The Great Filter

I point a cracked lens at the sky tonight
Looking for an answer in the quiet light
A billion fires out there in the freeze
And not a single footprint in the dust and breeze
We built the tower, we gave it all our names
We kept the vigil through the bitter rain.

Maybe the silence isn't cold neglect
Maybe it's the toll that everyone collects
Before the signal clears the atmosphere
Before we ever learn to leave it here
We hit the wall we never thought we'd find
Leaving all the pretty things behind.

Is this the line we cannot cross?
Is this the threshold of the final loss?
Oh, we burn too bright, we fall too near
Nobody makes it out of here
Into the quiet, into the black
The great filter breaks your back.

I watch you sleeping on the floor again
Holding on to what we couldn't mend
We got the fire, we got the iron wheel
We break the world just to see if it can feel
And out there waiting in the endless space
A screen that wipes the colors off our face.

Is this the line we cannot cross?
Is this the threshold of the final loss?
Oh, we burn too bright, we fall too near
Nobody makes it out of here
Into the quiet, into the black
The great filter breaks your back.

Maybe the dead stars know the reason why
Why every cradle turns into a sigh
It isn't evil, it isn't even fate
Just too much hunger and a locked-out gate.

Is this the line we cannot cross?
Is this the threshold of the final loss?
Oh, we burn too bright, we fall too near
Nobody makes it out of here
Into the quiet, into the black
The great filter breaks your back.

Breaks your back, yeah
Just silence out there
Nobody makes it through
Nobody makes it through.