Shrinking.
By this time, a lot of the other kids had Blurbs of their own, and the pitched battles between the various publicity campaigns left the streets covered in media corpses. My poor army suffered dearly for its victories. I found my beloved Scoop, and his wife, Gossip, lying dead in the street, and their firstborn son, Blabbermouth, crying all over the remains. I buried the two press warriors in a grave of obituary columns. Here lie Scoop and Gossip. Long may they propagate.
The Blurb Wars gained me some blessed new publicity, but pretty soon that died away, taking Mummy Wave to the very edge of zero-image: 'Do something drastic and stupendous, Tina! Save the family's brand identity! Save the logo!'
Mummy met her deadline. So sad.
A few days ago I heard that Tommy Smart's body had been found. He'd killed himself, hanging his emptiness from a street lamp. One final streetvert, his second death. No life beyond the image.
The Blurb Wars, the deaths of Scoop and Gossip and Tommy Smart, oh yes, and of Mummy Wave: these events all raised my public profile slightly. I came to realize that death was the ultimate advertisement.
So now, I prepare my final press campaign. My final image. Believe me, you will hear about it. Believe me you will.
All my Blurbs will help me.
DUB BLURBS
Exclusive! Tonight, in a death-pool beaming machine, desire tactics were cloud-swallowed. In-depth girl analysis revealed images of naked juvenile wave. Witnesses saw meme swarms pimp from reality. Imagine liquid killing. Murdering fashion!
Public bought child user's virus, injecting recognition. Pollination inbreeding mutated loophole desire, causing ultimate trademark feedback. Meta-corporate game howl-ings take over our collected shadowzine loss. Sunken, the colours reflected fame-value deadline. Emptiness street.
'Eat sleaze!' gossips cliche-incorporated larva mouth. Manual blabbervert feeds vision game, shapes a million hot-data smoke-map designs. Virgin brand-plunge logical, given transparent fashion for hormone buzzing. Cops imagine flaunt-worms flourish.
Discovering zero tornado, everywhere system-sex hounds wiped the whirl. 'Reproducing is nasty,' robotic marketing specimen cocooned at news disaster. Erasure campaigns labelled info too female. 'Dark brutal naked little logo!' messaged public-life junk alien. 'Too much worm-hood propagates downmarket mating.'
Comm-twister wings broadcasting to splintered scoop vid: 'Publicity, sell your ultra!'
Logo bio death. Falling media slogans secreted zero-media. A nobody image. Malformed afterglow infected final shadow. Body sported commercials; copyrighted slow graph disappearing down to sub-subzero. Hatches new instructions: infection's courtship, unfolding.
Meanwhile, world halo-shrinking conference editions change of sucked ghost.
TWEEDLES
The company flew me back to England for retraining, my first visit in years and, as always, coming back made me long to get away again. But what the hell, it was Christmas, and the guilt finally got the better of me. So I'd got the train up to Manchester. Christ, the place reeked. 'Remember me?' I asked my mother. 'Here, have some perfume.' She sniffed at the gift, like it was alien drool. We made some awkward conversation, until she astonished me with the news that Oswald Peel was still living in the same house down the street, still living with his parents. 'But the guy's my age,' I said. 'What's he doing living at home?'
'You should visit him,' my mother replied. 'He's working for the weather.'
So Christmas morning found me calling round at the big old house. His father didn't recognize me at first, until I nudged his memory. 'It's Billy, Mr Peel. You remember? Billy Sunset, from down the road? I've come to see Oswald.'
The mother was frozen in brandy, trapped by the television, smiling away at the twenty-four-hour weather channel. They were predicting snow. 'Oswald's in his room,' the father said. 'Shall I call him down?'
'No, no. I'll go up.'
The bedroom was dark, the curtains drawn against daylight. The latest telescope was peeking through the curtains, fixed upon some distant, unseen star, no doubt. Oswald was sitting on his bed, reading a book. It could have been years ago. 'Hello Ozzie,' I said. 'Happy Christmas. Look, I've brought you a present. Take a sniff. How you doing?'
He put the book down, got up from the bed.
The first thing I noticed was how well he was looking, for his age. I mean, I've lost a little hair myself, and grown A stomach in the passing years, but Ozzie was hirsute and trim-lined. The bastard, I thought, it shouldn't be allowed.
'Who are you?' A voice from the past.
'It's Billy. Remember?'
'Billy Sunset?'
'That's right. I've brought you some aftershave. It's what I do these days. I sell smells. What are you up to? I hear you're a meteorologist.'
'Yes, for the television.'
That's brilliant.'
'You think so?'
Well no, actually. I would have thought Oswald worth much more than that. But I didn't want to mention such things. Instead I said something even more stupid:
'I was sorry to hear about Junior. Do you hear from him?'
Oswald just looked at me. Then he moved to the telescope.
It was a bad thing to say, of course, about Junior I mean, but the years of selling have frozen me solid, I suppose, especially in the heart. And I was dragged backwards to another Christmas morning, ages ago, when I wasn't yet so cold.
Ozzie was the neighbourhood kid you just had to hate. I mean, there was the stupid name to start with, and the fact that he somehow managed to have two parents, which was one more than any other kids on the street could ever manage. And they were posh and rich of course, these parents, with two incomes and a nice house and two vintage cars, never mind the pedigree dogs and the goddamn loving relationship, whatever that was. Also, he received every little thing he could ever desire, this spoilt little brat, which was every little thing more than I could hope for. The latest model kit, the gun that saved the world, a telescope, pointed towards the stars.
Really, I should've hated his guts to the toyshop and back, but somehow I fell half in love with him, much to the downmarket taunts of my other friends. I was nine, Oswald ten, and we wasted some time together, talking about the moonshot and the effect it might have upon the atmosphere, and fantasizing about what presents we would get for Christmas. I was pinning my hopes on a new football, or some such small-fry dream, compared to Oswald demanding the latest model Tweedle Boy from Santa.
I laughed at him, of course, because Tweedle dolls were the toy of choice that Xmas, ever since the Only Child Law had been passed, and how could even his well-to-do parents afford such a luxury? But sure enough, that week one of the antique cars vanished, likewise one of the pedigree dogs, both of them sold to the same collector of oddities. Two days later Oswald was taken into hospital.
I didn't get to see him until Christmas morning, when I paid a call to show off my new Air UK football, my mother having also made a few sacrifices. 'Fancy a game, Ozzie?' I asked, but he claimed he was too weak still from his operation. 'What? You mean it's really happened?' I was dumbfounded. 'You've really gone through with it? Didn't it hurt?' I was shuddering to imagine my own bone marrow being excavated.
'Nothing much,' he answered, quite slowly. 'It's only a little DNA, after all, and I've got lots to spare.' Together we went up to his bedroom, where his number one present was sleeping in a specially designed cot. It was the first time I'd ever seen a Tweedle, for real I mean, not on television. I must admit I was disappointed at first glance, mainly because the adverts had painted the Tweedles as these marvellous objects, exact copies of their owners. But this sleeping toy was only about a foot long, rather chubby and quite blank in the face, hair and eyes, rather like a blindworm. 'But it looks nothing like you, Ozzie,' I said.