The terror is stronger. I hear pounding. The black waters shift in and out, always moving. Everything has changed, darkness has fallen. There is a new order. Everything moves except me.
Something is rushing into the machines
Even if extraterrestrial life is based on carbon and uses water as a solvent, like Earth life, it may still have a radically different biochemistry. The science of extraterrestrial life is known as astrobiology. I feel like snakes are coming in and out of the back of my head. I am not moving. Time goes slowly. Our long delayed “Plurality of Worlds” expedition recently has developed some sentientistic complications. The tuberous underground crystals are not bounded by their own faces but only within their own eternal panspermiatic forms. I am not moving much at all. So slow. Am I dead? Something is moving. Listen…
We were walking in a strange spooky place after our long journey through the boundless immensity of space, “Descending into Darkness” (6:44). Speculation about the possibility of inhabited worlds outside the planet Earth dates back to antiquity. Up until today, no extraterrestrial life had yet been conclusively detected, although efforts have always been underway. Such life might range from simple forms such as prokaryotes to zoocentric intelligent beings, possibly bringing forth civilizations that might be far more advanced than humanity. Once upon a time some would encourage aggressive methods to try to contact intelligent extraterrestrial life. Now we know, the universal laws of survival apply, the biggest ones eat the little ones. The inverse is true too, the microbes can take almost anything.
We came upon what we now call “The Hive” (6:14), after the discovery and close examination we called the rhythmic pace of motion the heartbeat. With dread we began to recognize that something starts now. I know I see something but I am not moving. Signaling with my eyes. I hear something, to hide I close my eyes. I see that we will meet again. There is something big moving now and it is getting closer. I am trying to move again. I see that it can see me, it knows I am here, listening.
The terror is stronger. I hear pounding. The black waters shift in and out, always moving. Everything has changed, darkness has fallen. There is a new order. Everything moves except me. “First Contact feat. Atrium Carceri” (7:44), we were wrong about alien motivations. We were following an unmanned expedition to an unknown planet. I can’t take it, I am going to kill myself now. This time I mean it. I have the means. “It’s Growing Inside” (6:13) New life has started. There is a new heartbeat fearlessly growing. The machines are running. I can never wait. The promised infant is shrieking and wrything, all in the darkness, wet warm darkness. The old factory of my remembered childhood explorations has a new sound. Now I have to figure that out. I forget. I have never been gone this long before. Are my sound-dreams the only worlds left to me now?
Now it is dangerous to discover. Down lower than imagined, way down there, I feel the warm buzz, safe and nourishing, “Incubation Period feat. Snakes of Russia” (5:18). The hunger grows to feed the fetus, bigger fears and risks are taken. The beat takes over, adjustments are made, the surface tells nothing. I now will die and this thing lives on.
I wait. I hope only that the old cycles are turning around again, just as slowly as before. I am still waiting to die, I have not given up. The pounding never stopped. Now I know that we never left this place, I only dreamed I did, it was all so real. “Leukopenia” (5:32) reveals that my low white blood cell count compounds the risks of any new infection because there simply are not enough white blood cells, the chamber is hollow and too dark. Try to forget about the smells and the silky filth, “Decomposed Tissue” (9:02) opens and an ancient gong explodes. Something is rushing into the machines, something is releasing caves full of angry bee creatures. I am covered only with a necrotic conglomerate, the tension remains. I have forgotten my only intentions. I fear that this is as dark as can be, wait, the pulse is back inside. What if, what if I do not die?
Breaking up and crumbling into something older ::
I hear new activity in the chamber, “Contaminated Blood feat. Blakmoth” (5:21) again some pounding. I think they are building a new machine, the beat is somehow younger or just new to my ears. I see shadows only, the monsters are dancing in a slow ritual within the great chamber.
Now my ribs and my lungs have become disconnected, how can this be? “Costochondral Separation” (6:27), I feel the bones and the places they once connected are somehow now all wrong. The cartilage is rotten, the pain is always a constant attendant. I am still alive. I am here, the pain is only physical. I am going home soon, I know it. I am going to learn to walk. The distant explosions repeat, closer. Now I fear the danger is locked within me. Listen, something is breaking away now. I must make some kind of first movement, push…
I heard the rescue party brag that nobody feels any pain. Do they have me? We prepare for transport, so much is involved.
I have been lost, waiting for years to go home. Now we are moving. I almost hear a mad laugh, there is a mirthful beast, do they see it here inside me? Oh god, save us please.
I am everywhere in the music, now I can move in a new way. “Alien Threat feat. Atrium Carceri” (5:28) The landing party has discovered me here, I am still not moving, I am not trying to move, I just wait. I just watch the alien threat gather behind them, they do not see it. So big, a throbbing beat with a grey shadow, a moaning survivor. I do not need to move, they have me loaded on a gurney and they are taking me. Is this true? The velocity feels almost combustible.
“Evacuation” (7:14) now there is a long long long delay, shout “hurry up!” and wait, stay down, now will it break? Wait to move ahead and secure.
The departure has mostly gone well. “Aftermath” (8:00) takes the chimes and sorrow, the sentiment, saying that we regret the loss, we will try and find the pieces. I am still waiting to die, but the music, the sound! It keeps me here. I am but a skull with dried old snakes attached to the far side of the cranium and that is where I continue to wait, an astronaut caught in lost time, now a monument in darkness and gloom, will it reverberate and combust? In my solitude I can make all the questions fit, I will never move.
I never left. From here the whole thing is breaking up and crumbling into something older. I see the evacuation party fading back into their journey home. They have abandoned my final form. I want to move again. I remember moving. I just am sitting here now. Venturing into space always requires enduring long periods of travel.
The Roman Titus Lucretius Carus predicted that humanity would find innumerable exoplanets with life-forms similar to, and different from, the ones on Earth, and even other races of humans. The writings of these individuals demonstrate interest in extraterrestrial life has existed throughout terrestrial history, although only recently have humans had any physical means for investigating it.
Void Stasis is a collaboration from Kristof Bathory of Dawn of Ashes, Scott Denman of Die Sektor and Marie Ann Hedonia.
Viral Incubation is available on Cryo Chamber. [Bandcamp]
