False Mirror

The 6th False Mirror album Isomorphic Worlds continues the sonic exploration of a past future in which humanity ventures out to explore the vast unknown of distant worlds.

Prelude

A hollow roar washes over the back of your mind, rising and falling like an ancient tide. Your limbs are numb and stiff. With deliberate effort, you manage to open your eyes, only to be greeted by a faint, wavering red light. You realize you are lying inside a compact cylinder, slowly rocking back and forth like a giant metallic cradle. The atmosphere is heavy with stale air and the faint tang of ozone.

Gradually, the distant thunder of surf registers in your senses: the relentless thump of waves against the hull of your vessel. Broken shards of memory start to surface. The Genesis mission, a bold experiment of 1982, shooting nearly a thousand human beings across the void in a dreamless hypersleep. The final moments aboard the ship flicker by: blinking overhead lights, the hiss of the sedation cycle. Then the long dark.

You were not meant to wake up like this. If you can hear an ocean, something must have gone terribly off-course. You remember the technical specifications they drilled into you, back at the Lunar Training Facility: the RG/H-300 cryo pod, capable of sustaining a solitary human for centuries, feeding you on minimal power with all bodily functions dialed down to merely keep you from dying. In the event of a catastrophe, the pod would automatically jettison and navigate to the nearest viable planet or habitat station.

How long have you been adrift? Your gaze falls on the internal chronometer. A blank screen stares back. No readout—no clue whether you’ve been drifting for a month or a century. With shaky fingers, you tap at the dimly flickering control panel. Bytes of broken data rush across the tiny green display...