Authors: Jeff Noon
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...’
‘Yes?’
‘Can you leave me now, please. I need to get dressed.’
He stubbed out the cigarette.
‘Where are you going?’ He stepped towards her once more. ‘Where can you go? Is there anybody, truly, who can understand you?’ He stared at her. She turned away. He leaned in, speaking softly. ‘When I saw you tonight, Nola, through that doorway. When I saw your skin. Oh...the glory of it. It’s like your body was on fire, with pictures, sounds. With energy.’
She could not look away now. ‘What am I?’ she asked.
His reply, a whisper: ‘Some kind of messed-up beauty.’ Eyes locked on hers. ‘Some kind of fucked-up beauty, beyond measure.’
Tremble glow of flesh.
Sudden image flow across her face...
Video film of the night sky. Stars, the moon, the brief flash of a comet.
Now. The face itself. Becoming new, changing.
Gone. Bare skin once more.
‘Oh my. That was...’ He could hardly find the words. ‘That was amazing.’
Nola asked: ‘Why me, though? Why?’
‘I don’t know. You’ve been chosen.’
‘But why choose me?’
‘It’s about being receptive, open to all channels.’
Nola shook her head, sighed.
The young man stepped back a little. ‘You’re not the only one suffering from this.’
Nola looked at him.
‘There are others. A few more, scattered across the globe. Russia, Thailand, Mexico. So...you’re not alone. Not entirely. And there will be more of your kind, as the months progress.’
‘My kind?’
Nola felt strangely charmed by this thought, by this idea of others out there, other beings aglow with the same flow and static charge of images. If she could only find one of them, one or more of them, join hands with them, surely that would calm her.
‘How do you know this?’ she asked.
‘From the ether. I was hacking channels one night. I had the wavecomp tuned to ghost frequencies, picking up broadcasts from around the world, semi-legal stations sending out messages, knowledge, the kind that governments try to keep secret.’
Nola felt the spark of flickering life, the gaps between signals. Pictures forming and moving beneath her skin, seeking transmission. ‘You’re a conspiracy theorist?’ she asked.
‘I guess I was. But now the truth sits here in front of me.’
‘Carry on.’
‘And then I found this strange programme. It was hidden between two other stations, hardly there at all, a wash of static. I could hear voices seeking to be heard from within the noise.’
Nola recognised the effect.
‘It was a site I’d never come across before. I magnified and isolated the wave as best I could, until the voices came clearer.’
‘They were in English?’
‘All different languages. Some completely unknown to me. Others more familiar. English, French, German.’ He smiled. ‘And that’s where I first heard about the parasite signal.’
‘What is that?’
‘Do you remember the Klein-Zecker changeover?’
‘Yes. Vaguely. The new broadcasting signal?’
‘That’s the one. It started earlier this year. An infinite amount of data packed into a fractal wave. Well, the parasite signal seems to be an unforeseen side effect of the new technology. Of course, everybody’s in denial about this.’
‘What does it do, this...parasite?’
‘It’s a viral infection taking over human flesh. But a virus not of any known organic nature. One made from the ether, itself.’
Nola shook her head. ‘I’d call you mad.’
‘You would have, a few days ago.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d feel the same. But now...’