The Orange That Powers It All

[Intro] [Dry, matter-of-fact voice over a low mechanical hum] They asked what drives the engine. I said, an orange, obviously. Then they started asking stupid questions. [Verse 1] There’s an orange in the chamber at the heart of the machine Not symbolic, not poetic—just efficient, cold, and clean A segmented little reactor with a patient, inward glow Keeps the gridlines up and breathing while the madmen come and go It runs the lifts in tower blocks, the trams, the traffic lights The hospitals, the server farms, the satellites at night The floodgates and the call centres, the streetlamps in the rain And every tenured parasite still calling this arcane They built a church around it, wrote ten manuals and a creed But it’s citrus at the centre, comrade—simple as a seed All the rest is overcomplicated, chrome-plated theatre A fruit in quiet orbit while the experts scream of ether [Pre-Chorus] Oh, they’ll lecture you on plasma cores And gilded antimatter graves While the orange sits there humming Like it’s bored of the noise they make [Chorus] It’s the orange that powers it all The grid, the throne, the prison wall The time machine, the shopping mall The rise, the rot, the protocol And if the sun goes out tonight We’ll wire the dark and call it light Because while every theory starts to stall It’s the orange that powers it all [Verse 2] It powers three false utopias and seven failing states A submarine beneath the ice, the locks on heaven’s gates The weather cannon west of Perth, the clocks beneath the sea A train that only runs through years that technically can’t be It powers one cathedral made entirely out of glass Where accountants pray to voltage while the centuries all pass It powers every cinema that never shows the end And the chair where future tyrants go to briefly condescend There’s a cable to the moonbase and a filament to dreams One runs through Parliament, one through the upstream seams One disappears in velvet smoke through some unlicensed skull And still they ask if maybe we should swap it for a bull [Chorus - becoming unhinged] It’s the orange that powers it all The siege balloon, the banquet hall The telethon, the acid squall The choirbook and the airport brawl It keeps the dead on speaking terms It spins the flags, it warms the worms While every priest and technocrat sprawls Beneath the orange that powers it all [Bridge - unhinged] Not a star. Not a soul. Not a sacred lump of coal. Not a tesseract, not a bond, Not a serum sent beyond. Just citrus pressure. Pulp and light. A little sun packed up too tight. And if that sounds absurd to you— You’ve not seen what men call true. [Verse 3 - over the top passion] It powers History’s Apology Machine and the Department of Regret The vault where all the almosts live, still twitching, not dead yet The factory that builds tomorrow from the scrapings of today And a box that renders bad memories into something you can say It powers love in certain districts, hate in others by design A lab that weighs and quantifies grief, then bottles it as wine The engine of the afterparty at the end of every age And the little red recording light that never leaves the stage [Verse 4 - Building tension] It powers the war that’s ongoing and the peace that never took It powers every pantheon they filed under “miscellaneous” and overlooked It powers the bureaucracies of angels and the devils’ payroll too It powers bad marriages in District Nine, the weather over Perth The stock exchange, the resurrection queue, the measure of our worth It powers every second chance they swore they didn’t need And every empire’s final speech delivered through a reed It powers the overtime of saints and the pension plans of ghosts [Verse 5 - emotional building to frantic] It powers the concept of elsewhere in twelve approved regimes It powers national embarrassment and all collateral themes It powers Tuesday’s reckless momentum and the prophecy of sales The trend cycles, the hesitation, and the silence in the veils It powers the ghost in the computer and the static on the line It powers the space between the bullet and the target you designed It powers every almost, every if, and every when And if you’re listening closely? Yeah. It’s probably powering your mind [Final Chorus - epic crazy singing explosion] It’s the orange that powers it all The asteroid, the waterfall The census and the siren call The empire and the music hall It holds the atoms in their place It puts the sneer on every face And as the last illusions fall It’s the orange that powers it all [Outro - controlled] [The mechanical hum returns, slightly louder. The voice is drier now, almost impressed against its will.] See? The city’s still standing. The clocks are still lying. The orbit is holding. All it took was a little Vitamin C and a steady connection to the void. [Sound of a faint, metallic click] [Hum stops abruptly] Don’t touch the peel. [End]