Authors: Jeff Noon
breathing
burning
flickering,
incandescent.
Here was the city of lost images speaking in tongues, gathered together on a woman’s skin.
And whatever people around the world were watching at that time, on their living-room screens, in their bedrooms, on their portapops and telebugs and hexplayers, Nola was there as well, dragging broadcasts down from satellites, jamming messages, decrypting diamond dust sonic bloom music, gathering and urging the images and sounds onwards, multiplying them, arousing them. Faces appeared briefly on her flesh, superimposed, all the lost and the dead and the semi-forgotten and the broken-hearted, all that she carried one by one by one, this colony of spectres, precious cargo, until Melissa herself appeared, Melissa Gold, she of the torn stomach and the sliced arms and the letters on the skin, the knife digging in; she of the blood flow, the word body, the national dreamer, held here briefly, carried here, that face taking over from Nola’s own once more, one last time.
Possessed, possessing.
And then gone. The image of the woman folded back. And Nola realised then: these messages will never truly die, they only drift along, alone, waiting for a suitable decoding engine. And this is what she was born to be, and what she might yet become. Not of the flesh, but of the spirit of the media itself.
Pure image. Pure.
She was seen at that moment on every visionplex screen across the land, on every device currently activated. Not as a body, not in form a woman or even a person, not human, but a onetime blast, a full-frequency bodysonic explosion of colours and sounds filling the image space, dazzling the eye with sunpowder transfiguration. Here was Nola, touching tongues and eyes with strangers in the sparklenet,
briefly seen, briefly
a single flashflicker of shape and noise
fading down to zero
blackout...
~~~
Alone now, her final broadcast over, she felt herself slowing. Feelings shivered her.
Stray pictures fluttered,
unfurling across her body’s curved expanses,
ether voices trembled.
Nola traced further along the wave spectrum, searching for a portal, a plug-in, for the hidden or coded information sent there just for her; the way home, a way to activate the higher channels, those beyond the normal range, the secret pathways.
For now her body was failing her, bringing pain.
No blues like the gemstone blues, shining...
Cut. Skin fever.
Night sparkles...
Shriek of flesh. Keep going. Sing!
No blues like a white moon shining
Dreams unfolding.
Body’s raw edges on fire. Just keep singing.
Down the sky of burnt-out stars...
And something inside, within the flesh itself, turning, changing.
Where the night sparkles
glimmer
flicker
flare
burn...
.,/.=//.>
Pain
Cut
Shriek
Rawness
/,/..,+/>*/>>
Blood...
Blood pouring from her stomach.
Real.
Her fingers wet.
It was time.
Final barely heard phrip and fizz
of static from the skin
ppfzzzzz
And she fell to her knees on the damp ground as the image of a bird came alive in her stomach,
where it tried out its frozen wings,
forcing them to crack open, to move again,
to be alive again,
allowing the bird to fly upwards
from Nola’s belly,
across her breasts,
to her long neck
and then to her face.
There now...
There!
A bird painted not with beauty but with all the dirt and wounds collected in a long hard life, in battle, in love, with torn feathers and a busted leg and a chipped beak and one of its eyes half closed; and yet a bird of deeper loveliness for all of that.
It rose up the channels of flesh
along the skindreams of the woman
slowly flapping dusty wings inside her head,
stronger now
finally
taking off for the silvery black
moonblur sky above.
The team moved towards the structure, walking slowly, with purpose. They carried with them all the instruments and tools they would need for the task ahead. There were four operatives altogether.
They started work on the skin of the Dome, examining every inch for traces of a dream, for clues to a lost psyche.
They noted the slitwound where Melissa had used her improvised blade. The team’s repair had ruptured, allowing a small amount of biotech fluid to seep out.
Apart from this, nothing untoward was found.
All the dreams and nightmares had drained away from between the layers, leaving only this fragile covering, stretched thin and clear.
And so they tore down the Pleasure Dome.
They removed each segment of polyhobarium, working with saw and hammer, with pliers and cutters. The space within was revealed, fully exposed to the open air for the first time in over a decade.
They looked through the few items Melissa had left behind: her bedroll, half-empty trays of food, a couple of books, odds and ends, clothing, a wash kit. The crude handmade knife. A small ragdoll. Nothing unusual was discovered. Only these few traces of a life once lived in public view, now fallen to darkness.
All of the personal items were removed for further study.
Now the ground was laid bare.
The team searched the area the Dome had once covered. A compact device was set down at the centre of the marked-out space. One of the operatives activated this, moving a detector wand slowly in sixty degree arcs, back and forth, back and forth.
Beep...Beep...
They were looking for hidden objects. Some item. A body, a means of escape.
Anything at all. Some kind of hope, belief.
Beep...Beep...Beep...
Their findings remained secret, for the time being.
C
ameras watched nervously from the surrounding field, ravenous electronic eyes standing witness over a strange ritual. The viewers at the ring fence stood in silence. Others, further back, gazed at the giant screens. Faithful viewers, one and all; they would stay for the duration, however long it took. Everybody was waiting for a moment of revelation.
A small forensic cleaner glided across the soil. They found skin cells, strands of human hair, faeces, fingernail clippings, bits of rotten food, seeds, worms, silver and black speckled feathers, wing cases, tiny coloured beads.
The team started to dig. They worked with trowel and brush, with comb and tray. They removed the soil in layers, carefully sifting through each level. They laboured quietly, methodically, speaking only a few words to each other now and again. Occasional curses. A cough. They worked through the night, illumined by spotlight and torch. The trees of the surrounding forest bent forward under a low wind, the branches scratching together. Shadows danced. It was easy to imagine ghosts at play.
They found an object in the soil, just below the surface.
It was a page torn from a notebook.
The image wavered across screens around the world.
Depicted on the yellowed paper was a drawing, lines and words scrawled in dark pencil. It might be a plan for a strange mechanism, or else a map of an unknown land. A news channel psychologist thought it a self portrait of the victim’s subconscious mind, that realm beyond the Dome’s reach.
Yes, some people were calling Melissa a victim.
From the comfort of the studio, various experts discussed the mystery of her disappearance. Commentators talked of the spiritual aspects of the Dome, of the possible mental problems it might bring to the user. Flowcharts and diagrams revealed the technical aspects of the building’s structure. Avid fans of the programme fired off shimmertexts:
>Hw dare thy do ths to the Dome! It is sacrilge.
>I am cryng. I can't stop crying.
>Dumb arse, shd no tears. It’s all a publicity stunt. The company is laughing. It’s all about making money!
>Where is Melissa? Why are thy not tellng us anythng?
>She is dead.
>Don't say that! I will not believe it.
>There are strnge forces at play. Things we know nothing about.
>Exactly. Beware of Media Voodoo. You have been warned.
Dawn was approaching, touching the sky above the rim of the enclosing hills.
>They are MURDERING the Pleasure Dome! They are KILLERS!
Viewing figures reached an all-time high for this or any other season.
>I am saddened beyond measure.
>I feel lke my heart has been cut out and thrwn to the wolfs.
Previous occupants of the Dome were brought forward to talk of their own experiences. They spoke of boredom, exhilaration, embarrassment and despair. Pushed further, they mentioned echoes, vapours, unknown feelings, glimpses of the face of God, the darkness of the soul. All bore the same expression, the same wistful look in their eyes, the downturn of the lips. Their brows were furrowed. One religious commentator called them, ‘The beautiful children of the dusk’. He talked of the giving up of flesh, of sacrifice.
Meanwhile, the special investigation team continued their work excavating the Dome. Soil fell from spade, crumbled to dust in their hands, trickled between fingers. And then, at a depth of almost one and a half feet, a patch of skin was seen.
Carefully, the area was cleared.
The skin was soft, pale, moon coloured.
The operatives sat back and discussed this, made plans, and then set to, scraping more soil away from the exposed flesh, revealing more and more of the body that lay there buried, hidden away, now slowly revealed in its entirety.
Here was the subject of this year’s experiment.
Melissa Gold.
The last of the sacred dreamers.
Her body was examined by a doctor and pronounced dead. The image of her corpse was carried around the globe, across the screens of towns and cities, through living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms, around the fence at the site. The crowd watched as Melissa,
their
Melissa, was lifted free from the Dome site and carried to a waiting ambulance, her face covered by a white sheet.
The people stood in silence.
Only the sound of cameras could be heard. Buttons clicked, lenses zoomed and whirred at her passing.
George Gold was seen entering the vehicle alongside his daughter’s body.
The crowd watched the ambulance depart. And then in groups, in couples, or one by one, the people walked away from the fence until only a bare handful remained. These last few hung their heads and they wept. They had no desire to return to any other kind of life, none at all.