Page 31 of Tapeworld Induction

“Oh, I mean, from when you approached me at Aftershock. You seemed so serious.” She laughed weakly. Silly Dylan. She’d been thinking about the stoic captain version of him she knew from his ReSports days. But for some reason she still wasn’t ready to admit that she’d been a fan. It was cute to see that he was also just a shy boy adorably stumbling over his words. It was also a surprise that he’d been jacking into this place for a year.

“Right…” he said, clearly not quite sure what to think. “Thanks, I think. Anyway, these are all places you can go in.” He pointed at the fronts of all different kinds of establishments. There were pubs, restaurants, oxygen bars, clubs, all with extravagant, flashing signs.

“How can the Tapeworld still be a secret with all these places?”

“Most of them are empty,” Isaak explained. “Which shows people can keep a secret, especially if it means hiding something from the Kings and Queens. I don’t think this place was made by them, or it would have been looted already, made mass-scale.” He looked like he was about to say something else, but stopped.

She nodded, taking his explanation at face value. It was strange and hard to believe. But secrecy was, after all, the only reason the Dark Year had happened. The Apocalypse Revolt kept their plans secret, and distributed them worldwide simultaneously. Only total belief and dedication to a cause could keep that kind of secret. She and him were more alike than she’d thought.

She changed the subject, not wanting to get lost in her thoughts right now. “So, what’s the coolest club here?” Just enjoy your evening in the black-market virtual reality the tall, attractive ex-ReSports player invited you to. It’s all good.

His mouth twisted into a wicked smile. “I know just the place.”

The club pulsed with life. The other striders were wearing outrageous fashion. The style dripping from everyone else’s clothes flustered her. Lots of what she could only call neon goth, night fiends taking on flashy hardware as accessories. People wearing sunglasses indoors, and long black raincoats, straight out of action movies. Clothes that looked like they came from whole other periods of history – short corseted dresses covered in pearls, velvet hose, and ruffs. There were people with bared jacked-up muscles, and prop robots worn as clothing.

She took in as much as she could, her mouth open. She got it almost immediately. This place was a festival for the living, a celebration of the vibrancy of life. Here, they were free from the surveillance of the First Kingdom, and it showed. Here, they felt free.

Isaak clearly felt it too. In fact, she could have sworn he was staring straight at the chest of a heavily made-up woman wearing a Gunne Sax dress and a top hat.

They were just friends, but she couldn’t help feeling jealous.

She must have made a noise, because he looked at her then.

“It’s a bit overwhelming, huh? Do you want to dance?”

She smiled, letting him take her hand as they headed to the dance floor.

A few of the striders they walked by were holding beverages. “You can drink in here?” she asked.

“It’s placebo,” he explained. “It doesn’t fill you up, doesn’t make you drunk or anything.”

“Old habits, eh?”

He nodded.

The music wasn’t anything she recognised from the StreetSocial feeds or Aftershock’s DJs. They danced to the tune amidst the crowd, the hubbub of chatter low under the volume of the EDM beat.

He danced better here than IRL. No knee pain to bother him, bless him. Perhaps that was partly why he didn’t like to talk to anyone here. This was a private experience for him, a special place. Anyone else giving their thoughts about it, whether positive or negative, might corrupt his pure view of it. She empathised with that. At the Vegan Outreach Centre, she’d realised how many of her colleagues were completely uninvested in the work. Sure, it was a crappy job. Do your hours, clock out. But while they all had to obey the vegan laws, they didn’t buy into the ideology like she did. Sometimes she felt like the only real vegan there.

After an hour or so, she’d had enough, and he could clearly see her fatigue. She wasn’t sure if it was the noise, or being inside the Tapeworld, but the visit to the BBD left her knocked out. She was ready to tape out.

“Let’s go back to my tape-space,” Isaak said. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

He was beaming, and she didn’t resist him.

12

Popcorn

Dylan

“A pet?!”

She'd always been anxious about pets after what happened to their first and only family dog. But here… This wouldn’t even be a real animal. It’d be perfect, even if it was only in the Tapeworld. Her own little creature companion.

Isaak smiled and shifted a pile of sand through his hands, letting the gravity of the place take care of it. As it fell, a few of the grains hovered in place, glittering.

“I would love one! I wanted a pet, years ago. My parents wouldn’t allow it.” Dylan kept the details scant. He didn’t need to know what happened to their dog in the aftermath of the Dark Year. How it had disappeared one night, its bloody collar showing up in their mailbox a few days later. She never knew for certain what had really happened to it, but most likely… the dog had been eaten by someone desperate, after the vegan laws were put in place.