Wasting Tape
Ah, now here's a tale for the ages, an unspoken understanding amongst the Domers. You see, in Harley Dome, long after the bubble had sealed them off from the world, one thing became more precious than gold or gasoline—VHS tapes. Yes, those old black cassettes, once used to capture the daring feats of racers and daredevils, became the lifeblood of the town.
Back in the days before The Incident, tapes flowed like water. The videographers would swarm the desert, recording every jump, every skid, every gravity-defying stunt. A stack of fresh VHS tapes arrived with each supply truck that rumbled into town. But when the bubble closed around Harley Dome, it didn’t just trap the people. It sealed off everything inside it—including the last remaining stock of VHS tapes.
At first, no one thought much of it. After all, there were enough tapes to go around for a while. But as time passed, something shifted in the town. The Domers, always craving the rush of speed, found themselves needing those tapes for more than just recording memories. They needed them to keep the spirit of the town alive. For in Harley Dome, you weren’t truly anyone unless your exploits were captured on tape, replayed on that towering Jumbotron in the square, with the crowd hooting and hollering as you flew down a canyon trail or tore through the desert sands.
And so, slowly but surely, the tapes became more than a way to capture adventures. They became currency.
A single VHS tape could be traded for food, for parts to repair a rig, or even for a favor from one of the more skilled Domers. But as the years rolled on and the stockpile dwindled, the tapes took on a life of their own. To waste a tape on the mundane—on anything that wasn’t a feat of speed or bravery—was the worst offense you could commit. Legend has it that old Wylie Brooks, an engine mechanic whose skills were second to none, once wasted a tape filming nothing more than a quiet afternoon fixing his rig. The town was furious. “What fool spends the most valuable thing we’ve got on something as dull as nuts and bolts?” they said. The Jumbotron was sacred, meant for moments that made the blood race, the heart pound. After all, tapes were now as rare as a perfect downhill run, and wasting one was like throwing away a chance at immortality. Now the mundane and the sublime mean different things to different people, so it’s most likely true that old Wylie had different opinions than most on what constituted “dull,” but the consensus had been set, for better or for worse.
You see, in Harley Dome, those tapes didn’t just store images; they stored hope. A person’s worth was measured not in what they owned, but in what was captured on those reels of magnetic tape. When the Jumbotron played a driver’s stunt—whether it was the daring leap over Dead Man’s Gorge or a gravity-powered attempt at the Exit Loop—that driver’s name echoed through the town. They became part of the town’s myth, immortalized in grainy footage, their legacy as indelible as the sun-worn cliffs.
But with so few tapes left, and only ten or so overdubs before the image was mud, every inch of tape counted. There’s an old story, told around the fire, about a man named Jeb “Hollywood” Wilkins. They say Hollywood found an entire cache of unopened VHS tapes in the belly of a collapsed gas station half inside and half outside the bubble. Hundreds of tapes in total. Each one fresh in its cellophane wrapper. But Hollywood didn’t hoard them or trade them off for riches. No, he did something even more daring—he decided to use them all… without wasting a single inch.
One by one, he recorded the wildest stunts the town had ever seen. He raced down the steepest dunes, jumped the widest canyons, and bomb-dropped from the highest cliffs—all in the span of a single summer. Every night, the town gathered to watch Hollywood on the Jumbotron, as the tapes rolled endlessly, showing a man who seemed more like a force of nature than a mortal driver.
But when the last tape rolled, and Hollywood had nothing left to give, he disappeared into the desert, leaving only the legend behind. His story became a cautionary tale—a reminder that in Harley Dome, you could burn bright, but only so long as you had tape to document your fire.
Today, as the supply of tapes dwindles to just a handful, the Domers are more careful than ever. Every new stunt, every new adventure, must be weighed—is it worthy of being captured? If you waste a tape on the mundane, on anything less than greatness, you’ve not just thrown away a piece of plastic. You’ve wasted a piece of Harley Dome’s soul. The old folks say the town’s heart beats in timecode as the Jumbotron, flickering to life every night, plays back the memories of those who dared to live fast and wild.
And so the tapes, worn as they are, carry on—both currency and culture, the last remnants of a world that once stretched beyond the bubble, now shrinking with every precious reel.
