Exit Strategy (feat. Jane Tyrrell)

The constellations silhouette her in a blue light

That floods in from the window that she sits beside mystified

With her tiny hands up to the glass

As if being able to hold it all would make it all real at last

And he wonders if she could ever see that orb as home

Or picture a million when all she's been is all alone

And time on a holodeck can't make a tree be real

He can't wait until she's old enough to ask her how she feels

About her circumstance, certain chance factors

Like an attack on a network of reactors and evacuation

The lucky few now look back on a planet that's red as Venus

But their memories mean naught to this kid who's never seen it

And what can a trilobite of footage even mean

To a youth that's been born into a can of sardines

Pa leans in and whispers to her, that was once home

But how could that be when all she's been is all alone?

Well just like a guiding stone

She'll lead us on towards places never known

Memories long gone, though tattered and torn

She'll guide us

And when the ship is stowed

She'll lead the road and as prophecy unfolds

The old is left old and the blessed new day be dawning

The crew remain wary, she settles too easy

Suspicious minds eyeing her as if she is a new species

At the very least a generation gap uncrossable

Her reality is that which we once deemed impossible

And all of our dreams will bring back more than fragments

When you changed her nappy to a view of molten magma

Back in the bad old days when the stabilisers busted

And that hidden moon's surface vaporised as we dusted

Or tried to describe food cooked on a gas burner

To a kid that barely chews, an advanced maths learner

Nurture versus nature fails to enter the equation

Though her nurturers yearn to raise her in the one location

The trajectory is clear and the controls are locked

And though they all hope to procreate, she's still the first frog

The captain's log records this historic offering

We enter the planet's orbit, the light is softening

Well just like a guiding stone

She'll lead us on towards places never known

Memories long gone, though tattered and torn

She'll guide us

And when the ship is stowed

She'll lead the road and as prophecy unfolds

The old is left old and the blessed new day be dawning

Who could say what will happen? Survivors stay chattering

And what the kid will do next is what will really matter

A smattering of applause for their exit strategy

Like an ark they put together in a land called Honahlee

And it's lashed together with twine and grit

We go on refining it until it's the finest ship

And they don't laugh at us, attempt to carpet us

In tractor beams and experiment

They look at my little one first but she is heaven sent

And while we're left to defend ourselves with so few tools

She's learning the alphabet reading the operator's manual

To this glorified lifeboat we're destined to drift in

Her perspective is nothing less than uplifted

Now Ripley meet Newt, stay close little one

Newton and Darwin both want you to survive for so long

And thanks for all the fish, when they said "c'est la vie"

It must have meant so much more than they could wish

Well just like a guiding stone

She'll lead us on towards places never known

Memories long gone, though tattered and torn

She'll guide us

And when the ship is stowed

She'll lead the road and as prophecy unfolds

The old is left old and the blessed new day be dawning