The Penrose Line

The fuel gauges bled into the dark three weeks ago We’re riding on the ghost of a thruster's dying glow Ahead, the Maw is waiting, spinning in the night An Ergosphere of silver, swallowing the light The captain looks around the deck, no choices left to make We drop into the dragon’s mouth for everything at stake We hunt the rotational momentum of the dead A desperate calculation spinning in my head. We are diving for the bounty of the Penrose line Breaking off a piece of mass to steal a little time Dump the cargo, fire the thrusters, split the ship in two One half falls forever so the other carries through But we know the price of dynamic recoil, we know the cost of speed When we escape the gravity, we’re running out of creed We’ll fly out to the stars again, victorious and cold But everyone we ever loved will be ten thousand years of old. The alarms are screaming crimson, the hull begins to groan Spacetime is twisting sideways, a terrifying zone Frame-dragging takes the guidance lines and warps them into knots The universe is blurring past in neon streaks and spots We clear the outer boundary, the event horizon gleams A fraction of a second from the ending of our dreams Release the payload stage! Let the fission matrix blow! We hit the negative energy orbit down below! We are diving for the bounty of the Penrose line Breaking off a piece of mass to steal a little time Dump the cargo, fire the thrusters, split the ship in two One half falls forever so the other carries through But we know the price of dynamic recoil, we know the cost of speed When we escape the gravity, we’re running out of creed We’ll fly out to the stars again, victorious and cold But everyone we ever loved will be ten thousand years of old. Time is stretching like a wire, pulling at our bones Outside the glass, the cosmos dies in dying amber tones A century passes in a breath, an eon in a blink The home we left is ashes now, slipping past the brink We stole the black hole's thunder, we intercepted grace But we bought the future's freedom with the ghost of time and place. The G-force fades to nothing. The engines purr with life Fed on the stolen power of the singularity's strife The sensors blink to active. The void is strange and new The constellations rearranged across the frozen blue We survived the Penrose gauntlet. We have the fuel to roam. But looking at the charts tonight... There is no going home. Ten thousand years ahead. Into the relative dark. We are the future's children now. Leftovers of the spark.