This Year: 2013

"This Year" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song from one year of my life. See the introduction for more.

As I said the last two weeks, 2012 is a scratch, because I had two songs for 2011.

I may have done this entire series, the whole "This Year" sequence, just to put this down in words. It's been bouncing around my head for a few years now.

Songs affect us strongly, of course - every person (I hope I speak for everyone but I probably don't) has some songs that are personal or important or special, for different reasons and in different ways. We can't choose that, mostly. It happens. It hits us.

I'm not a visual thinker. My mind works in words, or concepts. But this song - it's like there's a video for it, that I could make. I don't see it - my mind just does not work that way - but I know how it would go, I know the beats, how it lines up with the music, I know the emotions and the story.

I could probably do an AV script for it - time it out to the second. If I could draw at all, I could storyboard it. It's all that clear. And it came out of nowhere, from listening to the song.

For 2013, it has to be Heat Death Infinity Splitter by 65 Days of Static. It's an instrumental. And, in my head, it's a SF story.

(Oh, I should also say, before I completely dive down my rabbit hole, that 65dos - that's the short form of their name, all internetty - is thoroughly awesome and has a bunch of other songs equally good. Radio Protector. String Loop. Weak4. Dance Parties (Distant). Come To Me. Those last two are the only ones I know with actual lyrics, if you need that to get into a band.)

You can quit here if you want; it will run long. It is hugely self-indulgent.

No one knows what is happening
No one knows what is happening
There is a lot of danger out there, OK?

This is spoken, to open the song. From here, I'm going to tell you the story - again, it's my story, it's not official or "real" or anything. Just what came, full-formed, into my head from listening. (You may want to start the video below, as you read.)

There are two main characters: The Engineer and The Kid. The Engineer is that speaker; The Kid is, well, her kid. Ten, eleven, something like that. Boy or girl, doesn't matter. A kid, the child of an engineer, inquisitive, daring as any tween, smart.

We're on a big old spacestation, out in the depths somewhere. Lived-in, loved, full of people and life. We open with a longshot, the camera moving in and wandering around the surface as we hear The Engineer speak, as we move into the station and see her talk to The Kid. I don't think they're in person: she's talking over some speaker or comlink, already at work keeping the old hulk running when The Kid is ready to start the day.

We think The Engineer might be in charge of maintenance or systems. We see her bustling around, quickly, giving orders, looking at things, making fixes. We know this station needs a lot of attention to keep it going.

Cut to space: a ship is approaching: shiny, angular, inhuman.

Cut again: leaders of the station, assembling. Clearly nervous, some happy some apprehensive. Ready to meet the envoys. The aliens.

Interspersed: The Kid heading through the station. Purposeful, inquisitive. Going to see the big event. Snaking through crowds, going through sneaky ways. The Kid knows this station intimately: can get anywhere and see anything. Isn't going to miss this.

The music is quietly ominous as the alien ship docks. Doors open. At 1:10 the envoys start moving through the station, to that slow drumbeat.

They float. They are not humanoid at all. I see them as something like a Grant Morrison-era Doom Patrol creation: partially drapery and partially boxy, moving slowly, at a stately pace, down the corridors of the station. There is nothing human about them. There is nothing obviously organic about them.

The assembled human leaders see a feed of the envoys; they're unnerved, shuffling. But they're committed, it's going to happen. They swallow, collect themselves, whatever. They're professionals. They can do this.

The Kid is everywhere, sneaking around to see everything. Our viewpoint, our identification character. We are The Kid, in a way. We see it all through The Kid's eyes.

As the envoys move - more slowly than seems reasonable, painfully slowly, like the procession to the headsman's axe - the station is under stress. We know the envoys are doing it even if we have no idea how. Dials slowly turn into the red. Maybe steam comes from unexpected places. The Engineer and her team is working faster, keeping it all together - this is nothing new, it's what she does every day. As the song goes on, it gets harder (especially with that discordant note starting about 3:00 and getting louder thereafter, like a warning siren), but she's the best, she can do it. It's an old station; these things happen.

This all builds for what feels like far too long. Almost three minutes of the envoy's slow procession - we see them approaching the square or plaza where the human leaders wait; from our glimpses of The Kid we understand the layout of the station and the main route. Cutting from them to the human leaders, to human crowds watching from the fringes (shocked or surprised or increasingly frightened), to The Kid, to The Engineer.

Slow build. Slow burn. For three minutes.

The envoys reach the human leaders at 3:42. Everything quiets down. They stop. The camera shows us everything one more time, during that quiet, that waiting. Then, just before 3:59, the first envoy - slightly larger or shinier or boxier; clearly the leader - makes some sort of gesture. And all the dials around The Engineer crash into the red at once; everything shakes and is pushed to the limits.

The station is falling apart. It is doomed.

Mass panic: the crowds run, trample each other. The Kid is cool but clearly amazed, keeping clear of crowds, keeping an eye on the envoys, wondering what just happened and how.

The envoys turn. They don't interact with the human leaders at all. They head back to their ship, only slightly quicker than before. Maybe we see their ship leave, somewhere in the chaos.

The cuts are quicker, the action frenzied and chaotic. Everything is going to hell.

The human leaders are just as panicked as everyone else, heading to lifeboats or whatever. Trying to save themselves. We see mass panic and destruction for about forty seconds, as the music screeches the song of the destruction of this world.

The Kid reaches some kind of escape pod about 4:40. Closes the door, ejects - that cuts the volume of the music. Looks back towards the station. Sees, through some kind of window, The Engineer, in some decaying fragment or another, still at her duty station, even though it's now far too late. She is not dead yet, but she has no way out.

They share a glance. There's no way they can communicate. There's no way The Kid can save her. And, as the song ends, the fragment of the station rotates or bounces away, and The Kid sees The Engineer disappear forever.

That's the story this song gave me. Happy Halloween.