Page 21 of Tapeworld Induction

He smiled. “Right!”

“So you control everything in this space, but, outside of it, what happens? Other spaces? That boulevard place you mentioned?”

She fumbled her words. It felt like she was asking how to breathe.

Isaak sat forward and looked out over the water. “There’s rules. You can’t alter it as easily in a space you don’t own…”

Something popped into her mind from before. “You named this Laguna Beach. Have you ever been there? The real Laguna Beach?”

He looked at her, lips pursed. “In the Kingdom of America? Uh… I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen archive footage. From before the fall. My dad was from there.” His voice wavered and he kept looking out at the ocean. This was clearly an awkward subject.

“Sorry, we don’t have to talk about it. It was a beautiful country.”

“No, it’s okay. It still is, in parts. The wars and climate change didn’t wreck everything. At least, that’s what they say.” He swallowed hard. “My mum and dad moved here just before I was born.”

If he was around thirty years old… “That would have been right around the revolution. No wonder they came here. Must have been horrible. The disasters, and the…”

“The Dark Year.” The strider lay still, motionless. Was he replaying visions of the Apocalypse Revolt? Did he know the details of how his parents had evacuated the USA? What they’d had to sacrifice? “They lived there. Laguna Beach. My father saw it flood.”

Then it was Dylan’s turn to go quiet. Fighting all her life for something already won… It was a strange feeling. While her parents had been on the front lines, they kept that part of their life away from her. Didn’t tell stories, didn’t paint a picture. They didn’t have to leave their country. The United Kingdom survived the revolution, or – rather – learned from it, becoming the First Kingdom. Not so for Isaak’s parents.

“It’s getting late, Zak. We can stop.”

He turned and looked her in the eyes, his wet with held-back tears. He moved his hand towards the side of her head. “You ready?”

She nodded.

With a rip of tape, the bedroom walls came rushing back, putting themselves back together by some spell, geometric animal posters unfurled, desk and wardrobe sliding back into place, her neatly put away Dr. Martens plopping back into existence.

She was alone in her bedroom again, the beach only in her memory, the sound of the rolling waves leaving a faint echo.

8

The Broker

Isaak

The next day, Isaak hurried through East London's streets. Commuters shared the pavement with the occasional combination floating baby pram and jogging parent. Drones, loaded with parcels and coffee orders, drew patterns across the sky on their way to jolt awake office workers around the city.

The corner opened onto a mainway. Across the street, a stack of concrete floors rose up above a dingy-looking car wash. Squatters called the derelict home, climbing its sides at night-time clad in grip gear and streaming with an array of action cameras dotted along their limbs. London Live, atop the Royal Car Wash, “The Cadillac of car washes”.

Mechanical brush arms descended on an auto-car, soapy water flowing onto the floor. Roads were the domain of the First Kingdom’s electric auto-cars, with delivery services having taken to the skies since the Urban Affairs Act perma-banned white vans from the city centre.

He was on his way to see Elodie. To get more tape. She’d been the one giving him rolls of the stuff, ever since Astrid had introduced him to her. He’d felt tossed aside at the time, going from daily IRL contact with Astrid to just getting handed gigs at a distance.

Elodie did business from her residence, a tiny flat overlooking Great Eastern Street. The abandoned multi-storey car park that played host to the Royal Car Wash was a permanent fixture of her view.

Buzzed into the building, he started casually running up the stairs, then berated himself as soon as he felt the pain in his knee. Habits have a way of making you forget your shit, slipping into automatic mode, the brain and body simply following a previously agreed dance. How long would it be before he got used to the pain?

The door was open. Inside was Elodie, known to her biz-friends as Elo. A woman in her late thirties, her fluorescent puke-green hair was kept short with a buzz cut. She sat behind a risen bank of touch-screen monitors and customised mechanical keyboards. Social media feeds automatically refreshed on the displays, a constant torrent of content – bot sources filtered out by software. He didn’t follow the news that much himself, but he took note of the stories that scrolled by: a few more million accounts leaked from whatever online service, more unrest in the Middle East, Ukrainian refugees seeking the return of their dissolved country, some Senator called Luke Glacier endorsing the final steps in the complete privatisation of the Kingdom of America’s Postal Service and its subsidiaries.

“You got tape?” Isaak asked as he walked over to her, feet carefully avoiding the few surface drones scurrying about, a mix of hoovers and errand-runners.

He was significantly taller than Elodie, though here she towered over him, as she stood on a raised platform. The PVC Mackintosh raincoat she was wearing reflected the various displays. It was like she expected the fire counter-measures to trigger at any moment. Could he smell toast?

“Hello to you too, kid. You ran out already?” Elodie was a dual national – French–British – and she spoke in a clipped accent.

Isaak realised his faux pas. “Hi, Elodie! How are you? Yeah.” He gulped. “Just ran out the other night.”