Press release! Tina Wave is now open for business. Read her memoirs. Let her manage your campaign. Become as famous as she is.famous,
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!
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.
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
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
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?'