Authors: Jeff Noon
He twisted himself, tight bound.
Skin clenched. Teeth snarl.
‘Listen to me. As a child and a young man I was beaten, made fun of, humiliated, bought and sold and bought again and raised up and laughed at and kicked halfway to death and back and pissed upon *
bleep
* and glorified as a two-bit god and a devil, and all of this on good old-fashioned television, in glorious hideous colour. Live in your homes!’
Now came a slow wave of warmth lit by moon and camera, his eyes alive at last, the old condition.
Memories of good and bad times. Escaping.
‘I stole my first guitar, some cheapo number from Camden Market. I was what, 15, 16 years old? Just arrived in the capital, holes in my pockets, nothing else. This instrument was a truly horrible thing, a nasty, second-hand copy of a copy of a Fender Strat. Lousy sunburst finish paintjob, all peeling, all scratched. Dodgy pick-ups. I couldn’t even get it in tune. Spent three weeks on it, polishing it up, strings breaking every other day, terrible crackles coming out of it, from a tinny box amplifier, bang,
rtzzzzzzzzzttttttt!
The noise it made. Shit. *
bleep
* Couldn’t ask for worse and yet, here’s the thing, people...I wrote ‘Who Cares About Love?’ on that same goddamn instrument. You see? Two years later, it was number one in half a dozen countries. You know that song. You’ve sung it. You’ve danced to it. Who the Fuck Cares About Love! *
bleep
* Number fucking one, worldwide. *
bleep
* First of many. Of course, I had to burn some people to get there. Whatever it takes, it takes. And more so.’
*
bleep
* *
bleep
* *
bleep
*
Now he breathed slow and easy and found his rhythm.
‘It doesn't matter. It does not matter, it does not matter one jot what you’re doing, it’s how you do it that counts. Just bring the good heavenly tunes to the people, the working people. They come home tired out from a hard day’s graft with hardly any money to show for it...listen now, let them put some music on. Make it easy for the everyday people to dream. That’s the one genuine point, the only goal. I keep saying this to the young ones coming up, all my sweet little creations.
Make it easy for the people to dream.
But they won't listen to me, they do not want to listen.’
Here he settled down, almost withdrawn.
‘
The young won't listen
.
’
Quietly.
‘Ah no. They drift away. You hold them tight, far too tightly, and still they drift away.’
Slowing now.
‘Melissa. All lost.’
Now George’s eyes closed. His mouth moved alone.
Repeating. The one word.
Melissa...
Melissa, where are you!
Screaming.
MELISSA!!!
...
The camera loved him.
Nola walked on through the woods.
I nearly killed him back there.
Jesus. My fingers, so close.
Nearly.
Nearly killed George.
What is happening to me?
Where can I go?
Flagging now, weakening. She looked down at her hands.
Fingers around the throat, squeezing...
Seeing the palms covered in blood.
...Oh God. Look at me. Weeping.
Weeping blood.
Not real blood; only the signal-cast image of blood seeping upwards from each palm.
The real and the unreal played in her mind, in her eyes and all along her body. She was lost in the moments of blackout and jump cut, in the gaps between signals. And all around her the trees glistened with recorded life, leaves flickering with code, with numbers, with artifice. Her body followed suit. This forest had been recorded once, filmed, years ago, and now she was appearing in the playback of that event. And the further she travelled, the more she believed. By walking on far enough perhaps she would come to the edge of the illusion, and thereby escape from it. Instead, the forest closed around her; dappleflecked, mysterious, labyrinthine, without map or memory, every tree and branch another part of the film of her life.
Time slowed.
The dark moved against her skin.
Keep going.
And then voices ahead, through the leaves.
Nola paused.
She was almost naked still, her outer clothing discarded during the chase. And yet she felt no cold, no shivering after-effects of running. Her body flowed hot with the pictures that covered her, that crept all over her, every last stretch of skin alive with stolen passion.
She crouched down and peeped out through the branches.
A travellers’ camp had been set up within a bower, a roughly circular arrangement of patched tents and old rusty vans. It was close to midnight, and yet the people were still awake, many of them sitting around a fire. A woman sang a ballad of lost desire. A tattered purple flag hung from a central mast, on the top of which a satellite dish slowly turned to gather messages from the sky. Close at hand, dogs followed trails of scent, seeking out this stranger. Herself.
Nola had no choice.
She dressed herself in images, in clothes stolen from fashion shows. An iridescent outfit in silvery blue and green and grey: trousers, blouse, jacket. Adorned like this, she stepped out from the trees.
A teenage girl noticed her first, and cried out in wonder.
Others turned to see, to gaze upon this sight, this woman of shimmer and gleam.
~~~
Nola rested.
She slept fitfully for an hour or so, curled up in one of the tepees. Every so often, one or two of the camp’s children would enter through the flap to stare at her, at the slow-moving pictures that shivered on her face even in sleep. They could only think that the woman’s dreams had in some way oozed through her flesh, rising to the surface. And how wonderful it was, to see that her dreams were their own dreams, culled from the vision screen.
This was, they decided, even better than the Dome.
This was
live
. From the source.
Truly alive.
The children watched in silence, until called to task by their parents. There was work to be done, in readiness for the night’s events. This special night...
The camp was known as Tangent Five.
The residents were long-term fans of the Pleasure Dome, outcasts and wanderers from many different parts of the globe. Over the years, they had each of them drifted towards the location of their primal desire. One lonely day or night they had wandered there along the new pilgrim trail, set down their weary packs and decided to stay for a few hours. Hours had turned into days, into whatever time they could grab from their other lives, their so-called ‘real’ lives. And so one week had turned into two, into a month, into a year or more, and the initial reasons for being there had become a fanciful tale told around the fire, as nocturnal broadcasts triggered the stars. These outposts were semi-legal zones; the Dome company tended to let the intruders be, allowing them to become part of the overarching myth of the programme. Some of the older folk were veterans of the very first camp set up in series two of the programme.
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.