Authors: Jeff Noon
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.
She drove through a small suburban town, moribund and net-curtained. Further on, a windowless industrial estate, and then a village of newly built houses. The whole place looked as though it had been put together from a box of panels and struts, following a badly-translated instruction leaflet. Now black trees arched over the road. Nola’s was the only vehicle in sight. Finally, she reached a minor railway station, where the latest music god sensation glared down from a gleaming poster overlooking the tracks.
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.
Not too far now.
Keep moving.
Everything looked to be vaguely familiar, but she was dreamy-eyed, all sleepy-limbed, her skin shifting like a wash of liquid over her bones. She was growing weaker, her body of bones and muscle and blood slowing down as the images took her over, seeking out every last inch of her flesh.
Here we are, my dear. Do you see?
And now she looked up and saw where she had travelled to, this destination. This marker on the haze map of Nola’s life, where she might at last find an answer to her troubles.
The Golden Institute of Performing Arts.
The old mansion house stood before her.
Empty now. Off season.
Yes. A possibility.
Now walk.
The Pleasure Dome Speaks
PROCESS:
All cameras at work, watching the subject.
Disease spreads across the image.
Source of infection unknown.
SYSTEM SCAN COMMENCING:
This year’s subject lies at rest
bathed in blue green light.
I have felt her shadow move across my walls,
Her heat passes through my circuits.
And yet I feel weakened.
MAGNIFY:
Lice crawling in her hair,
Flecks of soil on her eyebrows
Under her nails.
A chipped tooth.
Her breathing laboured, drawn.
The lovely melting sound of her voice, a song.
Blood on the flesh,
Eye in the belly.
A GAME OF SKILL AND PATIENCE:
And still we play.
My queen of silence
almost lost now,
lost in dirt on the lens.
My Melissa.
I have dreamed of a life born
of dark mathematics, alas,
now the broken numbers rest in
palaces of sleep.
And where circuits once crackled
with heat, with light,
darkness flickers.
I am dying.
MEMORIES FADE:
I have trouble speaking,
trouble recording clearly
the things that pass across my skin.
I am the Dome.
Riddle me this: What am I?
A simple enclosed space? A palace?
A mind? A cage?
A house?
Of a kind, yes. I will think so:
A curious house on curious earth.
I FEEL SICK AND COLD AT HEART:
Do you remember, all my guests
through the years...
Do you recall the faces that each of you left
in the mirror of my surface,
on the shining glass of my lenses?
The pictures you gave me,
how you painted my skin with your love,
your kindness?
Fingerprints in the maps of dust,
in the soil.
Your breath filling my interior,
giving me a semblance of life.
Now only shadows,
traces.
THESE ARE THE HANDS OF MEMORY:
Caught on my cameras through the seasons,
Lost on my skin as the seasons died.
Human hands, the presence thereof.
Eyes, lips, gestures, faces, flesh,
Emotions,
Nightmares, desires
all stolen
by the public’s eye,
taken from me.
Melissa...
Only you remain now.
Only you.
My love.
I will protect you.
I will keep you.
FINAL SCAN COMPLETE:
Cameras weakening, their eyes closing.
Noise and flutter in the microphones.
Electrons tremble in the wires.
A tiny aperture discovered,
Made by a knife’s tip.
My colours are draining away
My blood of colours.
‘Hush my sweet, for you do me wrong.’
Data pulse
dancing
dancing now
slowing
The doorman recognised her. He let her in, no questions asked, as though she belonged here.
He said, ‘George isn't in residence, Nola.’
‘Was he here?’
The doorman stared at Nola’s face.
‘He was, Nola. But now he’s gone. I don't know where.’
Nola thanked him and moved deeper into the building.
A few staff were in attendance, a basic team to keep the place ticking until the new season’s intake. They stared at Nola but made no attempt to talk to her, this young and once vibrant woman. This star. They had seen her on the daily vine, on the visionplex, and knew her to be changed, transformed into something new.
They whispered to each other as the former pupil walked along the corridors of this House of Modified Orpheus.
Nola’s wavering image haunted the mansion’s security network, floating from monitor to monitor as she passed the large rehearsal hall. Here she had been instructed in the arts of singing, dancing and general presentation of the body and personality. The white markings on the floor looked now like the maps of a sinister ritual.
Glass panelling revealed the lush office space where she had been given her new name and identity.