view one
“We were right on his tail.” the policeman snarled in the interview room. “We saw you set off the charges Paul.” The policeman let the words sink in.
The interviewee mumbled, but the policeman cut him off:
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“You didn’t say that you weren’t the one then?”
“No.” the interviewee sighed.
“You didn’t say that you weren’t the one caught destroying the evidence?”
“No sir.”
“Do you know how big this case is?”
view two
Words written in ..... in ..... a magazine?
“They’re all called DJ _____.” the manager grunts, I can’t spell it.
“DJ this, DJ that, DJ the other.” Actually he named two or three DJ’s here, but I won’t embarrass them. “Just to make it stand out, to make it different we wanted Something DJ. Turned around. Anyway at that time we were playing a set in this little club, and we were the last DJ of the morning. People must have liked it because the word got out. Everybody was telling their friends: You’ve got to check out the last DJ.”
view three
“Close it down.”
“This is the biggest acid factory in the country. We have been satisfying the brain of the new generation, we can’t jut close it. How sure are you?”
“This guy I think I saw twice or three times? Just around you know? Well I was in Upstairs Downstairs and a panda pulled up outside and he got out.”
“What did you do?”
“Back entrance double quick. I don’t think he followed.”
Paul felt a twinge of the gravy train about to end.
“How many days ago was this?”
“Days? It was just now.”
Sirens.
view two
“Data Jive!” He snorts, I can’t spell that either, is he trying to kill me? The most difficult DJ crew to interview, but right now the only one worth doing a double spread on, despite what other music press is doing. Yes it’s a magazine. It’s been work all the way, ever since the announcement that The Last DJ was breaking their media silence. maybe cracking would be better, after all making an announcement that there would be one, exactly one, interview given hardly constitutes breaking. Everybody who wanted that interview submitted a recent non-photo interview. For my sins I got it, and it’s been work work work ever since.
view three
Five minutes ago Paul had been doing the only job in which he had ever felt justified. Then the twinge. As he heard the sirens he was plunged from gravy train dream into absolute worst nightmare and was running up the metal rungs of the factory ladder. The second to top one broke. Shit. His shin hit the top rung and tripped him. He caught sight of Ray letting himself be pulled away by Danny. He got up and ran to the emergency button.
“You! Stop! Now!”
He paused and his leg gave way beneath him, his shin screaming.
The button.
view two
Happy to be doing it? No. Interviewing The Last DJ - who think all music press is shit - in a totally dingoid squat somewhere outside London - probably illegal. Not happy at all. But I’d fucking cut off my right tit for the job. All of this your beloved interviewer goes through for you gentle reader. You should be pleased: at least this interview isn’t in one of those crappy four pence photocopied fanzines. To return to the interview then, but with some appreciation of the difficulties. I feel pleased it wasn’t one of this paper’s writers who coined the term “Data Jive”.
view one
“Yes sir, I remember exactly what I said next.”
“Would you repeat the words please.”
“Don’t touch that fucking button. Sir.”
“Then what happened?”
“He pressed the button, sir.”
“From the floor officer?” asked Paul’s lawyer.
“Yes sir. The button was very close to the floor. The wires to it were attached to the gangway running above the tank, then dropped straight down to where the explosives were fixed.”
view two
Most DJ’s try to look over the crowd and generally try to “feel” their mood. Not The Last DJ. His associate explains:
“Of course we still have that, but we wanted more feedback. We thought ‘OK the state of the crowd is what we want to know about, the crowd is where we should be.’ So we hit on the idea of the monitor. These days in the big clubs, we have several of course. The monitor would be dancing, with the crowd, and would use hand signals to tell the DJ how the crowd was, and where they could go. Like this for faster, like this for long attack, like this for higher pitches .....” He goes on, his hands doing “Data Jive”.
view one
“Yes we do have proof that it was a tank full of LSD, that your client knew this and that your client knew that pressing the button would detonate a charge placed to destroy the tank, therefore the main evidence. I will add that this act obviously endangered the lives of our arresting officers, and those of his accomplices.”
Paul’s lawyer went quiet.
Paul remembered the button, the pain in his now bandaged leg, tripping on the rung, seeing Ray and Danny. His head jerked up. Ray and Danny. “I saw him going.”
The policeman suddenly took notice.
“He was with Danny. They had an escape route.” At which point Paul thought of something else. “Bastards didn’t tell me about it.”
The policeman smiled inside. Danny had been pinched already. And if Danny knew where Ray was .....
view two
“You’ve got a large crowd, you have a number of monitors. They’re all waving these signals according to how their bit of the crowd is getting on you see?” I do see. The DJ of The Last DJ stands on the stage, not only feeling the crowd, but getting on-the-dancefloor second-by-second reports of how it’s going down. “Yes”, they say, all of them laughing as they do, “but it’s more than that.” Oh. They go on to explain how some of the code works. Wow. These are not just on-the-dancefloor second-by-second reports. more of a head-up display. Here’s how it works:
view three
“But that means -” Ray stopped running as the metal grille above him clanged open. Danny stopped and turned, saw what was coming and shouted “Ray!” as the deluge of concentrated LSD from the ruptured tank hit, drenched and dissolved. Danny stood, transfixed by the sudden subtraction of Ray, the sudden addition of a fast spreading, dissipating cloud in the foot deep water in which he was standing. Then running, but too slow. The stuff numbed his feet and he fell, feeling his hands graze, the skin break, on the submerged floor.
view two
“SDB”. Flyers have these letters on. “SDB”. All real venues are booking DJ’s who do it. Or are they? How? When they don’t know what it stands for. Semantic Data Beats. If they know that, they certainly don’t know what semantic means.
“What they’re doing isn’t SDB.” So says one of The Last DJ And he ought to know, after all they invented it. “They’re just playing a certain kind of music.” he continues. “We ..... well what we do is different. We don’t play tracks, as such, we go on with a selection, a large selection, of programs and samples. At any time up to twenty will be playing at once.”
view one
The two policemen laughed as they drove. The junior of them was driving, and chuckling, as the other, sitting in the passenger seat, spoke.
“A credit to himself and the men who trained him. What else was there? Oh yes, something about alertness and flexibility in action. Outstanding.”
The driver stopped the car at traffic lights. “Of course it would’ve been no use without the excellent strategy and planning which has characterised this operation and indeed the latter part of your career, sir.”
They both laughed again.
“Left here for the hospital.”
“Right you are sir.”
view two
“The DJ can’t have a lot of lights on stage. It distracts people. That’s why all the disks have tactile labels.” Tactile labels? She shows me one. A 3.5“ floppy with four layers of gaffer tape stuck on the side. The tape has been cut - serrated along one edge. Holding it, I find that I can feel the jagged edge pretty easily. ”They’re set up in a rack, with enough room for a thumb between the rows. They’re arranged in scales, plus he sits with us and helps us put down the programs.“ They record new stuff for every time? ”Only about two hundred new ones. We have five hundred regulars.“
view one
”He can’t be a complete wanker or he wouldn’t be a superintendent I suppose. ’ Course he didn’t have all the info’ either.“
The junior policeman made no response until he had completed the left turn. ”With all that praise he was heaping on my highly trained powers of observation I forgot to mention that the reason I collared Danny was that he was stumbling around in a large metal pipe screaming ‘Acid! Acid! Get it off me! I’ve cut my hands and it’s gone in! My feet have dissolved!’“ Both policemen laughed again.
”Difficult part was keeping my face straight and convincing him we were going to help.“
view two
She shows me a mass of wires and circuit boards. ”At the centre’s an Atari ST. We drive MIDI from our own software. We took the floppy drive apart so the disks can be put in and removed quicker - you have to, like, hold it on and push the shutter back with your finger but we cut down the time to load. This part comes out.“
She lifts out a chunk, attached by a twisted rope of cables that reminds me of nothing so much as a DNA model, which ends in a small strap and three big spongy buttons. She hooks the strap over her thumb and the buttons hang across the palm of her hand. The sponges have soaked a shit-load of sweat.
view one
”Let’s hope he’s still talkative. I want that cunt Ray.“ Both policemen got out of the car. A uniformed constable met them and they exchanged ID card looks.
The constable led them towards a side door on the main hospital building, saying ”We’ve got him in a private room sir. The results from the lab, and the initial examination are back. They’re just inside.“
The senior officer looked up suddenly. ”He can’t see us from his room can he?“
”No sir, he’s on the other wall.“
”Right, I want a good look at those results before meeting him. I want to take my time over it so don’t let on we’re here, OK?“
”Understood sir. I’ve arranged use of a junior doctors’ tea room for you sir.“ The constable held the door open.
”What was your name again constable?“
view two
”They’re a bit grunk aren’t they? We could probably charge a lot of money for a suck on these buttons. We wanted to change them, they’re just cut up pieces of sponge, but he says they fit his hand now.“ she goes on. She loves this computer. She tells me how it frees the DJ to decide, how the DJ can queue and play programs with a minimum of attention being diverted. But she doesn’t mention the hood. So I do.
”What about the hood?“ I say.
”I have to see what’s going on on the screen, in case something goes wrong. And we have to monitor other things, like what time it is. The screen has to be on, but we don’t want lights on stage, so we put a blackout hood over it, and over my head so I can see.“
view one
The policeman bent, buckled, and tore apart a plastic cup whilst his junior colleague finished reading the reports. He heard the gentle plop of the folder landing on the table and looked up. The other policeman was frowning too.
”No trace of LSD on his clothes or skin.“ his colleague mused. ”Plenty of the stuff in the water. Plenty splashed on the walls below. Traces in the wrecked tank even. None on our Danny boy.“
The uniformed constable let a doctor into the room.
”He can be moved anytime, his sedative’s worn off now.“
The policeman nodded, ”Five minutes“.
The doctor nodded and left the room.
”Let’s give him something to chew over on the way.“
view two
”After a while people realised the monitors were there and were signalling to the DJ. That’s when it got interesting. Yeah, people started signing to the DJ themselves.
“Pretty difficult to tell who’s a monitor and who’s just one of the crowd. The whole scheme is designed to be easy for the DJ to follow. So it’s difficult for anyone to follow right? Wrong. If you know what you’re looking at, even the advanced codes are pretty easy to decode. We tried, like, bracelets, gloves, stuff, but ..... too difficult to spot, for the DJ. Or too easy to copy. Then we thought what the hell? Let ’em do it.”
view three
Ray looked up at the holed tank. The concentrated LSD hit him squarely in the face without even time to close his eyes. A heavy tingling sensation penetrated his skin and the muscles on his face. Some part of his brain decided there was no way to limit the effect now and opened his mouth. Another, more reflexive part, lifted his hands, which were immediately drenched. He sat back on his knees. The tingling filled him. There was a brief flash of nausea as his sense of which way was up departed and then the tingling was gone. In its wake was the familiar, to Ray, disorientated acid high feeling.
view one
“I’m telling you. His body dissolved.”
“Danny, I heard you the first time. And I’m telling you you’ve got a car ride to my nick to decide to tell me the truth.” The policeman wasn’t quite shouting.
view two
There’s a lot of The Last DJ and it is very clearly a collective effort - between monitors, manager, programmer and of course the DJ himself, who although present the whole time said nothing until I was leaving.
“Thank you for coming. It was a good interview.”
There’s nothing else important to the mission in this magazine article, prepare to exit. Three. Two. One. I open my eyes. The light is very dim.
“Are you alright?” A young woman is asking me. around her voice I can hear a muffled, fast, musical beat. The source of the beat is not distant. This must be the chill-out room - whatever that means. The girl looks concerned that I haven’t answered.
“I’m fine. Thank you.”
“Have you got any left? Can I have some?” It’s a boy behind her.
“Some what?”
“Some of what you’re on.” He laughs and they both get up - all three of us were sitting on the floor. They walk off, carefully picking their way through other seated people. Her concern seemed genuine.
I have a mission, but I don’t have to do anything yet. Because The Last DJ isn’t, or aren’t, on yet. I will kill their DJ, and as many of the them as I can. I have no gun, or any other weapon but that’s OK because I am an expert in unarmed combat. Neither my escape nor my survival are important. Right now I guess I should reconnoitre the club. I’ve never been to a club before - I never took to dancing. I’ve got some burn-in from my mission - like “chill-out room” - but I’ll need more to complete. Or maybe not because as I stand up and walk around it starts to look familiar. I must have a burn-in map.
There’re three floors - the music sounds the same to me, lucky there’s a poster up saying where my target is going on. They’ll be waiting in a small room behind the kitchen on the top floor. I have an image of the exterior of the building in daylight. There’s a fire escape a few yards from the window of the room. I can get to it from the roof, which means sneaking past a bouncer. I’m good at that.
view four
“There’s no need for anything else sir. I’ve placed an agent in the club.”
“When did you place him?”
“Her sir. About half an hour ago. She’s got her orders.”
“What kind of agent?”
The only reply was a raised eyebrow.
“You recalled, landed, programmed and launched in -”
“It’s quite enough time sir.”
“I do read your people’s reports, you know. Heavy going as they are. The time you’ve allowed is -”
“With respect sir, if we don’t push our techniques we’ll be left behind.”
“You can play keeping up with the Jones’s - or the Schmidts or the Patels - on less important jobs. I want insurance. I’m arranging to have a large batch of poisoned LSD available cheap at the location.”
view two
I wait in the warm summer night on the fire escape stairs, just a few yards from the open, but barred, window. I can hear their conversation.
“We need a large audience.”
“How do we get them all into it? There’s not many SDB’ers out there. They’re likely to just do their normal dancing.”
“There was the interview.”
“I have a way. Drugs. We buy everything that’s on sale here. Get it all in here. Link through it.”
Why aren’t the degenerates laughing with glee at the prospect of loadsa drugs?
“Between you and me and the monitors OK, we’ve tried it, but the whole floor?”
“The whole club man. This is it. He’s coming tonight. He’ll help I think.”
“The interview fixed it. Everybody will Data Jive, thinking they’re telling him to Playit Faster - when really they’re speaking a whole new language. The jive is going to call him.”
“It’s OK. Now buy the drugs and get ready to meet the alien.”
That must be why I’m here.
view one
“Sir, the man was responsible for the manufacture and distribution of huge quantities of dangerous and illegal drugs. Frankly, if we had caught him, all that would happen is he’d get sent down.”
“I wanted him. I don’t believe he’s dead with no trace.”
“If you’re so concerned about his death, sir, then how about calling it murder. I’ve just noticed something.”
The policeman took the stapled sheets of paper from his subordinate’s hand.
“Paul’s statement?”
“He says he fell over, saw Ray and Danny, then pushed the button.”
The policeman frowned. “So what?”
“What was it you said sir? About endangering the lives of his accomplices? If he knew where they were going it’d be more than endangerment. It’d be premeditated.”
The frown cracked into a smile. “And he thought he was going to get off easy. He shops Ray as the kingpin, getting down on the drugs charge, but suddenly he’s right up again. On the big one.” He paused for thought. “If we want him to be. I mean if we make it clear that he had no idea where Ray was running to then he’s down a few rungs again isn’t he? But if we don’t. On further questioning.” He let it tail off. “What do we want from him?” Thoughts of chastising his officer for wishing a citizen dead vanished from the policeman’s mind.
view three
After some time Ray realised that he wasn’t just tripping. That he was not hallucinating, since that implied some kind of distortion. He was reminded of an occasion when he had just been tripping, when the feeling had come over him that all his senses were one sense. Then, he had found that by trying, he could distinguish his senses. If he concentrated, colour was indeed an optic sensation, and this was different to pitch, which was an auricular sensation. But now he found that he could not do this, no matter how hard he tried. Which is why it was not hallucination. There was nothing to distort. No matter how hard he tried to let himself settle out and stop tripping quite so heavily, no hint of ordinary vision would return. Ray started to get The Fear.
The Fear, the normal fear, was not unfamiliar to Ray. He had felt it many times, and had seen others getting it too. Equally he knew ways to deal with it. This time there was a difference. Ray could feel the fear taking off; he perceived the vector of its growth and it was steep. He was reminded of another trip, one which had gone bad. On that occasion a friend had helped him by asking him about lots of day-to-day stuff. He reached for his most recent mundane memory.
Police sirens. Paul running up the ladder. Danny pulling him away down some great big drain. Running through water. Then stopping. Then everything stopping. Cold water in his shoes; trousers floating free of his ankles, but stuck to his shins; the sound of Danny’s voice. These were the last specific sensations he could remember. After that everything was abstract. Moving towards a friend. Then feeling that his presence injured his friend and withdrawing. Then a long period of motion and diffusion, with occasional moments of lucidity.
Ray could remember thoughts and abstract sensations from earlier moments of lucidity. He put together the thoughts with those in his mind and assembled a conclusion: for him, Ray, specific sensations were a thing of the past. Somehow he had, quite literally, got off his face. In such a way that he wasn’t getting back on. Ever.
Ray decided to leave lucidity alone for a while. The fear was too much.