This entire episode of In Synthesis with Infinite Is can be streamed free from the Internet archive
This, the week of 2-14-20 on In Synthesis Jeff and Evan play a couple of spaced out live sets and review a couple of live recordings called “The Comet Hunters” and “Mining Deuterium”. They also listen to JD Ryans edit of their live “Five Before Chaos” performance of “Abiogenisis” which was performed at the first Stage 33 live Second Saturday Synthfest on 1-11-20
Here is the opening live improvisational set
A few months after the Kessler syndrome played out overhead, like a message in a bottle, a slimy, barnacled container washed up onto the pink sands of a Bermuda beach. Cracked along it’s axis the strange purple non Newtonian fluid oozed out, flowing down the rock that ruptured the vessel upon impact, slowly gathering into a pool of bright sludge. The blade of Shinky’s knife breaks the vacuum seal with a twist and a hiss, his hands pry open the lid of the torpor sled. How much linear time has passed, where is the rest of the ship, where is his chicken, his box of wizards? He had no recollection of his last spacetime coordinates, he could be anywhen. In the distance he hears a faint screaming, fatefully not screams of fear, but of joy, the happy screams of children chasing the surf. Well at least he was lucky enough to have been stranded somewhen with other living beings. Having no capacity for the strange language they spoke, he drew a chicken shape in the sand and shrugged his shoulders and with that the children pointed to an old fenced in lopsided structure on the hill, he could just make out a small flock of thin chickens with their heads bobbing up and down busily pecking at the ground. If Mara was anywhere on this island, that was the a great place to start looking, that chicken was his only source of answers and possibly his ticket out this ancient spacetime backwater. Making his way up through crowds of wide eyed locals staring and children pointing, the hulk of the Biovatar he inhabited towered over the frightened tourists. If only he had his conn box, he could resonate the beacon, pinpoint his chickenbot pilot and hopefully hitch a ride out of then.
Anastasia Sokolov was jilted out of torpor to the sound of a terrifying silence. On a mining ship the absence of noise means that life support has ceased to function and a space death is soon to follow. Hanging from her sled she reaches up a shivering hand and smacks the release which sends her thin body crashing to the floor with a sickening slap. Not sure where her ship has crashed the first order of business is to get into her suit, secure the crews emergency life support, check their torpor sleds and survey the damage. Outside on the black surface of this small planet it was clear that the ships fresh water shielding tanks and recycling plant had taken significant damage as had the main antenna array. The Diplogen’s inner hull protected by the crushed tanks appears to be intact, so once she gets the laser reactor going again this ship might just be able to fly. Judging from the way this iceballs ultra black tholin layer absorbs her scanners radio signals she deduces that this is no ordinary rock that the ships computer has run into. Her suspicions are confirmed when the coring drill that she sets up to run during her repairs begins to return a startling revelation, they have struck it rich, this ice is heavy, the whole ball is deuterium ice! But can they make it back to port with nothing but heavy water to drink?
Infinite Is – Sending Out An SOS – opening live improv set
Infinite Is – The Comet Hunters
Infinite Is – Mining Deuterium
Five Before Chaos – Abiogenisis (recorded live at the Stage 33 live Second Saturday Synthfest 1-11-20
Infinite Is – Blow Of The Sledge – closing live improv Set
Once all hands had been awakened and debriefed work began inside the strange crystal cave found near the crash site where the crew would have more protection from cosmic radiation. It was unanimous, everyone was in agreement, the risk of mining as much deuterium as the hold could carry before getting their crippled ship back to port was their best chance of claiming the embarrassment of riches that this strangely stealth planet of heavy ice had to offer to them and their future generations. How many days awake mining and cycles of torpor could the crew endure drinking nothing but heavy water and will they have enough fuel to get them to safety once the ship is loaded to the gills? With mounting impatience and anxiety Anastasia blankly stares into the crews progress displays when the radio suddenly cackles with a terrified “we have found a body!”
Live cut of Abiogenesis from 1.11.20 Stage 33 Live Bellows Falls, VT
Here is the closing live set
As smuggling ships go in the late 26th century, the Sledge was among the most advanced, painted a flattish black, with an angular yet feminine shape, she was the first cloaking craft to break the rules, striking out into the past in search of a lucrative bounty. Though forbidden, there were very few ships who could match it’s stealth and agility. Appearing as a storm cloud, it could hover silently over a city of ancient meatbags undetected, hauling in contraband by the ton under the cover of darkness. Shinsky had paid a very steep price for the privilege and the pilot, believing the enormous riches waiting to be plucked from the past would make him wealthy enough to build a fleet of such craft and own the early trade supplied by these verboten ancient resources. His early space trials had him eager to skip the timeslip safety tests in favor of his first heist, to a place that until then had only existed to him in folklore and the ridiculous tall tales of religious zealots. The origin systems planet zero, a place in spacetime they called “Earth”. There is always a certain degree of uncertainty in traveling spacetime and unfortunately for him, his clucking plot put his new ship in the planets garbage orbit, square in the path of a Chinese kinetic weapon satellite that was being secretly moved at great relative speed, setting off a chain of catastrophic low orbit collisions that would come to paralyze the primitive populations power and communications for some time, showering the defenseless surface with debris.