Authors: Jeff Noon
Milk white.
Now silver. Now the colour of mercury.
This effect had never been seen before, not this year, nor in all the years previous.
Blur of the crowd pushing at the fence. Guards trying to hold them back, a dog snarling on a leash. George’s face seen amongst the crush of people, a desperate figure pushing his way through, trying to, his mouth gibbering, voicing threats.
The fence creaked, bulged.
Nola herself, leaning forward, the telescreen warm on her face.
Let me see. Let me view this...
The Dome flared with light, with liquid silver shimmer. It sang a song of electrical blue notes, humming, fizzing. Sparks fluttered across the surface.
The guards of the inner circle held firm.
The production team pressed at buttons madly, as cameras blinked along static patterns and microphones shrieked with noise, interference.
Nola’s body sparked and flashed in time, in mirror.
Amid the crush, the heat of flesh, the breathing in and out of the crowd, amid all this...
George’s face. Still there. Still pressed against the fence, soft skin netted by the wire. Eyes dark from lost dreams.
His child was in there, in danger. His eyes told the story.
His sweet lost Melissa.
Where is she? Let her be. Let her free. Let me see her, touch her.
His mouth working. Close-up.
Wild swing of a camera through one hundred degrees.
The Dome hidden by a halo of sparks, by the flow of energy fields. The crowd had stilled, hopeless, trapped. In silence. The tiny pores of the microphones clogged with too much signal. Grey blur of sound. All the many cameras overflowing with light from every angle. One or two of them still managed to keep the Dome in their sights. The world-famous half-sphere filling the screen, aglow, radiant.
Nola blinked.
Her hands touching the glass, pressing close. Thus and thus, both hands.
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.
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.
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 realm!’
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
.