Open the Sky

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?