Authors: Jeff Noon
Misty spoke over the scene.
‘It is said that Melissa has left behind the petty bondage of flesh and entered another, better realm, one made of light and shade, of flicker and film. She has become lost in the cameras, sacrificed to light and vision.’
The people around the camp murmured in kind:
...lost...lost in the cameras...lost...
The screen faded to nightblack. Misty’s voice continued over this blank setting.
‘Melissa? If you are out there, if you can speak to us, communicate with us in any way or form, please do so now.’
Nola shifted in her seat.
Misty’s words sounded like incense, the incantations of a priestess.
‘Please, Melissa, we have darkened our screens for you, especially. Reveal yourself to us, speak to us. Show yourself.’
The screen trembled.
Trembled in moonlight.
And all gazed spellbound.
Nola imagined them. All those at the studio site, silent. All those at the fence, in the various long-stay camps, all those in their living rooms staying up late to see this, to be witness. All silent. Nightworkers and nocturnals in hospital wards, factories, offices, in cafes and bars. Silent. The nation as a whole, silent. Millions of viewers around the world. Silent. The technicians and the executives at the London headquarters of Pleasure Dome Enterprises. Silent. Misty Parker herself. Silent, waiting. All people everywhere looking at their chosen screens, spellbound: on visionplex, boxcomps, portapops, telebugs, somapods, hexplayers, antique television sets dragged from storage for this ceremony. A piece of cloth stretched between trees. All staring at darkness and waiting for an answer, a view of Melissa in her new guise, whatever it might be, her new location, wherever she dwelled. Surely, surely technology will give us this glimpse, this viewing? Surely.
Waiting.
Still waiting.
The stretched white sheet quivered in the nightwind, black, empty of life, of sound or vision.
The screen gave nothing back, offered no opening.
Nola held onto the seat-edge, fingers tightening. She could hear voices in her head, a pressure building. Her body itched and burned all over, every inch.
The viewers sighed.
Lost...still lost...
Live footage of the Dome returned to the cloth screen, as the pirate signal died, and the official programme regained control of the airwaves.
Nobody spoke for a moment or two.
A young man stepped forward, stripped to the waist. He started to dance in a precise low-stepping choreography, energy barely contained. The fire bristled. People began to chant, quietly at first, then building. A woman was playing electric guitar, generating minor key variations on the Dome’s theme tune, conjured from feedback. The music turned darker, more ragged, louder, atonal, as the tribe’s Shaman rose to his feet, a torch of naked flames held in his hand. The shadows danced with him, like the black spirits of wild animals tethered only by fragile spells. Nola shuddered, her own skin crawling with projected fur and claws under her coat. At the climax of the dance the Shaman set fire to the white sheet and a gasp ran through the watchers as the televised image of the Pleasure Dome burned away. People cried out in pain and release. The music burst into noise, alive with bloodnotes and bonesparkle. Prayers were intoned, the words borrowed from archaic television dialogues and catchphrases, all twisted, made abstract. And then silence as the ritual died with its god.
Fire crackle.
Night forest sounds.
Ashes from the cloth blowing away.
Now all eyes turned to Nola.
She stood up hesitantly and moved to the front of the crowd. What she had to do came to her from her skin, from the voice of flesh, from the image demon. From herself. She slipped off her outer clothing and felt no shame. The show began. It was a broadcast never before seen, created by Nola jamming together signals, producing her own programmes. Tonight on Skinvision we bring you delights:
Highway Zoo Racers
,
Death Cosmetics
,
Animals on Drugs
, and
Dirty Rock and Roll Decorators
. Nola stirred the pictures, making hybrids:
Bride of Cars
,
The Human Fish Talk Show
,
Naked Days of Flame and Wonder
,
Life and Death of the Corporate Misfit, Broken-Winged Pegasus
. She cracked sounds and voices into pieces, bringing them together in new combinations:
Blood on the Biscuits
,
Monkeys Making Money
,
Mister Kiss Kiss is Singing
,
Blue Electrocuted Poems of Football
,
Dream Midnight Goodbye
,
Zingo Lingo Bingo!!!
Nola made her own programmes and the audience watched, all wide in their eyes. The people laughed and cheered and oohed and ahhed. They salivated. They whispered. They wanted more.
Handheld cameras gazed upon her, lenses enraptured.
Nola slowed the vision down, catching the mood. Her skin glowed with bioluminescence as the images materialised:
Stolen glances of love,
gaslight gently radiating on a woman’s face,
a man’s arms, enclosing,
a couple standing dark against sunset,
waves touching at sand on some faraway beach,
a kiss so tender, so magnified on flesh that the lips burned with stars and sunfever.
Pictures. Soap-style clichés, exaggerations, the standard stock footage of love.
No matter: they were born of desire.
And a teenage girl was sitting close, a kid who gazed upon the flickering imagery with such need that Nola saw her own reflection in the girl’s face, Nola young and still believing, Nola singing for her own pleasure, making up tunes, words, testing out feelings in the wild flung-out starry-eyed sulphurmoon magic-spell ballet of music, playing live to her image in the wardrobe mirror, posing, dancing her own steps, her own beat.
And the young girl gave all this back to Nola
with hooded eyes,
a veiled smile,
a slight movement of the body in response
coded gestures:
a nod of the head, gentle hand claps.
The way it goes...
Here, now, amid tangled branches, under the cold morning stars, around a fire built in a hidden bower, life was being lived.
During the presentation Nola felt her body change. She was being taken over entirely by the signal; no longer human, but a strange beguiling amalgam. A soft machine for the eyes. She could feel the image of Melissa alive in her, rising up her spine. The signal spoke; not in words to begin with, not even in pictures, but in pure random pulses of energy. Until Nola felt her skull possessed, her face taken over, masked. Sparks travelled the curves of her skin.
Melissa’s face on Nola’s face.
Pure this time, more at peace. Settled in flesh and light, held tender.
Begin now...begin...
Melissa’s eyes opened.
They were black; jet sky midnight black.
No whites.
People gasped. Cries were heard, of surprise, of shock. A child started to bawl.
Now the eyes of Melissa in close-up, filling Nola’s face entirely. The whites appeared, fading into view. Now the eyeballs, a startling brown. Now the pupils, dilated, taking in light, giving light. All the passions they held, these orbs. Memories, stories, rage and love. All seemed to be on view, here to be taken in pleasure.
The eyes stared ahead.
Now the mouth appeared. Nola’s mouth overlaid with Melissa’s.
The lips moved.
Melissa Gold spoke, the voice murmuring up from silence into words, soft babble, chaos flow:
...alive in dust and pixels flowing from hair and tongue, adrift in films of the lost, those who are never watched, looked over, closed in black mirrors and a stitched mouth, now cracked open and spitting diamonds on the blade that slices darkness, gathering pictures and noise, alive, to sing of the city of moon and demons where the famous ones live when their fame no longer sustains them, their fake golden wings tattered and folded, alive, adrift, singing of the hidden doorway, the portal of the eye, gardens of silence and shadows, their voices tangled in moth-flutter, whispers, messages in pollen maps, signalflow, moonglow on skin, singing...
The voice drifted back into silence, distance. Strands of black hair fell across her face. And the eyes closed as the face of Melissa merged back into flesh.
Nola was seen once more.
The audience waited in silence, held by what they had seen and heard. Until, hand upon hand they started to applaud. And Nola knew then what she had to do, how this journey would be played out. She had given the people mirror-dreams, and they offered in turn that she stay with them awhile, for another day or two at least, but Nola thanked them and said no, that she had things to do yet, one more place to find.
She gathered her few belongings together and asked for directions that would lead her away from the Dome, deeper into the woods. These were given and Nola set off, leaving the people of Tangent Five to their memories of the Magic Glowing Woman, her colours and images still gleaming in the afterburn of their eyes.
A pathway led through the trees.
Nola’s body lit the way, her skin shining with a soft glow fashioned from the gas lamp flicker of period-costume dramas, and the curve and dip of cop-show flashlights. She walked on alone, and then not so alone as a dark shape moved along beside her, gentle of step.
No twigs were cracked,
no leaves disturbed;
the figure drifted in mirror motion.
Nola stopped.
The figure stopped also.
‘Who’s there?’
There was no answer. Nola could only think it was the photographer, coming back for more images.
‘I’m warning you. Stay away from me.’
Again, silence. And yet a person could be seen standing amongst the branches.
Nola parted the leaves and peered through the gap.
A young girl was looking back at her.
‘Who are you?’
The girl remained silent. Her eyes were red-lined; she may have been recently crying.
‘Let me see you,’ Nola said.
No movement.
Nola pushed through the trees to reach the girl.
She was perhaps six or seven, with translucent and pale skin, and straight-combed blonde hair.