Authors: Jeff Noon
All of you, the real you
I just wanna!
Click and flash of static interference.
Sxxizzklthhhmmmmmmxxstkkkkk!
Now. Melissa’s face took charge, took possession, the image flooding into Nola’s features, taking residence in her flesh.
George cried out. Wordless. Then finding the one name he could hardly speak without crying. Her name.
Melissa...
Nola opened her eyes. She felt her hands held tight around warm wet tissue, the neck.
George gasped, struggling for breath.
Nola tightened her grip.
She kept Melissa’s face for her own, whilst painting her hands with panic, with storms, sudden explosions of noise, detonations, music playing, a silver blaze of guitar sound, electrified, splintered, until all was only broken strings of pure light and colour and feedback running the screens of her hands around the neck of George as he stared deep into his daughter’s ghostly face. And then Nola’s face taking over, her own features peeled from some lousy promo video or other, a bright smiling translucent mask of herself that she had worn for too long now and the pain of it made her hands tighten further:
I wanna touch you,
just (wanna) touch you,
the real you, I just wanna!
Muscles contracting,
Her own throat closing as she felt the
Victim clutch
Body clutch
Breath clutch, closing
Fingernails drawing
Blood...
Now!
Sudden:
The FLASH of light from the dark portal of a camera lens. Cyclops eye monster sucking at her, sucking at Nola, wanting her, desiring. A camera singing:
Image, image, image,
Give me your image!
Give me your
Give me your
Give me your image!
Flash,
whirrrrrr
flash
whirrrrrr
flash.
Photographer Peckman was standing there, some few feet away. His finger pressed at the shutter button, over and over, shot after shot.
Nola’s hands unwrapped themselves. They came away from George’s neck, allowing him to fall forward to his knees, to the ground, the mud. There he groaned.
Peckman moved closer. He needed this. He had no other urge than to capture this electric illuminated woman on film, in numbers, pixels. These photographs would quicken and catch at eye and heart, they would flicker from screens worldwide. His name would spread with them. He was the one, the exclusive source.
Nola backed away, further into the woods.
The camera pursued her, wound up, triggered, hungry of lens, hungry for light, this small black box hunter of skin pictures with its robot dazzle eye.
Nola turned and ran into darkness, into rain droplet cascade. Branch tangle, mesh of crackle leaves. Hidden pathways, unknown routes.
Panic. Red haze in her sight.
Nola. Running, stumbling.
Peckman tracking her, camera at the ready,
Shooting.
Click whirrrrrr, click click whirrrrrr.
Closing on her.
Nola fell, hidden behind a tree trunk.
She could hear the camera moving through the trees, a shining creature of chrome and glass and shiny black plastic, approaching, seeking out, peering.
Crack of twigs, close-by
Uhhh...
Breath held.
Footsteps moving on, still searching.
Lens stutter.
Nola slipped off her clothing, revealing as much flesh as possible. She chose a different pathway, moving on step by step, slowly, quietly. Her body was searching the frequencies, calling down broadcasts of late summer foliage: falling petals, green leaves, russet shades, knotted branches, sticktangle of bird nests, black sudden blur and noise of wing beats, bird calls, play of shadows, raindrops, dappled light, insect noises, animal cries. With these effects she painted herself.
Camouflage Channel.
Tonight, live from the Forest of Dreams!
Naked flesh aglow with images.
Stay tuned for more after this!
Peckman waited, holding himself still.
The trees moved within trees, branches within branches, shivering, some kind of local disturbance.
Shimmer glade.
His eyes were dazzled, half-blinded by what he saw, and his camera clicked away madly, hardly knowing where to look. And all the numbers inside the machine, all the little ones and zeroes, they burned themselves on nothingness,
on a brightdark shiver of branches
leaf upon leaf
as Nola’s body melted away
into the forest,
becoming the forest.
.........................................*....................
...................\........ ,*......?\...\...................
...................t..*v/.......>..\..........................
................../0>1(*)..................... .............
..............(..skin^,
.....................drift.\.......:;.........................
...... ............roads....\....\..........\................
.....................,.>\.................\...................
..........................travel?>....\.\...................
.......................//.....................................
................//tick>...>/101*0.......\...\^011 011.........
..................../”!/^begin 1.101..........................
.............>10.....((,+_....................
...............//..//<%/:1>
broken
^>,\.........................
>/.................,//0101 1 10....101\\£.....................
..........blur..........cold.//(@’out here>.......... ......
.....................//,,,>’*/>0 Moon.........................
.........................fall/.>...........................
............^/signal ?/10>contact?....name is.................
......//,..my
name
is...???/011011/no^la/......?>.............
.........,^ 01001 flicker/..,..........1/,
............?/.0,//.>lay down...................../01.>.......
......................for thee, Zion..//1)0...........@/^0.1<.
................(still waiting///&^C%/\?/\>+\.................
. ........black
branches
.....................................
..............touching leaf>/ >cloudform///.....;\ ..01.......
......../*~parasitic//>/\.,@too...............................
...............close/^*01”1/+\.melis.sa..?.. ... .. .
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George wandered over to the company’s mobile studio.
The producer was sitting on the step, drinking a beer. Her name was Cleo James. Just twenty-seven years old. A young woman with eyes already raw from lack of sleep.
George staggered into view, his clothes damp, hair matted, face red. He said:
‘Do you know who I am?’
Cleo nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m the father of Melissa. The father of...your victim.’
Cleo looked at him. ‘We’re doing all we can, Mr Gold. Really. I don’t know what to say. No one can explain it. She’s just...disappeared.’
‘You want an exclusive?’
‘An interview? Sure.’
‘No interview. Just get a camera on me.’
‘What?’
‘Now.’
Cleo snapped her fingers and a technician came in sight, a sleek bodycam slung across his chest.
‘Film this.’ George’s voice was harsh, without hope. ‘I want it
live
, no edits.’
Click flood bloom of silver heat from a lighting unit, showing George’s face in its lusty, dirt-smeared, blood-pink moment of driven need.
‘Are you going to swear?’
George looked at the producer. ‘What? Yes. Obscenities. Of course. Very, very probably.’
Cleo turned to the crew. ‘Okay. I need a five-second delay, with autobleep.’
George stood at the centre of sudden activity.
‘Okay. Mr Gold. We’re rolling now.’
George nodded.
He got a countdown, fingers marking out the final three seconds.
Now live, exclusive, from the site of mystery.
George stared at the lens. He made an enemy of the lens, this thin round curve of glass, an apparatus that had made him his fortune, now he saw it as a parasite, a stealer of images.
He felt that his drunken heart was being sucked out.
‘My name is George Gold,’ he began. ‘I have some claim to be the one true Saviour of this Nation’s music.’
He laughed bitterly.
‘I have eaten my own fingers to the bone. I have stolen my own money. I have sold my own soul to myself at a cut-down bargain-bucket price, and rendered it null and void, drained of value.’
His eyes lit up.
‘George Gold! George fucking *
bleep
* Gold!’
His hands touched at his neck, the tender skin.
Shivers passed through him.
‘A woman just tried to strangle me. A music star. My own creation. Check this: my own fucking *
bleep
* creation just tried to kill me. I can still feel her hands around my throat, and after everything I’ve given to her. But what does she know? Nola Blue? Nola fucking Blue! *
bleep
* Some crazy half-broken visionplex woman with her skin ablaze, showing me the world like she thinks I haven’t seen it before.’