Exit Strategy

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