Channel SK1N Read online

  The body is right. The body knows.

  The body sings!

  Nola pranced and tingled, step by step.

  Needing privacy, she ducked into an alleyway.

  Narrow. Dim, dirty. Scuttle of something moving away. The smell of burnt food, leftovers. Wisps of grey smoke from a vent. And now Nola’s voice rose up from her throat, unbidden, filling her head and shining forth in love,

  out loud,

  halfway melodic:

  No blues like gemstone blues.

  The line just coming to her like that, made up as she stood there. But what did it mean? Oh, right: seeing her own face on the animated display earlier, projected eyes glimmering that supernatural blue.

  Again, try:

  No blues like the gemstone blues, shining,

  Night sparkles.

  (Good tune, better that time.)

  No blues like a white moon shining

  Down the sky, unfolding.

  (And repeat. Possible chord change here.)

  Down the sky unfolding

  Night sparkles

  Dreams unfolding.

  No cares for now. Only singing. Like she used to do, bedroom bound, just singing to herself, writing lyrics down as they came to her. Nonsense poetry most of the time, with the occasional two-line phrase sounding more than okay, making her wonder where it all came from. And just grabbing hold of it then and scrawling the words down, thinking: I can do this, I can really do this! And where before there was nothing at all, now a song, or half a song, or a quarter of a song existed.

  Again. Keep going:

  No blues like the blue-day news

  Of falling, stalling.

  (No. Crap. Again! Sing now.)

  No blues like the king and queen

  Calling, falling

  Down the sky of burnt-out stars.

  (Sing!)

  Night sparkles

  Calling out for love...

  (No. Cliché.)

  Calling out for lovers.

  (Yes!)

  Night-sparkle gemstone bluuuues

  Calling out for lovers everywhere

  Calling...

  Uh...

  Nola stopped.

  Shadows moving.

  A noise from further down the alley.

  Focus:

  A man was gazing at her from where he sat, slumped down against the filthy wall. Eyes fuzzy, wet. Misty with drink. But dressed in a dinner jacket, crisp white shirt, black bow tie.

  ‘What do you want?’ Nola asked.

  No answer at first. Then, a well-to-do accent: ‘That’s a nice song, my love.’

  Nola hesitated. ‘I’m just...Well, you know, making it up as I go along.’

  ‘You should...’

  ‘What? I can't hear you.’

  ‘You should do it for a living.’

  Nola laughed. ‘I guess so. I’ll try that.’

  The man tipped his bottle of red wine at her. Smiled. ‘Your very good health.’

  Nola walked out, hailed a taxi and headed back across the river. The night-blossomed city of drugs and crystals and spice and perfume and neon dancers and electric passion glowed in the water, inverted.

  She felt better now, on track for something as yet unseen.

  Just keep singing, that’s all that matters. Yes.

  Mouth, lips, tongue, music, words, meanings.

  Reaching people. Touching them.

  Her face in the cab window...half reflected...the roadside seen through the image.

  The ringing in her head still there,

  but quiet now,

  ambient.

  Blinking her eyes to the pulse of the street-lights, as they passed by one by one.

  Yellow sodium haze.

  blink

  flicker

  blink

  flicker

  A slight pain in the stomach.

  Sudden cold.

  -2-

  The flat was empty, dusted and polished, perfectly at ease with itself, comforting, expertly maintained. Shiny where it had to be shiny, matt where it had to be matt.

  Silence.

  Nola stood there in the centre of the room, looking from left to right and back again.

  How strange...

  All the usual items were to be seen, the usual furniture. A smooth plastic seat-covering warm against her fingers, the red and gold circles of the carpet design, the well-chosen pictures, the scattered magazines. The visionplex unit waiting on its shelf, beneath the viewing screen. All was in place. The walls were decorated in exactly the same patterns and shades as she was used to, so why then...

  Why this sudden feeling, that she’d entered the wrong apartment by mistake?

  Nola held her breath.

  Waited.

  Hoping that when she breathed again, everything would click back into place.

  Waiting...

  Breathe.

  No, the feeling remained.

  Through the living room window the river gleamed in blue darkness lit by passing boats.

  Nola’s apartment took up half a floor of a newly built tower. She could look out over the city. Nearby stood other apartment blocks and complexes, where other wealthy people, deserving or otherwise, lived in splendour. Windows were alight or not, ones and zeros. A code of living, of sleeping, at home, away. Nola’s eyes moved across vistas. Curtains drawn, curtains open. People alone or in pairs. No families, as such. This was not a place for children. In several observed rooms colours danced across screens, or figures moved from room to room and back. A young couple sat on a couch, laughing together.

  Nola watched them.

  They moved closer to each other,

  playing a game, teasing...

  closer

  into a kiss.

  Ah...that moment...

  Nola studied the passion.

  The song came back to her, the one from the alleyway. Three notes rising, and then one falling away, into minor. She picked up her guitar and tried to remember how it went.

  A few words here and there.

  Sparkles. Night.

  Here the chord change. Another.

  But no melody, not really. Whereas before...

  What was it? Sparkles in the night. Stars? Jewels?

  Billboard face, fake gemstone eyes all aglow. The sudden click of inspiration.

  Some kind of blues. The sky unfolding...

  No. Too late, too far. Too much distance between herself and whatever it was that might have been.

  Night-sparkle gemstone something

  Calling out for...

  Nola lay down the instrument.

  She grabbed a bottle of beer from the kitchen and came back into the living room to slump down on the couch. She picked up the remote control and switched on the visionplex.

  Click.

  Buzz. Burning sound. Brightness. Colour.

  Image.

  The viewing screen stretched halfway along the wall, and more than halfway to the ceiling, a vast expanse of dark shining mirror now brought to life, allowing pictures and voices to fill the room.

  Relaxing, Nola sank back into the cushions. She sipped at the beer, idly watching and listening as she flicked through the channels.

  Click.

  Onwards.

  Click, click, click.

  Football, comedy, cookery, explosions, sex, the current war, old wars, cradle snatching, speeding cars, dancing, do-it-yourself, even more wars of years past, a close-up of a fist hitting a man’s cheek, crunch of bone, spray of blood, a teddy bear, plague fever, adverts, madness.

  Finally...

  She found a music show where her main rival was sitting on a pink bench next to a young kid scarcely out of school. He was interviewing her. They talked wittily to each other in sweet words of praise and mutual delight. Two mouths dripping with wonderful inanities, as scripted.

  Boy and girl. They were both wearing sailor suits.

  Come here honey, honey, bang my drum.

  If you ain’t got th
e fever, you ain’t gonna come.

  Now the rival’s latest release was playing.

  Click, click,

  Click.

  Nola’s finger jabbed repeatedly at the buttons, causing the images on screen to flood and melt together as the programmes flowed by, merging into each other. Sub windows opened up and vanished as she moved through the web channels, the ethercasts, ephemeral programmes of vapour and dust, fragments and whispers. She passed through Shimmertown where the shimmers gathered, the countless endless messages that lasted for only 44 seconds before they faded from the screen. Nola tried to read a couple, failed to catch them in time, moved on:

  from station to station, haze to spark

  signal to signal.

  Then she stopped.

  What was that sound, that noise?

  Music.

  Her own music.

  Click, click.

  Nola flicked back through the last few selections until she found it, a web-cable fuzzcast, fragile, lodged in the low-rent frequencies.

  Click.

  The new video, the new song being promoted.

  She got up from the couch, moving closer to the screen.

  There she was.

  Nola Blue.

  The images jumped and pulsed.

  Zoom!

  Zoom shot hit the singer’s face like a bomb shock.

  But she just laughed. Nola laughed in the eyes of the camera and then turned, spinning on her heels, dropping down to a dead

  STOP!

  Bang. On the dot. Halfway to her knees and then up again and away, singing now.

  (I just wanna, I wanna get to know you.)

  Dancing now, moving in time to the music, playing to the tracking shot as it kept pace with her, along the studio floor and then out, outside.

  (You know I wanna

  I just wanna

  I really wanna...)

  Out.

  Bright glare of sunlight jarring the lens.

  Jump cut.

  Along the urban riverbank where the young man was waiting with his gang of toughs.

  (I wanna get to know the real you.)

  The young man was waiting just for her and then he too was dancing his own steps, moving away from the gang, moving with Nola but always keeping one or two or three or four twists and turns ahead of her.

  (I wanna touch you. I just wanna...)

  And no matter how she tried to stay in pursuit, no matter how loudly or how passionately she sang, he was always ahead, this young man, always on the edge of being lost...

  Nola watched herself on the screen.

  She could hardly recognise the face as her own, so often had she been transformed by the star-making process. Made-over, made-up, powdered. Jigged and rejigged. Extended, and then digitalised to within an inch of her flesh or so it felt, post-production, until there was hardly anything of herself left up there.

  Hardly anything at all.

  Even her voice, her lovely voice made by nature, by the good genes of the poor mother and bad father, even her born-to-sing singing voice was all chopped-up and rearranged, auto-tuned, remixed beyond any measure of her own tongue.

  It was like another person existed.

  That was it.

  Another version of her own face and body. Some weird little abstract entity who lived on the other side of the screen. A young person who looked like Nola looked, talked and walked as she did, sang and danced like she did, spelt her name the same way, using the same letters in the same order; this second woman, this double, with the same silhouette, wearing the same clothes, clouded and veiled by the same fully moussed-up and layered cascade of hair.

  The same goddamn teeth even.

  Gleaming like a showgirl. Plastic white scrape and bleach job, all paid for by George himself, against future royalties, of course.

  Name, face, teeth, skin, clothes, lips, eyes.

  Here she was.

  Here she was on the screen.

  The exact same person.

  Nola Blue. Music Star.

  But it wasn’t her. It just wasn’t her.

  Who the hell was it?

  Nola reached out her hand and touched the screen.

  Tingle fuzz. Heat.

  The glass lay between them, separating the two beings from each other.

  Nola studied her created persona. The mouth, especially. This painted maw as it worked to keep the song alive, the lips moving in time to the beat she kept inside herself.

  Sparkle mouth, sparkle eyes.

  Lovely sheen of lovely skin.

  And yet which was more authentic, her real-life human body, or the image of her body? One bound by flesh and blood and blemish and breath; the other glorified, elevated, set ablaze with computerised passion.

  Both of them constructed, both paid for.

  Nola watched herself dancing.

  Now slow...

  Slooooooow.

  Moving it down easily as the song reaches toward its climax and the handsome young man succumbs at last

  whispering, suddenly loving,

  suddenly realising, falling into the singer’s waiting and willing arms.

  The kiss.

  Ah, the sweet lingering touch of lips on lips.

  Final words of the song, final drumbeat.

  Video fade-out to black.

  Gone.

  ...fizsxts...

  Moment of silence.

  Blank screen.

  And when was the last time she had kissed or been kissed, really kissed, tongue to tongue, hot breath mingling in the dark of the mouth, when? When?

  Nola vaguely recalled her last true boyfriend, from the village where she grew up through her teenage years.

  What was his name now?

  No, she couldn’t remember.

  Where was he, these days? What was he doing?

  His face. His skin. Like her own back then, marked only by young time. His mouth. Whispers of loving you forever.

  Ages ago, or so it seemed. Another life. And herself a different person.

  Fame kills normality, it burns up closeness.

  Nola felt tears pricking behind her eyes.

  She’d finished the beer without really thinking about it, and that, on top of the two cocktails at the bar, and the drink earlier, when George had come round...

  Well, she wasn’t used to it. Too much regime. Do this, do that. Stay fit, healthy, focussed.

  Nola stared at the screen.

  Two pundits now occupied the space, fair to middling guys with seriously abundant attitude.

  One smirked, the other frowned. Both nodded.

  The first widened her eyes. ‘It’s the third single from the album.’

  The other replied: ‘That’s the trouble. Overexposure.’

  ‘Correct. Nola’s charm is draining away. What little charm there was, to begin with.’

  ‘Oh, she had enough, to begin with. More than enough.’

  ‘But now? Somewhat pallid, think I.’

  ‘Certainly, she is wasted on this material. Have you heard the demo tracks?’

  ‘You’re one up on me there, Andy.’

  ‘Early days material, before Gold Enterprises got hold of her.’

  ‘Good, is it?’

  ‘More than averagely good, I would say. Her own songs. Now that’s what she needs to be doing.’

  ‘Well she needs something.’

  ‘It’s the George Gold attitude, isn’t it. Mister King Pop himself, in charge of the system.’

  ‘Gold is old.’

  ‘The system no longer works.’

  ‘Check the status figures, kiddo. Thirty-six? Next step: accelerated decline.’

  ‘All I’m saying, Marty, is wait and see. Maybe Nola will break loose.’

  ‘Too late! I hear a bubble bursting.’

  Click.

  Nola jumped to another programme.

  One more. Another.

  Click, click.

  Anything but that. Anything but her own self being dissec
ted, poked and prodded like a cute media specimen: broken down, licked at, wrapped up, halfway discarded.

  Nola went back to the couch.

  Click, click, click.

  Her finger pressed idly now at the buttons, moving further out, beyond the legal channels. Her set decoded encryptions on the sly, calling up temporary signal jumps. Click, clikk, clikck. Out to the telesphere’s edge, where the spectrum blurred into mist and static. Here buzzed the fractalcasts, quarter-tuned pirate stations stealing frequencies for an hour or two. Cable dreams and nightmares. Political rants, home sex videos, karaoke soaps, real-life domestic arguments, porno-dramas, hyper-specialist dating agencies, bidding wars, medical fibre optics, ghost broadcasts, security surveillance footage, glamacam exposures, old-time ballroom dancers, blurry car crashes, flower arranging, real-time feeds from the street where little kids with pixel faces were singing the new urban folk ballads of guns and blood.

  So many thousands of microgenres.

  Everybody was on camera these days, everybody.

  Click, click.

  Nola chanced upon an old movie, black and white, one she had not seen before. The story was trite, overly romantic, but certain images seemed to have a fix of their own, to be more like memories:

  A black cat walking through a garden where a fountain sprayed arcs of water in sunlight.

  A teenage girl flying a kite.

  A broken-down car resting at the edge of a lake, its back seat occupied by the corpse of a businessman.

  The images glowed with a light of their own.

  Images. Moments. Slowing down.

  Molten flow.

  Nola managed one more click of the remote, one more sleepy finger press,

  suddenly tired,

  lulled by the sound and the vision

  spellbound.

  Image: a man’s face, mist-painted. He smiled.

  Soft glow of the screen

  like a charm cast over the room,

  over the viewer as she lay there,

  over Nola as she lay there quietly, eyes staring, and then drooping, softly closing; two lovely lashed portals to let one last glimmer of light in, and then no more.

  Darkness.

  The remote control fell to the carpet.

  And by half past one

  Nola Blue lay fast