$25.00
**IRTUOSI — s/t (C90)**
*(file recovered from the Infernal Neuroacoustics Archive / “Tongue Problems in Hell” Study, annotated and partially reversed)*
---
**SIDE A — “Peripheral Hymns (Live Beneath the Cortex)”**
It opens with **Crimson Vapor**, a warm hiss, red and slow—like the breath of a lung that’s forgotten how to inhale properly. The tape crackles. You can almost smell the **burnt myelin**—plastic, metal, and thought.
Then a voice (or something imitating one) mutters through the distortion:
> “Peripheral Nervous System—outside the dream, outside the brain.
> Everything that twitches is trying to remember.”
The liner notes define it precisely, though the ink bleeds toward the margins:
> **PNS**: all the nerves and ganglia outside the Central Nervous System.
> Connects the brain to muscle, gland, and regret.
> *Somatic division*: the urge to move voluntarily, even into fire.
> *Autonomic division*: involuntary hunger, heart rate, breath, decay.
> *Sympathetic*: prepares the body for action—
> sometimes that action is panic, sometimes it is song.
At the 5-minute mark, the entire recording warps backward, the sound of a sentence un-forming:
> “—kcab emoc reven nac uoy ,deksa reven saw ecivres ehT”
> (“The service was never asked, you can never come back.”)
Every syllable is a **tongue stutter**, every vowel a small **twitch of flesh** trying to pronounce heat.
The listener begins to feel their own lips refusing to cooperate—autonomic rebellion, sympathetic laughter.
Out of this noise rises **Jovian Joy**, the strangest track: a rhythm composed entirely of **muscle impulses recorded directly from the jaw**. It vibrates like alien gospel. Somewhere in the background, distant and almost kind, a choir of malfunctioning nerves hums the refrain:
> “We are the outposts of the brain,
> we act before we know,
> we smile before we burn.”
The smiling continues, unnatural, mechanical, **Celestial Chuckles** echoing off molten bone. Every chuckle triggers a reflex in the listener’s diaphragm—an involuntary gasp that syncs perfectly with the beat.
By midpoint, the tape’s saturation turns pure red. **Crimson Vapor** returns, reversed now, the tone spiraling upward until the air feels thinner. Someone begins reading from a medical textbook in fractured Latin:
> “*Systema periphericum nervorum—regnum ex ossibus latet.*”
> (“The peripheral system of nerves—a kingdom hiding in bones.”)
The words melt, the tongue breaks.
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**INTERLUDE: GRAPH (as found carved into the wall near the playback site)**
```
GRAPH OF TONGUE PROBLEMS IN HELL (REVISED & BACKMASKED)
Pain ↑
10 | * * *
9 | * * * Sympathetic spike
8 | * *
7 | * (Celestial Chuckles feedback loop)
6 | * *
5 | * Autonomic drift —-> * *
4 | * * *
3 |_________________________________________→ TIME
0 1 2 3 4 5
Each star = vowel lost in translation between pain and pleasure.
```
On the back of the graph is scrawled in mirror script:
> “**no tongue, no control.**”
> “**no control, pure PNS.**”
> “**pure PNS, perfect joy.**”
---
**SIDE B — “The Shattered Veil / Live Somatic Section”**
The second tape begins *mid-word*, a backwards moan like a rewound prayer. The sound expands—then folds inward. The somatic system is screaming to move, to dance, but the **spinal cord refuses orders**. The only movement comes from the mouth: endless flexing, involuntary syllables that sound like **Stellar Smirk**—a grin that cannot close.
> “We grin while the neurons bleed,”
> someone says,
> “because smiling is a reflex, not a choice.”
The Autonomic System begins to glitch: the bassline becomes your pulse; the treble, your breath. The body participates unwillingly. Somewhere behind the static, **Jovian Joy** reappears, looped in reverse, laughter imploding through flame:
> “—em llits I dna ,thgil eht ni desolcne ma I ,yaw eht ni yortsed I”
> (“I destroy in the way I am enclosed in the light, and I still me.”)
The **Shattered Veil** track follows—possibly a field recording from inside an artery. It is both peaceful and horrifying: the sense organs trying to sense themselves, the CNS gone dark. You are now purely peripheral, drifting, a collection of electric whispers pretending to be a person.
Then, silence—just one slow heartbeat left. The tape motor grinds, eats its own reel, spits static like ash.
Finally, **Crimson Vapor (Reprise)** oozes through the wreckage: low, reversed, steady, and wrong. The last words flicker in binary through the hiss:
> `01001010 01101111 01111001` — “JOY.”
Hell’s tongues twitch one final time, their movements voluntary only in theory.
The nerves, once musical, now coil in perfect stillness—
waiting the next signal
Edition of 1.