Channel SK1N

by Jeff Noon

  Nola looked at her and nodded.

  Christina reached out. ‘So now: you play the game. Please do that.’ Her voice was close, warm. ‘That’s all. That’s all we ask of you, little star. Play to win. Because you know what the very lovely and very rich and ever so talented Miss Yoni Yoni cried out, don’t you, her last words before leaping to the tarmac, seven full storeys below?’

  Nola shook her head.

  ‘Fuck the Noise.’

  Christina’s words shivered in light.

  ‘You want to end up like her?’

  Mist. Sparkle.

  And all that Nola could hear now was the voice inside, this time a child’s voice in her head, crying out for a cake or a toy, Gimme, gimme, gimme! and then laughing with sudden burbles of joy.

  Couldn’t Christina hear this? She must hear it.

  Was Nola the only one?

  Her face in the mirror.

  Eyes: fearful, black, they would not look back at her.

  She turned away. Again, her stomach heaved, she was going to be sick.

  Christina a figure of blur, miles away, miles.

  White porcelain glimmer, overbright.

  Strip-light fizzle and spark.

  Burn of wiring.

  One man’s voice.

  Facts and figures. Skintalk. Chatter.

  The average turnover will fall, as...

  Jabbering. He would not stop.

  Of course, as predicted...

  A woman’s voice, interrupting.

  Babble.

  Voices. Louder now. Voices that sang and blustered and yelled out and sighed, nonstop.

  Noise. A kiss. Two pairs of lips meeting, the sound caught and magnified.

  Wet suck.

  Pain in Nola’s skull.

  Sharp.

  Throb.

  Needle sharp.

  Then darkness.

  -8-

  She caught a taxi outside the studio.

  Alone now, having left Christina to sort out the mess. Thankfully, the strange voices had died down to a whisper, sometimes even fading to silence, but she could still feel her abdomen burning. A sudden feeling of nausea would every so often possess her.

  Reaching her apartment she immediately headed for the bathroom, where she pulled off her shirt to examine her body in the full length mirror.

  Eyes wide open now, needing to know...

  The bruise.

  The damaged area had grown still further, covering almost half of her belly. The surface was wet. Seepage. Pus. Moving images played there, flickering into existence and then changing, transmuting into other shapes and scenes in a constant flow.

  Nola saw:

  The crescent moon.

  Clouds.

  Pictures of far-off lands.

  Soldiers marching.

  A lingering shot of a half-naked man.

  Blood on a wall.

  Graffiti: Free the Dream!

  A cat prowling.

  A building in flames.

  Each image was accompanied by a sound or a series of noises:

  Cheers, shouts, inane chatter.

  Car brakes screaming, fists slamming into soft flesh.

  A gunshot, a baby’s first tears.

  Political commentary.

  A raging argument.

  Groans of simulated pleasure, cries of despair.

  Static interference, each wave bringing Nola a jolt of pain.

  Szzzxtzztztxt!

  Jingles, riddles, tangles of words.

  Popular songs of decades past, war whoops, poems of love and loneliness.

  Footsteps

  footsteps

  footsteps

  on a dark and rainy boulevard.

  All of these things were brought to extraordinary life on Nola’s skin, and she could not drag her eyes away from them.

  Oh God, what’s happening to me?

  What’s happening?

  Alas, alas the looking glass

  had no voice, no lips, no tongue

  with which to speak.

  Nola wet her hands at the sink and started to wash herself, her stomach, the bruise itself, rubbing, rubbing at the strange contusion, wiping, trying to clean herself of this mark, this damage.

  The bruise remained.

  She hurried into the main room, crying out to the walls, the visionplex, the furniture, the window, crying out for help, for anything, just some grain of hope or comfort.

  There was none.

  She rang Christina.

  ‘What is it, Nola? What the fuck is going on? You have to tell me.’

  ‘Just come over.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘If you can. Please.’

  That was all she could manage. She clicked off the bug, poured herself a drink, and waited.

  The blank wall screen held her in its vision, reflected, a pale dream of a woman clinging to the last shreds by her teeth and nails.

  She drank. Her eyes closed.

  Pictures came to her, dreamlike.

  Stop. Please stop.

  Pictures. Stories told in mist, in fragments:

  A tall tower struck by lightning.

  Night falling across moorland, where a strange animal drags itself through the grass. The beast has a wounded side, and seeps blood. The blood is succour to crawling bugs.

  She knew these images were currently flashing across her stomach. She felt them there, but she would not look at them, no, let them flow away, let them die, let all images die.

  The last man alive on the planet walks down a deserted high street. The air is humid, muggy with heat. The man’s scrawny greyblack shadow follows at a distance, separated from his body.

  A crashed spaceship in the centre of London. The people run in fear.

  Images stolen from cable vision, from fantasy and horror films, science fiction.

  From the all-day-long reality channels.

  A middle-aged woman stares at her own face in a mirror. She speaks, the signal broken by noise, by fever and dust. ‘I feel dirty, filthy... all these cameras...all day...all night...so many eyes...touching me...touching...

  Christina got there within half an hour. She could hardly believe what she was seeing.

  Nola: slumped down against the wall, face hidden, hair wet and out of shape. Her shirt was torn, hanging loosely open. There was an empty whiskey glass on the carpet at her side.

  Christina bent down, pulling Nola to a sitting position. ‘Come on, baby. Easy now.’

  Nola tried to hold her shirt closed, but Christina had already seen that something was wrong down there, within the folds, on the skin.

  Was that an injury, a wound of some kind?

  Quietly spoken: ‘Let me have a look.’

  And gently she pulled Nola’s shirt open fully, viewing the bruise that lay beneath, a sickening bright stain of colour stretching across Nola’s stomach.

  ‘Oh my God, Nola. Who did this to you?’

  Silence.

  ‘How did this happen? Did somebody hit you?’

  Nola shook her head.

  ‘Well. You didn’t do this yourself?’

  Again, no answer. But then Nola struggled to her feet, saying, ‘Look at me, Chris. Look closely.’ She breathed deep, steadying herself. ‘Tell me what you see.’

  Christina looked at the bruise.

  The colours and the extent of it were painful to the eye. At first all she could was the wound itself. But soon enough the contusion altered itself, the shapes and patterns taking on new form. Sounds could be heard, all quiet as yet, but gathering. And then a voice coming from the skin itself, and an answering voice, faraway, muffled.

  Christina closed her eyes.

  She remembered her own time on television, the primitive version, her one great chance at success. She felt again the camera’s heat, the fizzle and burn of skin. Sweat beads. Nerves jumping. She recalled the thought of her own image being transmitted, examined, sent around the nation, found wanting. The long minutes stretching out, her face melt
ing, it seemed like, under the harsh lights, every pore and blemish magnified, her sins on show, revealed, the body opened out for public viewing. All the people she had slept with over the years, the grabbing of pleasure wherever it might lie, moment to moment. No George Gold in her life, back then. Alone. So much booze, so many drugs. Add it all up, weigh the balance. The lights catching her, x-raying her soul. So bad, so very bad. The camera moving in, closer. Breath caught in her throat. Panic. One hand tapping at her tiny crucifix necklace, the other shaking at the script. Dig in, keep reading. Glue this mother down. Say your lines. Keep...

  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.

  -9-

  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 th
e 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