Beyond the Slums - SPREAD_THE_TAPES.mpx

March 2068. A new viral video titled SPREAD_THE_TAPES.mpx has taken the internet by storm. In the (dis)comfort of her small flat, Alexiel, the guitar player of Renzo's band, goes through the rumors surrounding it on occult websites - rumors pointing in the direction of Stratosphere.

Elevator doors, closed, wrapped in tape. ‘Out of order’ signs placed all over it, together with the discolored picture of a cartoon eye with wings wearing a safety helmet. A hand moves on the control panel, rips it off, connects to the cables behind it. Suddenly, the security tapes retracts into the walls. The elevator doors open. The cabin appears in all of its emptiness, as a flickering light welcomes the camera.

Then, black.

The screen goes dark.

The video ends.

Alexiel looped it back from the beginning, couldn’t help but giggle. It felt refreshingly exciting, almost like an alternate reality game, but more real – a true internet mystery, of the kind she would have never dreamt of.

SPREAD_THE_TAPES.mpx.

That was the name of the file, one that popped into existence overnight and was already on everyone’s mouth. That short clip that lasted around one minute. The caption simply read ‘LILITH AWAITS’. Nothing more. Nothing less. Yet, that was enough to make the video spread like wildfire. Rumor had it that it was originally shared by an anonymous, automated account on a racist internet message board, only to be reblogged everywhere around the net. Alexiel glanced at her pocket mirror, one that stood on her dusty desk. Her brown hair were braided as usual, though her bandages needed some adjustments. Her scar tissue was peeking out of them on one of her cheeks, showing the signs of burns she would have rather hidden. She quickly adjusted the fresh wraps of gauze, hid those marks from sight, restored her peaceful mummy-like picture with a tired grin. Her hands moved back to the keyboard, to the message board she was stalking for intel. Despite the late hour, there was way more activity than usual. And, of course, they were posting too. Well, maybe she was a better descriptor for that user, but Alexiel knew how things went: if someone online identified as a girl, there was a high chance they were instead a Guy In Real Life. Happened too many times, to the point of becoming a meme of sorts. Still, NightDancer repeated several times that she was a woman, so that’s how Alexiel decided to refer to her. She started typing on her broken down mechanical keyboard, one which missed a couple of keys (the c letter being the most prominent), and sent her next message.

>Halloween: So, to make things straight: there’s no hidden messages in the tapes?

>NightDancer: Not that anyone found. It’s interesting how simple the content of the clip is. It’s not doctored or altered, it’s raw footage from a Eve 360 ABLAZE stereoscopic camera, depth perception and everything.

>Halloween: No signs of editing either?

>NightDancer: None at all. I’m a klutz when it comes to tech, but people smarter than me have ruled it out. It must be genuine.

>SnoUVwhite: I ran some light forensics on it too. Couldn’t find anything not legit about it.

>eNTRopic: So what? It’s a clip of a bloody elevator opening and nothing else. Why is everyone so excited about it?

>NightDancer: Because we have a lead. There ain’t many places with stickers of Eikon, the Biblically Accurate Angel plastered around.

>eNTRopic: ...is that how the bloody eye with wings is called?

>NightDancer: My GF has a plushie at home with the same design. She calls it cute.

>eNTRopic: Your GF needs a shrink.

Alexiel gazed at the display for a while longer, reading the conversation back from the beginning. NightDancer was right. Eikon, the Biblically Accurate Angel was a failed mascot of that giant Czech conglomerate, Stratosphere, which her band played for one year ago. She gritted her teeth. The taste of the red sand, Serpo throwing up into a bucket, the chaingear, the screams, Renzo almost squashed by falling debris. Sometimes, she still dreamt of it. She shivered, turned back to the display of her PC. The display had turned off. She rolled her eyes, slapped its side with her hand a couple of times. The image triumphantly came back, together with the forum posts and the cartoon avatars of the other users – including the chibi noctiphage that heralded NightDancer’s presence and the colorful ‘NTR’ sign that eNTRopic used as her(?) logo.

>Halloween: That’s the old Stratosphere masqot. No doubt. I don’t think anyone else would use it for anything. That elevator must be somewhere inside a Stratosphere building. Seen how the text on the stiqker is written in English without any Qhinese or Japanese qharaqters, it qan’t be the East Asia branqh either, right?

>eNTRopic: You should seriously fix your KB, @Halloween, or use dictation or, like, a better autocorrector. I get flashbanged every time I see a bloody Q where a C should be.

>Halloween: Please, send me some money at @Halloween.qashmeplenty so that I qan do that, eNTRo. Meqhaniqal keyboards qost an eye and a kidney and I qan’t even pay rent next month.

>eNTRopic: Error: ‘@Halloween.qashmeplenty’ user unknown. Did you mean ‘cashmeplenty’?

>Halloween: Fuqk you, eNTRo.

>LeaOrLie: That tape is totes a headscratcher, esp with the cryptic caption. Sounds like a story my shift manager would tell me at night to keep me from going zzzzzz on the job (she’s how I got into urban legends, btw. Weird gal, but charming. Never ask her out or she’ll either refuse or propose a 3some with her GF instead – only if you’re a girl)

>eNTRopic: Could you, like, shoot me her contact? Ya know, just in case I fall into one of my biconfused phases *again*.

>LeaOrLie: No way. Even someone like her has *standards*, eNTRo.

>Halloween: HEADSHOT.

>NightDancer: FATALITY.

>eNTRopic: ...

>eNTRopic: Okay, the tape. Back to the tape. Stratosphere and all that jazz, yes? But what gives?

>NightDancer: Lilith. That’s the key.

Alexiel grinned from ear to ear. It was getting quite exciting quite quickly. She stopped typing, glanced at the dimly lit display once again. NightDancer was the heart of that forum. Her tales about the Shadow Gallery, the Dream that Never Ends, were so vivid that reading them felt like being there for real. The red desert, the black sky, the twitching tentacles, the emperor, the radio tower, the emptied remnants of old civilizations.

It was so fascinating.

Her blog, ‘Ever a Dreamer’ was a treasure trove of information, information that Alexiel couldn’t find anywhere else on the net – except in archived websites where Dreamers used to share their experiences… before almost all of them died in the Blossoming. NightDancer was an oddity, a relic of a world that didn’t exist anymore. And, if anything, that made reading her words even more exciting. Sure, sometimes she went on a tangent about wandering man-eating lampposts, but that felt oddly in-character. So, if NightDancer said that Lilith was the key, Lilith had to be the key.

Alexiel rested on her cramped office chair, waiting with trepidation. NightDancer was typing something, of course. She would have pushed her new message anytime now. That wait was unbearable. Her eyes pranced around her room, that twenty-square-meters world stashed at the very outskirts of Esperia, a dirty hellhole that included a kitchenette and a small chemical bathroom, plus one bed, one desk and two cupboards. It was dirt cheap, so cheap that her landlord forgot about collecting her rent for the last four years. Alexiel tried to pay it half a dozen times, before giving up and keeping her money stashed in a separate account. She could have used the unexpected extra cash, but dealing with the disgruntled heirs of the old guy who owned her house might have been worse. Because, of course that geezer died. There was no other way he forgot to collect rent for forty-eight months straight. Unless he was jailed or he found out the flat was damaged and/or not abiding by the existing regulations and simply decided to cut his losses. Nevertheless, that two-rooms-and-a-half flat she shared with Nana was all she could afford, at the moment.

>NightDancer: Lilith is a name that has been thrown around the net quite a lot. Some say it’s a lost devsk bioweapon that was snatched by a bunch of neofascists two decades ago, but the files about that are still under military secret.

>Halloween: You mean the the failed Talassa qoup?

>LeaOrLie: Talassa coup? What’s that, @Halloween?

>Halloween: Something very, very Italian. Lightists, everyone?

>eNTRopic: Belgio Quaresima, the Light of Italy. Yuuup, all over the history textbooks even on this side of the Channel. Hate that guy.

>Judokat: Fuck him and the Morelli laws. My dad was born a slave because of his regime. Free the nekos!

>Halloween: So, Ioria Patrizio Talassa was a famous Lightist general, head of the meqhanized battalion ‘Natale’. After the end of the war and the death of Quaresima, he was pardoned and founded his own politiqal party – ‘L’Italia in Marqia’. Things remained quiet until May ‘47. Rumors spread that he aqquired a devsk bioweapon and that he was planning to unleash it on the parliament. Before this quould be verified, Talassa disappeared, never to be found again. He is still believed to be alive somewhere in the world. Some say they have seen him in Hong Kong, working as an janitor.

Alexiel cracked her fingers, prepared for the second part of that exposition dump. It was rare for her to be able to take center stage on the forums, so she wanted to play her cards right, taking time to pen the story in the best way possible.

>Halloween: Last year, a diary rumored to be his was set to be auqtioned in Euterpe, before being stolen by a *lightist werewolf*.

>SnoUVwhite: A lightist WHAT

>eNTRopic: Pffft. I call bull.

>Judokat: My dad reviewed the case. @Halloween is legit. There are pics of that werewolf online, if you look into it.

>Halloween: My SO’s dad worked on the qase too. I qan’t prove it, but please, bear with me.

>Judokat: Rumor has it that the diary contained the word ‘Lilith’ and a picture of an alien being. It was something Brembo Marranzani said to a journo days after the heist.

>SnoUVwhite: Brembo WHO, now?

>Judokat: The owner of the antique store that was destroyed by the werewolf – pardon, by *Frida Igarashi*, owner of Igarashi Supernatural Investigations and walking category 5 hurricane *in her futile attempt to stop the werewolf*. Truly someone nobody should trust and definitely, surely should be relegated to a footnote in the unending flow of history.

>Halloween: Yeah, what @Judokat said. So, the diary is lost and all what’s left is a name, the desqription of a piqture and a ‘no qomment’ by Ambassador Andrakta of EXODUS.

>NightDancer: This checks out with what I read on the topic. So, yeah, I’m kinda sorta convinced the ‘LILITH AWAITS’ line refers to the *exact same Lilith*.

>SnoUVwhite: So, you’re saying that Stratosphere is hiding an alien weapon under our nose and that they stole it from the nazis who stole it from the devsk?

>eNTRopic: You guys, gals and non-binary hoes sure have a wild fantasy. Res Vertighel, is that you?

Alexiel cracked a smile. That entire conversation would have put Traveller to shame. She even came to believe Vertighel himself had to be lurking in the forums – some of his reports were oddly synced with the discussion topics they eviscerated in that discussion board. Alexiel had a hunch about the identity of Judokat (probably, one of her partner’s younger sisters), but the others were all anonymous, familiar names she just liked to be around in her sleepless night hours. It had been a long time since the last collective brainstorming session. Talking with them through the comfort of her screen, without having them see her scarred, burned, gauzed face made her feel better about herself and her self image. A sound from behind made her jolt. Steps. Light steps. The usual steps. She turned around, glanced behind her back.

A thin silhouette stood there, at the entrance of her room, wearing ragged pants and a pajama hoodie two sizes too large. Her ash blond hair peeked out of it, slightly covering her eyes and flowing all down her chest. Alexiel sighed with relief. Right, no thief. No criminal. Just her flatmate.

“Can’t sleep, Nana?”

“Not if you type like that on your keyboard. The walls are thin.”

Alexiel groaned, gestured to her.

“Wanna keep me company for a while? I’m in the middle of something huge.”

“I don’t understand the meaning of huge in this context. Are you sure it’s the correct word?”

Nana sat on Alexiel’s bed, yawned a little, arced her legs and lowered her head till she could pull away her hood with her right foot. Alexiel shrugged, waited for her to get comfortable. Nana had no arms, which made her life way harder than it had any rights to be. How she lost them, though, was something she never wanted to discuss. Her right shoulder, though, was full of small, star-shaped scars. When asked about them, she’d fall silent too. Once, she simply answered with a name, one that to Alexiel’s ears sounded very much foreign. Italian was also not her native language at all. In the four years they shared a flat (moving in right after the landlord stopped collecting the rent), Nana had started to pick up some Italian, but not enough to get by on her own. Her English, though, was spotless, aside from a weird accent that sounded neither North American nor British. Her appearance was a sort of enigma too. Nana was unnaturally pale, slightly malnourished, crippled, with even some extra scars on her face and rest of her body too. One of them run from her forehead down to her right cheek, diagonally down. One of her eyes was slightly too sensitive to light too, causing her to keep it closed relatively often. Without those wounds and with shorter hair (neck-length, maybe, instead of all way down to her navel), she could have been considered somewhat attractive. The way she was, though, made her feel more like a patchwork which was hard to describe or compare – much like Alexiel, in a way. Still, Nana felt even more ashamed of her defects than her flatmate, to the point she locked herself in her room every time Corinne came to visit. In the five months they had been together, her neko partner and her reclusive flatmate never crossed roads even just once.

The message board fizzled out in a desolate blackness. Alexiel slapped the display again, let the picture stabilize one more time. The chat opened in front of her with its glowing blue hue, ensnaring the attention of Nana too. Alexiel observed her for a while, following her gaze, trying to figure out what went in that impenetrable mind of hers.

The day Alexiel found Nana in the corner of a road close to Esperia’s dump, that girl that was now her flatmate looked even smaller, almost like a child. A child that almost cut her throat with a jackknife held in her teeth, aiming at Alexiel’s jugular with a speed and precision that felt out of that world. And she was – what – twelve, maybe thirteen years old? She couldn’t say and Nana wouldn’t tell. Now, she had to be anything between fifteen and eighteen. Her eyes, though, were dull, as if they lost all of their light long ago.

“…can you show me the video, Alex? The one you were discussing online.”

Alexiel nodded, opened the video file from her PC. ‘SPREAD_THE_TAPES.mpx’ suddenly took over half of the display, with the now familiar Eikon sticker staring at the camera. At that sight, Nana gulped. Her quiet eyes suddenly turned brighter, as she gazed at the display in anticipation. As the elevator doors opened and the camera went dark, though, her excitement died down.

“Question: is that… all there is?”

“Yep.”

“Nothing more?”

“Just a caption: ‘LILITH AWAITS’.”

Nana fell silent, let herself slump on the bed, stared at the ceiling. She closed her eyes, opened them again, let out a deep sigh.

“Then, it’s nothing ‘huge’ and I was correct. Your enthusiasm was misplaced as usual. Assessment: you really should be less excitable.”

Alexiel groaned. That weird speech pattern of hers was annoying, but also necessary. Nana’s voice tone missed any and all nuances, coming out as excessively monotone. So, whenever she wanted to clarify her feelings, she added short tags such as question, remark, assessment, acknowledged and the likes, in a way that sounded overly artificial but, somehow, fit her character.

Remark: that chaingear could have burned you to a crisp and cut you to pieces the size of a stamp. You’re lucky you are still alive. Question: since you didn’t die, where’s the 1/64 model kit you promised me?, she told her after she came back from Paradis, with an absolute lack of tact and an amazing display of tone deafness.

Alexiel scratched her gauze a little while peeking back at the display. NightDancer was posting more juicy details about some theories surrounding Lilith and the building shown in ‘SPREAD_THE_TAPES.mpx’. Some anons were now trying to find similarities between that and the Stratosphere HQ in Prague, some were tracking the camera model used to shoot the film. Overall, the chat room was bursting with activity – activity that didn’t faze Nana in the slightest. Alexiel caressed her long, platinum-like hair, let them fall again on her hoodie.

“We should cut them or twist them into braids. You are drowning in hair, girl.”

“Acknowledged, but no. Samson lost his strength when they cut his hair. I don’t want to be Samson. Father—someone who cared for me told me the story too many times. Also, if I cut them, I would look too much like her.”

“Who?”

“Her.”

Alexiel looked in the direction of her gaze, then back, then around. Yet, found nothing. Not a picture. Not a poster. No nothing.

Nana was looking straight at the mirror.

Nana was looking straight at herself.

For an instant, Alexiel shivered. The reflected image of Nana reminded her of someone. A woman she had seen all over the news several times. A woman that was as notorious as she was deadly. That woman, though, was somewhere in Prague, at the side of Mr. Greschnik and definitely not in a cramped room in a crappy flat at the outskirts of Esperia.

Shelving those thoughts away, Alexiel turned back to her display, typed one last message.

>Halloween: Sorry, gotta go. My flatmate’s sleepy and my PQ’s too noisy. Gotta log out, qya tomorrow. Hope for juiqy news.

Then, she left the website and switched off her computer. Maybe, Nana was right. Maybe, they both needed some good sleep.

Chasing ghosts that late in the night was already twisting her perception and making her see similarities that didn’t exist.