1. |
Hypnopompia
00:35
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Earth, 2278. Underground, millions of humans are sitting still, tethered to machines in an elaborate prison called Greenhouse, a facility built beneath the soil by colonizers from another planet.
Rows of motionless, grey-pink human bodies sit there, each one alone, connected only by a network of Posts: the machines that supply these bodies with everything needed to keep them from withering.
Images stream through the Post’s wires and into the minds of the humans in Greenhouse: falsified memories of nights out, good meals, watching films, fighting in wars; marriages, birthdays and funerals, all tailored to each body’s genetics and funneled into their skulls like water. The brains within these helpless heads lighting up at the images, emitting theta waves. The Posts harvest these brainwaves. To the race that colonized Earth, theta waves are a prized commodity. Humans do not live, their happiness is the ore drawn out from Greenhouse, the mine of minds.
The extraterrestrial firm that owns Greenhouse recently began testing new Posts. These are equipped so that two humans can be placed on one Post, promising increased efficiency --- the technology still in beta testing. This cost-cutting measure, pitched by an over-achieving intern, was proven on paper but not in practice.
Some handfuls of humans were kept fully alive. Including Guards, keeping watch over the whirring machinery and their once-fellow-man. The eleven Guards at the two-human-per-Post section were tired from hauling and hooking-up the limp clammy bodies all day, troubleshooting cabling, filling out reports. So they began drinking earlier than usual, unable to hear a distant rattling of cabling over their own voices, the laughter more tuneful as the night went on.
One unit - one person - woke up.
Theresa’s eyes were able to briefly see her-self. Her hands clutched her stomach to discover it tethered with metal and plastic, like she was a fetus and the wires were her umbilical cord. As she pounded against the Post that connected her to her new cellmate, she found her voice worked just like it always did in the false images. She saw a thin clear optic wire, spewing blue laser pulses on the wall behind her. It seems this had come loose.
Every nearby Greenhouse guard bounded toward the piercing sound of a human scream. They combined their strengths to hook her back up to the Post. As they restrained her they saw her eyes dart to her silent neighbors in their rooms. The Greenhouse guards eased her back down to her cradle. Later, drunker, the guards would agree that she had probably seen close to forty pale neighbors before the sedative reclaimed her senses. A numbing calm returned to her brain and she was instantly taken to a scene at the edge of a canyon. This was right where the dream left off, but the image began to flicker, morphing instead into one faint, grainy face forming on the horizon.
It was a face she recognized: her new cellmate in Greenhouse appeared above, her face a constellation sat between either side of the dusk canyon. The pixels of the face twisted and fused with the artificial Arizona sky.
The pixelated face’s first words to Theresa come out hoarse. “Was that you just now..?”
“It was,” Theresa answered. “Could you hear me?”
“I’ve heard everything the whole time our bodies have been in that town,” Claire says. “Did you see that door?”
Hypnopompia
(instrumental)
Guard Cmdr. Hall’s office was located down a winding hallway. It was secluded enough that if the motion detectors would go off, he would just assume that a guard had tripped the sensor by accident. His job was to keep tabs on the cells from his office. In theory, if a human ever came-to like Theresa had, Cmdr. Hall’s pudgy finger would enter a four digit PIN, allowing him to then press a big blue button.
Cmdr. Hall was told that the blue button would unleash a swarm of nano-drones he could then use to sedate would-be escapees. He had never needed to push it, so it didn’t matter that he was never trained in how to pilot the swarm, and, though he had never admitted it to anyone else, the entire time he had served as Guard Commander, he had never even known the passcode. The only code he knew by heart was the one that opened the exit when his shift was over.
Claire lay awake one day when a Guard said it. “1-7, 1-6.” She would never forget it.
Theresa’s brief and violent awakening would have been the first time that the deployment of these drones would have been called for. However, since no one noticed that Claire had been awake, no Guards were on the lookout for her spying eyes.
At the canyon, Theresa winces. “I did see a door. To the right.”
“You saw it? You? You---okay,” the voice in the stars replies. “I’m Claire. Want to get out? I do too. Let me tell you what I know.”
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2. |
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There is a portal at the edge of town
This alley here will take us halfway down
Step by step by step
I lift the glass it asks for my passcode
I knew it all my life but somehow, no
Incorrect, try again
A nano-drone awoke then made it clear
"Whoever tried to warp will disappear"
A flash and it was gone
They lay in wait for us didn't they
They paved no ways for us did they
Fist to the gate that holds me
It quaked in its welding
Thinking no man could fell me
I cut through the gates, singing oh oh
You got your way all those times
I held up the ladder, you climbed
Now you wear this do-good disguise
And turn us all into your puppets for this show you named life
Just before genocide
They’ll try to trap us one by one and starve us out so we die
Know it’s not all in your mind
‘Cuz the race is done and over and you never heard that shot fired
God-hand in the back of my head
A bouquet of wires
Fall back or rise up from the dead
now the choice is ours
----
Claire began teaching Theresa how to see the world around them in the Greenhouse. Claire’s way of opening her senses to real-life was rooted in a salvaged childhood memory. Claire remembered a time she placed the backs of her hands on either side of a doorframe. When her knuckles turned white, she would take one step forward. Her arms would spring up around her on their own like wings. Soon Theresa could see a face from her own childhood. It was foggy but it was just like Claire’s wings and so Theresa was able to drop in and out of the Post’s dreamland at will. Looking at each other in the Greenhouse cell, Theresa can hear the guards as clear as Claire.
“Eight of us,” said a Guard, his voice like brittle reeds tightening round his throat. “Eight of us dead.”
“They got scared when girl flipped out,” another replied. “They got suicide sick. Died. I haven’t seen them and I didn’t like them.”
“Three now,” said another, calmer than the other two. “And too many hallways.”
This meant Theresa and Claire would have to play dead less often. Soon the only cord still attached to the Post was the one they used to talk. The other empty ports that had been stapled into their skin ached. They felt hungry without the biggest tube and grew weak, more and more confused every hour by the stillness surrounding them. If they were going to leave, they had to do it that day, or else they would die.
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3. |
Tether
05:56
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Twilight wanes
And night’s stark stranglehold appears
Tireless I wake
Ever-hungering disease
My fate is tied
To the tether on my wrist
My eyes capsize
Lay silent
Intrepid phantoms packed away
The welding wearing every single day
Corners, corners, corners
Is everyone asleep
(I can feel the wires)
Is everyone asleep
(I can feel the wires)
...Push
I can feel the wires in your mind
I can read your thoughts and analyze
Implausible disguise
Access denied
Can you tell what dream I had last night
Same one I’ve been having all my life
If that’s all you then what am I
Hivemind
Brains laying in retrograde
Braced for the future in knots
Forgoing analysis
Tense, out of balance and lost
Singled out in a marathon
Tie up the mast to the sinking dock
Take either handful of copper yarn
Tie up the horse to the burning barn
Shattered compulsory paragon
Tie up the horse to the burning barn
Take either handful of copper yarn
Push them together until it’s gone
...I see you flickering so push
----
Claire and Theresa run like hell, unpursued, following the map they drew in their minds. And it was easier than they thought: eleven guards had left a hatch wedged open, neglected for nearly a full year now. Their yelping indignation turned to laughter as they ran.
They sprinted most of the way past the north-south hallway toward the Alloy Hose Shop, and while they believed that they hadn’t been noticed, their motion had triggered the alarm system. A blue word “WHEREWITHAL” scrolled furiously on the monitors overhead. Since the fugitives used Guard Cmdr. Hall’s passcode on a previous gate, the swarm hovered impotently two corridors behind them. Tracing his belt, Cmdr. Hall watched a skin-flick he had ordered in goggles.
Breathless, Claire leads Theresa along the mapped-out path to a manhole cover. They’ve made it out. A blizzard rages above their heads, showering snow upon the wrecked remains of life on Earth. A mile down, they see an old train tunnel. As they sprint toward the tunnel, Theresa loses steam. Only now in the cold ugliness does she regret ever leaving the comfort of the Post. The device had attended all their bodily needs. The pleasant dreams had only conditioned Claire and Theresa to the nap after a meal they never had to chew. If the consciousness they were used to could be called a life, at least it was easy. This was hard.
Theresa bargains with Claire to give up now, come back to the Greenhouse with her, and hook the cables back up. Claire attempts to convince Theresa to stay the course and see what waits for them beyond the shelter of the tunnel.
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4. |
Fall into Then
04:12
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Imagine that we still accepted the unacceptable
Wouldn’t you still be alone
You tell me, just go
And isn’t all the wreckage you see
Calmer than either/or?
You’re bitter, you swear
Emotional? It’s just pixel fire
Whatever becomes of us right now
Promise you won’t tread lightly
I’m serious as a heart attack right now
So little thought to the chance you got outside those walls
You think you’d rather be on fire, than on a wire?
You think I take you serious when you’re this tired?
...I’m serious as a heart attack right now
I got to get her off the cliff
We’re running round in circles...
How ‘bout we aim for a bigger prize
(What’s so good about living tethered up, you know?)
You’re trying, it’s fake, it’s charming, you know?
Get up, don’t get inside your head
Fall into then
They think we’re beat down, try again
Have I ever failed you yet
You gotta get inside my head
All intellect
A ruder ruse that complicates
I got some peace of mind to share yet
Whatever becomes of me right now
Remember it all too brightly
Whatever becomes of me and you
See it in those you knew
Promise you won’t tread lightly
Whatever becomes of us
----
They hike to an abandoned train station at the outskirts of a big city. The streets are empty but still lit. Some buildings lay in rubble, some are intact. They follow the streetlights to a multi-level grocery store. The sign on the door reads “Store is now closed. Thanks for your business over the years.” The pair decide it’s safe to take refuge there, and begin to forage for food and supplies in the abandoned aisles.
Claire and Theresa step into a deserted kitchen area and trip an alarm. A broken loudspeaker whistles loudly for two minutes as they stand frozen. No one comes for them, but soon after the alarm starts whirring, they hear claws scraping at the storefront windows. Unsure whether there are creatures like this inside the store, they make it to the top of the building and spend that brisk but liveable night on the roof, tending to each others’ injuries.
As they struggle to sleep, they see the amber glow of dawn. Behind them, the blizzard rages on, but up ahead, a highway slices a barren desert, and even further, just on the horizon, a verdant oasis sits carved into a sandy ridge. Claire wakes up to Theresa, transfixed on how the sunrise outlines the distant trees.
“It’s like a promise,” Theresa says.
“I don’t know,” Claire says. “Did you hear those things? Had to be huge. Had to be mean. They’ll kill us if---”
“Not true, if we just---”
Claire hops onto the ledge. “Stop talking! They can eat me!”
“No!” Theresa grabs the arm that Claire dangled in Theresa’s reach, only to wrest it away from her again.
“It’s easier, just let me do this.”
“No.”
“Why?! Why why why?”
Theresa jots frenetic answers into the morning air, penned, as quick as she can talk, by a sudden fear of loss and by the imprecise elegance of love.
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5. |
L'appel du Vide
05:06
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Take the spiral stair up to the top of the city
Where the wind hits our skin like it's 2250
And the stars are all put there on purpose
When I'm being carried on you… carried on...
There's an matter cloud forming round back of the building
And it might take us with, so let's - quick - raid the shelving
Take the keys take your wallet, a flashlight a lighter
Carry on, you
Are you sure
Because sure isn’t a word anymore
It’s a thing that people used to say
When everything was gonna be okay
Hello gorgeous
How’s your arm
I would get us breakfast in bed if it weren't for the alarms
So we might live longer, let's learn a martial art
Make our own bathwater, walk like we got armor on
The night light paints white satin on you in all my clothes
I’ll fetch you when you’re close
All the stoplights are changing, but no one’s awake yet
And it dawns on you well after dawn that it’s vacant
As relief turns to fear, and your tears taste your blanket,
How can I carry on
Are you sure
Because sure isn’t a word anymore
It’s a thing that people used to say
When everything was gonna be okay
Hello gorgeous
How’s your arm
I would get us breakfast in bed if it weren't for the alarms
So we might live longer, let's learn a martial art
Make our own bathwater, walk like we got armour on
The sunlight paints white satin on you in all my clothes
I’ll fetch you when you’re close
When the worst does its best
And I can’t catch my breath
O how many rooftops do we gotta leave behind
To carry on in this disaster they designed
Hello gorgeous (You got your way all those times)
How’s your arm (I held up the ladder you climbed)
I would get us breakfast in bed if it weren't for the alarms
(gather, puppets for this show we named life)
So we might live longer, let's learn a martial art
Make our own bathwater, walk like we got armour on
The night light paints white satin on you in all my clothes
(the race is never over)
I’ll fetch you when you’re close
It’s never over (never heard that shot fired)
-----
Claire backs away from the ledge, coughing, but not talking. They decide to follow the highway through the desert and to the oasis.
After they get some restless sleep, they pack everything they can and set off for the vacant exit ramp that twists toward the oasis. A sun, half glistening yellow and half machine, slowly rises above their heads, its oppressive rays bearing down on them.
As Theresa’s mind grows weaker from the heat, memories of her past leak back into her brain: an airstrike --- Earth was taken over, then further back --- to what life was before the Greenhouse, before dull achy holes where wires were, and before Claire --- and way before now, Theresa’s lips tried to say, too dry from the heat. She sees the foggy face again --- and Claire was right: that face, that fog, is from 2250. Eyes blink stinging from overuse --- “Put a tube down my throat,” Theresa petitions weakly through numb lips ---- as her eyes grow dryer she sees that face --- 2249 ---- she did --- Theresa watched New Years’ on TV with that face --- Big, candy numbers to announce that 2249 behind us --- 2250 --- Theresa wonders when when will the past is supposed to start, as the foggy face fills the dizzy void in her eyes and her tongue grows numb --- Twenty….do thfiteh … The star they sent has upstaged the Sun we underestimated --- then what? The face --- water, to carry memory --- without water the mind is left to grind against itself ---
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6. |
New Sun
09:50
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Desert abandon and drought
Wander forever about -- to water -- water...
Beaten down, I cannot explain
How freedom makes me crave my cage
I wonder...Who defined the urgency, and
Who decried humanity, and
Who installed the face of God?
Who controls the new-new sun?
She asked to no one
She screamed at the stars
The vultures circled... all abandoned cars..
Keys in ignitions...
The bones wait at lights...
Forever frozen
The wave that took them took their lives...
Silence…
Picture the perfect shady tree
We’ll be there soon, you and me
Steel, unforgiving steel, and heat...
Roots, roots without their plumes, under feet..
Buoyant clairvoyant...
She waits for my tears
She heard my mind cry for those three long dead years
Picture the perfect shady tree
We’ll be there soon you and me
I remember my mom now...
She had headaches ever since I could remember
She would lie on the, uh.. the couch...
She would tell me that she loved me...
I remember, ‘she loves me...’
She could laugh every sentence
She could laugh ‘till she was breathless...
Buried with the TV on
It’s like she knew about the bombs
It’s like she knew about the, uh... ‘air-strike?’
Never cursing at me, making noise...
Never yelling at the static...
She’d just laugh, like it was automatic…
One day she screamed for me to go to the attic...
And she was buried with the TV on
Then it was dark... until we stumbled upon...
...
water ...
---
At the brink of exhaustion Clair and Theresa reach the oasis. They rush toward its green landscape and vast, clear lake. They fall to their knees, and scoop a desperate bowlful from the lake with their hands.
The moment the water hits Theresa’s lips and the desert crumples around her vision by an unseen fist. Claire is screaming.
At once Theresa is back inside the damp underground Greenhouse. The guards attempt to restrain Theresa. She looks down at her wrist to see the hair-thin cord at her wrist glowing. Theresa follows the cord to see Claire fighting five out of eleven Guards as they try to restrain her.
Seven other guards look on. Nano-drones hover outside the cell, ready to strike in the event eleven guards cannot restrain the two --- caged now by imported impulses. Theresa’s eyes shoot straight into Claire’s. Claire’s face is muted and the glowing cord melts into scattered points of light, separating to become the stars above a canyon.
As the oasis fades away and just before the sedative lulls Theresa back into a dream, she hears Claire’s voice, hoarse but placid, ask faintly: “Was that you just now..?”
“It was,” Theresa answered.
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Vultress
Vultress is a progressive rock, heavy-prog band: Jordan Gaboian (guitar) Paul Uhrina (drums) and Anthony Capuano.
(Vox/keys)
On Hypnopompia, the band fuses prog rock, metal, modern heady alt-rock and other eclectic influences.
Critics called their debut:
"[A] flabbergastingly high-quality release" (Scene Point Blank)
"one of the finest recordings ever of a debuting band" (Background Magazine)
... more
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