lyrics
Surface Tension
Every day teachers bleed us. We decay as they lead us, bearing loads of contention, down the roads that we pave. Still, they take us for granted. Wide awake, disenchanted; we assail this dissension, and we fail to behave.
Solitude drives our mood. All too easy to disconnect and mutually meet their lack of respect.
Skipping out on our teachers; lessons we’ve been ignoring. Sleeping under the bleachers. School is seriously boring. But there’s one thing we’ve heard about that has caused a stir: that our whole building holds a secret.
There were whispers spinning up rumor. Former students had brought it. Always treated with humor, no one actually bought it. But it turns out we’re gonna learn what the building does as a well-armored war command post. Because...
In the wall of a bathroom, down the hall from the math room, a covert old computer screams alert and alarm. Teacher stops, sets her chalk down. Central Ops is in lockdown. Says she’s more than a tutor as the war-systems arm.
“Brace yourselves...watch those shelves!”
Walls and windows are folding in. Now part of the floor is starting to spin.
Plunging at a steep angle, one that only gets steeper, cables dangerously dangle as we’re burrowing deeper. There’s a loudspeaker telling us this is not a drill, but it seems that it kind of is one.
We’re still digging downward and leaning. Forward engines are roaring. Old thoughts take a new meaning: school is actually boring. Pretty soon we’re a mile or so under solid ground. When we lurch to a stop we’re met with no sound.
Led by somber personnel, walls unfold. And we're ushered from the airlock, in awe, into a hermetic cell where we're told that the sanctity of their lock is law.
Sterile hallways, wide and white at the fore, house a thousand ordered war-rooms and stalls. Flooded by fluorescent light, every door opens up to even more rooms and halls.
Riding out the war in hiding, we'll be here abiding, living in trade. The highest grade energy made by the muscle we're providing powers hydroponic towers, filter pumps, and showers. Learning the nursery down to every letter, each anniversary makes us even better.
Ample surface sensors sample, scanning each example. Pulses and beams slip through the air, reading extremes everywhere. So many stations monitor vibrations and communications. Every antenna's a signal fed to every display inside our hideaway.
Stasis, driven by the basis of this strange oasis. We're pioneers, but we're confined. Though it's been years, we don't mind, ’cause our arrival guaranteed survival. We are all archival. Ready to back up humanity, we patiently wait to go repopulate.
While we churn in the compound, cities burn in the bomb-pound. What devours far above us isn’t ours to forgive. So we face our salvation and embrace obligation; any role needed of us in this hole where we live. We purvey DNA, just like how each antenna fits, as we all become friends with benefits.
Automation; manufacture is ongoing. Cultivation; all consuming and all growing. Satiation at the pull of a lever. Self-sustaining; all as one in the same garden. Softly raining; our resolve and our hearts harden. Waxing, waning, we could be here forever.
Fruiting trees extend their leaves as they sway in the artificial skylight and rain. Signals any screen receives make our day, but they only seem to highlight our pain.
Searching each alert we see, we endure for the words that lead the way out: ALL CLEAR. Someday life above will be safe and pure, but till then our lives will play out down here.
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