14. New Occupation
New Occupation
Isaak
The next afternoon, back in the Tapeworld and the Boulevard, Isaak looked for somewhere anonymous to summon a tube to the house Astrid had shown him. He turned a corner between buildings and walked further into the alleyway, wondering if it had been charted already.
The Boulevard’s creators, whoever they were, left the area around the streetfront to be designed by the imagination of its explorers, who would inevitably carpet it through with cathode tubes, concrete, and glass walls.
Neon and LED lighting was everywhere, the first to walk these roads having grafted their preferred aesthetic coating onto new, dreamed-up structures.
When Isaak was confident no one had followed him, he struck his hand forward into a plastic wall, and a large blue-lit tube formed around it.
The light extruded a corridor all around him.
Duct tape wrapped his conscious mind in a handshake.
Swirling textures coalesced, blue hues shifted to white and dark green, arranging into a clear night sky and a canopy of tall trees. The tape-tube connection had brought him away from the Boulevard to a leafy grove.
He walked at his own pace down a well-beaten path surrounded by trees.
Smooth columns came into view further ahead, behind a cluster of trees and foliage, supporting a large white concrete square. Full-width windows, uncurtained, wrapped most of the way around the building, a few areas turning into white-plastered brick walls.
The brief from Astrid was succinct, as usual. Get in, get the loot, get out.
At his side hung his brown bag. He grabbed a pair of binoculars from inside it and surveyed the building through the telescoped lenses, glass windows providing a generous view of the interior. There was no one inside or outside.
He took a deep breath to steel himself and ran towards the building.
His footsteps left an imprint on the ground, moss under his shoes.
This was real strider work. Adrenaline pumped into his veins, the real-world knee pain like a mirage of a past life, muscles and reflexes surpassing the weakening IRL version of him.
When he reached the place, he hugged a white pillar and looked along the wall. There was no entrance on this side. He’d have to make his own.
Familiar blue light seeped through newly formed cracks in the white plaster. A portal.
Would Le Corbusier approve of tonight’s events? Cracking open a building like this, with fancy future tech… Granted, the building itself was just virtual. Wasn’t it? The questions started bubbling up. Isaak slapped his bent knee. Knock it off!
The blue door he’d created shimmered faintly.
Isaak stepped through and scanned inside.
A living room. The decoration was professional, to the point it looked like it had been someone’s job to mimic in meticulous detail how affluent self-isolating auteurs lived.
There was no motion or noise. The adrenaline of this Tapeworld action was starting to please his brain more than the memories of his London Lazarus days.
Luckily the skills he taught himself for ReSports were transferrable to this bizarre new occupation.
Carrying his wonder at operating as a data thief via a futuristic technology with him, Isaak looked around the room.
Unfortunately, nothing about the meticulously sourced décor betrayed where valuables were kept.
While in theory the data he was looking for could be anywhere and any of the thousands of bricks forming the walls could be used to store secrets, in practice people tended to stick to old habits.
All of his previous thefts were from safes, computers, data centres – locations considered relatively secure in the real world.
The people who stored data in the Tapeworld hadn’t seemed to use much imagination when it came to where to store it.
Reddened eyes watched him as he tossed the room: the painting of a man lost in bloodlust, a vivid depiction of a murderous act.
It looked out of place in here. It didn’t match the restrained minimalism of the rest of the space.
The Poet Assassin, no artist name. Isaak lifted it off the wall but there was no safe hidden behind it.
He thought of calling Astrid, even though he hated asking for her help. She’d only pick up annoyed and end up making him feel worse.
Come on, think outside the box.
His eyes stopped at a bust made of white plastic, a pair of thick bifocals resting atop it. He picked them up. He’d never worn glasses, and his eyes protested a bit as he placed them on his nose, but soon the thick gradation faded and gave way to something unexpected.
Thermal vision. Turning the walls, floor, and ceiling into varying shades ranging from dark blue to a bright-red hue.
He stared again at the painting. The man was draped in a white crimson-streaked suit, a hiltless blade grasped in his hand, a devilish grin adorning his face.
Isaak lifted the painting off the wall again and sure enough, the thick spectacles revealed a large square of yellow light.
A secret behind The Poet Assassin. He placed the painting carefully on the floor to one side.
The lit square on the wall beckoned him.
Unrestricted in his choice of tools inside the Tapeworld, he produced a drill from the side bag.
There hadn’t been a drill there before, but being able to summon anything he could imagine was a useful skill to perfect in here.
He placed the drill on the edge of the yellow-lit square and pushed, slowly, into the wall section.
The edges of the square split apart, and he was able to pry the whole thing out of the wall. As he did, the entire brick facade of the square dematerialised into translucent pixels in his hands.
There was no data stick or hard drive in the recess.
A pearlescent case gleamed under the room’s lighting. Engraved on the top was a familiar symbol.
GK
Power hummed from inside the box, like it was waiting to be picked up. The air went rarefied. He felt compelled to grab the rectangular shape. The pearl casing was old, weathered down by time.
It doesn’t make sense.
He thought of opening it. No one would know. I hope. Not Astrid. Not her client, assuming she was planning to resell this. Curiosity gnawed at him. But he decided he’d pry it open back in the safety of his personal tape-space.
He stuffed the case into his side bag, a chunk of it still jutting out, unable to fit in completely. He replaced the painting on the wall, but when he looked again to check it was straight, he could have sworn the killer’s eyes had changed. Were they actually looking at him?
Keeping to the walls, he made his way out of the structure, his light step turning into a sprint as he hit the path into the woods.
By the time he got deep into the tree line, he knew he was being followed.
There were noises from around the house now.
It wouldn’t be safe to tape out if someone might find him in the seconds before he fully dematerialised.
Panicked, he stole a quick glance back at the building.
But the house wasn’t the only thing staring back at him.
Dylan’s face was overlaid on his field of view, like someone with a massive projector was casting her distressed expression onto the glass wall of the house.
He blinked hard, took a deep breath, and it was gone, with the same speed as it had appeared.
What the fuck is going on? Am I losing it? I hope she’s—
“Dylan?”
In a shock of red-and-blue lights, Dylan appeared right in front of him. Her whole body now. She was there, with him, in the woods.
She looked at him with a completely dumbfounded expression, bare feet on the dirt path. “Isaak?”
“Fuck!”