Immutable Antinomy · Track 6 · middle
Ode to the Grandfather Paradox
You travel back in time and prevent your grandfather from meeting your grandmother. You are never born. You cannot travel back in time. An ode to the loop that eats its own tail — the logical wormhole at the center of every time-travel story. Causality swallowing itself.
Lyrics
[Intro] The lab smells of hot brass and ozone. Paris, July, 3 a.m. The air contracts around my shoulders. A sudden chill. [Verse 1] The dial is set for a cafe on Rue Saint-André. A specific table, a specific Tuesday. All it takes is a nudge. A spilled coffee, a missed connection. A word whispered to the waiter. I have the photograph of him, young. I have the name of her, the one I must keep him from. The woman whose face is a blank in the record. [Chorus] I am the thought that erases its thinker. The bullet fired from the future that finds its own gunsmith in the past. If I succeed, I was never here. The machine was never built. This mission never conceived. Causality swallowing itself. [Verse 2] And there he is. Younger than the pictures. He orders a coffee, reads a paper. And there she is, walking toward the door. My purpose made flesh. My target. My own grandmother, a stranger. I only have to stand up. I only have to block the way. Just for a moment. [Chorus] I am the thought that erases its thinker. The bullet fired from the future that finds its own gunsmith in the past. If I succeed, I was never here. The machine was never built. This mission never conceived. Causality swallowing itself. [Bridge] René Barjavel wrote this down in 1943. The traveler returns to the municipal archives. He finds the ledger for his year of birth. The entries before and after are untouched. But his own certificate... it's just gone. Not torn out. Just... a clean absence. The paper is smooth where the ink never was. [Outro] So I do nothing. I sit. I watch them meet. I watch myself be born. The loop is stable. The knife stays on the table.