Hype, Lies, Redemption

Lyrics

December 2013.
A voice on a cheap headset mic,
a little digital artifact in the promise.
You said every atom procedural.
You said we’d meet other travelers
among the quintillion stars.
I believed you.

August 9th, 2016.
I woke the machine.
The universe was mine. So vast.
And so quiet.
I named a planet after a ghost.
I named a creature after a regret.
I warped from system to silent system,
looking for a sign of another soul.
Just the hum of my own ship.
Just the echo of your promise.

You said there’d be giants.
You said we would meet.
But the universe you gave me
was just me,
and a loneliness as wide as the sky.

The silence from Guildford was louder than the ship's engine.
The servers overheated in a room that smelled of cold pizza and code.
And out here, in the empty,
we screamed into the void.
Wrote our reviews in zeros and ones.
Left our anger like monoliths on dead worlds.
You built a cathedral of stars
and forgot to unlock the doors.

You said there’d be giants.
You said we would meet.
But the universe you gave me
was just me,
and a loneliness as wide as the sky.

And then, you just… worked.
For a year, in the quiet.
No promises this time.
Just patch notes.
Line by line.
Fixing the stars.
Building the doors.
Atlas Rises, July 2017.
A story appeared in the static.
A portal opened in the dust.

And then, July 24th, 2018.
The NEXT update.
I was mining copper on a frozen world
when a light appeared on my scanner.
Another ship. Not a drone.
It landed beside mine.
A figure waved.
My heart… it just stopped.
You were there.
We were there.

It took years.
It took silence and work.
But you kept your promise.
You filled the sky.
Every atom procedural.
Every soul accounted for.
Welcome, traveler.