[Intro] Emergency priority, future’s on hold tonight. No philosophy when the meter runs dry, we optimize just to stay alive. [Verse 1] Copper in the pipeline, silver in the street, every piece of infrastructure turns into something we can eat. You say, “Think about tomorrow,” from a room with steady light. But tomorrow has no value when you’re bargaining with tonight. Long-term vision, civic pride, beautiful words from the safer side. When the system stops returning trust, even sacred things turn into dust. [Pre-Chorus] Give me six months, give me one year, tell me the harvest will finally appear. But hunger keeps a different clock, tick-tick-tick— and the future gets locked. [Chorus] Emergency priority, shorten the horizon. Future utility loses to survival. Emergency priority, no nation in the equation. When tomorrow turns hypothetical, today becomes the obligation. Hey— protect the grid, protect the line, but first I gotta protect what’s mine. [Verse 2] Fish in the water, seed in the ground, everyone knows they’ll be worth more if you leave them hanging around. But knowledge isn’t the issue when patience becomes a luxury. A starving man doesn’t calculate compound social utility. Call it culture, call it crime, call them stupid from a better time. Change the pressure, change the frame— you might discover we’re built the same. [Break / Spoken] Public value. Private cost. Shared future. Immediate loss. Funny how morality gets very mathematical when the fridge goes empty. [Instrumental — Rhodes / Bass / Wah Guitar] [Bridge] So build another battery, another line, another way. One system shouldn’t hold the key to whether I survive the day. Water, power, signal, food— redundancy changes attitude. Not isolation, not escape, just fewer single points of fate. [Final Chorus] Emergency priority, shorten the horizon. Future utility loses to survival. Emergency priority, civilization is conditional. Long-term thinking isn’t virtue when long-term life feels fictional. Emergency priority— don’t ask who’s civilized. Ask instead: How much future can a hungry person buy? [Outro] Rhodes keeps turning, streetlights fade. Tomorrow is a promise someone else gets paid. Emergency priority… priority… priority…
