by Jeff Noon
Sxxsxsttt!
Sizzle where the flesh touched the screen, and then away leaving a print, five fingered, a digital silhouette in soft blue glow, tinged with ultraviolet.
One hand, another hand. Side by side.
Aura prints.
Nola’s eyes blinked with tears.
A spell was being cast.
The Dome whispered to her, from skin, from glass, calling along the frequencies, station to station.
Her two hands pressed on, deeper, and the screen seemed to melt around her fingers.
A soft membrane.
Something passed through
from one side to the other
back and forth.
Convergence.
Sparkles.
Nola receiving.
Skull shivers.
Traces of light,
whispers
a scent...
And now the colours died on the screen, the spotlights shivered, faded.
Floodlight, glowlight, yellowlight,
Moonlight, dusklight.
A pale sheen covered the Dome, the surface completely transparent, void of image. All dreams at zero. The inside was clearly seen, the small contained space.
Cloudlight.
All eyes stared at the structure.
All viewers held by the sight.
All words
held.
Nobody moved,
none dared to breathe even.
Dusklight, darklight...
The Dome stood revealed,
empty.
Melissa had vanished.
-22-
Ballad of Telemorphosis
From skin to skin
Image to image.
Across the stations,
In signals caught on
Fingertip antennas.
Following bloodmaps
And crackle paths,
In cable dreams and
Cradles of sky.
Moon-drawn
Along motorways
Sulphurlit, lamplit.
Tracing patterns
Of ghost and noise,
Here sings Nola.
Here she moves
and breathes:
Voice of mist and wires
A face of static
Mouth of broadcasts
Screen of flesh.
And soft in the skull
Soft, a waiting hum.
-23-
Nola parked the car in a lay-by and then set off walking, following her body’s direction.
A dirt pathway led through a forest.
It was dark. But Nola covered her body in glow and sparkle drawn from the ether, from neon signs and electric bulbs and gas lamps seen on film. By this soft light she moved carefully past branches webbed together, the first signs of Autumn visible in clusters of leaves tinted orange and gold. She reached out to caress bark, fungal matter, bird shit, insects alive and dead. Everything she touched seemed to exist only for the act of being touched by her own hand; she imagined objects fading away, disappearing, when she moved on, when she looked aside. The whole forest had the feel of a stage set, a location, of something she had already seen on film.
But this is reality. Actuality.
She had to keep reminding herself of the fact.
Here. In this moment, by sight by sound by taste by scent by touch, the world in play.
The moon above, off-yellow, sickened by clouds.
Something moving through the tree trunks unseen, some kind of creature. Alive.
Alive...
Keep thinking. Keep believing.
Breathe.
Gather evidence.
Keep on track.
A long journey she had taken to get here, this close. Across country, through villages, bypassing cities.
The road unwinding.
Nola continued down the rough forest path. She pushed against twigs, bending them back until they reached the limits of their curve.
Grey creep of woodlice.
Soft wet carpet of ferns and flowers underfoot.
The ground still damp from a recent shower.
Nola walked on, further into the forest.
Ahead now, faint lights glimmering.
Distant crowd noise, machinery.
Commotion.
The sound of helicopter blades overhead, lights strobing through the leaf canopy.
Mist drifted through the trees, silvering cobwebs. Blur of the forest. Moonlight wavered. Moth flutter. Nola scraped her arm against a sharp edge of branch, deep, on purpose, cutting skin. A thin trail of red fluid appeared. She touched it with her fingers, raised droplets to nose and mouth.
Yes. Blood.
Correct.
I am alive.
Keep moving.
Nola wiped her arm clean.
She turned her bodyglow to dark and then slowly made her way forward. Fewer trees now, more air, more light, as the forest came to a ragged end. A large field spread out before her. Close by, a group of technicians were clustered around a mobile studio van, their voices raised in consternation and anger. Cables snaked the grass. Security guards hurried along, dragged by eager guard dogs. Sharp-faced pressmen stood close together, sharing fags, tea from a flask, one mug passed around between them. Voices low and fevered, the thorns of a story in the grasp, front-page poison.
The air tasted electric on Nola’s tongue.
Tar. Smoke.
Just keep moving. That’s all.
Here the people gathered. Long-time real-life viewers, fence clingers, dirty of face and hand and hair, ill-kempt, rubbing at eyes, sleepless, fuelled by sugar and coffee and pills. Fanatics, one and all. Nola felt strangely calm, her body warm and still, untingled, and those images she currently possessed were slow moving, hidden away. Her hands were bare, gloveless, and yet clear, free of any moving picture or channelled sound. And yet the Dome’s energy could be felt even from this distance, a static charge that sparked around her.
She was being drawn forward.
Nola walked through the crowd. Unseen, uncared for, just one more pilgrim to this sacred temple. The ring fence was glimpsed through the press of bodies and beyond that the upper curvature of the Dome could be seen. Arc lights flashed to one side, technicians shouted to each her, a press helicopter hovered above the site. A microphone squawked with random messages. Gently, low-level, Nola gave off radiant heat. Sparks crackled around her fingertips. People let her push through without really understanding why. She made it to the fence and a new batch of spectators closed in around her. The crowd shifted through lines and swirls of slow chaotic motion. All eyes desperate for a glimpse.
There it was.
There stood the Dome of Pleasure.
White of skin, blank of skin, without stolen thoughts, without image, broken in its circuits, turned to OFF. But still bathed in glowlight from the lighting rig, still targeted by cameras and microphones. A group of technicians were working near the structure. One of them opened the single portal set low in the wall.
The clouded moon hung above, forlorn.
Nola pressed her face against the wire.
The Dome’s interior space was clearly visible through the transparent skin.
Empty. A vacant space.
No sign of Melissa at all.
A man in a white overall was climbing inside through the circular portal.
‘What do they think she’s done?’ A crowd voice speaking. ‘Killed herself?’
Answered with laughter, fear. Another voice: ‘It’s all a game. The company are tricking us.’
Others: ‘She was never there to begin with. The occupant was just some kind of holographic projection.’
‘Computer trickery.’
‘I can’t believe that. I refuse to believe that.’
‘Melissa would never leave us, not willingly.’
‘She’s climbed free. The girl has found the secret doorway.’ This one hushed with devotion, mad at the edges. ‘The magic doorway into another re
alm!’
Nola shook her head, closed her eyes. The breaths and murmurs of the people close by clouded over her. Somebody dug an elbow in her ribs. Others were pressing from all sides. People were getting nervous, angry. Voices raised. Electric sparkles in the air. The crowd inched forward, fell back, cradled from one side to another. These were the hardcore spectators, viz screen addicts, fame stalkers with their glamacams raised and flashing out for the hope of an image, something to upload and show the world, proof of presence, proof of actually being here, being somewhere.
The fence posts buckled, the wiring stretched against flesh. Any minute now it would surely splinter and snap. A klaxon sounded. A woman slipped, almost fell. Too close. Hot, sweaty. Push. Make room, make room! A guard came in sight on the other side of the barrier, urging the crowd to step back, to give people space. His dog barked. Nola felt herself being pulled away, aside, channelled, dragged along.
Free now. Free of the crush.
She stood at the crowd’s straggly limit, and felt a shiver on her flesh. The skin tight suddenly at the back of her neck. Ice fingers.
Something...someone...
Someone looking at me...
She turned around and saw George Gold standing alone near the forest’s edge.
Nola walked over to him, and he scanned her the whole way. Seeing a woman in a dark overcoat, all bound up, with dark glasses on, hair tumbled across her face.
‘Fuck me.’
It was all he could say to begin with. Words atremble. His hand wrapped round a silver hipflask. He was already drunk.
Nola kept her voice steady: ‘What’s happening? Where’s Melissa?’
He breathed deeply. ‘I don't know. Nobody knows.’
Glowlights moved over the Dome’s exterior, searching, seeking out. George followed Nola’s gaze.
He said, ‘She’s gone, Nola. Just vanished.’
And she saw now that his eyes were flickering, wet.
‘There’s an answer.’
George shook his head without thinking. He looked far away from himself, detached.
‘George?’
He could barely look at her.
Nola tried to calm him. ‘Have you told them who you are?’
He frowned. Spat. And set off drawling: ‘They won’t let me in. I’ve tried. I’ve pleaded with them. I offered the guards money, drugs, women, boys, a position in the music biz. Fuck. Nothing works with them. How can that be?’ He was growing manic. ‘How can it be?’
Nola stared at him, not knowing how to answer.
Her body was hit by a sudden wave of images.
Static spasm.
Skull shiver.
George came near, responding to her distress. ‘Do you think she’s alive? Do you?’
Nola felt the images crawling over her flesh, under her clothes. She heard voices, sound effects: the slamming of a door, a cry of jubilation, fierce political argument, a street riot, somebody running, their footsteps on a pavement. If she could just keep her face clear.
‘Do you?’
George was just one more voice in the skinmix.
‘Talk to me. Is Melissa still--’
Focus.
‘Of course.’
George looked at her.
‘Of course she’s alive.’
His voice trembled at this answer.
‘Alive?’
‘Yes. She’s escaped.’
George pushed a hand through greasy hair. He looked around in a daze: at the trees, the Dome, anywhere but Nola’s face. Now his hands made nervous movements, making shapes.
‘Escaped.’ This said quietly, in awe.
‘George...’
His voice gathered strength. ‘Melissa’s out there somewhere. She’s drifting. She needs help. My help. I have to find her, bring her home.’ His eyes locked onto Nola. ‘You. You can help us. You, Nola. With your...with your body.’ He smiled. Grimaced. His mouth stuck in the one twisted position. ‘With your pictures and all that.’ Hands jabbing, gesturing. ‘Let me see her.’
He came forward, close up, touching. Nola tried to back away.
‘Show her to me!’ He grabbed her.
Nola stayed in his grasp, feeling the pressure of his hands build. She let it happen, holding his eyes with hers. Seeing the old George in there still, the one who had given her this chance of a new life, whatever kind of life it was. Her maker.
He stared back.
And now his fingers loosened, fell away from her clothing. His teeth started to bite at his own lips.
‘George. Let me--’
Auiehghhhhh...
He started to howl. He could not control himself.
Nearby viewers were turning towards this new attraction. A pressman came over, a crumpled guy in a raincoat the same ash-grey complexion as his face. A camera was slung low around his neck, his fingers itching for a picture, a story, scandal, anything.
‘You. Peckman!’ George was on him in a second; he knew his name, his face. ‘Piss off.’
‘Just doing my job.’
‘There’s nothing here for you. Zilch! Do you hear me?’
Peckman held his hands aloft. ‘Sure. Whatever, Mr Gold. I’m gone.’
George watched the reporter move away. ‘Fucking bedbugs, all of them.’
He turned back to Nola. She had wrapped her arms around herself, hugging the coat to her skin. Colours shimmered at the frayed edges of the garment, around her neck, her wrists, along the filament of her hair where it tumbled from her slouch hat.
George looked at her. Her examined her.
Nola whispered, all she could manage. ‘I don’t feel...I can’t feel...’
‘What is it?’
Nola’s hands came forward.
‘I haven't got long.’
Her fingers skipped with tiny dancers, images leaping from one hand to the other as she rubbed her palms together.
George clocked this display, his eyes now clinical. He said: ‘Come here, come closer.’ Traces of the old style coming back. ‘You’ll live forever, I can feel it.’
‘No, George. I don’t think so.’
Silence then.
Muggy air. Hot, clinging.
Nola took off her glasses, and her hat and scarf. She let the pictures roam, giving them access, freedom. Her face shone with moving colours, with iridescent shapes.
George’s gaze wandered over her, incapable of settling.
Not on her eyes. Too deep, too painful.
Not on her cheeks and brow, nor on her lips. Too many shifting planes, too many colours, images, figures.
And not on her hands. Too much was held there.
Vision blur.
He sensed her as a whole, as a being of many programmes, fully alive in the one thousand channels. And he felt proud then, that he had in some strange way created this body, sent it on its way into the world. Now it had come back for him. Now the body stalked him, it burned him, it fired up his eyes and he could hardly see for the dazzle.
Nola spoke quietly. ‘Inside the lens lies a world beyond ours. We have created it, set it free. Now it grows, expands. People live there. The spectral ones, the lost and the damaged for whom this world sets too painful a task, there they live.’
George looked deep. ‘So you know where she is, where my daughter lives on.’ He pressed finger and thumb against his eyes, dug in. Words: mumbled. ‘Show. Please.’
Nola waited, watched.
Flesh wet, sweaty. Drizzle mist.
The two of them, locked together. George holding it cold until he lost his nerve, and then:
‘Oh shit. I’ve fucked up. What have I done?’
His face suddenly looking old. Tears on stretched flesh.
Nola took a step or two, into the canopy of trees. Away from crowd eyes. George followed her. Shadows fell over them both, joining them together in this place. Past branches half bare, half still in leaf. Semi-gloom. Slow flowing map of moonlight, dark and bright shades of green, tans and yellows in between, orange tint
s.
Trickle of rainwater,
drop by drop,
tiny bell music.
Faint animal cries.
Nola was half hidden, semi-dark, semi-lit by screen glow.
George’s hands reached out.
‘What can I do, Nola? I’ve given up everything for this. This career. Fame. Money. You, the other stars. All the songs, the sorry songs. Now I’m being punished. The demon of broadcast has taken my child, swallowed her whole.’
Nola stared at him, unmoving.
Then she said: ‘Do you want to see?’
He nodded. He stared.
‘Yes.’
‘Her face?’
‘Please. Show me her face. Melissa’s face. Give me her image, her picture. Bring her to me.’
Nola let her overcoat fall open and drop from her. She rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and opened the buttons down the front, allowing the two halves to hang open. And then she moved forward slowly.
George waited. His eyes never left hers.
Out of the damp mottled shadows she came, stepping into moonlight. And all of her body that was currently visible, her face and neck and hands and arms and chest and stomach, her golden-dyed hair even, all were fully alive with imagery, with gorgeous icons and starlets. Nola was the Special FX Human and her art and style dazzled the muted woodspace with its electrical motion, with sound and vision and colour.
Luminance, chrominance.
Of fog and fragments and jewels she was made.
Her palms outstretched sizzled with sparks where the pictures flashed and breathed. Images caressed her.
Nola came close.
She took charge, covering her visible skin with chosen metaphors, all drawn down from the airwaves. Brought down, set in place.
Now...
Killers’ faces. Scowls.
A knife in the hand of a woman. Blur movement. Flesh pierced.
A scream. A pink mouth, stretched.
Blood flow:
drops
drops
drops of red
hitting a white tile floor.
A little boy crying.
Burning flags and carriages and sea storms and sailing ships and blue-winged birds and books filled with numbers and spinning tops whirling around nonstop and rockets landing on distant planets and automobiles racing along a tarmac strip and people lying on a beach.
All of these things and many others all contained within her body, at play upon her contours.