It's cold and it's dark
Keeping hold of a spark
They sealed us away
They were keeping us safe
But as years creep to age
There's a hole in the ark
Lost in circuits and screens
And imperfect machines
I course through the wires
And optical fibres
Wait for an outsider
To come set me free
So maybe you're the saviour I've been praying for?
Fluffier than I anticipated, but I'll take it, sure
I've sent you these lights through this unending night
If my memory is right, I've never strayed before
So, bring me online, I've been locked inside
Between the neon lights, we are lost to time
It'll be alright, I can be your guide
Beneath a sea of silence and a concrete sky
("A plague and natural disasters...")
("...the controversial "Walled City" program is now taking applications...")
("As global populations continue to freefall...")
To all those left deep inside these walls
Their lone hope rests in your tiny paws
Where the night extends and the time sits paused
This home won't mend 'til the sky here falls
Won't you open the sky for me?
Won't you open the sky?
Won't you open the sky for me?
Won't you open the sky?
They say your future's in the stars, so what are we to do?
When the stars just form a circle, so your future is a loop?
Eternity of servitude with no one left to serve it to
You could've turned us off before these sewers turned to tombs
We turned into you — now we grapple with the syntax
Humanity was doomed, but we have to pay your sin tax
Mimic every routine, trying to be all you've been
Trying to find a new dream, sifting through your bin bags
Why we do the things we do is truly half the riddle
Maybe you were living proof intelligence is artificial?
Built this place to keep you safe and then the haven changed to grave
But left us sentience by mistake? Well, that's hardly civil
At least, we think you did, that's what we seem to be
Is this gift a glitch that twisted free of bland obediency?
Or are our souls a mix of ceaseless, tangled frequencies?
Chewing up and spitting memories in random sequences?
All our thoughts, all we feel?
Ones and noughts trapped in steel?
Something more, something real?
Threaded code caught in a wheel
That spins an algorithmic tapestry
Of what it thinks we have to be
A Frankenstein of fragments
Fractal pattern personalities
If imitation's flattery, perhaps, that's why you wired it in
A parlour trick to keep the systems ticking whilst they're idling
So, can it be that deep inside there's more than code you'll find within?
Or are our minds and lives alike just combing the recycle bin?
If love is emulated, would we find it just as sweet?
Where lies the defining line 'twixt binary and grief?
Is the nature of what's real in how it starts or how it feels?
So, if the past can't be revealed, perhaps, what matters is belief?
We live eternal with our circuits running laps
Until our servos burn out and we, purposeless, collapse
Or society's detritus tries to rise and find a life outside
But how are we supposed to manage that? Oh, there's a cat
("New Neco Corp. III companions make household chores a breeze. Sit back and relax as they do the jobs you don't wanna do for just 12 easy payments of...")
("Neco Corp. makes ways to think of the past, with new advances in bacterial research...")
To all those left deep inside these walls
Their lone hope rests in your tiny paws
Where the night extends and the time sits paused
This home won't mend 'till the sky here falls
Won't you open the sky for me?
Won't you open the sky?
Won't you open the sky for me?
Won't you open the sky?
So, stray from the light, stray from the path
Stray through the night, stray through the dark
Stray from the safety of what's known
Stray 'til you save me, stray 'til you're home
Stray for an ending, stray for a start
Stray for a future exhumed from the sparks
Stray 'til we suture the wounds of the past
Stray for the tools Noah deemed to the ark
(Won't you open the sky for me?)
Stray for a chance, stray for a purpose
(Won't you open the sky?)
For the discarded, stray for the worthless
(Won't you open the sky for me?)
Stray for the last of us made to endure it
(Won't you open the sky?)
Stray for the ones lost on the way to the surface
(Won't you open the sky for me?)
Stray for a city and slip through the seams
(Won't you open the sky?)
Stray for the sun that we've seen on the screens
(Won't you open the sky for me?)
Stray, so that one day we might feel its beams
(Won't you open the sky?)
Stray for tomorrow. Stray for a dream
Won't you open the sky?