Page 1 of Tapeworld Induction

1

The Strider

Isaak

Blue lights flashed rhythmically on endless rows of electro-galvanised steel plates, the cavernous server room brimming with effervescent metal shelves. Flickers of machine noise periodically broke through a gentle but pervasive hum.

A blue light shifted red, then faded back to blue in the space of seconds.

“That’s the one,” the strider said as he walked over to it. His hands were a blur as they dug through his side bag, emerging with a rainbow ribbon connected to a decades-old tape recorder still tucked inside the bag.

The strider flipped the ears off a steel rack on the blue-lit shelf and slid it halfway out. The light stopped pulsing. Behind him, a new blue light joined the flashing chorus as the disconnected processing unit failed over to a new instance.

On the steel rack he’d pulled out were multiple extruded aluminium and polymer shapes: GPUs, CPUs, hard drives, and other miscellaneous hardware. He quickly found what he was looking for: a grey access port.

“Do you see it?” A woman’s voice echoed through the steel corridors.

“Yes. Like you said, there’s a data port.”

There was a slight pause before she answered. “Great. Glad to see the info’s solid.”

The strider connected the rainbow ribbon to the data port, pressed the red button on his tape recorder, then swiftly sat on the marble floor.

“We’ve got five minutes to kill,” he told the shelves around him. The tape recorder did its spinning dance with a light whizzing sound as dark-brown tape wheeled within it.

“How heavy is the transfer? Terabytes?” the woman asked, hurry in her voice.

“Two hundred and forty megabytes. But this is early nineties hardware, bronze-age transfer speeds compared to nowadays.”

“Oh… Got it.” But it sounded like the woman on the other side didn’t really “get it” at all.

“I’ll check for any more counter-measures in the system,” he said, his fingers jabbing at the semi-translucent touch screen on his lap.

There was another short silence before she said, “Let me ask you something, Ike.”

“It’s Isaak,” he said, only half focusing his attention on her voice, the immediate reply almost an automatic response to the unwelcome nickname she still used despite all the times he’d corrected her.

She continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “Everything else in that place is packed with bleeding-edge computers. What’s an old SCSI port doing in a souped-up server room?”

This time her voice sounded very close to his ear – a conspiratorial whisper.

“For this, exactly. Making our life harder. Obstruction through obsolescence…” His fingers continued to dance over the touch screen. “It’s not a SCSI port. It looks like an old hard-drive port, but like, not really? I’m surprised you didn’t expect it, Astrid. This hack being your idea and all…”

“The leak was sloppy,” she admitted, sounding vaguely defeated. That was new.

The “Record” button on his tape deck flipped up. The transfer was complete. All that was left was for him to extract the target and leave.

“Is it ready?” Astrid’s question temporarily turned all the lights green.

He got up, stuffed the rainbow ribbon back into his side bag, and slid the rack back into place, flipping its ears. Then he made his way in quick strides towards a blue-tinted door at the far end of the room.

But he froze at a sound in the corridor beyond it. Footsteps.

“Did you get it?” Astrid hissed. Her voice came in cold, out of the walls.

Isaak moved away from the door again, careful not to make any noise with his feet.

“I need all the data from that place, Ike. Get through that door and find the rest!” There was anger in Astrid’s voice now.