Pixel Juice

by Jeff Noon

  Under extensive questioning, the suspect broke down. He admitted to forcing the young prostitute into certain acts she had not fully appreciated, at least not at the prices he could afford. He had pressed ahead anyway. During these unspecified acts he had received a shock, an electrical shock of some kind, that had caused him intense, if momentary, pain. He claimed that the shock had come from the prostitute's body itself. He had immediately leaped from the bed. His outraged demands to have his money returned met only with laughter, and when he had struggled with her, again the shock had burned through his body. He claimed that the woman had left his room then, a claim later substantiated by a night cleaner who had been working in the corridor at the specified time. The cleaner could not fail to remember the woman's smile.

  3.2 Motive. A colleague of the deceased met up with her in the bar after the incident described above. This source has confirmed certain details of the customer's story, as related to her by the deceased. A possible motive was supplied, when Miss Finch confided that she was thinking of getting out of the business soon, and to this end was appropriating more than her fair share of the proceeds. The friend had warned her of the dangers of cheating on a pimp. The friend did not know the name of Gina's new pimp.

  3.3 Witness. Miss Finch was next seen one hour later, running down the service road away from the hotel. The witness who saw this was drunk; still, his claim that the deceased was heading, in a panic, towards the deserted garden centre certainly fits in with the known facts. The witness added that, although the woman was quite alone, she had the look of someone being chased. This is the last time the deceased was seen alive.

  4.1 Lab tests. Experts at the University of Manchester carried out extensive research on the strange egg-shaped apparatus found inside the woman's body. X-rays were taken, but only when the machine stopped functioning (the green light went out; the humming noise stopped) was the egg actually removed from the stomach. A simple mechanism allowed it to swing open, into two half-shells. Inside were found a primitive motherboard and chip, various regulating devices (including the 'shock' device mentioned earlier), a battery (obviously a back-up in case the body died), a complex organic 'soup', and a removable recording device. This last, when played back, revealed details of all Georgina's sexual acts, or transactions, during the previous five weeks, including details of the cost of each, the amount credited, along with any 'shortfall'.

  4.2 Cause of death. It was determined that Georgina Finch died of a massive electrical shock. The police are treating it as murder.

  5.1 Addendum. Further to the above report, police inquiries have finally uncovered the makers of the device. They are now under arrest, awaiting further investigation. The device is marketed as the Proactive Internal Master and Protector ('Pimp', for short). It is recommended that all details of it be kept from the general public. The makers have admitted that twelve such devices have been sold already, including four 'male' models. We must do all we can to track them down.

  FROM THE BOOK OF NYMPHOMATION

  The following document (recently donated to the Museum of Fragments) was found in the ruins of Manchester. As with all our exhibits, it raises more questions than it answers. Several attempts have been made at completing the two extant pages; we prefer it as it stands. A faint glimpse of a long-lost world. Date: unknown. Please note: The museum advises that the fragment contains information of an adult nature. View at own risk.

  (text begins)

  A-LIFE n. abbreviation of artifaecial life; the process by which sinformation is evolved until it simulates, and is no longer distinguishable from real life; any product of this process.

  AMOUR n. human love for a fellow creature or machine.

  ANAL-YSIS n. sinformation taken via the anus.

  A.N.U.S. n. abbreviation of Auxiliary Nurturing System. Aurafice common to both male and female machines (and therefore seen as superior to gender-specific models) used for the introduction of artifaecial information to the body. Compare Vaginode.

  APHRODATA n. the female goddess input into nymphomation; also known as Intra-Venus. Lover of Zuice.

  ARTIFAECIAL a. not originating in real life; an imitation of life.

  ATTRACTION n. the measure of how much beauty a sinput possesses. Measured in attractons.

  ATTRACTON n. the unit by which attraction is measured. One attracton is equal to pure blandness, ten attractons equals pure beauty.

  AURAFICE n. an orifice in the body specially designed for the taking of nymphomation.

  AUTOGEN n. product of hatch technology.

  BABY n. the outcome of unprotected sex between a human male and a female.

  BABY-DATA n. the outcome of unprotected sex between a mail sinput and a femail in a nymphomatic system.

  BASTADATA n. an illegal offspring of two sinputs which are not properly married in nymphomation.

  BEAUTY n. the amount of attraction installed in a sinput in order to facilitate nymphomation. Compare with Ugliness.

  BIO-PLASTIC n. the material from which biorgs are made.

  BIORG n. a loving combination of flesh and machine.

  BIORGASM n. what happens to a biorg when nymphomation takes hold.

  BIORGY n. what biorgs get up to when too much nymphomation is introduced to their systems.

  BLOW JOB n. (sl) another name for cunnilogo or fellatio.

  BLOW-UP DOLL n. an early attempt at an artifaecial doll, which allowed humans to have sex with inanimate matter.

  BORBI DOLL n. the most sophisicated doll of the early twenty-first century. The girlfriend of RoboKen with whom she produced the baby-data called Borble.

  BORBLE n. the first true child of the nymphomation. The child as product, where the product is the future.

  (text ends)

  SOMEWHERE THE SHADOW

  In the bathroom, combing some grease in the hair, suddenly this blue shiver lit through me. Pointed little fingernail scratchings, back of the neck, tingles. From the street below, the noise of the crowd; gathering laughter, making blaze. And there's me with the deep skull rendezvous. Feeling so up for it so suddenly, I was in two minds to maybe, yeah, go answer the call, go fetch Dugg, tell him to bring the dark along. A shadow in the mirror, lingering smile, just behind and ten miles away. A hint of pheromone, a taste of sugar. If you can't get laid on the last night of the year, well when can you?

  Trouble lies along that way, which is why. Last time I'd let him out, Dugg had gone a little wild on me, despite the promises. I was scared of him doing wrong, ruining it for both of us. He could sleep this time.

  I shake off the feeling, turn around; the shadow turns with me, and then it's gone.

  Vanished.

  When I get to the club, of course everyone's twice-ways drunk and half-past wild already, with five hours still to go till midnight's global kiss. I was used to being the loner by now, well practised at getting off on other people's getting off, but the fever of the countdown caught me unawares and strung out. The madness was on sale and the dancers were circling each other, male and female, like animals. I could taste the sex in the air, like a blind dog can feel the moon rise. I just couldn't connect to it. I did the dance, drank the booze, even talked to a girl or two, tried to forget the incident in the bathroom. Then the cops came to get me, scouring the crowd.

  Ten minutes later I was being driven towards Old Trafford, where the Monastery is, which is the street name for the sex-offenders' prisonship. Along the wet streets, people were dancing, which just made me bite down harder. The chief cop, a woman called Kinsey, had simply told me that my shadow had escaped. Then she'd shut up, left me alone in the fear, because Dugg was a peaceful little pervert usually, and nobody, as far as I knew, had ever escaped from the Monastery before.

  My questions to Kinsey brought no response, not until we actually came within sight of the prison. I wanted to know how Dugg had managed it.

  'You give it a name?' was all she said, and the way she said it made me ache with shame, because I know the normals just don't u
nderstand.

  The Monastery ship was looming large across the river, with all its lights misted by the downpour, and a wailing from the sirens. This vast floating bulk of caged life. And as we drove over the road bridge to the other side ...

  Towards the other side ...

  Always, traversing this bridge in happier times, I had sensed the meaning of those words, and welcomed it. Now I was dreading the passage. Again I pressed the cop woman for details. 'At least tell me when he escaped,' I asked.

  'Is the time important?' Kinsey replied. 'Did you feel something?'

  I nodded.

  Then she told me the time of his escape, and of course it was 6.35, right when I was greasing the hair, and the feel had sizzled me.

  It's strange, but you always know when the darkness is feeling lonely. I might be down in London on business for instance, no matter, I can feel it. In boardrooms and offices, on trains or in taxis, wherever I am; when Dugg wants to fuck, somehow it gets through to me. It's not like I get a sudden erection or anything crude like that, because that's impossible without Dugg being there; more a feeling of being needed, deep down, like I said, in the skull. The shiver, the tingle, whatever.

  'But how?' I asked. 'I mean, it's not possible, is it?'

  Kinsey turned away as the car swung into the dockyard, where a frazzled guard checked our IDs. On the wall beside him someone had sprayed the words GNOMES GO HOME. Around the gateway a bunch of applicants were waiting, desolate and soaked through. The prison must've called off all hand-overs, because this sorry crowd was shouting at the guards to let them inside.

  No deal.

  But we went through easy, and as the car pulled to a halt, already I was feeling the guilt come over me; if only I'd let Dugg out. If only. He was allowed out five days a year and I'd only used up four of them. He was due another, and with the year coming to a halt, he must've been terribly desperate.

  But escape? How could he do that? He'd been well behaved on all previous leave-days, following the rules, well except for the last one, but that was a blip perversion, nothing serious. A few more months, he was due out for good, and I know how much he's been looking forward to his freedom. Believe me, I know.

  What could have made him so crazy?

  In 1999 I was classified as a Class E sexual pervert, which is the weakest kind, no trouble if properly controlled. Well there you go, because one day I let the thing inside get out of hand. It wasn't a serious incident, and nobody got hurt, at least no-one except myself, and that's what I'd paid for anyway. But the act got reported by some professional voyeur, and the next thing I was dragged before a judge, who ordered the pain inside me removed.

  Digital castration. Either that, or go to prison myself, which I doubt I would've survived. Not with my desires.

  It was a four-year separation.

  You think, straight after the operation, that you'll never get over the loneliness, because the shadow of your desire haunts you like a ghost-itch. Then, slowly, you come to terms with it, actually start to enjoy the freedom, in a way. Life turns easier, without the other person raising their snake inside you.

  Stuff like that, because you start to see your lost sexuality as a separate being eventually; another, darker reason to live.

  And then, sometimes, usually when the night is darkest, you get the tingle again. Being a Class E, I got the five days of freedom, and that's a way to scratch the need. But you have to ration it carefully, make sure it's a good need, not just a whisper. And of course you have to control it, once it's out, just use it for the normal stuff, the boring stuff, which they say is better than nothing. Yeah, sure it is.

  But you live with it, you know. You live with it. And Dugg was good, I really thought he'd been changed by the life in exile.

  Made clean.

  But now ...

  Maybe it's true, what they say about prison just making you worse.

  We sailed out to the Monastery aboard a rickety launch, and I was drenched to the hollow, still in my party clothes. On previous visits the ship had seemed a quite civilized place, more like a laboratory than a prison, with the guards wearing nice suits, and perfumed breath, with a gentle calming music being constantly played. All that had now been stripped away, like a flimsy skin. I was led down a long corridor past the old cell doors. From behind which came a fearsome noise, as of so many trapped animals. What I had taken earlier to be emergency sirens was mostly this caged and hungry growling.

  What does the human sex look like, the nastier kind anyway, once released from the body's containment? Artists' impressions, based on 'genuine eyewitness reports', showed either a lump of misshapen flesh, as though ripped from the guts, or else a paler, more spectral version of the original sinner, a sort of waking dream or ghost figure.

  One famous photograph showed a hideous, malformed monster, small and hunched, with a fixed evil grin. The image was dark and badly processed, the kind of thing you can find a thousand shapes within, whatever your mind desires to see, fitfully. From this photograph came the popular name for the sexual miscreants. The twisting of pheromones: Pheronomes.

  I suppose there was a gnome-like figure vaguely squatting there, but for myself I have always seen the interior as the fleeting, following shadow. The authorities, for their part, maintain that the sexual knowledge is merely that: knowledge. Pure information; a batch of digital biology imprisoned on a computer's hard disk. If this be so, then what strange creatures made the hideous noise coming from all the cells?

  Kinsey and her partner more or less shoved me into the transfer room. There was another man in there, an older guy. I remembered his face from my day of separation. The prison governor. 'Well,' he began, 'this is a sorry way ...'

  Somewhere or other, I was wondering what this 'way' was, and where it was leading.

  '... to celebrate the New Year.'

  Right. I made an effort to keep myself glued together. There was a chair. I sat down. Put my hands on the table. To steady them. Asked for a cigarette. Got ignored. People talking over me. Around me. The table was wedged up against the wall. In front of me, set into the wall, the apparatus of transfer ...

  How many times had I sat at this same table, waiting patiently, excitedly, for Dugg to be transferred back into my body. Hardly thinking of it, my hands were now caressing the various switches and buttons that glinted there, almost willing the computer's screen to come to nascent life. To wake from this dream and find Dugg still living, in the lines of numbers and symbols that constituted his collected presence.

  It was not to be. Usually, upon coming aboard I would feel his desire growing; the closer we were, the stronger the bond. But now the ship felt quite empty, devoid of that exquisite tension. My shadow had drifted.

  Somebody was talking. The name Breakheart was mentioned, which stirred a dark memory, and then another voice: 'That poor, poor child ...'

  'A child ..." I whispered, turning.

  Now, for the first time it seemed, the three of them, the two cops and the governor, paid me serious attention. Kinsey laughed, and then did a strange thing, or not so strange: she hit me. It was a powerful blow with the flat of her hand, with enough force to shock me back to reality. The strangest thing of all, however; the terrible, laughable thought that went through my head: that in different circumstances, earlier in my life and with Dugg back inside me, nothing in the world would have thrilled me more than to be treated in such a way by a figure of authority. A cop, a female cop! Hitting me! From such practices have I made a sorry life, and paid for it.

  'You like messing with children, eh?' Kinsey asked. 'You want to mess with me?'

  'But... but Dugg... that is ... I... I've never...'

  Struggling for the feeling.

  'I've never been like that!'

  'You may calm down, Mr Carter,' said the governor. 'And you too, Detective Sergeant. Mr Carter is innocent. The prison, that is, myself, will accept full responsibility. There will be an inquiry.' The governor's eyes were filled with a shadow of
his own making, one of imminent loss, as he turned to me.

  'Please tell me what's happening,' I asked. 'What is it?'

  'Earlier this evening, there was a breach in our security. A serious breach. Our mainframe computer was penetrated. Do you understand what I'm saying?'

  'Dugg...'

  'Doug?'

  'The name he calls his sex,' Kinsey told the governor. 'Cute, huh?'

  'I see. Yes. Your sexuality was stolen.'

  I was almost laughing, I don't know why. 'Security?'

  'Oh, the very best. But. Well. You have heard of Breakheart?'

  'Thomas Breakheart? Of course. He's in prison.'

  'Unfortunately, no. He was released six months ago.'

  'Released? But—'

  'His sentence was shortened. It was part of the deal, I'm afraid. For volunteering.'

  Kinsey banged her fist against a wall.

  The governor ignored her. 'So, you see ...'

  'With Dugg inside him?' I asked, hardly believing. 'Out there?'

  He nodded. 'We need your help, Mr Carter. Only you can find him. You may remember Breakheart's methods. He will strike before midnight. We have . . .' He studied his watch, shaking. 'We have less than three hours.'

  Suddenly, there was a fifth person in the room. That shadow there, fleeting, or else the play of the ship upon the dark water as somebody touched the back of my neck. Kinsey, or the other cop ...

  I turned round. They were standing apart from me.

  'Mr Carter?'

  Who spoke then? The governor? Kinsey?

  'Carter! Are you all right?'

  No. The tingles. The shivers. It was happening. Happening again.

  I think I said something. I think so. I must've done.

  I seemed to come awake, back in the car, speeding now, over the bridge, back towards Manchester, the waves below, the waves inside me, the shadow somewhere, somewhere ...

  Other cars were behind us, lights flashing like afterthoughts through the wailing fog of sirens. Kinsey in the back with me, urging me to be strong, to keep the connection open.