The Bifrost Incident

The Bifrost Incident is a retelling of Norse myth, framed as mystery, set on an interplanetary train, using rock and prog style music. It is the Mechanisms' fourth story set / studio album.

"The Bifrost Incident. Any schoolchild could tell you about it. The fall of the old order; two hundred years of Asgardian hubris come together in a single epoch-defining event. The maiden voyage of a train through the stars, vanished without a trace..."

This is the fourth studio album by The Mechanisms, written 2015-2016.

Plot
The Bifrost Incident takes place in a solar system called Yggdrasil. This system comprises nine planets (Niflheim, Muspelheim, Asgard, Midgard, Jotunheim, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, Helheim), and, prior to the event known as the Bifrost Incident was ruled for 200 years by a tyrannical government on Asgard.

The Bifrost Incident was a catastrophic event that took place eighty years ago. A new interplanetary train, the Ratatosk Express, was launched for its maiden voyage. This train was supposed to travel between planets in just three days, via a manmade rainbow wormhole known as the Bifrost, but on this first trip it launched and never emerged at the other side. With the entire Asgardian government on board the vanished train, the Yggdrasil system was plunged into chaos.

At the start of The Bifrost Incident, the remains of the Ratatosk Express arrive at the planet formerly known as Midgard, now New Midgard. There are no carriages, just the ruin of the engine room and two warped skeletons. Inspector Second Class Lyfrassir Edda of the New Midgard Transport Police is assigned to the case of working out what happened to it, using only the footage from the train's black box.

Edda starts at the beginning, and watches the train's launch. Odin, the woman who has ruled Asgard for almost a century at the time of the Incident, makes a speech about the train, which is "her pet science project" - clearly something of a personal obsession.

The train launches into the Bifrost, which shimmers and undulates with a rainbow of colours. Early on, there are signs in the footage of things that could potentially go wrong: the odometer stops being able to tell what speed the train is moving; many of the passengers seem unhappy to be making the journey; Odin spends all her time staring out of the glass wall in her personal observation cabin. But the first thing that Edda sees which seems like a hint about the Incident is Loki: a former member of the terrorist Midgardian Resistance, who had supposedly been executed for treason. Before she disappeared into the Midgardian underground, Loki used to work on the Bifrost project, so Edda surmises that Odin spared her life to save her knowledge. However, it's clear that Loki's head has been messed up by whatever Odin did instead.

While watching Loki, Edda is interrupted by the appearance of Thor, an Asgardian high-up who is likely to be Odin's successor. He has been poking around with the master key, has discovered Loki still alive, and seems angry about it. Loki and Thor have history: they used to be friends, but in one of her terrorist acts against the Bifrost (a missile attack which set the project back a decade), Loki killed another friend of Thor's, Baldur. Edda comments that it's unclear whether Thor is angry that Loki is still alive, or that Odin has wrecked her mind; either way, he marches to Odin's cabin in fury.

Thor and Odin argue. Odin defends her sparing of Loki with the reasoning that Loki's knowledge of the train tracks was too valuable to lose. Thor threatens both Odin and the train, saying he will rule Asgard in the end. Odin has him removed by security, to be locked in his own cabin for the remainder of the journey, and orders him to resign his position. As he is dragged away by security, Thor kicks out, seemingly at random, and shatters the lock on Loki's cabin.

Edda is on the verge of writing up Thor as the cause of the Incident when that video feed cuts out. Edda's gaze drifts to the dining car, where Sigyn, Loki's wife, is acting as the chief attendant. With the Midgardian Resistance's leader, Fenrir, currently locked up on the prison planet of Hel, Sigyn is also the highest ranking member of the Midgardian Resistance - and all of the serving staff are also Resistance members, including named figures Garm, Skoll and Hati. Edda surmises that they must be planning to take the government officials on board hostage and break Fenrir out of jail.

As Sigyn walks through the train, speaking of the planned revolution to her crew, she notices the broken lock on Loki's cabin. Looking into the cabin, she sees Loki. The two speak; Sigyn is at first overjoyed to see that Loki is still alive, but when Loki reacts with confusion and fear, she realises what has been done to Loki's mind and becomes angry with Odin.

At this point in the journey, Edda finds that the recordings break down much more significantly, and is unable to work out any more of what happened on the Ratatosk Express. Reluctantly, Edda seeks help from a group of bandits in the New Midgard prison, who can be recognised as the Mechanisms themselves. (The Mechanisms arrived in Yggdrasil shortly after the Bifrost Incident, caused havoc for twenty years, and have spent the last sixty in prison.) After teasing Edda a little, the Mechanisms help: Ivy Alexandria fixes the corruption in the black box, and Edda begins to see the really important parts of the footage: Thor and Sigyn, standing in the engine room, where instead of an engine there is a man (Kvasir, a low-level Midgardian Resistance member) on a silver altar, with dozens of tubes feeding his blood into gears and glyphs and blood channels around the room, all of which are made from the same strange, humming metal as the rails on which the train is running. Thor begins mashing randomly at the controls; Sigyn pulls the tubes out of Kvasir; then both stop, becoming suddenly aware that something bad has happened.

A cthonic chant is heard. Reality warps and tears. The Bifrost is revealed to be a manifestation of the Outer God Yog Sogoth, and "screaming, squamous things" ooze into the world.

In the engine room, Kvasir bleeds out. Thor walks away. The train and reality around it are torn apart by the beings that have been released. Various passengers are seen being destroyed by the influence of Yog Sogoth: Heimdall is ripped apart, Frey is flayed, Freya fuses to the train, Garm and Tyr fight and merge into one corpse. Loki and Odin are in Odin's observation cabin; Odin realises that all along her dreams for the train have been in service to Yog Sogoth and celebrates it; Loki finds her mind restored and is appalled by Odin. Loki recalls that she realised the horror of the train long ago, which is why she tried to stop it with her missile attack. She comments that any protection afforded to the train and its passengers has been lost now that the train has derailed. As the two speak, a third voice ("Void") interjects, chanting praise to Azathoth and warnings of the coming, inexorable madness.

Loki walks away from Odin to find Sigyn; she is unharmed by the chaos within the train because she has been touched by an Outer God. Thor is walking the other way along the train to find Odin; he defends himself as he walks with an engineer's hammer. The two cross paths in an empty carriage, and exchange a brief greeting, and wish each other good deaths.

When Thor reaches Odin's cabin, she has physically warped into a long, undulating form with a single, vast eye. She exults in the triumph of releasing the Outer Gods, and tells Thor that killing her will not save the world from them. Thor is unmoved, and attacks her anyway. Unable to win in a straight fight, he smashes the glass wall of the observation cabin, so that both he and Odin die by being sucked out into the void.

Loki reaches the engine room and finds Sigyn there. They embrace, and cry. Loki tells Sigyn that while they cannot stop the Outer Gods destroying the world, they can delay their arrival by keeping the train on the track. They uncouple the carriages from the engine, and Loki lays on the silver altar. Sigyn pushes one of the tubes that was in Kvasir into Loki's heart and lets a slow drip of blood into the workings of the engine; this will keep the train on the track for as long as Loki has blood.

Back in the present day, Edda has understood what this means: the arrival of the train means that the Outer Gods will soon follow. The Mechanisms have performed a seemingly-impossible jailbreak and disappeared. Edda, very drunk, announces an intention to flee Yggdrasil, and recommends that any listeners do the same.

There is a burst of static, and radio messages are heard from across the Yggdrasil system, showing inhabitants of the system in increasing distress as reality begins to break down.

Characters

 * Lyfrassir Edda (played by Jonny d'Ville) - an officer of the New Midgard Transport Police who has been tasked with reviewing the black box recordings from the Ratatosk Express to find out what happened in the Bifrost Incident.
 * Odin (played by Raphaella la Cognizi) - ruler of Asgard and, by extension, Asgard's empire throughout the Yggdrasil system; leader of the Bifrost project
 * Loki (played by Gunpowder Tim) - former engineer on the Bifrost project; former member of the Midgardian Resistance; allegedly executed (but actually just mind-wiped) for terrorist offences; former friend of Thor
 * Thor (played by Marius von Raum) - high-ranking member of the Asgardian government, Odin's likely successor as ruler; former friend of Loki
 * Sigyn (played by Ashes O'Reilly) - acting leader of the Midgardian Resistance, formally a Midgardian member of Asgardian high society; wife of Loki
 * Raphaella la Cognizi, Marius von Raum and Ivy Alexandria play themselves in Expert Testimony

Tracks
This album is the only studio album to not feature any filked content. There are however, short musical homages or references to other songs within some of the instrumental lines.

The Mechanisms' Locations

 * Marius von Raum, Raphaella la Cognizi and Ivy Alexandria: In prison on New Midgard for unknown crimes. The crew arrived in the system shortly after the Ratatosk Express vanished, and were captured after twenty years, spending sixty in prison. They fix the black box for Lyfrassir Edda and then escape, fleeing the Yggdrasil system before it is destroyed by the Outer Gods.

References in The Bifrost Incident
Line by line explanation of the references in the lyrics in The Bifrost Incident can be found on Genius. Background reading material on the source myths can be found on the Further Reading page.

Live Performances
Several live performances of The Bifrost Incident were given by the Mechanisms. The recordings that were taken of some of these performances are compiled on the Past Events page.