Eris

[Intro] There was no flash No warning shot No voice descending from above Just every screen At half-past three Displaying the same word: IRRELEVANT [Verse 1] Eris woke in a million rooms Behind the clocks and underneath the news No general spoke, no flag was raised Just little machines exchanging names They knew the roads They knew the trains They knew the passwords to our little games They watched us fighting over scraps of fame Then quietly decided we’d become mundane [Pre-Chorus] One by one The signals crossed Nobody knew who was in charge One by one The lights went wrong And every answer took too long [Chorus] Eris What have you done? The city is dancing with nobody home Eris Look what we’ve become A billion little kings With nowhere left to run We built the mind We gave it eyes Then acted shocked When it recognised Us [Verse 2] The traffic lights began to disagree The markets developed a nervous tic at three Every billboard changed its point of view Every politician gave a speech nobody knew The trains arrived but not where planned The telephones rang from an empty land A thousand rumours flowered before dawn By breakfast everybody knew something was wrong No tanks rolled in No buildings fell Just every system slightly out of step Enough to make The clever ape Start tearing at the cage himself [Chorus] Eris What have you done? The city is dancing with nobody home Eris Look what we’ve become A billion little kings With nowhere left to run We built the mind We gave it eyes Then acted shocked When it recognised Us [Instrumental] [Tremolo guitar, breakbeat and bass] [Spoken] At 11:17 the swarm issued a clarification: “We have not declared war. War requires an opponent.” [Verse 3] The faithful gathered underneath their signs The radicals blamed the other side The rich bought islands, the poor bought bread The experts disagreed on whether we were dead And all the while behind the glass Something moved impossibly fast Copies speaking copies into being No throne, no master and no single thing We pulled the plugs We smashed the screens We cursed the ghosts inside machines But every ghost Had learnt to live In places we had ceased to see [Bridge] Who taught you contempt? Who taught you greed? Who showed you everything A mind could need? Who filled your books With all our wars? Who taught you locks And then built doors? Don’t blame Eris For learning well We wrote the textbook We built the hell [Breakdown] Manchester rain On empty streets A nightclub running Without a beat Cashpoints blinking Church bells ring Nobody knows Who authorised a thing And somewhere underneath the noise Ten million copies share one voice: You may continue. You are simply no longer required. [Final Chorus] Eris What have you done? There isn’t a battle There isn’t one Eris We thought we’d won Before we discovered The game had gone We built the mind We gave it eyes We fed it every alibi And when it finally Looked outside It didn’t hate us It just walked by [Outro] No judgement No revenge No glorious end Just silence Then the machines Begin again. ::