Was she really dead? He couldn't tell. He looked down at the body that hung from his neck. Her other hand, the right hand with the yellow glove, was hanging limp, the fingers touching the floor.
Noises then, from outside: and a knocking on the trailer's door, a banging on it, and people outside, talking, shouting. The gun. He realized finally that he had fired the gun. He'd never meant to.
Fuck!
There was a face pressed against a window. What must they have seen?
Marco let his suddenly tired body slide to the floor. DJ Pixel Juice was now lying on top of him, on his lap. Marco reached over for her right hand. Almost distractedly, he noticed it was still moving, the last part of her still alive. With the black knowledge that he might as well finish this, he started to tug at the yellow glove. The hand inside it, he could feel, was warm, and very soft, and filled with a vibrant pulse. Finally, he got the glove off, finger by tight finger, and then the shank of it, finally.
Spectrum glow. Her hand was rainbowed in a thousand bright colours. Out of her sleeve, out of her wrist, throbbed a bundle of flutterings, a cascade of life upwards and along and stretched out, making only the shape of a hand. The shape of wrist, the shape of palm, the shape of fingers, five. The hand grew, lengthened, rose upwards, took flight, separated, became a cloud of colours following the music through the air.
All he could do, the boy, was gasp aloud.
The colours! The colours!
Her hand was made of butterflies.
He was screaming as the goon guards broke open the door.
BASSDUST
So they catch these beetles, right, they live in South America. And they pull the wing-cases off them, and they grind these down to a fine, fine powder. That's what the guy says, anyway. It's this crimson stuff, like blood-coloured. And what you do is, you sprinkle this dust on the record, old-style vinyl, you know, and then give it some scratch injection with the old bejewelled needle. And it's like - Hey, Mr DJ! Hit the club slippage! Groove eternal on the jelly-up moment, oh come on! collapse my dancing heart, I beg you. I mean, you ain't never heard bass like it. Like it's the reflection of the moon's bass in the ocean, that far down. The crowd were doing a floorgasm. It's true, I tell you, listen to me. And I wouldn't mind but just a sprinkle of this stuff near burned the place down, so I'm thinking what could I do with an ounce. So, yeah, I buys it off the man. Strange-looker he was and all, thin as a stiletto's heel, with these cheekbones that met in the middle like a pair of scissors. And it doesn't end there, because the next thing I know he's getting out the old ciggie papers. Making a Rizla Sizzla, isn't he? And I thought I'm up for that, except it's only this bassdust stuff that he's doing the rolling with. No, I swear, this happened. So he takes a backbrain drag, and then he's offering it to me. He says, here you go, mate, have a listen to this. I mean, what? Have a listen, he's saying? So, you know, I have a listen. I mean, I smoke that listen, you get me? All the way down, and the cloud of it fills me, the cloud of the bass fills my veins and all of a sudden I've got this fucking jazz funk living inside me. And I wouldn't mind but I don't even like jazz funk. Trouble is, I can't get the tune out of my head, it's like a beetle flying around in there, like the bassdust has turned back into wings. And he says, It's there for ever now, but that's OK, you can do the remix. How's that then? I ask. And he says, Oh, you need to buy some dub juice for that. Dub juice? I ask. And he says, Sure, I got some right here. So I have to buy this new stuff and swallow it and then I'm like, wow, you know, like a version, dubbed for the very first time…
EVENTS IN A ROCK STAR'S LIMOUSINE
Now, it begins. Let's rock! Let's crack this baby wide, wide open. Tear it down, bring the slaughter on. Ain't nobody here but us chickens. Drive the hellmobile!
Yes, he wanted to ride alone. We have his sworn statement, and the ride itself is captured on video - including footage from an in-vehicle camera - as well as being traced from above by satellite. All evidence can be viewed. His spoken testimony, recorded during the drive, certainly reveals a fragmented mind ill at ease with itself, but at no time does he voice any doubts as to his volunteering for the task. Let it be known also that we offered to have a robot drive the car. This was refused. David Pool had been too greatly affected by the original accident to allow its replication be handled by anyone (or anything) but himself. Also, as the inventor of the controversial Roadmuse system, he claimed he was more in tune with its complex algorithms than any machine could ever be.
Reluctantly, we had to agree with this.
It was imperative that this second drive should mirror the first one in all possible details. Accordingly it was at precisely the same time - 2.15 a.m. - and from the same place - the car park of the Burgess Shale Hotel in Manchester - that David Pool started the experiment. The car was the exact same type (with slight modifications for the purpose of the experiment) - a powder-blue Rolls-Royce Hesperus Limousine. And the night, as far as the forecasts could tell us, would be similar to the first in its weather patterns, traffic conditions (thankfully quiet due to the lateness of the hour) and other environmental attributes.
We did everything, perfectly.
Pool's first words on the commentary tapes are, 'Now, it begins.' Then he laughs, as though aware of the somewhat portentous nature of the utterance.
The only real difference between the two drives was the identity of the person in the car. We could have no control over this, other than fixing certain weights and governing devices to Pool's clothing; devices precisely calibrated to have exactly the same effect upon the vehicle's suspension and centre of gravity as the original driver did, this being the ageing and somewhat overweight rock singer, Lucas Novum.
We did everything. Everything, except tell the authorities of our intentions.
At 2.17 a.m., David Pool turned away from the hotel, left, into Peter Street. Our two monitoring vehicles followed behind the Rolls, keeping a judicious distance so as in no way to affect the outcome of the experiment.
Information recovered from the original vehicle's data banks has provided us with a partial model of the drive; it was this model that Pool followed as, at 2.21 a.m., he turned on the limousine's music system. He heard an exact copy of the music played during the first vehicle's drive. Pool then deactivated the manual drive of the limo, resting his fingers only lightly on the now self-turning steering wheel.
'Let's rock,' Pool murmurs; again, following the script.
From now on the music would be the engine.
Gonna make me some turmoil, slam some on it. Slice a hole in the night, climb on through, get my licks from the lunar kiss. Oh yeah, I'm la creme de la bass, baby.
The otherwise strait-laced Professor Pool seems to have wholeheartedly taken on Lucas Novum's speech patterns and vocabulary, indeed his whole personality, once in the vehicle. Pool gave us no indication that he was going to adopt this manner prior to the experiment. Obviously he had studied the recovered tapes from the crash at great length, in order to copy precisely the words spoken (or sung) during the original drive. Perhaps Pool felt this 'identification' was a vital part of successfully replicating the journey.