‘For now. Benny did the DNA analysis on it.’
‘And?’
‘He didn’t have a clue. Said it was an unknown genetic structure. We showed the results to Hackle. He went crazy, saying it was a Hackle Maze made flesh. Apparently the genes don’t just split in two, like in men and women. They split into many different strands. A more random way of reproducing. More chance for evolution to make play. Benny couldn’t keep track of it. Hackle said he never would.’
‘What about the disk? What did Joe do?’
‘He only gave it to Dopejack, didn’t he? I mean, all my own work, going to waste,’
‘And I bet Dopejack did good.’
‘Sure, he did good. Used my findings, didn’t he, to find a deeper way into the bones. But I could’ve done good as well. I could have.’
‘You could have done better, Jaz.’
‘Dopejack’s got better equipment than me, that’s all.’
Daisy smiled.
‘What you smiling at?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You are. You’re laughing at me.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are.’
‘I’m not!’
‘You are!’
‘Get off! No. That tickles—’
‘I’ll teach you.’
The next thing, the two of them were on the floor, rolling around. Sometimes Jaz was on top, sometimes Daisy. Either way it was fun, if painful when the laughter got too much. Sometimes Daisy was winning, and Jazir let her win, and sometimes Daisy was losing.
And she let herself lose.
‘Are you all right in there, you two?’ It was Jazir’s mother, knocking on the door. ‘Would you like something to eat, Daisy?’
‘We’re all right, Mum,’ Jazir shouted, trying to get up. ‘We’re working hard.’ But the door swung open, unlocked.
‘Oh, Jazir. What a mess you’ve made!’
‘Yeah, Mum.’ On his feet, unsteady. ‘I’ll clean it up. Right this second, Mother.’
‘I’m helping him, Mrs Malik,’ Daisy said from the floor, showing her a piece of burgerwrap she had picked up. ‘Look.’ She got to her feet.
‘That’s nice of you. Dinner will be ready soon.’
‘Daisy’s going in a bit. I’ll walk her home.’
‘Very good. There’s some nasty men around.’
She went. Jazir locked the door. ‘My mum’s sound. Four kids. Things are changing. It’s just—’
‘Am I really going?’ asked Daisy.
‘Yeah. In a bit. Didn’t I say that?’ He did a little dance, copying the movements of Frank Scenario. One two, one two, slide…singing a lyric.
Closer they came.
On the computer screen, the stray blurb from one land mass found a stray blurb from another. For a few seconds they danced around each other, before finally merging.
By which time Daisy and Jazir were lying on his bed.
Afterwards Daisy kissed the wound on his hand. It was a sealed-over bump, which gently moved under Daisy’s lips. She didn’t want to talk, and Jazir was asleep anyway.
Afterwards he walked her home, as promised. Again, very little was said. Daisy was slightly embarrassed now. It was the thought of giving in so easily, so suddenly, after being so alone and so opposed for so long. Again, the probabilities were unworkable. Watching the blurbs on the computer, what had that done to her? Well, she had waited long enough and Jazir was a friend. Would her life change? Would he still be a friend? Was this the start of something, or the end? So many thoughts.
Jazir, the same. Mostly of shame, however. He knew it hadn’t gone well. He was glad it had happened, but why had he fumbled so, with the protection and the act and the afterwards? The thought of his mother and sister downstairs, that was part of it. And the ever-present father, floating in his mind, his bedroom, his body. Would he never escape?
‘It was your first time too, wasn’t it?’ Daisy asked, finally.
Jazir didn’t answer.
‘That’s OK. It’s good, I think.’
Jazir shrugged. Daisy took his arm. She’d never seen him this quiet. There was no going back. It was an equation that couldn’t be undone. Even now, thinking of numbers.
‘Jaz,’ she said, ‘this doesn’t mean—’
‘We’re all the same, aren’t we?’ said Jazir. ‘I mean, we’re all virgins, these days.’
‘Not any more—’
‘No. We still are. Everybody is. Even Joe Crocus, in a certain sense. We’re all waiting for something to happen. It’s the times.’
‘I suppose.’
A blurbfly landed on Jazir’s shoulder then. He stroked it, without thinking, as it whispered in his ear. Some secret message.
‘You know what this is like?’ Daisy asked.
Jazir shook his head.
‘They’re attracted to you, just like they’re attracted to your special recipe. Maybe you’ve got some sauce on you, a real version that is. Is there a real version?’
Jazir shook his head.
‘What is it then?’
Jazir shook his head, but made an answer anyway.
‘I’ve been bitten.’
They were walking along the curryfare, neon bathing them bright with colours. SHAZAZ. KING TANDOOR. ASSAM. EASTERN KISS. GANGA JAL. TAKSHAKA. PALACE OF SPICE. Finally, THE GOLDEN SAMOSA.
‘Oh God, Jaz! Have you been to a doctor?’
Jazir shook his head.
‘You must. Something’s wrong with you.’
Jazir kissed her. ‘Don’t worry. I’m dealing with it. Friday night, right?’
‘Friday.’
He walked away, a blurb on one shoulder, another two floating overhead, singing his praises.
Afterwards, past midnight, Daisy lay on her bed, sleepless. With the radio playing Frank Scenario’s latest single, his voice laden with molasses and wine and the weight of years.
Rolling and tumbling along the domino,
Hoping for a full cast, landing with an all alone.
One of these days I’m gonna be an only know,
With sweet Heaven’s breath on my bone.
It should’ve been the best day of her life, with Max asking her for help, and Jazir and that. And that and that and that and that. Rolling and tumbling. Twisting and turning. Good things, bad things. Numbers, falling. Jazir’s wound. The temptations. Blurbflies hovering. Play to win! Play to win! The song. The hot smell of his flesh. Heaven’s breath. The spices. The numbers…
Numbers! That was it. She would do some work. She would open the folder that Max had given her. She would start to read…
Pages of handwritten workings, equations galore, scribbled ravings, copies of magazines. Number Gumbo: A Mathemagical Grimoire. Launch date, October 1968. She started with that.
Psychedelic typography, its overabundance of flowers and drugs and cartoons of Jimi Hendrix, alive with six strings of fire. There was even an article containing a mathematical analysis of the guitarist’s solo in a song called ‘Purple Haze’. It claimed that Hendrix was a shamanic figure, whose music was a virus designed to infect the establishment with love. Each ragged chord was a ragged equation of love, apparently. Daisy skipped through it lightly, mainly because she had never heard a Jimi Hendrix recording, not for the life of her.
Instead she focused on an article written by Hackle: ‘Love Labyrinths: A Guide for the Active Wanderer in Nymphomation’. It was hard-going, to be sure. Lots of the equations were beyond her control, but she persevered.
Knowledge gathered: a love labyrinth was a computer-generated maze in which the wanderers could actively find the centre by falling in love with the pathways. This was called playing to win.
Some wanderers had a better chance of winning. These were the Casanovas. They had more love for the maze.
The wanderer could also fall out of love with the pathways, thereby forever losing his way. These were called the Backsliders. This was playing to lose.
The wanderers of these labyrinths were
only packages of information let loose in the computer’s world. The more they wandered the maze, the more they learned about it. They could then change their behaviour accordingly.
Hackle seemed to view these wanderers as being almost alive. He gave the different types names—Chancer, Casanova, Warrior, Seducer, Cartographer, Jester, Sheep, Shepherd, Builder, Backslider—according to how they tackled the pathways of love. Special Informants patrolled the mazes, collecting knowledge and position. The more you loved the maze, the more it moulded to your desires. The more you hated the maze, the more it got you lost. But sometimes getting lost seemed good. Too many complications for Daisy to untangle, but loving the tangle anyway.
All this and more was nymphomation.
All this activity taking place inside a computer’s memory. It must have been a struggle to fit it all inside the dumb, clunky machines of those days. Of course, there was no reality application, not in 1968, and this fact seemed to inform Hackle’s equations with an element of loss. The professor was crying into his numbers.
The telephone rang; her father’s lost voice. ‘Leave me alone!’ she said, slamming down connections.
She looked through some of the papers then. Most of them were merely the workings-out for magazine articles. Some were maps of Hackle Mazes, printouts with various wanderers in position. Others were number, pure number; dazzling displays of abstract maths. There was no way that Daisy could follow the various pathways.
She went back to the magazines; issues of the Number Gumbo, six in all, dated from 1968 to 1979. The further in time they went, the more they lost their hippy trappings. These she skimmed for Max’s work, adding to her knowledge. There certainly seemed to be connections between the nymphomation and the dominoes. For instance, perhaps the Casanovas were related to today’s lucky bleeders. The Informants were maybe the precursors of the blurbs. The Trickster virus was obviously related to the Joker Bone. No, don’t say obviously, keep your distance, Daisy. Stay objective, don’t get dragged in.
The last mag was a glossy affair. They were obviously getting money from somewhere. It contained an article by Max called ‘Maze Dynamics and DNA Coding, a Special Theory of Nymphomation’. This was the juice, basically. It detailed how recent explorations of the Hackle Mazes (on the latest computers) had discovered an interesting anomaly. Some of the wanderers were actually having sex, or so it appeared. In previous games, the wanderers had reproduced by making exact copies of themselves. Now they were making inexact copies. Two of them would get together, merge, and a ‘babydata’ would be produced, with attributes from both parents. Already mutants had been observed, wanderers with bits missing, or bits added on. These were either killed instantly, Backsliders, or else became Warriors. Evolution was taking place.
The paper ended with a speculation by Hackle on the possible future of such a system. ‘One can imagine a time when this new kind of knowledge will be put to use in the real world. For instance, we could mate everything we know about mathematics, with everything we know about flag-waving. The babydata would be the mathematics of flag-waving. A new science! But why stop our imaginings so soon? Let us mate this new baby with everything known about ice cream. The result? The mathematics of waving flags made out of ice cream. Everything known about driving a car? Excellent! The mathematics of driving flags made out of vanilla-cars. Astronomy? Dominoes? No problem. Flag-driving of numbered vanilla-bones on the moon.
‘We must imagine a world filled with these highly specialized disciplines. Most will be completely useless and will soon be extinct. Others will be all-powerful. They will mate in turn. I no longer know whether to be excited or terrified at this prospect.’
Daisy, the same. She turned to the contents page of the mag. Was there anything else by Hackle? No. But his name caught her eye nonetheless. There he was, in the credits column. Assistant editor, Maximus Hackle. There was one reason why they kept printing his stuff. And who was the editor? Paul Malthorpe. Well. So Max and his enemy had kept in touch, worked together even. Strange, he’d never mentioned that. But Daisy knew Hackle’s way of teaching by now. Let the pupil find the clues. She looked further down the column. Susan Prentice: art director. George Horn: cartoonist. They certainly stuck together. In a list of special consultants she found this name: James Love. Her father…
Daisy fell asleep with this page open on her chest.
Two other things to be seen that night: firstly, Joe Crocus making Benny carry a portable computer and a fishing net up to the roof of Hackle’s house. There Joe set up the machine. He slotted in a certain disk and waited for the pattern to emerge. Jazir’s Chef’s Special Recipe. Benny was waiting nearby, with the net, as the blurbflies came in to land.
Secondly, Jazir laying awake on his bed, the window open. His chest was bare above the sheet, and a sluggish blurb nestled there, wings folded. Jazir stroked it lovingly, squeezing a trickle of grease from its duct. He called the blurb Masala, as in Chicken Tikka Masala. Best recipe. He rubbed the loving juice into his chest. Miss Sayer watched over this scene. Whispering computer advice…
‘Wing up. Please quickly. Come find.’
Game 44
Lucky young Bone Day. Dotty old Pipchester! Game 44. Throw those bones, you burger-gutted dribbleheads. Make honeyspot to the pimplevision. Gamble fast, live long, make cash. Change the orifice. Let loose the digits! Tumbling and falling, cascading mist of bonejuice, genetic flash. Sing those swarms, broadcast your tongueflies, alive with blurbverts. Sex your gamble, long your life, cash your bones. Play to win! Play to win! And all over the city that numberday evening, moments from boneflight, how happy were the hordes! Jabbering their dancing eyes on windows and walls and floorboards and thighs and meat pies and trouser flies and psychedelic, hippy throw-cushions.
Watching the dots. Pulsating, blooming, coming on strong. Losing the day job, winning the prize. The world turning on a rainbow of pips…
Tommy tumbled, and the players steeled their bones, honed their breath, bought some last-minute prayers, took a collective burger, sang their hosannas. Sacrificed some wingless dream to the pagan gods of flight.
Fuck to win! Fuck to win!
As the blurbflies went out of control, blocking out the streetlights, making a cloud of logos. It was rutting season for the living verts, and all over the city the male blurbs were riding on the backs of females. Biting their necks, hoping for babyverts. The city, the pulsating city, alive with the rain and the colours and the stench of nymphomation. Mathemedia.
Here we go, numberfucked…
Down to Hackle’s house and the domino-breakers. DJ Dopejack working a computer, Jazir another. Linked by networks. Daisy Love and Sweet Benny Fenton, sofa-bound, just watching. Daisy to Jazir, Benny to Joe. Old Joe Crocus making his rounds; pent-up, nerve-ridden, sharp-edged with need.
‘This is magic equipment, Joe,’ said Dopejack.
‘Just capture it.’
A direct feed from the television to the two computers. ADTV. On the paired-up screens Cookie Luck began her dance of chance. The theme song playing out, a buzz of words:
Love the numbers, dream the squeeze.
Cookie Luck, don’t be such a tease.
Bring me prizes, I beg you, please!
All of them, hanging tight upon the teledance, nervous hands stroking at nervous bones. Play to win! Play to win!
Joe made a prayer. ‘Oh my Lord of Infinite Numbers, come down to us now. Grace us, your pitiful calculators, with your generous presence. Oh my master, oh my Dominus! Come down to bless these, my simple bones of offering, my humblest of chances. Oh my darkest fractal, may these my pitiful tokens be forever graced with your winning spirit. Open all channels…’
Little good it did him.
PLAY THE RULES
11a.
The AnnoDominoes shall be allowed to protect their identity at any reasonable cost.
11b.
No player may attempt to infiltrate the dominoes.
11c.
Neither the ga
me nor the players are above the law.
11d.
(Addendum) The game is deemed more above the law than the players.
Big Eddie and Little Celia were holed up in paradise, if paradise is a rundown, abandoned house in Cheetham Hill. Eddie had found the place on his wanderings. They had to keep moving, until he could prove his thoughts about Celia. He found a nice little hole on the main road. A very nice little hole, just his size too. Trouble was, it was already occupied by some thin sliver of a loser. Short work for a man like Big Eddie Irwell. So, a hole. Big enough for both Eddie and Celia. Good position too, right outside the Jewish supermarket. Lots of punies to be caught, mid-flight.
And now a house to go with the hole. Backstreet bliss, it was; due for demolition, but fine for all that. They had a row of them to choose from. No. 27 was the best, with its ‘PLAY TO WIN’ graffiti scrawled across the door; a real mess inside, tiled with creamy bones, but they cleaned it up nice. Even better, tins of pseudosoup in the cupboard, tins of astrobeans. No gas, no electric, but candles and an old camping stove. Best of all, a radio; an antique transistor job, no sound, abandoned. Just a battery that needed changing, and there were batteries in a clock. And who needs a clock when you’ve got the dominoes?
Imagine, their very own radio.
Pigs in blurbjuice. With two bones, one each, and Lady Cookie Luck dancing to a standstill…
Tommy Tumbler crying, ‘A two, a blank. A two-and-a-blank!’
Celia started screaming.
No such luck over in Hackle’s house, but at least the game was captured on video and hard disk, ready for deep analysis.
‘I can’t believe it!’ screamed Dopejack. ‘Another fucking half-blank.’
‘Stop complaining,’ said Benny. The university paid for your chances. You lost nothing.’
‘It’s the principle. And that’s two blanks in the last, what is it?’
‘Four games,’ replied Benny. ‘You know what Hackle’s gonna say?’
‘The Joker Bone’s getting closer?’