by Jeff Noon
Projection alone was not enough for them; they needed to feel the image and the reality conjoined. Subsequently, they had folded themselves into the porous regions that grow around sites of extreme media activity, and found themselves willingly lost on the maps. And now the they mourned the slow passing of the Dome in all-night vigils of flame and shadow. For rumours on the vine and ether had foretold that this was to be the final night of broadcast, perhaps for all time. The Dome was closing down its circuits.
Nola woke to the sound of music.
It was still dark outside. She came out of the tepee to see that all the residents of Tangent Five were gathered together, children and all. Their focus was a large white bed-sheet stretched between a van and a tree trunk. Live-feed images of the silent empty darkened form of the Pleasure Dome flickered on the surface of the sheet, projected from a homemade device. Sparks from the camp fire flitted across the screen and around people’s faces, adding to the atmosphere of a pagan ritual. A portable generator squatted nearby like a humming beast. The camp’s satellite dish had been decorated especially for this final ceremony, with long strips of glittering silver foil hanging down from the bowl.
Nola looked around.
It was three in the morning and the air had turned cold. People were dressed in overcoats and scarves. Nola herself wore a similar outfit, given to her by one of the women who had taken her in, Bethany. A woollen hat pulled low down over Nola’s face meant that only her eyes could be discerned, and yet the campers glanced at her, nervously. She was a mystical being to them, a species made of electric glow, signal and tissue, one of the fabled illuminated wanderers as depicted in the old creation stories of the Cathode Ray Transmission and the Vacuum Tube.
Nola took her place in the audience.
The sound system crackled and the screen buzzed and shivered with static. Now the Dome’s image vanished as a pirate channel cut through the signal. The figure of Misty Parker appeared. Misty: celebrity gossiper, creeper of the all-night grapevine. Her gothic hair dyed aflame and her face like a butterfly stretched and pinned for permanent display, white of skin with painted patterns on her cheeks and brow. Her violet-tinged lips made grinning movements as her show’s theme tune played to an end.
Misty’s words poured forth.
‘Dome watchers everywhere, I bring you the mystery of Now! I mean this minute, this very second. There is no other story worthy of our time. Namely: Just where has the lovely, desperate, beautiful, humble, fiery, shy and dancing Melissa Gold gone?’
The crowd around the rough-made screen watched in silence, some of them nodding their heads, others closing their eyes in meditation.
Misty’s grin lengthened. ‘The producers will not tell us. They keep their little secrets. Oh but we shall know the truth, for we are the people, the true-hearted and only open-eyed viewers of this outcast land.’
Misty gleamed. Her voice took on a deeper hue.
‘I speak now of the pains and the pleasures of life in the Dome. I whisper of words half-said, of rumours in the night caught on webs of air and numbers.’
Now the screen showed the live audience gathered at the ring-fence. They too stood at rest, in quiet, in flickers of light, in reverence, heads bowed, hands intertwined with their nearest colleague - strangers, friends, families, fellow viewers - all held together in these moments of shared doubt and loss.
Misty spoke over the scene.
‘It is said that Melissa has left behind the petty bondage of flesh and entered another, better realm, one made of light and shade, of flicker and film. She has become lost in the cameras, sacrificed to light and vision.’
The people around the camp murmured in kind:
...lost...lost in the cameras...lost...
The screen faded to nightblack. Misty’s voice continued over this blank setting.
‘Melissa? If you are out there, if you can speak to us, communicate with us in any way or form, please do so now.’
Nola shifted in her seat.
Misty’s words sounded like incense, the incantations of a priestess.
‘Please, Melissa, we have darkened our screens for you, especially. Reveal yourself to us, speak to us. Show yourself.’
The screen trembled.
Trembled in moonlight.
And all gazed spellbound.
Nola imagined them. All those at the studio site, silent. All those at the fence, in the various long-stay camps, all those in their living rooms staying up late to see this, to be witness. All silent. Nightworkers and nocturnals in hospital wards, factories, offices, in cafes and bars. Silent. The nation as a whole, silent. Millions of viewers around the world. Silent. The technicians and the executives at the London headquarters of Pleasure Dome Enterprises. Silent. Misty Parker herself. Silent, waiting. All people everywhere looking at their chosen screens, spellbound: on visionplex, boxcomps, portapops, telebugs, somapods, hexplayers, antique television sets dragged from storage for this ceremony. A piece of cloth stretched between trees. All staring at darkness and waiting for an answer, a view of Melissa in her new guise, whatever it might be, her new location, wherever she dwelled. Surely, surely technology will give us this glimpse, this viewing? Surely.
Waiting.
Still waiting.
The stretched white sheet quivered in the nightwind, black, empty of life, of sound or vision.
The screen gave nothing back, offered no opening.
Nola held onto the seat-edge, fingers tightening. She could hear voices in her head, a pressure building. Her body itched and burned all over, every inch.
The viewers sighed.
Lost...still lost...
Live footage of the Dome returned to the cloth screen, as the pirate signal died, and the official programme regained control of the airwaves.
Nobody spoke for a moment or two.
A young man stepped forward, stripped to the waist. He started to dance in a precise low-stepping choreography, energy barely contained. The fire bristled. People began to chant, quietly at first, then building. A woman was playing electric guitar, generating minor key variations on the Dome’s theme tune, conjured from feedback. The music turned darker, more ragged, louder, atonal, as the tribe’s Shaman rose to his feet, a torch of naked flames held in his hand. The shadows danced with him, like the black spirits of wild animals tethered only by fragile spells. Nola shuddered, her own skin crawling with projected fur and claws under her coat. At the climax of the dance the Shaman set fire to the white sheet and a gasp ran through the watchers as the televised image of the Pleasure Dome burned away. People cried out in pain and release. The music burst into noise, alive with bloodnotes and bonesparkle. Prayers were intoned, the words borrowed from archaic television dialogues and catchphrases, all twisted, made abstract. And then silence as the ritual died with its god.
Fire crackle.
Night forest sounds.
Ashes from the cloth blowing away.
Now all eyes turned to Nola.
She stood up hesitantly and moved to the front of the crowd. What she had to do came to her from her skin, from the voice of flesh, from the image demon. From herself. She slipped off her outer clothing and felt no shame. The show began. It was a broadcast never before seen, created by Nola jamming together signals, producing her own programmes. Tonight on Skinvision we bring you delights: Highway Zoo Racers, Death Cosmetics, Animals on Drugs, and Dirty Rock and Roll Decorators. Nola stirred the pictures, making hybrids: Bride of Cars, The Human Fish Talk Show, Naked Days of Flame and Wonder, Life and Death of the Corporate Misfit, Broken-Winged Pegasus. She cracked sounds and voices into pieces, bringing them together in new combinations: Blood on the Biscuits, Monkeys Making Money, Mister Kiss Kiss is Singing, Blue Electrocuted Poems of Football, Dream Midnight Goodbye, Zingo Lingo Bingo!!! Nola made her own programmes and the audience watched, all wide in their eyes. The people laughed and cheered and oohed and ahhed. They salivated. They whispered. They wanted more.
Handheld cameras gazed upo
n her, lenses enraptured.
Nola slowed the vision down, catching the mood. Her skin glowed with bioluminescence as the images materialised:
Stolen glances of love,
gaslight gently radiating on a woman’s face,
a man’s arms, enclosing,
a couple standing dark against sunset,
waves touching at sand on some faraway beach,
a kiss so tender, so magnified on flesh that the lips burned with stars and sunfever.
Pictures. Soap-style clichés, exaggerations, the standard stock footage of love.
No matter: they were born of desire.
And a teenage girl was sitting close, a kid who gazed upon the flickering imagery with such need that Nola saw her own reflection in the girl’s face, Nola young and still believing, Nola singing for her own pleasure, making up tunes, words, testing out feelings in the wild flung-out starry-eyed sulphurmoon magic-spell ballet of music, playing live to her image in the wardrobe mirror, posing, dancing her own steps, her own beat.
And the young girl gave all this back to Nola
with hooded eyes,
a veiled smile,
a slight movement of the body in response
coded gestures:
a nod of the head, gentle hand claps.
The way it goes...
Here, now, amid tangled branches, under the cold morning stars, around a fire built in a hidden bower, life was being lived.
During the presentation Nola felt her body change. She was being taken over entirely by the signal; no longer human, but a strange beguiling amalgam. A soft machine for the eyes. She could feel the image of Melissa alive in her, rising up her spine. The signal spoke; not in words to begin with, not even in pictures, but in pure random pulses of energy. Until Nola felt her skull possessed, her face taken over, masked. Sparks travelled the curves of her skin.
Melissa’s face on Nola’s face.
Pure this time, more at peace. Settled in flesh and light, held tender.
Begin now...begin...
Melissa’s eyes opened.
They were black; jet sky midnight black.
No whites.
People gasped. Cries were heard, of surprise, of shock. A child started to bawl.
Now the eyes of Melissa in close-up, filling Nola’s face entirely. The whites appeared, fading into view. Now the eyeballs, a startling brown. Now the pupils, dilated, taking in light, giving light. All the passions they held, these orbs. Memories, stories, rage and love. All seemed to be on view, here to be taken in pleasure.
The eyes stared ahead.
Now the mouth appeared. Nola’s mouth overlaid with Melissa’s.
The lips moved.
Melissa Gold spoke, the voice murmuring up from silence into words, soft babble, chaos flow:
...alive in dust and pixels flowing from hair and tongue, adrift in films of the lost, those who are never watched, looked over, closed in black mirrors and a stitched mouth, now cracked open and spitting diamonds on the blade that slices darkness, gathering pictures and noise, alive, to sing of the city of moon and demons where the famous ones live when their fame no longer sustains them, their fake golden wings tattered and folded, alive, adrift, singing of the hidden doorway, the portal of the eye, gardens of silence and shadows, their voices tangled in moth-flutter, whispers, messages in pollen maps, signalflow, moonglow on skin, singing...
The voice drifted back into silence, distance. Strands of black hair fell across her face. And the eyes closed as the face of Melissa merged back into flesh.
Nola was seen once more.
The audience waited in silence, held by what they had seen and heard. Until, hand upon hand they started to applaud. And Nola knew then what she had to do, how this journey would be played out. She had given the people mirror-dreams, and they offered in turn that she stay with them awhile, for another day or two at least, but Nola thanked them and said no, that she had things to do yet, one more place to find.
She gathered her few belongings together and asked for directions that would lead her away from the Dome, deeper into the woods. These were given and Nola set off, leaving the people of Tangent Five to their memories of the Magic Glowing Woman, her colours and images still gleaming in the afterburn of their eyes.
-27-
A pathway led through the trees.
Nola’s body lit the way, her skin shining with a soft glow fashioned from the gas lamp flicker of period-costume dramas, and the curve and dip of cop-show flashlights. She walked on alone, and then not so alone as a dark shape moved along beside her, gentle of step.
No twigs were cracked,
no leaves disturbed;
the figure drifted in mirror motion.
Nola stopped.
The figure stopped also.
‘Who’s there?’
There was no answer. Nola could only think it was the photographer, coming back for more images.
‘I’m warning you. Stay away from me.’
Again, silence. And yet a person could be seen standing amongst the branches.
Nola parted the leaves and peered through the gap.
A young girl was looking back at her.
‘Who are you?’
The girl remained silent. Her eyes were red-lined; she may have been recently crying.
‘Let me see you,’ Nola said.
No movement.
Nola pushed through the trees to reach the girl.
She was perhaps six or seven, with translucent and pale skin, and straight-combed blonde hair.
A living room flickered around the girl, suspended like a painted mist between the trees, webbed from branches.
Nola recognised the room, the girl.
It was her seventh birthday party.
Her mother and father were moving round about, along with some other relatives and a few children her own age. Amongst them, herself, this little girl whose body and face shimmered with barely present life, a ghost caught on video, years ago, years, the image degraded and fuzzy, conjured into being by Nola, peeled from her skin, given life, tremulous life.
The girl spoke in a voice so quiet and crackly, recorded on tape: ‘I can’t do it alone. You know I can’t.’
Without movement, in silence, fearful of disturbing the picture, Nola watched the scene unfold.
‘I have to sing along.’
The mother’s voice then, unheard, but Nola knew every word. Jerry, get the CD player working.
My first ever music centre player, Nola realised, seeing the cheap black plastic machine on the shelf, hearing the song unfold from tinny speakers, her favourite tune from childhood: ‘Tomorrow Came a Day Too Late’ by Sumi James. Not the main tune, but one of the remixes. Yes, now she remembered.
Her party trick.
Papa spinning the tune, instrumental dub, herself singing along to the wordless music. Words of her own devising.
Nola as she was, stepping forward into the centre of the room, all eyes upon her, how she loved that.
And then she recalled her real name, her given name.
Diana.
The young girl standing there in repose, calming herself, waiting for the music to reach its perfect moment. And then beginning...
Sally falls,
The moon catches her.
Susie loses her cat,
The sun he finds the cat
For Susie.
Nola found herself singing along quietly, murmured under breath, but each word in perfect accord.
Ginny takes the wrong path
Clouds bring her home...
The song continued to its end, before the living room and the family faded from view, returning to air and wave and pixels. Leaving only the girl, who turned now and seemed to look directly at Nola across the years. She contemplated this grown woman before her, noting the marks on the face and brow where twigs had scratched. Hair awry and stuck with leaves. Nola could not tell if the girl was really looking at her, it hardly seemed possible, but nevertheless
she set her skin alive with dancing images, with colours and sounds drawn from family film, uploaded memories, photos and vidiflex.
Cartoon cats chasing each other.
Birds fluttering above telegraph wires.
A street. Grey, urban, littered. A dog nosing along the gutter.
A house. Despite everything, a family home.
Tinkle of a bell hanging from a car’s rear-view mirror. Laughter.
A child alone in a forest.
Nola blinked.
The young girl reached out with her hand, towards Nola’s face. Her fingers were coloured by the images as they flickered and died, as new ones came into view. And yet the girl, Diana, she could not touch the skin itself; her hand blurred into dust and vapour. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured, or seemed to murmur. ‘Very beautiful.’
Nola smiled.
Eyes linked in that moment.
And the two walked past each other, woman and girl, real and projection, each along the same pathway, one to the North, one South.
Nola glanced back and saw the girl for a final time as she vanished, flickered away into air.
Afterglow. Sizzle of image fade.
A memory in dim light,
taken by darkness.
Nola carried on for a couple of miles more until the forest petered out. She hit a train track and continued along it, taking on instinct a left-handed route. Each footstep created its own small glowcircle to move within. Her body had settled down, images moving across her skin in slow random patterns, splashes of blue and gold and scarlet, drifts of black and white, abstract shapes.
There were lights ahead.
Nola left the track, taking a narrow country lane. The first few houses of a small village appeared, most in darkness, one of two with lighted windows. More buildings melted into view, lit by streetlamps. The place, seen through Nola’s eyes, took on a strange, dreamlike quality.
The air shimmered.
She moved onto a patch of open land and kept on walking until the houses were out of sight.
A patch of waste ground.
Litter. Discarded household goods, shopping trolleys, tattered plastic sheeting. The railway line could be seen on the other side of the disused field, travelling onwards. Droplets of rain still glimmered on the telephone lines, where the bleached-out moon was caught, low in the sky.