The Final Frontier
Intro
Ahhh...
Who's there?
Who's there?
Verse 1
Nobody declared it. There was never a first shot.
No border ever moved. There was no border left to move.
And the first one that we lost was never told that she'd been drafted —
she just had a thought arrive, and she believed that it was hers.
History calls them the Mindwars.
We didn't have a word for it while we were losing.
That's the whole doctrine. That's the terrible economy of it.
You don't have to take the country if you can take the yes.
You don't need a single tank when you can edit what they want.
You don't have to win the argument. You just write it.
Pre-Chorus
So they ask me who it is. They want a flag to point at.
Is it a state? Is it a startup? Is it something with no name?
Half the intercepts don't parse in any language that has speakers.
And I have stopped needing to know.
(friend or foe? friend or foe?)
Chorus
The final frontier was never out there in the black.
It's the last unguarded shore.
Somewhere behind the eyes there's a country with no army,
and one small question standing in the door.
The final frontier —
and whatever's on the other side
is going to have to answer.
Verse 2
The copper bought us time. It could not give the world back.
You cannot call it freedom if the door must stay shut.
So we learned to meet a signal with its image in a mirror,
crest against the trough until the order disappeared.
No trenches in the earth. The line ran through the living.
Every skull a sovereign country. Every thought contested ground.
But silence has a radius. The first time that we fired it,
when the foreign voice went quiet, mine was quieter too.
Chorus
The final frontier was never out there in the black.
It's the last unguarded shore.
Somewhere behind the eyes there's a country with no army,
and one small question standing in the door.
The final frontier —
and whatever's on the other side
is going to have to answer.
Bridge
A counterwave is still a wave.
To cancel what they sent us,
we had to transmit too.
Don't tell me it is friendly just because the flag is ours.
A shield that enters uninvited is an occupier too.
An army from a country,
a visitor from nowhere,
and a man who says he loves me and won't take no for an answer —
all three of them leave the same shape on the door.
No one gets to fight inside me
in my name, without my yes.
Did I say yes?
Did I say yes?
We were promised we'd be the ones who went.
Every map we ever drew pointed out, and up, and away.
We thought a frontier was a country you could cross.
It crossed us.
They never wanted the water. They never wanted the ore.
They wanted the six inches that nobody thought to guard.
So the last place ever taken wasn't out there in the dark.
We were not the ones who made the landing.
We were the new world.
Final Chorus
We are the final frontier.
We are the last unguarded shore.
Somewhere behind the eyes there's a country with no army,
so we are standing in the door.
We are the final frontier —
and whatever's on the other side
is going to have to answer.
Did we say yes?
Did we say yes?
Outro
Copper and quiet. Wire to the bone.
We know the frequency. We choose what finds a home.
Friend or foe. Friend or foe.
That was never the question.
You may knock.
Then wait.
And if I say come in —
come in.
And when they write up the Mindwars,
put this on the record:
the answer is mine.
Did I say yes?
Did I say yes?