This is how it happened: Tommy Smart was my best-ever friend, and I miss his tactics dearly. We were playing Corporate Sleazeball™ on the Game-Pimp™. Tommy was so good, he'd already scored seven freebies, five perks, four liquid lunches and two complete takeover bids against me, easy pickings, before the bad thing happened. At first it was just a whirling shadow at the very edge of my game-vision, like a mild intrusion from reality, nothing to be scared about. Perhaps our collected mummies were calling to us, to come eat?
Before I knew quite what was happening, the shadow shape had pounced on Tommy, hard and fast. It splintered his game-play into a million pieces and then sucked his image clean away. I pulled out of the Pimp, double quick and falling…
Into my mother's arms. Back to the Real World™, as Tommy's image drained away to zero before my startled eyes.
Marketing disaster!
Zero-image is a kind of slow death. Tommy didn't really die, he just became a nobody. I couldn't bear to play with him now that he had no flaunt, no flourish, no publicity value. I guess that being privy to his erasure made me too famous, far too quickly. Whatever, the Commcops™ soon came knocking, and I was hauled off to give the press-con. I had to give this tear-stricken speech about what a noble player Tommy Smart had been. The news hounds asked me a ton of questions about the monstrous virus that had wiped Tommy's image off the map. I said it was a twisting whirl of data-smoke, dark and brutal, like a tornado, only more fashionable. I was already learning how to work the media.
The next morning's editions were full of screen-prints of the Twister Wipe ™ virus, and how it was going to kill all the game-pimping children unless caught quickly. Thus was my fifth image-change achieved.
From 'Media Virgin' to 'Grieving Witness', all in one easy move.
Mummy Wave was so pleased with my press-con that she bought me the pet as a reward for being so open to notoriety. Blurb Worms were rare and expensive in those days, but Mummy had sold my story to one of the more downmarket news hounds.
So, my very first Blurb. I called him Scoop™.
Scoop was only three inches long to start with, and a pale cream colour. I kept him safe and warm in a glass tank filled with earth and sawdust. Following the instructions in the user's manual, Scoop's first meal consisted of five metazine articles about my witnessing the evil Twister Wipe at his play, a mating pair of Vids reproducing my press-con, and the complete series of howlings my mother's exclusive had produced from the newshound.
Mummy Wave threw a launch party to celebrate my exploits, inviting all of the street's residents. I allowed Scoop out of his tank for the first time. By now the Blurb had completely swallowed my hot news story. He'd grown an inch in size with the info, and his once-naked body now sported the colours of my new brand image, my very own logo. tina wave enterprises™, ran the letters along his spine. The Blurb Worm sat lovingly on my shoulder, beaming his messages of goodwilclass="underline"
Important Press release! Tina Wave is currently recovering from her traumatic experience at the hands of the Twister Wipe. She will not be giving any further interviews until after the publication of volume one of her memoirs.
That was my street name: Tina Wave. Short for Christina Waverly. Just like Blurbs is short for Bio-Logical-Ultra-Robotic-Broadcasting-System. Just like the commcops are really the Communication Police. Because this is the Golden Age of Appearances ™. We don't even call them names, really; rather we have logos, or corporate identities, or else brands or trademarks, copyrighted designs, slogans, tags or communique's.
Nothing is real, and that's how we like it.
Meanwhile, more and more kiddie players were twisted to zero-image. The Wipe-out rampant. The commcops could only patrol the games, like the useless watchdogs that they were, discovering zero, zero everywhere.
My sixth image was 'Lone Vixen'. I retired to my bedroom, and stayed there a whole season, writing my memoirs and formulating my game plan for the public life ahead. Scoop also went into hibernation, enfolding himself in a cocoon of secreted commercials. Everything slowed down; kids worldwide were leaving the Game-Pimp machine alone, egged on by horror-struck parents. Of course, most of the kids really wanted to have a go against the Twister, relishing the image they would gain by killing it. But the parental advice prevailed, and the kids went AWOP: Absent Without Official Play. The Big Pimp's profits took a graph plunge.
Sometimes Tommy Smart came round to see me, but my mother never let him inside the house. I would watch from my upstairs window; his thin, weak, almost transparent body disappearing into the afterglow. But what could I do? After all, he had no commercial value.
By my seventh image-change I had acquired another five Blurbs, including a rather lovely female specimen I called Gossip Monger™. My latest image was 'Petulant Brat', and the Blurbs actively promoted that labelling throughout the street. Scoop had meanwhile outgrown his wormhood; he emerged triumphant from his shell, his new wings fluttering madly to dry themselves. Two hours later he was airborne. Scoop became a Flier™, reproducing my image joyfully over the entire village.
Press release! Tina Wave is now open for business. Read her memoirs. Let her manage your campaign. Become as famous as she is.
By the time I was ten images old (crazy alien kid on planet earth by mistake!) I had a hundred or so Blurbs flying around the whole city, and a hundred more waiting to hatch their messages from cocoons. Mummy Wave didn't need to buy the worms any more. Following Scoop's courtship and mating with Gossip - and the birth of the first of their larvae, Blabbermouth™ - the other Blurbs were soon hard at it, making their own baby adverts. But Scoop was the official King of Blurbs™, and I was the Queen of Publicity™. The famous Tina Wave, the young girl behind the release of winged logos. I should have realized the problem: I was becoming famous for being famous, not for actually perpetrating any new major stories. I was making a handsome profit from my marketing business, thank you, but nothing stupendous had happened to me in the last few months. I was becoming a media ghost, fed by past glories only.
I really should have realized.
Image number eleven: 'Sullen Bitch-Kid'. I had a thousand or so Blurb Fliers surrounding my body by then, thanks to Mummy's desperate attempts to over-extend my public life. She had started to feed the Blurbs with Junk Mail™. Designed by the engimologists, Junk Mail was a nasty subscription hormone that made the adverts go sex mad. They birthed a buzzing halo wave of publicity. They worked as one, this new swarm of logos, arranging their bodies into a collective display. Hanging over the city like a cloud of desire.
Press release! Buy Tina Wave's latest output! Volume two of her memoirs, now out! Learn the secrets of her publicity drive!
It seemed that the whole world must know about my exploits; but really, it was only publicity about publicity. Self-replication of the Image, which is a kind of inbreeding. The Blurb Worm manual was very strict on this point: 'Lack of cross-pollination can lead to mutated images.' You bet! My twelfth image was 'Psychotic Juvenile!' And the Blurbs were becoming ever more hungry: 'Info! More info!' they buzzed in ragged formation. 'Feed us! Feed us major stories!'
Myself and my images were becoming cliched and malformed, thanks to the limited meme-pool. 'Do something, Tina!' cried Mummy Wave from her sunken armchair. She was slowly dying from the lack of reflected fame.