by Jeff Noon
She pulled into the forecourt of the next place that came in view, a small crumbling hotel on a street with only half a name.
Here now. To sleep.
The old man behind the desk looked at her like he knew her from somewhere in a past life but couldn’t quite remember when or where. One other person: a solitary man sitting in reception. Young. Neatly dressed. He too stared at her. Somewhat nervous, but like he had the right to stare, as though he owned a part of her already. Nola knew the look. He was viewing her as public property.
She ordered a tray of sandwiches and a coffee and then retreated to her room. Tiny and damp, candlewick spread, the sheets extra tight on the bed. Tepid hot water the colour of rust from pipes that clanked and rang. The food was fine, the coffee better for being cheap and strong, but there was a moment when she almost didn’t keep the meal down. But no, her stomach had this urge, a need for fuel. She gulped it. Stench and taste jarring her tongue but that was good, her metabolism like an animal living inside, needing to be fed.
Now she felt better.
Sleep could wait for a while.
Let’s see this. Let’s brazen it.
Nola stood up and opened the rickety, creaking wardrobe. As she hoped a full-length mirror presented its face to her. Dusty and speckled, stripped of silver here and there, but it was enough. Nola stripped off her clothing and stood there naked before the glass, gleaming, shivering, turning this way and that as she examined her body.
Her stomach offered a talent contest for her viewing pleasure.
Tiny shapes played along her left arm, on the inner side just below the elbow. She looked closer. The shapes were made from numbers: tumbling trade figures.
Faces bloomed and faded, bloomed again on each wrist, each face in conversation across the space between her hands. As she moved her hands apart, the voices raised themselves slightly in volume, to reach across the gap.
A motorway flowed around her right thigh, far into the distance, a car speeding along, vanishing.
Nola twisted her back to the mirror, to see her left shoulder blade alive with bright lush flowers amid tall waving stalks of grass. Insects buzzed the petals, seeking nectar. A gardening show, perhaps.
Each programme had its own sounds, low volume, all merging now into a soft persistent hum.
Her neck received news from foreign lands, the threat of war increasing.
One breast drawled with the burr and bite of Pleasure Dome, Melissa’s dreaming thoughts painted on the curve of flesh. The other breast glowed with a games arcade, a place bright with cascades of coins, warm with music.
Now a cartoon cat chased his yellow-feathered nemesis around and around her midriff, crossing from one side to another in their circling progress.
Nola smiled, she couldn’t help herself.
She was alive with images.
Here was the skin cinema, creating art.
Infectionism.
At one moment she watched herself from a distance, a viewer; the next she flipped inside and felt the images burn and tumble and slither across the flesh. Confusion reigned. And yet in the bar she had gained some kind of control. Could she do it again, could she learn the new techniques?
Nola breathed deep.
Proceed carefully. Concentrate.
Let go.
Now. Begin. The click and buzz of her mind as she changed the channels of herself. Random hits. Shivers. Fuzzy static, patches of interference where the signals clashed and fell away momentarily, the pain of this. Skin burn. Click, click. Channel 9, Channel 24, Channel 57. Moving on, beyond the normal waves. Picking up radio programmes, taxi calls, police transmissions, citizen’s band, satellite pulses. Web-blasts, flexitexts, random input from total strangers, shimmers from Shimmertown, vidi-blips. And beyond that, the ghost voices at the fading edge of the spectrum, clickxk, pictures changing in tune with the sounds.
Nola was skinloading.
She was trying to control the waves of transformation, failing, klxckz, falling, failing, zxttixkt, turning her flesh into a total body-surface chaos pad. Overload of pictures, flash cuts, faces, legs, pistols, car chases, weather reports, crashing seas, bombs exploding, young lovers kissing, hands on flesh, maps, planet Earth from space rotating with the moon in tandem, that kiss again, zkxixkc, all of her bodily screen streaming different signals and downloads, a sonic visual mess, complexity, her skin burning now, sweat covered. Nola was lost in each moment as it flowed along the listings of her flesh, tissue melting with noise and colour and dampness, veins flooded with image, clikxzk, her mind soft like stars, haze filled: static pulse shadow, ache of muscle, mains hum, ignition, fizz, zclick, zzhhmmmxt, xklikc, zlick, ckiclk, cxzcikcz.
Losing breath.
Eyes painful with grit and tears.
Blur.
Her mind clicking on, clicking off.
On...Off...
Clicking on and off.
ON
OFF
Her hands coming to press at her stomach, at her thighs, her breasts, arms, to dig in and scratch. Click. Clikck. ON. Fzzzt. OFF. Ktch. Zxxt. ON! Kttrv. To pull loose the images, to rip them from her. Xzzt. Ktick. Zzsxct. Cktich. Tearing images from the screen of her skin, her one desire to be free of all this, to be clean again. Hands digging in, digging. Cliick, txklickc, click, czxxikiclk. Blood. Jolt. Clcik, ckkickzx. Nerves jumping and then the scream coming out of her, out of her body, and now all the pictures suddenly breaking with human faces, suddenly as one, one hundred mouths in close-up, red maw, teeth, all of them screaming. Herself. Her own mouth, this one true red raw mouth of hers joining in the scream.
Arhhhghhshyyrhhhhhhh!
She fell to the floor, onto her knees, her hands coming up to clasp around her face.
She cried out. Every voice.
Howl!
Ahhfgrhhhazjhhhhjarghhcxxzhhhhhghhhhhh!
Bang.
Somebody’s fist on the wall. No, not the wall. The door. Somebody knocking on the door, hard. Demanding to be let in.
Go away.
Nola’s voice, a mere breath. Whisper.
Please. Go away...
The knocking continued.
Other voices now. Out there.
Why can’t they leave me alone? What can’t they?
The sound of a key in the door lock.
No!
Nola tried to get up, to get to her feet, to pull some clothes over her, a bed sheet, anything.
To cover her shame, ugliness, her splendour.
The old man from reception was there, staring in at her. And then another man pulling him back, talking to him, Nola hearing only the scream of noise inside her own head, hands clutched at the bed sheet.
Clutching, clutching...
Blind.
Blind panic.
-15-
Evelyn Moore came home drunk, crash-landed, sprawled herself across an unkempt duvet.
Slept for an hour or two.
Glimmers woke her. Shivers.
The night. That woman in the bar. What had happened?
Her eyes part-opened in the dark.
What the fuck happened tonight?
Suddenly alive, more than halfway sober.
Cold minded.
She got up and found her glamacam, viewed the screen, seeing once again the woman with the glowing skin, the body of pictures, images dancing across flesh, across hands.
Nola. Nola Blue, music star.
Some kind of Vision-Screen Woman?
This was major league gossip, news, downloadable sizzle.
Now Eva was fully awake, clothed, washed and spruced and sitting at her boxcomp. She wired the vidiflex direct to input and viewed the result full-screen, full colour, sound and detail enhanced as far as the dial would go.
She worked for an hour or two, setting up a new vinesite, not bothering about design perfection at this stage, just the need to get the news out there, to communicate this wonder to the world.
Fingers on the SEED switch, and...
clikkck
Channelsk1n*vine was now active.
The footage of Nola in all her televisual glory set off through etherspace, drifting through wires and waves, encrypted, entangled, bouncing off way-stations, repelling noise, multiplying along webs and nodal points, fixing on signals of attraction, falling like image dust on receivers, here to be downloaded, decoded, dragged down to earth by terminal pods and tagspikes and cliphounds, by all the seekers out there, the message detectors, all picking up on this broadcast from paradise, the living breathing woman with the vision skin. Viewers tuned in. Word spreading, portapops passing on the link, somapods whispering each to each, telebugs flicking their wings open and singing the news full score, tenfold, a thousandfold.
Click-jammers came awake.
Rumours converged and diverged along pathways of ones and zeros. The night buzzed with blipspeak.
Mouthnet whispered, sang, shouted, overloaded.
Shimmertown sparkled with shimmers, a few to begin with, then many more, as the world’s viewers clocked in, sparking back and forth with their own thoughts and feelings.
Nola lived on, no longer screenbound, no longer of flesh alone, but etherised.
Evelyn opened a buzzcircle, got the first requests within minutes: messages for Nola, wherever she may be.
> Nola baby! Here’s my facepic. Skincast me!
> Fleshtastic. All the way! Please please please show the world my puppy dog dancing. It’s supacool.
> It’s sum kinda trick, right? Sum crappy George Gold hype.
> No. It’s true. I heard it good from a friend. He was there! In the bar.
> Nola...You are Womankind 2.0.
> Come visit me, NolaBlue. Check my podswap.
> Oh God this is so freaky! I want to be like her! Where do I get plugged in? Anybody?
> Does she do porncasts? I will offer my services.
> Screen me up, VizScrn Girl. Let me be in yr programme.
> Nola. Sing the body electric, why don’t you?
Evelyn gathered the input, turned it round, set the vine to auto and leaned back in her chair, tingling with pleasure, drinking coffee and eating cereal from a striped bowl.
Whilst in her halfdreaming mind...
A nightair gold shiver of messages
moves across waves of moonlit
wires and particles.
Globewise: eyes are dazzled bright
as fingers click and tap
in motion to the
data dance.
-16-
Slow jazz on the radio. Yesteryear misty music.
Bedside lamp: warm yellow glow in one corner. The rest of the room shaded.
Nola Blue was sitting on the bed, drinking from a chipped mug filled with brandy. Her body was wrapped in a white sheet, nothing more.
The man leaned against the wall.
He said, ‘I recognised you, of course. I saw you arriving and I said to myself, there she is, that’s Nola Blue. Number one around the world with your first single.’
Nola kept her head down.
The man continued: ‘It’s not often I get to meet a famous person.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Not famous? Or not a person?’
Nola looked at him.
Mid twenties. Face half in shadow. Long hair combed back. The young man from downstairs, from reception.
‘Neither,’ she answered.
The man folded his arms. ‘You’re a creature like me, the unknown species.’
‘I’m not like you.’
‘A lonesome beast with a thorn in its side. One dreadful rainy night it happens, the pinprick of fear. Can a person really be so alone, even with all the friends and lovers in the world? Ouch! It hurts, doesn’t it? But not enough to make you do anything about it. Nag, nag. All these years of trying to get rid of the thing, nag, nag, nag, and still it persists, still its jabs and spikes you. And instead of bringing up the hunger in you, all it does is leave you bored with yourself. Isn't that right?’
Nola could no longer look at him.
‘Evidence,’ he went on. ‘Even global superstars get to feel world-weariness.’
‘When allowed to.’ Her voice quiet.
‘What’s that?’
‘When their managers allow such feelings.’
‘And how often do these managers, as you call them, allow such feelings?’
‘About once a year.’
The young man shook his head. ‘Now that is sad, it really is. With me, Nola, you can feel anything you want, at any time you like. Is that good for you?’
Nola hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘But you’re in a bit of a state, aren’t you? Just now?’
She nodded.
He moved across to the window, which he opened partway. The sudden feel of cold night air.
‘I made a recording once, of the sound of an anthill.’ He spoke now in a lowered tone. ‘I was only a kid. I had a cheap tape machine and a crappy microphone, which I pushed gently into the soil. I pressed record and left it there for half an hour. That night I turned off all the lights and lay on my bed, and played back the tape. I was nine years old.’
His voice was pulse-like, hypnotic.
‘It was the sound of fire crackling, electricity burning through wires. A human brain at work. I lay there, transfixed, falling into sleep. The sound penetrated my dreams.’
He turned to Nola.
‘By day, I’m a cold caller. We sell advertising space. Emptiness, if you will. I sit in my cubicle, ringing people up, strangers, to gently hound them. The pre-programmed words unfold on the monitor and my lips make the requisite movements to bring the words alive in my mouth, in the wires, the air that separates us all, in the ears of the listeners. This was supposed to be just a stopgap, you know, something to keep me going until my secret projects kicked in, my plans. Three years I’ve been there. Recently, I was promoted. Now I circle the cubicles, making sure that people do the same as I did, following the script. And little by little, call by call, the void closes in: the lost connection, the dead line, the noises.’
He stepped nearer.
‘And then at night, at the weekends, I travel into sound. I record the world in miniature, the world inside the world.’
Nola whispered back, ‘Tell me more.’
‘Birdsong, rainfall on leaves, on water, animal calls, night owls, people arguing on park benches, the magnetic core of badly-tuned antique radios and televisions. I like fuzz and crackle and feedback. Analogue grit. Once, I placed the microphone inside the body of a dead mouse as insects devoured the flesh. Life itself, always on the fadeout. And then one morning I woke up in a scorching hotel room with a woman lying naked next to me, a stranger, recording equipment scattered on the bed sheets. Her body was still adorned by contact mikes, five of them, each taped in place to a vital area of flesh. And even as this woman stirred and awoke and whispered and smiled at me, I thought to myself, where the hell am I? Where am I going with this?’
His voice fell silent.
Nola was aware of all the noises that filled the quiet: the creak of wood panelling, the rattling flush of a toilet down the corridor, the mini-bar’s thermostat activating. Also, her own body working at low level: the constant shroud of interference, the random red-yellow spikes of heat that made her skin crackle.
She tried to stand and regretted it instantly, her skull aglimmer with light, spilling over into a steady grey drone. She could hardly think straight. One hand came up to her head, thumb and fingers pressing on each temple. She squeezed.
‘Are you okay?’
The man came to her. He looked uncertain.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Stay away from me.’
Nola was fighting the static waves, trying to keep them down. Noise, echoes. Voices. Indecipherable. She felt she was being called, summoned, and she reached out to answer, to belong at last, to be free from all this pain and doubt, and then the man’s hands were on
her, calming her. Nola let herself be guarded, and she rested once more on the bed, the noise dwindling now, fading, leaving her mind empty, homesick, lined with shadow.
The man gave her room. ‘Does that happen often?’
Nola nodded. ‘Yes, but not that bad. Some kind of attack.’
He stood there watching her, as she drank her brandy down and asked for a refill. One for her, one for himself.
‘I don't know your name,’ she said.
‘That’s right.’
‘Will you tell me?’
‘If I did, Nola, would it mean anything to you?’
‘Of course it would.’
The young man smiled. ‘And fifteen minutes after we part, it will drift away from memory.’
‘No. That wouldn’t happen’
‘What can I mean to you?’
‘You helped me.’
He smiled as he took out a cigarette. ‘Do you mind?’
Nola shook her head.
‘You want one?’
‘Please. Just a drag or two.’
He lit a cigarette, handed it to her. Nola inhaled.
The man watched. ‘Good?’
She breathed out. ‘Jesus. It’s been a while.’
‘It suits you.’
They passed the cigarette back and forth between them.
‘You seem to be alone,’ he said, ‘for somebody so well known, I mean.’
Nola shrugged.
‘Do you have a boyfriend?’
She laughed. ‘I have...companions. I’m not sure if they count.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, you only ever see them in photographs, in the press. And there’s always a caption. Something like: Number one star Nola Blue seen at sleazy night club with her latest “companion”, actor Martin Finchley. That kind of thing. Nola flaunts her new “companion” at a product launch. On and on.’
‘And what are they like, these boys, in reality?’
‘I’m not sure if they exist, in reality. Not as such. George finds them for me.’
‘George?’
‘George Gold. My manager.’
‘Ah yes. Famous George. Right. You’re one of those.’
‘One of...’
‘One of those creations.’
Nola looked at him. Cold. ‘I think we need to...’