Members of London’s 1981 electroplasm scene, a fusion of extreme body modification, mortality edging, and electronic music, where specific frequencies generated by custom modular synthesizer hardware were found to stimulate spectral wavelengths enough to generate ecloplasm and control its psychokinetic growth into electronic wiring, creating sounds unlike anyone (living) had ever heard before.
The most hardcore electroplasm musicians, flatmates at a warehouse space they called The Cortex, began fusing their nervous systems to the hardware such that the electroplasm could flow through their bodies, syncing with their biorhythms, turning them into electronic posthuman processors in a chain of spirit-charged flesh modules. As the ectoplasm rewired their brains and warped their forms, they were no longer technically “alive” by standard definitions, but held on the bleeding edge of the mortal plane by the spirits trapped in them, howling supernatural tones they shaped with their body instruments.
As the niche scene grew, more devotees joined the chain of spirit vessels in The Cortex, giving their bodies to the rhythm, building the beat, forming new otherworldly sounds with each new human instrument. These “beat zombies,” as NME coined them, could only continue “living” as long as the sonic frequencies continued through the chain, and so the beat at The Cortex ran 24/7, their “musical life support.” Hundreds of fans gathered to dance at the undead rave, the most unique performance art ever seen; some predicted the sound would last forever, growing so big that one day every human who ever lived would become connected to it, a jam session across all souls, here and beyond.
Unfortunately, the entire electroplasm scene ended abruptly just a few months after it had begun, when the power was cut to the warehouse space, killing all 78 posthuman vessels instantly and releasing all of the spiritual energy trapped within them at once in a psychokinetic blast that razed four city blocks. It turned out that when the musicians gave their minds & bodies to electrically-charged ectoplasmic sound, they never thought about who would pay the utility bills.
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NOTE: This alternate reality horror story is part of my NightmAIres narrative art series (visit that link for a lot more). NightmAIres are windows into other worlds and interconnected alternate histories, conceived/written by me and visualized with synthography and Photoshop.
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