[real mechanical metronome] [one click every second] [electrical room hum] Mark. [switch clicks] [thirty-two tones die] [one thin pulse remains] There you are. What's that? Noise. No. Noise is what people call the instrument when they don't understand it. Put that on your tombstone. No tombstone. Too analog. [Fatbo chuckles quietly] Oh, we're gonna have fun in here. [huge low drum enters] ONE POINT SEVEN TWO [group whisper] AGAIN. ONE POINT SEVEN TWO [group] AGAIN. High. Low. Breath. Reset. ONE POINT SEVEN TWO It stopped being alive. Why the fuck didn't it stop? [metronome continues] Before we make tonight special remember the boring dead. Eleven beds. Eleven endings. Eleven clean flat lines. Cardiac artifact. Ventilator artifact. Electrode drift. Nothing left once the body quit. Good. Then number twelve says— Not tonight. [glass tone rings] One eighteen. Still talking. One twenty-six. Eyes shut. One thirty-one. Somebody humming. One forty-two. Breathing shallow. One forty-seven. Long exhale. Another almost comes. Doesn't. [all instruments vanish] One forty-nine and twelve seconds. Circulatory arrest. [metronome] One fifty-four. Time of death. [silence] Then— [low glass vibration] Something rises. Tiny. Structured. Repeating. [drums crash in] ONE POINT SEVEN TWO [group] AGAIN. ONE POINT SEVEN TWO [group] AGAIN. Kill reference two. Still there. Kill the clock. Still there. Kill ventilation. Still there. [group whisper] Still there. EEG flat. I know. Heart stopped. I know. Then what is that? I don't know. [Fatbo] That's when science gets interesting. [second voice] That's when science should get scared. [Fatbo] Even better. [deep bass pulse] If this came from a living brain I'd call it hers. Don't use that word. What word? Hers. It's repeating. Machines repeat. So does a heart. A dead one doesn't. [everything stops] Say that again. A dead one doesn't. [ensemble pounds the 1.72-second figure] ONE POINT SEVEN TWO ONE POINT SEVEN TWO ONE POINT SEVEN TWO RESET. [prepared piano] [bowed glass] Can I hear it? It isn't sound. Can you make it sound? You turned her last hour into thirty screens. Don't get shy now. [sonification begins] High. Low. A breath-like harmonic. Reset. High. Low. Breath. Reset. That's nothing. Correct. [group laughter] Damn. Coldest guest on the album. [tones continue] Pale oval. Dark red. Hand. Green. Reset. Pale oval. Dark red. Hand. Green. Green what? We don't know. She had a green glass horse. [all music thins] My grandmother's. Mom kept it in a box. Made me hold it when I was six because I couldn't sit still while she cut my hair. Did anybody tell you that? No. Did she? Why would she? [1.72-second motif] Hand. Green glass. Hand. Green glass. She was holding my hand. The last thing she saw was probably me. [long silence] For the first time nobody calls it noise. [Fatbo quietly] Well. That's fucked up. [organ-like low harmonium enters] If you find God— Don't let Victor patent him. [one startled laugh] No promises. [Fatbo] Put me down for merch rights. [second voice] Fatbo. What? No. Fair. [drums return, harder] ONE POINT SEVEN TWO [group] WHAT CAME THROUGH? ONE POINT SEVEN TWO [group] WE DON'T KNOW. ONE POINT SEVEN TWO [group] WHAT DOES IT WANT? Stop inventing answers. [group] AGAIN. Again. Again. Again. The pattern isn't dying. It corrects itself. Disturb it— comes back. Move it— comes back. Twenty-six minutes. No decay. It's reacquiring. Reacquiring what? [low voice] Careful. [metal relay clacks] Looking changes it. Maybe there ain't a ghost. Maybe wanting makes the hand move. Hand moves the machine. Machine moves the world. Maybe that's already enough. [Fatbo] You always ruin the supernatural part. [second voice] Reality keeps doing my job. [brief laugh] [metronome suddenly doubles in perceived tension] Wait. What's underneath it? A code. What code? Mesa. Calibration. That's not possible. Why? Because the room marker isn't supposed to become part of the brain. But there it is. Again. Again. Again. [group] AGAIN. The machine doesn't know death. It knows loss of update. So it grabs the last thing it can still find. Again. And again. And again. [Fatbo] Sounds healthy. [second voice] Shut up. [Fatbo] Fair. [huge breakdown] ONE POINT SEVEN TWO [group] LAST THING IT FOUND. ONE POINT SEVEN TWO [group] ROUND AND ROUND. ONE POINT SEVEN TWO [group] DEAD OR ALIVE? Wrong question. ONE POINT SEVEN TWO [group] THEN WHAT'S THE RIGHT ONE? Did we find something after death— [all music cuts] —or build something that behaves like it? [long silence] [metronome] Click. Click. Click. Click. [Fatbo whispers] Anybody else hear breathing? [second voice] That's you. No. Mine's over here. [another breath appears across the room] Oh. [1.72-second motif returns very softly]
