by Jeff Noon
He tuned into Pleasure Dome.
And they saw there, as shown already on Nola’s stomach, the wounds of Melissa.
Live and direct. Rolling as we speak.
Melissa had cut into her own stomach with an improvised blade and carved out the symbol of an eye, an eye that stared out of the screen in close-up.
A human eye of blood
and tears.
-18-
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-19-
Wound pulse.
Nola alone now. She could barely keep her hands on the steering wheel, barely see the road ahead through the blur of early morning rain, the throb of overload.
Too much information.
Too many pictures.
The slow red flow of her stomach and hands, drop by drop.
Her flesh lined with a blood diagram where the image knife had cut.
Still in shock from that, still reeling. Still thinking that somehow she had to reach out, to help in some way, to cleanse the blood, to close and stitch the wound.
Melissa’s stomach.
Nola knew that now.
Melissa’s hands.
Nola picked up further news from the airwaves, from the fiery web sparkle of the ether. Millions of signals flashing back and forth through grey light, through clouds and dust and scattered wind-borne litter. She saw them in her mind’s eye, his vast array of communication. Melissa’s crude weapon examined in details, discussed by experts, this thin stark blade of sharpened stone and wire strung with dirty matted hair. With this she had proceeded to harm herself.
Seven cuts to the stomach.
In reality, the cuts were shallow, a work of art more than damage.
Demonic markings, ritual scars.
The eye. Shape and symbol.
The evil eye. The all-seeing eye.
Horus.
The Pleasure Dome worked its magic, its skin of dreams alive with the same imagery, the eye of poison, the eye of love, the splash of red, fountains, a scarlet moon, a swarm of flies with crimson wings, funeral songs, bloodpetal flowers. Blossom and fade, blossom and fade and blossom again.
The viewing figures rose, drawn upwards by the blade’s tip, the moment when sharpness met flesh. The incident was shown over and over on the vine, as people tuned in to the bloodletting.
The victim pleasing herself, working herself. Making the map of her skin.
The cameras moved in.
The body responded.
Finally, the knife lifted up in Melissa’s hands, her two hands, to be pushed slowly through the pliable surface of the Dome itself, making a tiny slice, an opening.
Pigment leaked from the wound.
~~~
Alone. Driving.
The air warm now, damp, heavy.
Alone with the pictures, with the flow of messages drawn down from the ether, alone with phase-signal flutter in and out of time with her own breathing, her own heartbeat rhythm. Zxssstszxtt! Her own image caught on camera, transmitted, cast on the body of herself. The scene in the bar, when she had shown herself, exposed her skinscreen to the people. All of that now on view across the screens of the nation. Messages sent to her across wavefields, picked up: videos, words of praise, desire, amazement, disbelief. All for her. Blips and curses and cute little drawn hearts and longings and all the tongues awag with glee and danger and mystery.
About her. About Nola. Nola Blue.
Her fame back on track, bigger than ever.
And yet she tried to block the flow of images, to cut herself out of the signal.
Driving on.
Szxzsssztztzzt.
Nola alone with electrical spectra, adrift in static.
Beep. Beep. Beep beep beep.
Telebug singing.
Christina’s face.
Nola clicked the bug to speaker.
‘Nola! Where are you?’
‘Travelling.’
‘You’re all over the news, everybody’s watching you.’
‘I know.’
‘Come back to base. We can work this, make it happen.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Nola! Wait--’
Enough. End transmission. Bugdown.
Blessed silence.
No. No returning, not now.
She glanced in the rear-view mirror, noting her face was clear once more, free of images.
A blank screen as yet.
The car moved on.
The city glowed with life. Roadways shrouded by downpour. Billboards. Colours melting in the car’s slipstream, gleaming with advertisements for diet pills and face powder, chocolate bars, celebrity keep-fit regimes: all of them sold by various male and female residents of Size Zero Paradise.
The flood of skinshots, images.
A woman’s eye opening...flowerlike...
She had to know if Melissa was alright, truly.
Nola scanned the skinwaves of her own flesh, seeking clues, answers. Finding only gossip, vague rumours, wild conjectures. Chatter. The company was keeping it tight. They had given Melissa some bandages, ointment.
The Dome resealed.
The contestant remained inside, asleep now.
Only by her own decision could she leave. It was written in the programme’s contract, signed and countersigned.
Melissa dreamed and the Dome dreamed with her, aflood with black sky imagery, falling comets, a door banging shut.
Nola felt this strange connection, this shared pain.
She had dreamed of the girl on the screen, the young woman trapped in screen world.
Connection.
She had dreamed of the girl
Dreamed of the cuts to the skin
Felt each one as her own
Each drop of blood
Her own.
All that Nola could do now was to keep her hands li
ghtly on the wheel, her foot down, allowing the road to drag the car along seemingly in one direction only, guided by forces she had no real control over.
11:30
Time passing.
Joe came to her: his face, his body.
Memories.
Nola felt dismayed.
She could still feel the glamacam’s eye scorching at her skin, stealing secrets from her, almost opening the wounds further. Watching her, wanting her. She had let her barriers down, and the young man had taken possession.
And yet she had wanted it, desired the contact.
Joe...Joseph Palmer.
It had been a mistake. But there was no need for any anger, not against Joe. Really it was her own problem. Being alone was part of the system she had given herself to, a necessary offshoot of the career transformation, a way of handling fame. Her image had been her armour.
All that was changing now.
Her skin glowed with the latest sensations, with this season’s fashions, daily news, on the hour stock prices, the endless rolling out of human life.
Nola’s edges were blurring.
She pulled into a petrol station to fill up the car. Across the forecourt a billboard glistened with gold and silver bottles of Isolation and Isolation pour Homme, the sponsored perfume of choice for happy Pleasure Dome viewers, wherever they might be living.
Nola hid herself behind scarf, dark glasses, gloves, the long coat. But when she checked the mirror her face danced with a single tiny advert, a black horse moving across her brow. Nola concentrated on this, she fought the impulse to broadcast and by this act of sheer resolve managed to clear the image from her skin.
Her face was a fragile blank state under which pictures and messages moved and trembled, waiting for release. They were kept in check only by willpower. That would have to do. She got out of the car, filled the fuel tank and then went into the garage store to pay. She poured herself a double-shot from a coffee machine, and picked up four slices of currant cake. This sudden urge for caffeine and sugar.
People waited in line for the checkouts.
Nola joined them.
Her flesh tingled. Sweat shivered her.
She could feel the images moving under her clothes and could not help seeing herself covered entirely by vision footage and download. Her face burned. Surely people and things moved there: actors, presenters, characters, sports programmes, action movies. Her whole body was alive with noise, with voices, car brakes squealing, a gun being fired, a woman screaming at the top of her voice: Stop, Johhnnnny! Please don’t hurt him!
Nola reached the till. Nobody seemed to be hearing the noise, only her. This is good. We can do this. She paid quickly by cash. The girl behind the counter looked at her, puzzlement on her face.
Nola panicked, tried to get away.
Coffee and cakes dropped.
A man blocked her path.
And now the other customers around her were muttering, pointing at her, saying her name out loud.
That’s her, that’s Nola Blue.
She’s the one, the vision screen woman.
Let me see. I need to get this on my--
Yeah, come on Nola. Give us a show.
A camera flashed in somebody’s hand. Another.
Nola pushed through, made it to the doorway. The people followed her, outside. Their voices were louder now, shouting, demanding a show, some skincasts.
Nola, what’s on view tonight?
Come on baby.
She reached the car. By now her skin was fevered by image. The viewers crowded around her.
Oh, there it is! Look at her face.
On my God!
Glamacams whirred, lenses opening and closing. Tiny fizz and click of mechanisms, light being gathered.
What is it? Which programme? Which channel?
Channel Skin.
The chant went up.
Channel Skin! Channel Skin!
‘Please, leave me alone.’
Nola managed to get the car door open and to slip inside, behind the wheel. Faces and hands pressed at the windows on all sides, somebody was banging a fist against the roof.
Channel Skin!
Show me! Broadcast me!
The engine caught, started. The car moved forward slowly, allowing the people to make way.
Nola could hardly breathe. Her body clicked and hummed and dazzled itself, all channels at full blast, all noise, all screaming of jet planes and fist fights and car chases and the hollering songs of the winning football team.
Now one last person clung to the bonnet. Nola swung out of the car park exit, forcing the man to slide loose.
Now she was free.
Speed. Speed!
Breathe.
Channel Skin...Channel Skin...
Channel Skin...
~~~
Onwards.
Through the hours, the day unfolding.
And the further she travelled, the more she felt her body taken over, the more she drifted through moods of love and hate. She crackled in primary colours as the road flashed by through a cascade of billboards, brand names, symbols, messages.
Stop here, special offer, no waiting!
Service stations
flyovers
traveller’s hotels.
We have what you need, guaranteed!
Weekend Breaks. Special rates.
Pedal. Press.
Speed...
Head blur, sun blur.
Roadway signs burned words into her eyes, messages, the one thousand destinations, directions, place names. And yet nothing was required beyond the fact that Nola drove along by her own compulsion, her body covered in images:
Speeding cars, maps, Satnav projections,
Bursts of traffic info, accident blackspot reports,
The road itself, filmed from the air and projected on her skin, becoming knowledge.
Body knowledge, skin knowledge.
~~~
Skin of stars and flowers
Of lime trees and factories
Skin of ice and blood splashes
Skin of dreams
Of spider webs, control systems
Skin of wonderment
Skin of bridges collapsing
and homemade bombs in the marketplace
Of trysts and tricks and dagger spikes in flesh
Of glamour queens and centre-forwards and fly-halves
Of x-rays and mirrors and all faces in-between
Skin of lake and stream and shoreline
And moon reflections and ghosts
Skin of mystery, of chemicals, pixels
Of sparkles at the edge of daylight
Skin of eyes looking back at skin of eyes
Skin of air, of rainfall, cloud patterns
Rocket launches, kittens,
drug thrills, murders, wedding videos
Magnetic fields, fluid mechanics
Skin of image dust
Skin of a creature, human, shining
Skin of Visionflesh.
~~~
Nola edged the car out onto a motorway. Blood throbbed behind her eyes. She was growing tired, her body slowing. The journey was long, taxing. She was becoming less physical, if such a thing could be understood. Shimmervision pictures speckled her skin, casting patterns on the dash, on the sun-dappled windscreen, the steering wheel, on her hands as they clutched and turned, and held on deep to the ridged leather of the wheel trim, turning, holding fast, turning once more, following orders, the voice of her skin her one true guide and pathway, directing the vehicle onto a slip road.
Already footage of the garage incident was playing over her body, picked up from portapops and telebugs and glamacams, as well as the garage’s security system. A blurred tangle of followers, her car, her own face sparkling with colour in close-up, her features painted alive with shots of a beach, a hillside, water cascading from Roman fountains.
The face of film caught on film.
The latest must-see programme.
The ether settled to one sound, one voice in the skull:
Pull over. Pull over now. Here.
Nola answered: Right here?
Park.
It was Dolly Temple talking, her rich bubbly drunken squealing soap opera voice giving out orders:
Park here. Now.
Messages received direct from the skin, whispering.
Nola stopped the car.
She looked up at the poster of the new star, this lovingly rendered mask of a face. Designed to catch the attention of passing commuters on their way to London, the image seemed out of place here in this austere, middle-class realm. The singer was a new female creation: shiny red of mouth, glittery blue of eyes and lush-golden of hair. Generous of body in the exact required ratio: desirable and yet safe. All the required attributes, so far off the scale of normality the poor thing looked more theory than human. Every year the spell of transformation was extended.
But there was no envy inside Nola, no desire.
The old passions were drifting away,
all ash, all dust,
so many flakes of make-up in the gutter,
so many notes of music lost beyond memory.
So many...
So many songs...lost...
drifting...
She shook her head to clear it.
The front wheels of the car were mounted on the pavement, the back half-skewed across the tarmac. No other traffic.
Shit. Bad parking, Nola.
She turned off the engine and climbed out of the vehicle. The doors closed with a hush as the car sighed into sleep.
Nola set off walking.
It was getting late. Static sparkled where the last of the afternoon sunlight fell on her, activating random images. Without thinking, she was pulling up televised skinmaps of the area, indicating direction with flowing arrows and animated footsteps. She followed the road for ten minutes or so, idly listening as Dolly Temple spoke to her, or seemed to speak to her.