25. Remnant
Remnant
Dylan
Light rays filtered through the window, hitting her face. It was getting brighter earlier now, waking her up far before she’d like to.
On the floor rested the discarded top of her pyjamas, which Dylan had disburdened herself of sometime during the night due to the mounting heat.
Her desk was tidier these days. Fewer sticky notes.
Dylan knew the reason, and it wasn’t because she was tackling all of her plans more diligently.
If anything, it was the opposite. She had stopped working as hard as before.
On herself, on her goals. Hence, less notes.
The roll of tape lay to the side on the desk, good enough for one more stride.
Dylan got up in one motion, took an oversized tee from the wardrobe and did her morning’s ablutions in the bathroom.
She thought of texting him while she brushed her teeth. But at two minutes to eight in the morning, Isaak was bound to still be asleep. They both got back home so late after Sacha’s, and he didn’t have a job that forced him to wake up early.
In the shower she made plans, dreamed wildly. Of Isaak, of the Tapeworld, of kicking Astrid’s ass for how she treated him. But he was going to quit working for her soon. She wouldn’t be able to hurt him anymore. Would she?
Dylan recognised a few faces inside the monorail carriage.
Short sleeves and skirts in the hot weather.
She somehow managed to land a seat for this commute.
A familiar face, an anonymous commuter, was forced to stand near the door, the carriage almost overflowing with people.
The corners of his mouth curved down and the scowl spread across his face.
Good. You don’t deserve a seat with that attitude. She was feeling on edge.
A couple of hours after midday, after a string of back-to-back calls with absolute bellend meat-eaters, her boss having raised the minimum daily quota of contacts, she finally took her lunch break.
It was the only time she had during the day to scroll her phone.
She held it with one hand while eating a fakon sandwich.
She nearly dropped it when she saw a message from Isaak.
@isaak: I stopped working for Astrid. I want to see you.
She didn’t even know how she felt right now. Happy, yes. Elated, hell yes. Anxious? Abso-fucking-lutely. Was he even aware of what he did to her? Goddess…
@dylan: me too. tapeworld 2nite?
The “2” was accidental but by the time she realised, she’d already pressed send. Oops.
She ran her fingers through her hair, the roots starting to show its natural jet-black colour, but the blue-on-blonde dye job still looked half-decent.
She scrolled the StreetSocial in a mechanical routine.
The experience usually acted like a sedative after a shitty morning at the Office for Veganism, and the rest of the afternoon wasn’t gonna be any better.
She was quite happy to let her mind go numb.
There was self-improvement advice, rote discourse on left vs right-wing policies, and a few bits of misinfo upvoted mostly by people pointing out their fallacies rather than believing in them. But pretty quickly, Dylan gasped and stopped scrolling, her breathing coming quicker.
An anonymous post praising Eltarc Romly’s fascist ideals, and claiming he was still alive, had gone viral.
Her stomach twinged. Right-wing propaganda had been squished under the Green Party.
It had been years since she’d seen any mention of Eltarc and his Second Revivalists.
Seeing this out in the wild, with barely any censorship…
It was a threat. His ideas being spread might incite people, especially the young, who didn’t witness the Dark Year, to mess with the equilibrium of the Kingdom.
Of the world, even. And if Eltarc was still alive…
She scrolled past it forcefully, as if pushing it under the top of the phone’s screen would wipe it from existence. If only.
She scowled and scrolled until something else caught her attention. It looked strange – the font was different from the rest of the posts on StreetSocial, and it didn’t have many likes or reStreets. She tapped it.
GET PAID FOR SLEEPING.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCHERS NEED YOU. GET THE LATEST IN TECH!
SLIP ON THE SLEEPER!
An ad for volunteers to wear a sleeping aid, and send their sleep data back to the researchers.
There was a photo of the device. She zoomed in. It looked like a beefed-up sleeping mask, grey with plastic segments on the sides of the head, chunky enough to hold a phone’s worth of microchips and sensors.
“Fuck privacy, right?” she said between her teeth.
The pushback against surveillance tech after the Dark Year made a lot of changes back then.
But thirty years on, those safeguards were now unstable at best, or ignored and ready to be deleted at worst, the Tech Kings publicly going back to their old ways.
A message notification popped up, causing a surge of adrenaline to pulse through her body.
Isaak!
@isaak: see you there.
Her heart grew a couple of sizes. She was gonna see him tonight. And now the rest of her day was going to be even harder to get through…
After dinner that night, she put her phone away, ripped the last piece of tape from her shiny gold roll, and lay on her bed.
As soon as she stuck the tape on her temple, the practised gesture almost a ritual, her resting idle routine kicked in while her consciousness slingshotted through the sky and plummeted into the ground.
The dirt became individual specs of earth and then each spec became a star and each star shot out in a continuous trail, at first in a straight line and then drawing concentrical circles.
And then she was there, as if she had always been there and had never left, back among the rolling green hills of her personal tape-space. Home.
Isaak was already there waiting for her, in all his hyperdefinition. He was wearing a black tee, black jeans, black boots. Arm and chest muscles defined, beard cropped to four millimetres. The Gunkatana was hanging from his belt, the blade and revolver derezzed.
He looked cool AF.
“Hi, Dylan.” He slipped his hands in his back pockets.
She couldn’t contain a smile. “Hey…” With a hand gesture she magicked a plush orange sofa into existence, just behind him. “Sit down. Let’s chat!”
Her joy at seeing him again was real. But it was also a mask for the anxiety pulsing beneath her skin. Worry about his intentions. Whether he was on the same wavelength as her.
With a swift move he pulled the Gunkatana’s grip in front of them, making it hover in mid-air. He sat down awkwardly.
She chuckled and joined him. They were sitting side by side, Isaak very tense and straight. Dylan grabbed his hand and pulled his arm around her shoulders. The warmth of his body was a comfort she didn’t realise how desperately she wanted until now.
That seemed to be the encouragement he needed. His lean, long arm embraced her and kept pulling her closer to his bulk. She turned to look at him and they locked eyes.
This was it. He was going to kiss her.
She shifted her body to face him as much as she could. She leant closer to him, expecting him to match her movement, but—
“Dee, I’m sorry.”
What?! No…
“Sorry? What are you sorry for?”
He looked like he was trying to speak, but nothing came out.
“I get it,” she said, trying to be comforting. “You’re worried about struggling with cash. But you’ll be happy you stopped working for Astrid—”
“I have to tell you something!” His words came fast out of his mouth.
“What is it?”
Isaak began to look more nervous, his legs moving restlessly, feet tapping. He moved further from her again in the seat, his hands finding their way into his black jeans pockets somehow, his gentle warmth gone.
“I wasn’t just her employee.”
Dylan’s stomach dropped, her mouth dry. She felt herself slowly going numb.
“Please listen, Dee. It didn’t mean anything.”
Her arms and legs had lost all feeling. “I should leave. She’s not good people, Isaak. Fucking hell… Don’t tell me you slept with her last night!” Her thoughts crashed into each other. She was so stupid.
“No! Goddess, no, not at all.” The strider reached for her hand. “Don’t go, please. It was a long time ago. Please, stay.”
She got up, his hand still holding hers. She felt embarrassed. Everything was hurting inside her. It made her want to shrink and disappear. She looked him in the eyes, looking for an explanation.
“I fucked up. But that was before I met you.”
Dylan sat back next to him slowly, every movement guarded.
He sat almost motionless.
After a few minutes of silence he said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just felt shitty for not being honest about it from the beginning. I don’t want to hide anything from you.”
She nodded slowly. “Thank you. I’m glad you told me.” She still couldn’t look him in the eye, trying hard not to picture him undressed, a boy toy on that woman’s arm.
“It was before I even knew what the tape was. Before she showed it to me. I was in a bad place, and she took advantage of that. Pretty soon after, she had me pulling heists in the Tapeworld. I know I was manipulated.”
“I’m sorry.” The numbness was receding. It all just felt kind of sad.
“It’s okay.”
His reaction suddenly filled her with anger.
“No, it isn’t okay! You can’t let people run over you like that.
She’s a bitch but…” She wanted to blame him, for thinking with his dick.
She took a deep breath and reminded herself that he’d been a victim of manipulation.
But there was something bothering her. She was trying not to sound angry, not to make any assumptions, but it came out harsher than she intended.
“Who’s the woman in the photo, Isaak? Another Astrid? Someone else that manipulated you?”
He looked away. “I can’t…” It sounded like he was holding back tears.
“So you do know the woman in the photo! Why didn’t you tell me when I asked you?” Dylan kept at him. She wanted to stop, to give him a chance to explain. But the way he reacted when they found the photo, and now all of this….
Isaak stood up, his posture angry. “She’s my mother!”
“What?” That was a shock. “What the fuck is a photo of your mother doing inside the Gunkatana, in the Tapeworld?”
He wiped his eyes, pacing in front of the sofa.
“Is there something else you’re not telling me?
Despite all the danger and what you agreed with Sacha, you still tape in every day…
” She pointed at the tape stuck to his head.
“It can’t just be Astrid. If you knew it was dangerous and that what you were doing was wrong, you would have quit earlier.
Have you been searching for your mother? ”
He looked at her, without anything to say.
“This is why you jack in every day you can, isn’t it? Why didn’t you tell me?” Her throat strained, pleading with him for an explanation.
“I’m not looking for her. Just like she never looked for me! I have no idea how the fuck her photo was in the sword! Look, I know you think I’m just a ‘silly goose’, but I—”
“What?” She couldn’t believe it. “Say that again.”
“What?”
“Say it.” Her eyes narrowed.
He swallowed. His face went red. “I said you think I’m a silly goose.”
Her pulse shot up. She stood to face him, legs wobbling. “How do you know I called you a silly goose? I was speaking to the cat!” Don’t tell me…
“How do you think I know?” He waved his arms, gesturing around them. “The Tapeworld! I’ve been here way longer than you. Miss Kitty has been keeping tabs on you. I made her do that when I summoned her.”
Dylan was stunned into silence for a moment. “I can’t believe you’ve been spying on me.”
“It was warranted, wasn’t it? The tape is secret. And I’ve been stealing data from tech giants without even realising it. I wanted to keep you safe!”
“You didn’t trust me!” Her voice went hoarse.
“I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t trust you!” He formed a fist and punched down through the couch they’d been sat on.
“Hey! Stop that!”
He turned away from her and started walking off.
“Wait! If you keep punching things, you’ll only end up hurting yourself—”
“I don’t need anyone.” And he pulled the tape from his head.
“No!” She ran to him, but it was too late. He was already derezzing, what was left of his body blue-tinged and see-through. His remnant. She almost grabbed it, wanting to hug him, but not knowing what that could do to him IRL, she stopped herself.
He was gone.
Fury and misery swam inside her like twin sharks.
This hadn’t gone to plan. What she thought would be a lovely evening with the boy she fancied, a chance to talk about their feelings, had become a nightmare.
She wiped the tears rolling down her face. She was on her own now.
Except for—
Fuck. He didn’t take the stupid sword.
She picked up the Gunkatana. The blade revolver released from the hilt, materialising from thousands of particles with a sleek sound.
“GUNKATANA MODEL XR01 at your service.” Its sibilant voice faintly echoed through the hills.
She had no idea how to do this. But she would damn well try.
“Command: Rename to ‘Gunkatana’. And you’ll accept the nickname ‘Gunky’.”
It took a few seconds to process her instructions.
“Gunky is acceptable.”
Great. Something going her way felt good, no matter how stupid it was.
“Gunky, what’s the photo of Isaak Powers’s mum doing inside you?”
The sword went quiet. And stayed quiet. What she thought would be a processing time of seconds became minutes.
“What’s taking you so long?”
“Invalid query.”
Invalid query?
“Tell me about Isaak Powers’s mum.”
“Why don’t you look on StreetSocial? You’ll have better luck there, meat sack.”
“Whoa, what the fuck? Why are you calling me names?” Even the gun-sword was turning on her now. She wanted to cry again.
“You gave me the nickname ‘Gunky’. So I gave you the nickname ‘meat sack’. Is that incorrect?”
The sword has a point… She cringed at the unfortunate pun. “Fine. But pick a better nickname. I like Dee.”
“Thee what?”
She closed her eyes with so much strength she nearly saw stars. “Just give me the photo and go back to sleep.”
“Fine.”
The blade dematerialised, the Gunkatana back in hilt form, and the photo released, flying into the air. She picked it up, and then – with a flick of her hand – made the Gunkatana disappear, tucking it away inside a nook of her personal space.
She held the photo in her hands, studying his mother’s face. The photo must have been taken some time ago, as she looked the same age as Isaak, who shared her nose and lips. She looked the right combination of smart and pretty.
“What did you do, Mrs Powers? Why did you leave him?”