Jeff Noon - Pixel Juice

Be that as it may, we can only imagine the surprise of the murderers when they discovered that Dr Chandra Kalk was not in fact an impostor, but a fully formed autogenetic male! If the killers had seen the mouth in Kalk's stomach prior to their vicious act, perhaps they would have shown mercy. We shall never know.

The twisted logic that led the professor to pretend to be human for so many years has been the subject of much debate. It may well be that only by doing so could he overcome the prejudice that allows only 5 per cent of Autogens to enter the scientific community, despite their natural ability in that area. Perhaps some other factors, psychological for instance (from which Autogens are known to suffer more than most), can be blamed for his dissemblance. Whatever, it certainly explains his success at pretending to be one of their kind during his research!

Did he, I wonder, try to 'be himself' at the final moment? Or was the professor so lost in the layers of disguise by then that he could not find his way out in time?

The final pretence concerns his work itself. The Perfumed Machine, a book which established in the public's mind the exotic lifestyle of the Autogens, has now been shown to be a tapestry of lies.

Was this, finally, the cause of the murderous revenge? That Kalk had made a vast fortune out of nothing more than his own twisted imagination?

Here then, are the facts: Autogens are capable of three different kinds of reproductive activity, each of which leads to a different kind of offspring. The first (which Kalk freely admitted to) is a rudimentary copy of the human sexual practice, where a male and a female between them create a child. Following the natural process, this baby receives half its genes from one parent, half from the other. This technique is used in times of affluence, when prospects allow for the nurturing of a long childhood.

The second type of reproduction (which Kalk merely hinted at) is used more in times of slow economic growth. This is the autogenetic process in its purest form. The female of the species reproduces without the need of the male. This produces a child more or less identical to the parent, one who very quickly (a matter of four years or less) grows to full maturity. These offspring are always female, and can be 'stacked up' in the womb; that is, a foetus may already have a foetus of its own inside it, and so on, down to an undiscovered break-off point.

The final type of reproduction (of which Kalk said nothing) is concerned with the so-called stomach-mouths in relation to which the Autogens suffer their greatest prejudice. It seems that the purely human will always be disgusted by this aspect of autogenetic physiology, and not without reason. The female has a male mouth in her stomach, the male a female one. Each mouth has a tongue, sometimes known to be over eight inches long, and a rudimentary set of teeth. Kalk claimed that the act of 'kissing stomachs' is merely an intimate greeting, or else a form of foreplay. It is now known to be the most desired and most difficult of the reproductive methods.

The female's stomach-tongue is placed within the male's stomach-mouth. It is believed that the female's 'sperm' is present in her saliva. It is the male that becomes pregnant. A small egg is formed in the stomach, which becomes a kind of male womb for the process. The egg is ejected, again by use of the stomach-tongue, and then taken over by the female, who warms and protects it (outside the body) until the hatching takes place. This can take up to two years. The resulting baby is always male, and takes fully thirty-five years to reach puberty.

This strange sexual process has a 98 per cent failure rate. Of those successfully conceived, many die within the egg. Those managing to be born are always weak and sickly; many more die before becoming fully grown. For these reasons the 'hatched' are considered more precious than the other two kinds of Autogen. Their very existence can bring about intense feelings of jealousy within the more 'normal' children. The hatched often become figures of power and authority, despite the fact that they are the most prone to psychological problems. Then again, they often become criminals or outcasts.

There now seems little doubt that Professor Kalk was such a child.

The following incomplete document (from the Museum of Fragments) has been provisionally dated as belonging to the early twenty-first century. Although various theories have been put forward regarding the nature of the 'device' referred to, none of them has yet gained universal credence.

(text begins)

1c. The device is not to be used by children under the age of fourteen, or adults over the age of thirty-nine.

2b. If device is to be handheld, click button B to 'portable'.

2e. If device is to be shared, activate 'protection' mode.

3a. Device to be used only four times a day, unless authorization granted.

3b. Any one session not to exceed sixty minutes, or the onset of auto-shutdown by device, whichever duration is the shorter.

3c. Do not attempt to use device after auto-shutdown, unless a period of at least thirty minutes has passed.

4d. Special dispensation required for use of device in public place.

5b. In case of such breakdown (see 5a), owner of device completely to blame.

5c. In case of legitimate breakdown, device should be removed from body, and returned to point of purchase.

5d. Under no circumstances should corrupted device be left attached to body.

6a. Under no circumstances is device to be left unattended during 'dispersal' procedure.

7c. Unprotected dispersal can lead to infection of receptacle.

(text ends)

Gone two in the morning and a gang of us were leaving a Megadog gig at the Academy on Oxford Road, Manchester; There was me, and four people from the bookshop where I worked, and some strangers we'd got talking to. Eight of us in all, trying to get a taxi, but none would stop for such a large number, so we all start walking down the road towards the Royal Northern College of Music.

It was a Saturday night and the streets were crowded with people trying to get home. When we get to the college, the taxi rank is buzzing. I think there must have been over a thousand people in the queue. Now I don't know if you've ever seen the taxi rank that they've turned the College of Music into? The taxis leave from the basement, and the queue starts on the roof. From there you have to walk around the outside edges of the building, dropping down layer by layer till you. reach the basement level.

I think we're on the second level down, in this long curving snake of people, when I look over the balcony and see my friend Rikki on a lower level. Now Rikki used to live in Manchester, but he moved to London about a year ago and I haven't seen him since then. So I tell the party I'm with that I'm going to go see my friend.

I climb down the side of the building. Eventually I reach him, and we chat for a while. I look over the balcony again, and this time I see Ian, another friend who also moved to London. I haven't seen Ian for at least fifteen years, and he was my best friend way back then. I don't even have his telephone number, so I'm desperate to get down another level to see him. I set off climbing, but somehow climb too far, so that now he's above me, looking down. He throws a paper towel down towards me. It blows around in the wind a bit, but I catch it easily and it's got his number on it. By now I'm worried that I've lost my original party.

The next thing I know, all eight of us are in a taxi, heading for Levenshulme where I live. We're going very fast, way too fast for a taxi ride. And when I look through the window I see we're going through Droylsden, where I was born. This is wrong, because you don't go through Droylsden to get to Levenshulme.