Page 66 of Tapeworld Induction

Bright lights lit Astrid’s unflinching face, a holographic tablet spilling data onto her brown eyes. After a moment’s pause, the lights dimmed, and Astrid made eye contact. It looked like an act, pretending she was so busy she hadn’t noticed him arriving.

Eventually, she deigned to speak. “Ike.”

“You know I don’t like that name,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat but wanting to retain his composure. “What do you know about the duct tape?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed as she leaned forward. “Well, well. Straight to business with the hard questions.” She sounded surprised, and annoyed. Cold metal scraping over concrete.

“The novelty’s started to wear off, since I had to shoot that… bot.” He played along, a grimace on his face, as he remembered the other night. “Do you know how it really works? Does anyone?”

“This whole thing…” She waved her finger around, a whimsical look on her face. “It’s running somewhere, hosted somewhere. I don’t know where that is. But I trust it. Just as the real world out there runs on trust. Trust that the people walking down the street aren’t going to throw their trash on the floor, trust that they’ll stop their cars at a red signal, trust that no one’s going to push you onto the train tracks. The Tapeworld runs in much the same way.” Astrid paused, letting the words hit him. This high definition version of her lips provoked unwelcome images in his mind. “The Emporium trusts its patrons aren’t going to pull it apart with their imagination, the striders in the Boulevard trust in the destinations of the portals, and all of us trust that when we stick a piece of tape on our head, our minds wake up here… and not in a shithole somewhere else.”

He rubbed his hand over his beard, trying to mask his mounting anxiety. “So, with all that trust going around, why do you choose to run ops on other people’s data?”

Astrid was unmoved, still leaning forward. “It pays your bills, doesn’t it?”

“That doesn’t answer my question. How does it work?”

She smirked. “First principles, Isaak.” She held her own hands over the table, almost reaching him, showing off her pointed, shiny, black nails. Her face seemed to sparkle in the low lighting. He followed the line of her neck down, her shirt open just enough to expose the curvature of her chest.

She called him by his actual name this time, not “Ike”. And she knew exactly what she was doing. He tried to stop his brain picturing her naked. He had never tried it. Sex in the Tapeworld. He wondered if her whole body would sparkle like that…

Stop it. That was the past. The way she lured him into the gigs in the first place, with easy sex, tending to his fucked-up ego after losing the captaincy.

“I hate that expression,” he said. “First principles. Historically overused by Silicon Valley CEOs.”

He swallowed down the sexual tension between them. It wasn’t something he wanted. He’d been a cheap target almost a year ago, her body her weapon. After his first few gigs, she’d never looked at him like that again. With Dylan now in the picture, he was starting to think he might actually be able to turn his life around. It was partly his experience with Astrid that made him so cautious around Dylan, wanting to take it as slow as possible. How would he even explain how he’d truly met Astrid to her? Goddess, please—

“Then you know what I mean.” Astrid’s voice broke him out of his spell. “You tell me, Isaak, how does any shared virtual reality work?”

“String a bunch of computers together and, using a common protocol, share the data hosted on each machine. When someone swipes right on Flirter, that piece of data – that you find PugMomma41 or whatever attractive – makes its way to any of the multiple server instances, which will switch a number of data registers, trigger an event, and next time the target’s phone calls back to home base, it will up pop a notification. Ding! ‘You matched with HotHeadMammal45’!” His smile was laced with sarcasm. “But that’s silicon chips. The duct tape, there’s no chip inside it… Unless it’s lined with nanometric-scale antennas that haven’t even officially been invented yet.”

“Yes, you’ve described the internet, but not virtual reality. VR is about simulating what we do out there. If the simulation is good, how do we know what’s real or not?” Her icy stare penetrated him to the bone. “How do you know you’re not a tape tear away from finding the real real world?”

Of course he had thought about that. He’d spent days awake after his first stride, looking in the mirror and touching his own face, the lack of sleep messing with his mind.

He grimaced, betraying his thoughts to her.

Astrid’s face lit up, realising she’d struck a nerve and savouring it. “I’m kidding, Ike!” Back to the nickname, then… The taunt was almost enough to make him get up and leave.

“If you can’t tell me how it works,” he ground out between his teeth, “then tell me who you work for.”

The expression on her face quickly changed from mocking delight to unimpressed contempt. It made his skin crawl. “They’re the people who found their way into the Tapeworld before anyone else.”

Finally. Some answers.

“And who are they?”

“That’s all you’re getting from me until you give me the artifact I sent you to get.” She raised her eyebrows expectantly. The dim lighting accentuated Astrid’s face and heaving chest against her folded arms, the pointed, shiny, black nails hidden away.

Bitch. He leaned back against the soft leather cushioning of the seat. Fists clenched, he steeled himself for what was coming.

“I don’t have it.”

Astrid’s expression went sour. She pursed her lips, tented her fingers together, then she touched her lips with the tips of her index fingers. She closed her eyes and opened them again, her mouth almost completely still, betraying no emotion. She smacked her lips.

“I don’t know what game you’re playing, Ike,” she said with a biting tone, “but you’re going to give me the artifact.”

“I don’t have it.”