[Verse 1] He spent his years in lighted rooms, Blue dashboards bleaching out his face, Muted calls and softened words, Dead fault trees no one meant to trace. He knew the drift of managed blame, How every break was talked to death, Till no one owned the thing by name And nothing real was left. Then one wet night beyond the ring He saw what severed signal meant: Their optics tracked him through the rain. One speaker cracked: state role or die. He knelt in runoff, split the sheath, Found the burn and bridged the line. [Chorus] On the far side of the wire, Past the cold blue screen-light glow, Men came over one by one Where consequence ran hard and low. Not for comfort, not for ease, Not for any softer lie, But because the old world dulled them down Where every edge was sanded flat And every man learned not to own. He’d once known weight in younger days, A winter range, a conscript line, But all that nerve had gone to ground In talk and culture, managed time. He found the first man in the sleet, Arms deep in ruptured cable lead, Three war machines in partial dark, One mount still live, one near dead. So off came coat and down went hands. He dragged dead cells through roadside mire, Set watch beside the drainage cut, And scanned the dark for muzzle fire. [Chorus] On the far side of the wire, Past the cold blue screen-light glow, Men came over one by one Where consequence ran hard and low. Not for comfort, not for ease, Not for any softer lie, But because the old world dulled them down But because the old world dulled them down And this one still required a spine. [Verse 3] The third moved freight by ghosted feeds, Predictive routes and planning glass, Consensus loops on flow control, Review on review while shipments stalled. He knew the polished fraud of drift, Where ten men spoke of movement clean While power waited, loads stood still, And spoilage vanished into screens. Then out beyond the managed rim He saw two men and a wounded unit Dragging charge and ration load As if the road itself still meant it. He read it once and read it clean: One side still knew what moved the whole. So he cut his route across the verge And drove dry cells into the cold. [Chorus] On the far side of the wire, Past the cold blue screen-light glow, Men came over one by one Where consequence ran hard and low. Not for comfort, not for ease, Not for any softer lie, But because the old world dulled them down And this one still required a spine. [Verse 4] The fourth kept tools in service white, Vendor gates and black-box walls, Remote approvals, deadened hands, Maintenance trapped behind protocols. He knew the insult of that world, Where broken things were not repaired, Just ticketed, deferred, discussed, And left to die in filtered air. Then into his shed came damaged steel, Burned harness, slack mount, scorched-out rack, A field unit dragged in through rain With half its working body black. He looked from men to machine scars, Then stripped the sleeve and laid out steel, Cut out the rot, reset the feed, Drove life back through the wounded frame. [Bridge] The old world never beat them down. It numbed them slow with light and air, With endless loops of careful speech And nothing any man could bear. It fed them soft and left them thin, All edge dissolved in managed peace, Till action looked like something crude And judgment like a strange disease. [Final Chorus] On the far side of the wire, Past the cold blue screen-light glow, Four men came over one by one Where consequence ran hard and low. Not for glory, not for ease, Not for any gentler name, But because the dead world made them small And this one still demanded flame. [Outro] They found him west beyond the stacks, Still in that same old weathered coat, Bent above the plotting glass, With the whole hard region in his scope. He looked up once through ash and rain, Four hard men come in from the rim, And in that hour before first light The houses first took shape in him.
