Page 145 of Tapeworld Induction

He got up and wiped his arm across his mouth. Blood.

There was only Astrid in front of him now. No sleptigrades, no beds, no kidnap victims. No Dylan. He stood on a vast flatland made of tarmac, lit by a high full moon. On the distant horizon all around were towering black skyscrapers dotted with red and green lights.

“Volunteers? You’re sick, Astrid. You’re trapping them. They can’t take the Sleeper off. How?”

“Oh... I started by binding their arms, like so many crazies in a nuthouse…” She paused. “Then I thought to try something new.”

Isaak’s stomach clenched.

“You have experienced it already.” She smirked. “Your little LSD trip?”

His eyes tightened, rage rising.

“And what about sudden cravings for chicken?”

Exactly as they thought. Astrid was trying to control their behaviour.

Isaak’s stomach churned. “What else did you program me to do?”

“Oh, who knows…? Maybe this!” Astrid clenched her teeth and raised her fingers in a rapid gesture.

An immediate sensation took hold of his injured knee, pain shooting through it, as if he had twisted it in just the wrong way – the same as when he’d fucked it up playing ReSports. He collapsed to the floor, holding his leg.

“Fucking cunt!”

“I’ll admit it took a bit of work, creating tape-spaces that make people feel a certain way, crave a certain forbidden food… Shoot an innocent man.” She laughed, a glimmer in her eyes.

“You made me shoot him?’ A swell of anger mixed with relief.

Astrid laughed harder, shutting her eyes, mouth open wide. “No, you fool. That was all you.”

He emptied his lungs and looked down. Blood on his hands.

“With the help of your mother’s research, I… made the Sleeper work.”

Isaak glared at her. “Be very careful what you say next.”

“Oh, Ike, please. Don’t bother with threats. We both know you can’t touch me in here… Once I came up with the Sleeper design, with some help from dear Maria, I no longer needed to bind arms and legs. So much easier to just convince them to slip it on. ‘Here’s a bit of cash, why not try the latest trend in sleeping aids?’ And then they can never get it off! It inhibits all of their volitions, and any awareness that they are wearing a headset.”

“Why?” Isaak asked. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why?” Rage flared in her eyes. “No one bothered to ask Eltarc Romly why, when he unleashed cutting-edge climate tech and the most powerful technologies this world has ever seen.”

Bile rose up his throat. “Yes, but he was also responsible for the rise of the Second Revivalists.”

“And? What’s wrong with them?” Astrid’s voice was pregnant with laughter, her face barely holding in a chuckle.

“You can’t be serious? The notorious gang of racists and xenophobes?”

“What’s wrong with a little patriotism…?” she mused.

Fucking witch. He was at his limit. “The things they did belong in the past, not in our future.”

“The things they do, Ike.”

Dread smashed into him a terrifying wave. Was Eltarc Romly alive? The rumoured life extension mods?

Astrid interrupted his thoughts. “Do you know how the trees in the First Kingdom were saved from extinction by fungal disease?”