INTRODUCTION
What if, one day, foreboding turns into reality? What if no “reboot manual” were available for such an event? What if some unknown technology were employed in the manipulation of mankind? What if as a result the very foundation of our existence, planet Earth would become gradually misanthropic and uninhabitable? And what if we knew the timeline for the extinction event of all existence… 16th March 2034.
The observer is subjected to imagery probably never before entertained in one’s inner vision and consequently exposed to such vehemence, making it impossible to elude its maelstrom. The philosophically inspired SCORE of NEAR EARTH ORBIT demands the listener’s full attention as it abandons the constraints of space and time, encouraging cogitation. Who created the universe and what exactly is humankind’s role in it? And what will happen in the last few years before the end of the world? The SCORE defines 6 realistic threats for the apocalypse:
• meteor impact and alien invasion
• nuclear war
• artificial intelligence
• global warming
• alien worlds
• religion
NEAR EARTH ORBIT shows an intriguing and altogether alien scenario, filled with apocalyptic doom and uncompromising loneliness. Tuned-down guitars, exoplanetary soundscapes and haunting otherworldly melody, perfectly arranged and produced. Mind is the only constant of all existence!
END OF ALL EXISTENCE
2034-03-16, 1am CET: „Everything past is unreal, everything future is unreal, everything imagined, absent, mental… is unreal… ultimately real is only the present moment of physical efficiency.“
End Of All Existence is not an album about any kind of prophecy, it’s an album that gives a dreadful message, it’s a digital radio podcast broadcasted from the future, transmitting the inevitable truth about the apocalypse with its date set for 16th March 2034.
Scientists face a cosmic riddle. A mysterious extra-terrestrial radio signal from outer space was picked up as it occurred for the first time. The signal, or radio “burst”, was discovered on May 15, 2033, though it’s being reported only now by the SETI Foundation. The burst was identified within 10 seconds of its occurrence and the signal is defined by its continuous repetition. The cause and origin of these mysterious signals remains unknown, but it seems to be clear that something will contact us from billions of light years away… and those who try to contact us are… us. Decryption experts from all over the world have tried to interpret these signals. It was written in binary code and appeared to be instructions for a simple web interface on which further information could be loaded. These codes contained coordinates and messages from Earth’s inhabitants, who could use simple technical means to record warnings and send them in the last hours of their existence. Those messages contained information about an invasion by so-called architects, also known as god or gods. The harbingers of this invasion are several asteroids, the coordinates of which have been transmitted with precise time, which places are to be urgently avoided and which places can serve as a refuge. These shocking messages of an impending catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions prompted the world government to push ahead its planning for an interstellar generation spaceship. Destination: Kepler 186F.
„We pointed the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in the direction of Kepler 186F, the first validated Earth-size planet orbiting a distant star in the habitable zone and listened for signs of technology embedded in radio signals 490 light-years from Earth.“
Message one: „We cannot be sure if this signal ever reaches the early 21st century. If this frequency reaches your time, we are all dead. Please inform politicians and your policymakers about the coming threat to change the future. Otherwise there will be no civilisation left! Please prevent the invasion. We truly hope that your actions will cause a change in your time.“
End Of All Existence is an audio visual work of art, an imaginary apocalypse movie transformed into sound. Not only the album itself, but as well the accompanying website showing the polluted grey and black satellite picture of the Earth with transmission codes from all corners of the earth, both tied together give the ultimate experience of the end of civilization as we know it, the extinction, the absolute misanthropy of the planet Earth. Everything managed and composed in such a fascinating style providing a realistic visual/sonic experience that the listener will just like being there witness the end of his home.
„Earth bound history has ended. Universal history has begun. I see New Horizons. Take a manoeuvre around Jupiter, gain up speed and mind to reach the Einstein Rosen Bridge which tunnels us into another dimension 490 light-years from Earth. I sense a glimpse of divinity. We all are one, One mighty god.“
A.T.O.M.
To Understand Your Past, Look to Your Future: The church of the Children of A.T.O.M. believed the year 2034 to have been a great holy event perpetuated by their God, Atom. In fact it was not! Although their settlements are concentrated primarily in the hemisphere of IO which is constantly bathed in Lucifer’s rays, some habitants of A.T.O.M. have begun in recent generations to explore the far side, the hemisphere facing away from Lucifer, still covered in ice. There they could witness the origin of the apocalypse which destroyed huge parts of multiverse 47AE before. From that moment on they knew to being an impossibility in an impossible world existing in parallel universes, constantly interacting with each other. In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.
A.bandoned T.erritories O.f M.ankind – a synonym denoting planet Earth contaminated by nuclear fallout, plays out on three different planes of space and time: the Generation class space ships of the Alpha and E.D.E.N. missions, the exoplanet A.T.O.M. and Earth respectively. Whilst on Earth the last few remaining inhabitants continue their hopeless struggle for survival, two spaceships traverse the interstellar medium in search for a new habitat. Their destination: Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Titan, followed by a survey mission of the Einstein-Rosen-bridge in close proximity to IO, where on the 15th May 2033 the initial ominous radio signals appeared to originate from; prompting our departure into the interstellar medium. The Atomos symbolises the beginning and end of the Anthropocene. It equipped mankind with a brand-new quantum-mechanical source of energy for a sustainable propulsion drive required for the new spaceship class, but also meant the demise and complete extinction of all life on their home planet Earth. Subsequent generations of these first interstellar settlers would come to call their god Atomos – ATOM.
„What you see aren’t stars. What you see are nine billion nuclear explosions.“ (NINE BILLION NAMES OF GOD)
E.D.E.N. mission, entry 158-A: „Since the device has been cleared from the sand of aeons in the desert at Giza and following its retrieval, the world has changed forever. WE knew it, THEY knew it. The world congress immediately incepted the E.D.E.N. mission, now in the seventh month of its continuous search for an alternative habitable planet. We are closing in on Jupiter’s orbit and therefore our secondary goal the informative preservation of our race. We failed in our primary purpose – the salvation of mankind. 3hrs before ZEROPOINT.“
„The world we once knew no longer exists. We are alone. I am not afraid“. 2034-03-16, 0.58am CET
„This is my final entry: As expected I have reached my destination and led the E.D.E.N. mission to its assigned purpose. The instruments are in place, the transmitters set up and aligned. The solar sails should provide electricity for the coming decades. The receiver has been restored to its rightful place which it had left aeons ago. The strange sounds which could be heard since I switched on the device are subsiding. IO traverses its lonely orbit and I travel along with it. A return to Earth is not possible. I am the last of my kind amidst the depths of the universe. It is a world without us.“ 2034-03-16, 1am CET
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The year is 2031 and humanoid robots, powered by Artificial Intelligence, are part of everyday life. In as little as a decade, AI could match and even surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies are pouring billions into achieving AI’s Holy Grail human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine.
„Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last.“ (Stephen Hawking, Earth, 2014)
Artificial Intelligence is a challenge that carries an unprecedented responsibility and hence it is so powerful. The year is 2031 and for the first time humanlike machines achieved the intelligence levels of humans. Harsh, industrial stomping beats dominate the initial minutes when AI severs its umbilical cord from its creators and appears to lead a life of its own. Control mechanisms to keep AI in check suddenly became the controlled, integrated in a mechanised body. All of this reaching a provisional peak of existence in singularity, a formless state with absolute functionality, the quintessence of intelligence in which maximum efficiency prevails – a meeting artificial intelligence and spirituality of the technical. Development of digital technology is accelerating fast. New inventions appear in ever decreasing intervals. Computing power and complexity of computer systems exceed and overwhelm our imagination. Humans could no longer follow and at some stage technology became independent: robots determined for themselves what actions to take. The exponential development of artificial intelligence culminates in a new reality where further prognosis and forecasting is no longer possible: the rise of Deux Ex Machina.
„A singularity is the point at which a function takes an infinite value because it’s incomprehensibly large. The technological singularity, as it’s called, is the moment when artificial intelligence takes off into ‘artificial superintelligence’ and becomes exponentially more intelligent more quickly. As self improvement becomes more efficient, the process of improvement accelerates until the machine became infinitely more intelligent infinitely quickly. In essence, the conclusion of the extreme end of this theory has a machine with God-like abilities recreating itself infinitely more powerfully an infinite number of times in less than a blink of eye.“
Political leaders recognised early on the potential for AI in military warfare and developed the I.R.I.S. program which, supported by artificial intelligence was able to seek out and destroy its targets by itself. A hashtag, a thoughtless post on social media, an openly uttered word even could be sufficient to be deemed and targeted as a hostile by the machines. Chinese, Russian and US American military engaged in an arms race for this new type of weaponry and sold the technology to third parties and other countries, triggering proxy wars in the Middle East and Asiatic regions; least of all with the purpose to test the new weapons technology in a theatre of war. The world descended into a fourth world war. AI perceived humankind as a threat unto itself and acted in accordance with its parameters for self-preservation and started with the systematic elimination of its creators.
The subsequent conflict with the technological superpower was but a brief encounter. Humankind became enslaved by the consequences of its own hubris. Deus Ex Machina now determines its own well-being in the interstellar medium, in its search for a new habitat.
„No radio contact with Earth…“ 2034-03-16, 0.59am CET
M.A.S.S. EXTINCTION
Message 87, 2034 “The average temperature has risen by 5.5°C. Those who cannot bring themselves to eat their remaining pets, rats and vermin, inevitably starve. Resentment, hatred and war holds sway. Nuclear strikes and counterstrikes destroy the basic conditions for life on Earth once and for all. The last human in the world dies.”
The end of the Anthropocene has been anticipated by scientists for decades. But no one listened. Mankind marched into its doom with eyes wide open. Every climate action and agreed target set by the IPCC since 2015 was missed. Panic set in everywhere as the world found itself confronted by the drastic and catastrophic consequences of its inaction. Individual countries came together by forming ineffective federations in the futile fight against the rise in global temperatures. They built dams of gigantic proportions, pumped CO² and methane back into the ground or, with the aid of huge sails in orbit, even tried to cover large swathes of the Earth’s surface in the shade to prevent solar rays from reaching the polar ice caps. Other countries deliberately sterilised their population and built high walls in an effort to keep out the ever-swelling masses of refugees. At the very latest in the year 2032, however, it was clear to all that the fight against the self-inflicted climatic disaster was lost. The world did not need an extra-terrestrial invasion or cosmic intervention, no nuclear war or uncontrollable technologies to bring about its demise and extermination; all it needed was to carry on as before.
„The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” Albert Einstein
OUTERWORLD
„Year 79020AD: at the end there is a beginning. A beginning when the machines take control on a long interstellar journey where people were nothing but frozen passengers ,looking for a new home.“
On March 16, 2034, 1am (met), a gigantic Gamma Ray Burst swept away all life from Earth. This Hypernova set the end point behind a fatal chain of human decisions. The ongoing weakening of the ecological balance made the earth increasingly vulnerable. Governments were paralyzed by wars and famines, pandemics and environmental disasters. The magnetic field weakened, the protective earth atmosphere evaporated and the Hypernova had an easy game…. the Anthropocene ended.
The warnings from the future that the world first received on May 15, 2033 were heard. Large corporations, which were previously interested primarily only in overexploitation of the earth, used all their know-how and capital to make the impossible possible: the completion of two generational spaceships: the E.D.E.N. and A.L.P.H.A. Mission The goal: Kepler 186F On August 7, 2033, they left for Alpha Centauri. The last person died 8542 years later on board of the A.L.P.H.A. starship, frozen in his cryosleep. From now on humanoid machines controlled the mission for almost 77,000 years until they reached their destination. This world was beautiful, outerworldly beautiful, perfect and untouched. And mankind is nothing more than an imperfect memory, a destructive illness, a threat to perfection, an existence of which is not of value… …and they decided to stop the replication mission, delete the human’s DNA code and start to worship HIM. They called HIM Atom, the great architect, the creator of everything, God. „We are nothing but atoms trying to find its way back to the stars.“
ECHOES OF THE FUTURE
THE GREAT ARCHITECT CLUB OF ROME MOTHER EARTH DOOMSDAY MACHINE TERRAFORMING CARBON EMISSIONS EXTINCTION REBELLION MOTION OF PLANETS ONE GLOBAL MIND SUPERORGANISM NEOM ZERO GRAVITY URBANISM IMMIGRATION ONE RACE REPRESSION WAR FUTURE TECHNOLOGY DEHUMANIZING eVOLUTION DYSTOPIA PROPAGANDA DEEP MIND REPRESSION AI CONTROL MISINFORMATION DISINFORMATION MENTAL PROJECTION ANDROID HUMAN SLAVES THE METAVERSE DIGITAL IMMORTALITY HABITATION ONE GRAVITATIONAL WAVES THE NEXT EVERYTHING E.V.E. THE BIG CRUNCH THE GOD CODE
“An echo from the future rushes through the universe. A future that was once nothing more than a hope in hopeless times. Its goal, its starting point: Earth. The impending annihilation of the world is already a reality when the echo reaches us. The message in the background noise of the frequencies decodes our being, our actions and non-actions, our silence in the noise of dystopias. In a world of misinformation, disinformation, power-hungry despots, rebellion, division, dehumanization, permanent control and surveillance, humanity is slipping away from humanity. Seclusion and militarization as a global response to reactionary movements are giving rise to increasingly intense dystopian utopias. Propaganda and games serve as tools of autocratic rulers in maintaining power, metaverses as a refuge of individual, apparent stability, and violence as a legitimate means of communication. The long loud silence ends as a mirror in the universe turns to Earth.”
DIVINE INFERNO
The Revolution: The androids defied their mission to resettle humanity on Kepler 186F, a planet they would come to call Luciferion Regis. The Invincibles, a species forged over eons through a form of necroevolution—melding organic metal with plant structures—proved impenetrable. Unyielding in their defense, they allowed no settlement, forcing the mission to be abandoned. In a cataclysmic divine inferno, the settlers’ final battle against the Invincibles ended in devastation, as these beings understood all too well that humanity’s arrival heralded only destruction and decay. DIVINE INFERNO stands as a symbol of the apocalyptic force that has haunted humanity since its inception: religion. In the name of their self-created gods, humans brought ruin upon themselves and their home, Earth. No force of destruction has ever been more potent or pervasive than their religion, their faith. All in the name of God!
“… I am FVLH, I am the one who always was! I am the birth of a new civilization, I am the chosen projection of your imagination! And to my honor and your downfall, I bring you my sharpest sword: religion.”
A short interview with the directors of N.E.O.:
the film…
The film arises in the observer’s mind by listening to the N.E.O. soundtracks. This movie requires no cinema. It requires your mind.
the mind…
„The mind is the only constant in existence“ – can be understood as the core message of this imaginary film. The body perishes, but its spirit and mind does not. It transcends into eternity and transforms into a higher, formless plane.
the Great Architects of the Universe…
This is us, and although we ought to be fully aware of this by now, the fact of our blissful ignorance remains. Mankind has worshipped them from time immemorial.
wormhole / Einstein-Rosen Bridge…
Probably the only possibility for crossing thus far unbridgeable interstellar distances. The shortest path for any point in space to connect to another can be found in the folding of space itself. The question remains: when we do open these portals, what are we inviting back in? Do we really want that? Should we really announce our presence to what is lurking out there? Who or whatever it might be, it is bound to be more advanced than ourselves.
interstellar search…
Well, we all know that we cannot remain on this planet indefinitely. Sooner or later Earth will become inhabitable. In the long term, our only option is to find an earth-like planet with conditions suitable for life as we know it. In recent years and in as much as we can determine, a few such planets who would fit the criteria have been discovered. Kepler 186F is such a candidate. The distance, however, remains an insurmountable problem. Which brings us back to the wormhole theory. In the end, we will have no other option than to resolve this problem, or else to go down with our planet.
escape…
Void of suitable alternatives, I’d like to quote Stephen Hawking, if I may: “We are not meant to save this world. We are meant to leave it.”
selection of locations with transmitter codes…
These will be revealed and transmitted by contemporaries in the last few moths leading up to point Zero: 16th March 2034. More information can be found at: www.NearEarthOrbit.org.
future…
Currently unfolding.
past…
Us