
Sszzzztzs
Infection took place.
And still the screen flickered
with image.
-3-
The struggle towards waking.
Lights flickering...on and off...
A voice...
Breathing...
A woman’s voice...
But not hers...not her own...
Ahhh...must try to...find the way now...
Finally, the voice stopped.
Nola’s eyes came open.
Head throbbing, painful.
She pressed hard at her face to re-engage with herself, with her own body, but all she could truly summon up was a feeling of being hollow inside.
Nola was lying there in the semi-gloom.
Her tongue moved around her mouth; again, the taste of burnt metal. And that buzzing noise inside her head, a steady drone.
Her left forearm ached, the skin tinged red.
She felt strangely unattached, as though she might slowly float away from the couch and hover above it without any means of support.
Dreams. Half remembered.
Catch them...
The lights stuttering. A woman talking: What the hell was that? Then darkness. And then?
No. They drifted away.
Traces. Pictures.
Smoke.
Vanished.
Her eyes opened and closed.
The screen made a noise, a crackling sound. Nola looked towards the visionplex.
It was still on, still playing.
The voices she had heard in her sleep were coming from there, from the set. The woman still talking, a man answering now. Two characters. Two angry, loving characters in a drama, that was all, heard from dreamland.
But which channel? Which programme? She could not make it out properly. The figures blurred.
Too much drink last night. Too much.
She wasn’t used to it.
Yes, she must’ve stumbled in drunk and fallen asleep right here in front of the wall screen, like this, fully clothed, leaving the visionplex on all night. It was not the way she did things, not usually.
Nola focussed.
The people faded on the screen.
Silence now.
No pictures. No words.
What was wrong?
And yet, bending closer...
The faint hum of electrostatic.
Fizzle, fizszle...
The noise in Nola’s head sounded like two wires, like two hot stripped-bare wires reaching out towards connection.
Fzzttztzstz...
Nola stared at the blank grey screen, transfixed.
She watched and listened. Seeing, hearing...
Flashes of static, snowdrifts.
Random noise bursts.
Fzzxtsststss!
Shapes. Shapes in the grey.
Figures?
Half seen glimpses.
And her own face in reflection.
One more character.
Nola didn't know what to do. She felt bound to the screen for some reason. It was claiming her eyes, craving attention even now, with only a powdery static fuzz in place.
In the flickers, find yourself...
Nola rubbed at her temples.
Time?
Wristwatch. Blur. Eye squint. Tighten...
5:05
She looked at the window.
Dark still. But a glint of sunlight maybe.
Early yet. Maybe there was time to climb into bed, to get some proper sleep before Christina came round. Maybe that was the best option. A lot of work to do today.
The screen made a noise. It changed colour, brightening, filled now with wavering lines: light grey, cream, grey blue, violet, yellow. Nothing could be seen as yet, not properly, but within these shapes, noises were heard: scuffling sounds, hurried nervous footsteps, voices now.
Somebody whispering, fearful.
Nola listened closely, inching forward.
Are you there? Are you still there?
Nobody answered.
The sound of breaking glass.
A human cry.
Ahhh...
Weeping.
Nola leaned forward.
The screen blossomed into light. Images.
The programme.
A family sitting around a dinner table. The man and the woman as before, but delineated now, given types to play: a father and mother, two children with them.
The youngest of them, the daughter...crying.
Some kind of soap opera, or personal drama. It must have been on the whole time, just some trouble with the reception, that was all. Faulty signals.
The mother was screaming, shouting. The father’s head was bowed down; the children in shock, saddened.
Nola gazed at this spectacle in some kind of relief, she could not explain why. Her own fingernails were pressing hard into her palms, modelled on the father’s actions.
His hands in close-up,
nails digging into flesh.
Nola’s own hands.
The pain was good, and she felt the sudden gulping rush of a media high, old-school style, the pre-digital needle to the heart. And behind that, a nagging doubt, a fear.
Unnameable as yet, unknown.
That taste in the mouth.
Skin tingles all over.
Skullbuzz.
Nola stood and walked through into the kitchen area, turning on the overhead strip-light. She poured herself a glass of water and drank it down with two aspirins.
Powder on the tongue. Ice-cold liquid.
Shiver of contact.
Her fingertips burned.
Mouth fuzzy.
Feeling bad.
Supposed to be working today.
How was she supposed to...
Headache.
No matter what she did.
Strange.
She steadied herself, grabbing hold of the kitchen counter.
The room lost focus.
Click.
Back in place.
Maybe it was time, maybe go to the doctor.
Soon.
Yes. Talk to Christina about it.
Maybe.
Click.
Room blur.
Click.
Clear once more, every detail of sink and countertop and cooker sharp, real, overly real.
Nola walked back into the living area.
The wall-screen played on.
Commercial break. Some minor celebrity figure dashing through a house of treasures, speaking of facts, numbers, units sold, usages thereof, the life sparkle, the one hundred different usages of this one, brilliant product. Images of switches being pulled, buttons pressed, a child’s face all smile, all need, all shining pink happiness. The product itself unseen, only talked about, only fantasised over. Now the logo, the final line:
Purchase now, before your friends do.
Be the first! Become the subject of discussion at work and in the home!
Yes.
All is good.
The Bliss Machine lives on.
Here we are gathered...
A presenter spoke in reverent tones of programmes to come, all the mystical pleasure to be viewed and reviewed later on this day, into the night, next week, oh such delight to be accessed at your leisure, when and where you wish!
Nola sat down. She heard secret prayers, the chatter decoded.
Dearest viewers,
Here we meet on each side of the glass
To sizzle and purge
and plug our souls in.
To lick the screen for static
To burn our eyes with dazzle.
Daily, nightly, twenty-four seven
Week upon week
Life-long
We will download, upload
and drown ourselves gleefully
At the electric well
Of glitter,
Of poison and moonshine.
Why not join us?
Nola found the remote.
Click.
Gone. All silent, all blank.
She leant back on the couch. Maybe grab a snack. Need for sugar.
Shhszzsssssss...
What?
Noise.
What was that?
Tingle dizzy.
Moment of.
Blur.
Something wrong. Something is wrong.
The noise again, quieter now.
...shhzzhsshsss...
She stopped. Held herself still, alert.
The skull hum?
No, not that. This was different.
The screen, maybe?
No, still turned off. Definitely turned off.
So listen. Listen now...
Shhhhhshs.
There.
There it was. Slightly louder now.
Shhhhszss...shszts...sshskjszsss...
Words?
Listen!
No. Not words, not as yet, and not even a whisper. Only a murmuring or a faint hissing sound that seemed to come from a slightly different direction each time she moved her head.
Nola closed her eyes, concentrated.
Was it a voice? Was it somebody speaking?
Sth...sh...ha...t...he...mho...istu...shn...
Somebody trying to speak? A child perhaps? A young boy?
Nola could not tell for sure.
She felt a tingling sensation on her abdomen, which she scratched at without really thinking, her fingers digging in under her shirt. The skin felt warm and sticky.
What?
Fingers searching, pressing.
What in the hell is that?
She leaned back to lift up the shirt, to examine her stomach more closely. There was something there, on her skin.
Difficult to see.
She stood up and walked into the kitchen, where the overhead strip-light still buzzed.
Now. Now she saw it clearly.
...A bruise.
A bruise on her stomach.
It was purple and pink coloured, lurid against her flesh, roughly circular, about two inches in diameter, situated just to the left of her navel. Nola’s fingers explored the area gingerly, almost scared of what she might find. But there seemed to be no puncture, no serious wounding. That slight feel of stickiness, nothing more.
Had she been attacked last night, or even been involved in some kind of fight?
No, not that she could recall.
Could she have forgotten some violent encounter? No. No, it wasn’t possible. Maybe she’d fallen over in the street, in a stupor? But what kind of fall would result in a bruise to the stomach? She must have walked into something, that was it, that was the only explanation, stumbled into a door without realising, or a lamppost or a fence, a parked car, something like that.
It was a mystery.
The tingling on the skin could still be felt.
Nola pulled her shirt back down and walked through into the bedroom. She was suddenly tired, exhausted, struggling to remove her clothes, most of them.
Her head fell back against the pillow.
She was soon asleep.
Dreams disturbed her.
Strange visions, bursts of imagery that never settled for more than a couple of seconds. They could not be truly registered, only experienced, only flinched from or welcomed, each in turn. Around these fleeting pictures lay a wash of low-level static that softened the skull, and within which music could be heard.
Somebody singing.
A voice so beautiful, and that melody, that amazing pattern of notes! She’d never heard such music. Really, she had to get up now and write it down, capture it, jot down the words and the melody before they vanished.
But she could not awaken, not properly.
Instead Nola reached out towards the music, towards the singing voice, these human presences, until the dream folded itself back into darkness.
After that she slept soundly for a couple of hours or so, her fingers resting lightly on her stomach the whole time.
Blood flowed back and forth around the web of veins and arteries.
Feeding the bruise.
-4-
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*
-5-
Nola stared into the bathroom mirror.
She was showered and fresh and feeling better. Having checked the bruise again, she was glad to see the colours were fading a little and that any physical sensations had lessened, fading to a mild skinglow.
She moved into the living room, clicked on the screen without thinking, just for the sound of it, the flicker, the company, the chatter of voices.
Szhzfzztttht.
Connections were made.
Her stomach lurched.
Her hands were drawn to the screen as it lighted. The warmth comforted her, the crackle of electrics. And now she could smell fused wiring. Her tongue licked around her mouth, tasting smoke, sparks.
Fingertip sizzle.
Body heat.
Head buzzing with random input.
Szfistt...szifftst...
Not painful. Just this feeling of being fragile,
on edge.
She needed to take something, a pill. Fuel. Something sweet and thrilling to get her through the day. She would ask Christina’s advice, yes. When she came round...
Nola sat down on the floor in front of the visionplex and stared at the screen.
She recognised the programme.
The Pleasure Dome.
Scattercast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Cross channel round-ups on the hour, specials at the weekend, all access available via the grapevine sites, legal or otherwise.
Shimmer now. Colours forming...
The clear plastic of the Dome itself, twenty-one metres in diameter, buried partway into the soil, eighteen meters tall at the apex. Dots of orange and blue traverse the curved surface, slowly mutating into sun and sea, melting from there to a speeding car, a wave of surf, a rui
ned tower under a twin-moon sky. The outer surface displays constantly changing images, sometimes in abstract patterns, other times forming into semi-coherent episodes, fragments, glimpses of a narrative.
Early morning Sunlight caresses the Dome like a lover’s ghost.
Interior shot: the woman, kneeling in the centre.
The young woman kneeling in soil, with her greasy matted hair and dried out skin, her fingers covered in clay, scabs, dead insects. Torn flowers around her, the remnants of a meal, bones, apple cores, wafer crumbs. A roll of cloth for a bed. Nothing more. The woman’s hands, working, knotting, tangling string and wire and twigs together.
The image flickered.
Nola’s eyes blinked in time.
The young woman frowned.
Her name was Melissa. Famous Melissa. The chosen one, this year’s oracle. Participant. Victim. Call her what you will.
The camera moved closer to the woman’s head, showing the tiny marks, one on each temple, where the transmitters had been injected. They glowed red: active signal.
Now her face filling the screen entirely, her eyes...
Melissa’s eyes gazing out at Nola.
Staring. Dark. Fierce.
Nola could not turn away, not even for a second.
Cut to: Dome shot. Exterior.
The surface reacted with swirls of red and gold, flickers of blue, flowers, petals, bees landing on stamen to gather pollen, flying away. Shift and slant into pure white, milk white, off white. Crackle of flames. The surface of the Dome danced with imagery, all of it conjured in real time from the woman who sat and slept and prayed and slathered and murmured and howled at the centre, locked inside. From the skullflow, let bloom skullfowers. Fill the screen, move in, bleed. Take us over. Witness now the buzz and crackle of a mind at play, setting flames to a bird’s wing, tearing at raw meat, sucking a wound, caressing naked flesh, sweat on a man’s back, muscles at work, the sky folded, darkened, the myriad stars in their constellations, all cast for a few seconds in turn on the surface. The images were constantly shifting and merging and separating and fading and dying away to let new images take over.
In this way, the young woman in the Dome gave her thoughts to the world. Whatever she dreamed was immediately made visible, uncensored, direct to the audience.
Direct to Nola.
Jump cut.
Now Melissa’s eyes in close-up, yearning.
Nola stared back.
Melissa rubbed the fingers of one hand in dirt and shit. She took up a stick and started to scrawl letters in the soil around her.
D...A...
She hesitated as though remembering an impulse, then moved on.