Page 38 of Tapeworld Induction

Seat, headset, boot up computer, automated dial tone, “Hi, please stop eating meat, no, okay, bye, thank you,” new automated call, “Hi, stop meat, bye,” new call, on and on for eight hours. That was how her work days went.

But today would be different. Today, she’d brought tape.

In the early afternoon, Dylan got up from her seat, which retracted back under the desk. She might not get the same desk when she came back – permanent hot-seating made it easier to accommodate changing shifts of workers, but it meant she couldn’t decorate her workspace in any way. Already, as she walked across the office, she could see the cleaner drone coming to disinfect it, prepping it for whoever came next.

It’s just a toilet break, guys.

Then her muscles tensed. Mira was coming round again, the sunshine bouncing off her glasses making them appear milky white. She lifted her glasses up onto her forehead, ruining the effect.

“Alright, Dylan?” Her supervisor’s perfunctory smile twisted Dylan’s stomach. Did she know what she was planning to do?

She tried for a smile herself, failing miserably, her lips barely parted. “Sure. All good, Mira?” It was her natural fear of authority figures that made her act like this with her boss. Therapists would surely have a field day exploring how having revolutionary parents had affected how she saw the world.

Mira’s mouth was moving again but Dylan could barely pay attention. The roll of duct tape in her bag felt like it was burning a hole in her side. The stickiness of its inner side, the glittery sheen of its outer layer. She was starting to sweat just thinking about it. She realised Mira’s smile was starting to wane, and she was waiting to hear Dylan’s answer to a missed question.

“I’m sorry?”

“Where are you off to?” Mira asked, clearly repeating herself.

“Uh, the toilet?” Dylan made an awkward face, hoping that would end the interrogation.

She was wrong.

“We have nothing against toilet breaks,” Mira said, still smiling. “We’re all for work-life balance at the Office for Veganism Outreach Centre!” It was like she was a robot, playing out a repeated mantra, part of the institution’s training for their C-suite.

Dylan made to keep walking. “Right. Off I go, then.”

Mira grabbed her arm, her long fingers fully wrapped around it, nails digging into Dylan’s skin. “Right! But we do keep track of toilet breaks and this is your fourth today.” Mira’s smile was starting to look strained, like a growling pug. “Consider this a warning… and I don’t like handing them out.” Mira’s voice lost all whimsy, steeped in seriousness.

Bitch.

Dylan nodded. She put on her best guilty, upset face.

“You can go!” Mira waved her arm, exasperation in her voice.

Dylan didn’t need telling twice.

The building’s bathrooms were massive and oddly luxurious for a government office, the kind with showers and shampoo if you felt like washing your whole body between bouts of calling hangry meat-eaters. Dylan walked into a cubicle, locked the door, sat on the toilet seat, and grabbed the small roll of golden duct tape from her pocket.

The thought of what she was about to do was so exhilarating, she had to consciously calm her breathing. This would be her first time going in alone – her nerves had stopped her the previous three times she’d been to the toilet today.

I can’t wait any longer.

She ripped off a piece of gold duct tape and pasted it onto the side of her head.

An onrush of colours stripped the grey-brown walls of the toilet cubicle away, creating the tape-tube connection into the Tapeworld.

Each particle of the tape-tube surrounding her looked definite, of a miniscule but graspable size. Realistic, but limited. She reasoned it up to the resolution capabilities of the tech.

At the other end of the tube was a bright light. She felt herself being pulled towards it, but she resisted. The other times, when she’d joined Isaak, she rushed into the Tapeworld, not paying the entry process much attention. Now, more curious, she wanted to savour it. Thinking herself towards the floor, she landed her booted feet down. It seemed like she could take as long as she wanted in here. Was it the same for Isaak?

There was a background noise inside the tube. A light hum, a vibration that was barely perceptible.

She tried to touch the side wall, but the particles moved away like a liquid. The liquid clicked back into place as she kept walking.

Everything she knew about the world had already changed. The geopolitical implications of something like the Tapeworld were unfathomable. Like the early internet, it seemed to have been built as a series of discrete spaces, not as a continuum, with shared experiences like the Boulevard being separate from other places. Whoever designed it had put in a lot of thinking. Or maybe it was all randomly generated based on data mined from the black box of an unknowable titanic AI model.

She sighed.