Authors: Jeff Noon
Take that fucking machine off me. Turn it away!
She came off set jittering, soaked. Never again.
Never.
She had been reading the local news, small-time cable. That’s all. Flower shows and minor flood warnings. Viewing figures in the low hundreds.
But now. That same panic.
Christina felt faint.
The room
tilted
.
Nola asked, ‘Do you see it? Do you?’
She looked up at the singer’s troubled face and then back down to the belly.
The bruise was glowing, casting a charm.
Christina saw faces, eyes filled with need, mouths moving in silent prayer.
Now the tiny image of a village, the streets filled with worshippers. They were carrying an effigy of the Virgin Mary through the twisting lanes. A windy day, the breeze catching at the statue. Somebody stumbled, one of the carriers.
Our Lady of Blood and Shadows fell.
The crowd gasped, a collective breath held in silence, and then let loose, released in tears. People on their knees, begging for forgiveness in Spanish, hands clasped before them in supplication, murmuring as one.
Christina turned to catch the words. No, she would have to get closer.
‘I won't...’ she said. Hesitated. ‘I won’t, you know, catch anything from you, will I? Nola? I mean, it’s not contagious?’
‘I don't know. I really don’t know.’
Christina took a breath and then pressed her ear directly against the warm, wet stomach.
Nola’s body reacted to the human presence, the closeness. Her skin tingled. Strangely, she felt comforted. It was good to be giving pleasure in this way, to be sending out signals, and to have those signals received and understood. She became a giving object. A subject to be viewed. Here was solace, of a kind.
The voices spoke to Christina:
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.
The effect was soothing, lulling, only for the mood to be broken as another sound cut in. People cheering, and booing. Christina stood up. Mouth open, eyes wide. Fear written there on the face.
A miniature football match was being played out on Nola’s stomach.
...and now with only seven minutes of normal play left, what possible magic can United pull from their red-and-white bag of tricks...
Christina took a few steps backwards without thinking, away from the vision, the terrible sight.
Nola watched her retreating, and she wanted to speak out, to cry out:
No, please Christina. Don’t be scared of me!
But she could not, she could only remain silent, and watch the shocked expression of her personal assistant. Knowing then that Christina was repulsed by what she had seen on the body.
Nola spoke gently. ‘Turn on the visionplex. Go on.’
Christina did so.
‘Now flick through the channels.’
The screen buzzed with images and sounds.
Click, fzipp, this morning, spak, pppop, crackle, get away, shoosh, for ever, karroom, sxzxktt.
‘Something’s wrong, Nola. The reception’s terrible.’
‘Keep going.’
Fragments jumped and jarred.
Until finally Christina stopped her searching. Now she looked from the screen to Nola’s body and back again. The same image of the same dying minutes of the same football match was there on the screen of glass, exactly as the game appeared on the skin. In synch, real time. Moment by moment, kick by kick and pass by pass. The ball slamming into the back of the net on both objects simultaneously, machine and flesh.
Goal!!!
Christina zapped onwards, finding the same Spanish village as before, the same worshippers. The statue had been lifted up once more, the procession continuing on its way.
‘Do you see now, Christina?’ Nola’s face had taken on blood, life, energy. ‘My body has become a receiver of some kind. An aerial. I’m picking up signals as they move through the air. Media waves. Pictures. Sound.’
Christina saw this as the point and edge of madness, and yet the physical sight of the screen of skin burned its way into her eyes. There. There was proof.
‘You need help, Nola,’ she said. ‘Let me help you.’
Nola stared ahead. Body shaking now.
Christina closed her eyes and waited for some light to click on.
No light clicked on.
Eyes opening to the same scene, the same Nola, the same woman with her stomach glowing with pictures. ‘I don't know what this is,’ she said. ‘I’m never seen anything like it, not ever. But we can do something. You have to go to a doctor, to the hospital.’
Nola shook her head. ‘But the press will find out. They’ll treat me like a specimen. I’ll be on the specialised freak-body channels.’
Christina moved closer. She looked genuinely concerned. ‘Really...you need to do this. We need to look after you.’
Silence.
Until Nola nodded, sadly. ‘Yes. Hospital. Okay.’
‘I’ll call an ambulance.’
‘No. We can take my car.’
‘You can’t drive, Nola. Not like this.’
‘You take me then.’
‘Fine. That’s good.’
‘I’ll get ready.’
Nola was moving slowly. Barely understood instructions were being sent to her body from some vague dislocated part of her brain.
She walked into the hallway, heading for the bedroom.
Christina tidied up a little, waiting for Nola to come back out. The wall screen glowed with transmitted life, with a gathering of people. A church bell sounded.
Christina felt faint. The room rang with lost spells, with blue echo ghosts.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women...
After a few minutes she called out. ‘Nola? Are you ready yet?’
There was no reply.
Christina walked to the doorway, looking through.
The bedroom was empty.
Out on the roads where the neon glides, sparkling, where the glass walls glow golden with the falling sun.
Nola driving.
Her vehicle is sleek and blue and shiny and finely tuned, a present from George for her second number one hit.
Nola travelling through the city of fire and shadows, along roads of glitter-dust, through the ether paths, through the airwaves, through haze and crackle.
Nola, picking up broadcasts.
Surrounded by words, flashes of heat, of noise, fuzz and flicker. All broken, all scattered, fragments of meaning. Feeling the signals as they danced, feeling her skin respond, to burn and itch.
Traffic reports, blips of info, rolling news, pirate radio callouts, shrieks and moans.
The latest hits, the fallen songs.
Skull traffic.
Nola in pain. Her one desire now, to escape, to outrun the feelings, the charge that was taking her body over, that threatened her.
Hands slipping on the steering wheel, wet with sweat.
Her whole body alive with buzz and static.
Bad reception. Loose connections.
Szzstzt...szsztztz...
Now. Come on. Concentrate.
Slow down.
Szzxxztsts...
A red light.
Stop.
Nola reached over with one hand to scratch at the palm of the other, where it rested on the wheel trim. Her fingers pushed at skin, at softly giving flesh.
Her head throbbed with noise.
Szzzxtxzttztzzzzzsztz...
Lights: green.
She drove on a little way until the road ahead blurred to a mist and she had to pull over to the curb. The engine ticked quietly like a clockwork animal.
Slowly Nola turned her hand over, the right hand, and looked at the palm.
A second bruise glowed there: tiny as yet, purple, violet.
And a young man’s face stared out from the centre of her hand, from the bruise, conjured into being. He sang, he whispered, he pleaded, he sobbed. Interference patterns cut through his message.
Let us partake...szxsxt...
Destroy the nightly fix...
Take over...
Nola’s eyes closed. She tried to shut out the sound, the words. It was no good. They travelled through her. Clouds of static embraced her completely.
She rubbed at her hand, to scour away the picture.
Fever burn of signal.
Her teeth against her lips, piercing.
Blood, the taste of.
Burnt metal.
(...No! Please. No...)
Fingernails digging at her palm.
Nola. Nola Blue. Her own voice rising up from her lungs, her throat, her tongue, bursting free, leaving words behind.
Only noise, only the scream of her own pain. Her body crying out. Crying.
Crying down to silence.
Without heed, soft in the dusk, the young man on Nola’s skin spoke on...
Let us partake.
Destroy the nightly fix.
Take over.
Subvert all adverts, merge in colours.
Give voice, make our own distractions.
Let us dream.
Electric dreams, perfumed dreams.
Adrift, we live in the sparks of static, at one with screen and wires, burning with moonfever.
Calling all parasites, all voodoo junkies
all media hackers, culture jammers
all Renegades of Noise:
Forever and ever, all the way down the wavelengths, cable to cable, from the farthest orbit of the satellites, all the way down to Planet Earth,
Splice the signal flow.
Beyond the one million channels, let us travel.
Remix the networks.
Fill our skulls with sound, with vision
Broadcast the feelings
And give reflection, image, completion.
Tune our souls in.
Give me transmission!
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