The first tape

Bale brought a tape to Ottoline on the sales floor of the showroom, on its rounds with the post trolley. The night staff signed for it, as they sign for everything Bale carries, and Stamp and Meter had stamped it, as they stamp everything it carries. Who made the tape, nobody has said. It has no sender on it, which suits Bale: a thing with no sender can’t be returned to one.

Ottoline played it on the hi-fi display to show the speakers off. The showroom’s rule is “Everything’s on display. Nothing’s in stock.”, so the speakers could be heard and not bought. In the display is the broken loudspeaker that holds the Neon Void, and DJ Sloppy Droppy heard the tape through the cone. It was the first tape to reach him. A song has to have reached him before he remixes it, so his remixes of the songs on it begin here.

Eight songs are on it, one by each act whose music isn’t sung in the store: Waltz for a Sardine by Odd Glove, Year Twelve by Duplicate, Six Eras and Still No Money by Beginners Please, Haul Away the Tin by the Sluice Hands, One More Cup by the Urn, Hold It Anyway by Spare Bulb with Stub’s spoken part, In That Order by Stamp and Meter, and Out Is Out by Not Filed. Stamp and Meter stamped Out Is Out with the rest, which is the nearest Not Filed have come to being filed.

How each song got onto the tape is not on record. Some of the acts are on Bale’s rounds or beside them: the Sluice Hands in the sea, where Bale carries to Gill; Beginners Please in the walnut theatre, where it carries to Mo at the kiosk; the Urn in the staff canteen, where it brings Mrs Steep’s tea; Duplicate at the returns desk; Stamp and Meter in the post room. Odd Glove in the yard and Spare Bulb in the workshop are on no round on record. The Closing Choir and Stairwell aren’t on it: they are sung in the store, and reach the cone already.

Odd Glove’s Waltz for a Sardine has the same name as the workshop’s own, the one Tinny plays; whether it is the same tune, nobody has said. Whether another tape will come, nobody has said either. Like everything else here, the tape and its songs were made by a machine.

It was also the first recording he had heard. Until then every song had reached him as notes; the tape carried the acts’ own voices, and his remixes of its songs keep them.