Evo prica koje stoje iza svakog albuma:
THE FINAL EXPERIMENT
Prologue
In the year 2084 scientists have found a way to send messages back into time using time telepathy. With the earth nearly destroyed by many different causes, they have one hope for the experiment: warn the past of the future to avert the fate of earth.
Act I
The receiver of the telepathic messages is Ayreon, a blind minstrel living in 6th century Britain. He's lived his life in darkness from the day he was born, but one fateful day everything changes- Ayreon can see images. The minstrel believes these visions are sent to him by the Lords of Time. Unaware of how much time there is left before earth is destroyed Ayreon sets out to tell the tale of earth's demise singing songs of wars, natural disaster, and computer technology. The terrifying tales frighten the villagers who run him out of town.
Act II
Alone, and cast out of his village, Ayreon goes to King Arthur's castle, and, being a famed minstrel, he is allowed to sing of his visions in the King's very own court.
Act III
Jealous of his ability to foresee the future, Merlin, the court's wizard, isn't pleased with Ayreon's message, convincing the court the minstrel must be a charlatan.
Act IV
Merlin believes it is necessary to silence Ayreon forever and curses him. With the curse completed Merlin realizes his error, but it is too late. The wizard then predicts that the message will arrive in the mind of another minstrel at the end of the 20th century…
ACTUAL FANTASY
On 'Actual Fantasy' Arjen wanted to stimulate fantasy, not simulate reality. Actual fantasy is the opposite of virtual reality.
Actual Fantasy
This song is the intro of the CD and starts like a fairy-tale, beautiful, with a classical orchestra.
Abbey of Synn
Synn is the old spelling for 'sin' and also refers to the important role of the synthesizer on the CD. Inspired by the movie 'Name of the Rose' with Sean Connery, the song tells the story of a monastery where laughter is strictly forbidden. One by one monks die mysteriously each having a blackened finger and tongue. It turns out that the monks have discovered a book of comedy written by Aristotle, but the pages are poisoned; if you lick your finger to turn a page it will kill you.
Stranger From Within
In this story that Arjen wrote himself, doctors are trying to find a way to help a girl who is in a coma. In this state she begins to fantasize about some stranger. He could be dangerous, or harmless, or just a magician. The stranger tells her that she can cure herself using her own imagination, and then he allows the doctors to 'shoot' him as he takes the disease with him. The girl wakes up and the stranger from within has become part of her.
Computer Eyes
This song is a story Arjen wrote himself. It is about someone who has been playing a computer game for days. At a certain time he isn't able to tell anymore whether he's playing a game or has become part of it. He doesn't feel any emotions and has become like a hologram unable to find a way out. This song is certainly not an attack on computers, for this album could never have been made without computers. It just all depends on how you use computers and virtual reality.
Beyond the Last Horizon
This is story Arjen came up with during the last few days of his father's life. The story is set in the Middle Ages during the days of the crusades. One of the crusaders is ambushed and killed. After that it's a familiar story: he sees a light and he rides towards it on a road that disappears on the horizon. Beyond it is the 'last horizon': death. In most stories it says there is a beautiful light or heaven. But where he is, there is darkness. There is nothing beyond the last horizon; he will disappear.
Farside of the World
This song is based on 'The Navigator', an obscure Australian movie. It's about a boy in a medieval English village where the plague is killing most of the inhabitants. The boy falls and has a vision: in order to cure the village they must dig a hole straight through the earth, and- on the other side- place a cross on top of a silver tower.
Back on Planet Earth
In this story, written by Arjen himself, a boy lives in a space station. Humans have lost the ability to feel but he overhears the older people telling stories about the days when they lived on earth. On his computer the boy finds images of the most beautiful things, such as flowers and mountains, but he also finds out that earth was destroyed by wars and environmental disasters and people eventually had to live in space in order to survive. The boy realizes that after seeing people with emotions, and their laughter, he would rather have died on earth, than be in the cold space station.
Forevermore
Based on the movie 'The Neverending Story'. A boy steals a book from a store. The boy arrives too late for class, sneaks into the attic and crawls under a blanket to read the book. The fictitious world of 'Fantasia' is falling apart; it's being eaten by the Nothing. Symbolizing the fact that nobody's fantasizing anymore. The hero in the story has to cure the empress from her disease, and save 'Fantasia'. He does so by giving the Empress a name.
Dawn of Man
This is a very experimental song with vocoder and scratches on it. The story is based on Stanley Kubrick's '2001' and '2010', but with Arjen's own fantasy and interpretation incorporated. The listener should do the same; the lyrics cannot be explained one way. Just use your imagination!
INTO THE ELECTRIC CASTLE
Into the Electric Castle' tells the story of 8 stereotypical characters from different periods of time who suddenly find themselves in another dimension. A Highlander, Knight, Egyptian, Indian, Barbarian, Roman, Hippie and Futureman each try to understand where they are and what they are supposed to do. It is then that a voice rings out from the sky to tell them that the dimension they have arrived in is built on dreams and fears. In order to find their way back to their own dimension and time, they must go in search of The Electric Castle. During the search every character is forced to confront his or her innermost fears, and not everyone survives the treacherous journey to the Castle.
At the end of the journey those that successfully dealt with their personal demons find out that the voice belongs to an alien named 'Forever of the Stars', a member of an alien race living in a distant galaxy. These aliens created planet Earth and its people as an experiment so they could study, and hopefully one day experience emotions, as they themselves lost feelings eons ago.
'Into the Electric Castle' is a double CD. On disc 1 we experience the journey to The Electric Castle and on disc 2 we find out what happens when they arrive there.
THE UNIVERSAL MIGRATOR Part 1:THE DREAM SEQUENCER
On 'Universal Migrator part I: The Dream Sequencer' Arjen picks up the story of the 22nd century. Over a hundred years have passed since the last world war destroyed all life on earth, which the main character Ayreon already predicted in the 6th century (see the first Ayreon CD 'The Final Experiment').
During the battles a number of colonists resided on Mars, witnessing the destruction on earth from afar. For years they managed to keep themselves alive with the supplies they brought with them from earth. These supplies ran out and almost all colonists have died. The main character in the story is the last surviving human being, a child of the first colonists. He has never been on earth.
To make the boredom on Mars somewhat bearable, clever technicians designed the Dream Sequencer, a machine that allows Colonists to travel back to their own youth by means of hypnoses, but also to their lives before; their pre-incarnations so to speak.
It is in this machine that the Colonist relives his youth on Mars, his death as a woman on earth during the war of 2084, the first moonlanding of 1969, and his life as the standard bearer in the famous 17th century painting of Rembrandt: The Nightwatch. He stood on the shores of England as Queen Elisabeth I, watching the English fleet sail out to stop the Spanish Armada, and as a Mayan girl he witnessed sacred ceremonies in Tikal. We find out that the Colonist once was the minstrel Ayreon and that, in another even earlier incarnation, he was present during the construction of Stonehenge. His soul's first incarnation was the first human being on earth.
THE UNIVERSAL MIGRATOR Part 2:FLIGHT OF THE MIGRATOR
The Universal Migrator part II continues the story of the last man alive on Mars as he decides to venture further back in time. He wants to go all the way back to the time right before the universe was created, a time when there was nothing but chaos. The Colonist witnesses the big bang and the creation of the first soul: The Universal Migrator. This soul divides in various new souls that each go in search of planets they can inhabit. This is how they bring life to various planets and start different civilizations.
In the Dream Sequencer program the Colonist follows the soul that is headed for earth. On his long journey through space, he passes astronomical manifestations such as quasars, pulsars, supernovas, black holes, and wormholes. He finally enters the solar system, but the DS program goes on overload. The Colonist should never have ventured that far back in time. The Dream Sequencer is desperately trying to wake the Colonist from his deep state of hypnoses, but it is too late; the Colonist dies in the machine. Then the Migrator speaks to him without words: "Eternity lies before you. You are the new Migrator!"
THE HUMAN EQUATION
A man has a car accident and ends up in hospital in a comatose state. The car accident was very bizarre: it was broad daylight and there was no other car in sight. His wife and his best friend are keeping a vigil at his bed, trying to understand what happened, hoping he will wake soon.
Cut off from the outside world, the man finds himself trapped in a strange realm where his emotions- most of which he’s ignored for a long time- have come to life to confront him with all the choices he has made in his life.
As he is taken from one memory to the next, he slowly becomes aware of all the events leading up to his accident, and realizes that if he ever wants to wake up from his coma, he must find a way out of his prison…
