Page 132 of Tapeworld Induction

“Dad!” Dylan was on the defensive. Isaak liked that. “Let’s just have a good time. Yes, me and Isaak are dating. He’s a great find… aren’t you, darling?” She enlaced her arm through his and looked him in the eyes. She spoke with an overly sweet voice, putting on a show for her parents.

“Uh… yes! I mean, sure!” he said, with a smile.

Talia came to his mind then. It must be hard for Dylan to act like this, with their friend in danger. But she told him beforehand that she didn’t want them to know. About the Tapeworld, or about Talia.

Dylan grinned and turned to her dad. “See? He’s fine!” There was a sarcastic note to her voice and she raised her eyebrows at her dad, like she was making a point of it. Isaak tried to make sense of it. Did her previous boyfriends all suck horribly, or…?

After half an hour drinking tea, eating soy cake, and making polite conversation, Dylan and her mother went upstairs with a flimsy excuse to leave the boys to talk for a bit.

Isaak and Wes were alone at the dining table.

Dylan’s father’s smile dropped, and his face turned serious, almost upset. “So… you’re the man seeing my daughter.”

Isaak dry-swallowed, unsure what he meant. Did he disapprove? Worry gnawed at his gut, slowly at first, but rising. Isaak was ready to defend himself and their relationship.

“Yes. Is that a—”

“A problem?” Wes said, completing the sentence. “No. Of course not. She’s an adult. I don’t mind who she sees. As long as they have good intentions.” Wes looked Isaak up and down. “Do you?”

Feeling judged, Isaak was quick to reply, “Sure. Who would be foolish enough to say ‘no’ when their girlfriend’s dad asks a question like that?” He smiled tentatively. “What are you really asking for?”

“I mean, son” – Wes was close enough to place his hand on Isaak’s shoulder – “is your mind in the right place? And will you protect her from harm? I know she’s up to something.”

Isaak squirmed his shoulder out from under Wes’s hand and tried to play it cool. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“She’s been asking me more and more about our time before… before this world we’re in now. Before the Dark Year.” Wes turned deadly serious, his body rigid. He didn’t look like the harmless family man who cooked curry every Sunday, like Dylan had told him he was. A side of him was coming out that perhaps not even his daughter had access to. “Whatever it is you two are doing, I know it’s important. Her probing like this… She needs something from us. Approval, maybe. I won’t ask what you’re planning. I wouldn’t have answered that myself, if my parents had asked me back then.”

“What did happen back then? What did you and Mrs Colt do?”

“You know about us?”

Isaak crossed his arms. “It was one of the first things she told me. Can you imagine the weight on her shoulders, the pressure of being your kid?”

Wes put his hands on his belt, gripping it as if to keep himself stable. His eyes, permanently fixed to Isaak’s until now, moved to the window, to the horizon and the blue sky outside.

“We did what we had to do.”

“Mr Colt, I’m not judging you.”

Wes’s gaze snapped back to Isaak. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

Everything about his gestures said this was a man holding on to order, keeping chaos tight inside him, under a leash.

“There was an attempt, in 2030, at—” He coughed, hand to his mouth. His voice failed for a moment. After a short pause, Wes stomped down on the emotion stopping him from speaking. “There was an attempt to virtualise every aspect of our existence, eliminate everything physical, everything that makes us human. A thin jarhead, feverish with his newfound power, sought to interpose himself at the centre of every mode of communication, to stand in between every person in the world, to become the receptacle of every word, every thought, of every person in the world.”

“What happened?” Isaak asked. “You stopped him, but how?”

Wes sighed. “Laws, son. Laws were passed to ban his ideas.” His body language betrayed no emotion, only calm assuredness, but his eyes were darting between Isaak and the window. There was something he was leaving unsaid. Something left out of the history books.

But, wanting to preserve the intimacy of the moment, Isaak relented. “Of course, sir.”

The man looked him in the eyes again, and gave an ever-so-subtle knowing wink. “Call me Wes.” A smile across his lips.

“Wes,” Isaak said with a nod.

“You seem to be getting on well with my daughter. What do you make of her?”

“I like her,” he said, breaking through the thick vines of pride around his insides. “A lot. I mean, I love her.”