Track 1 · Side A
We're Not the Only Ones Alive
Lyrics
From orbit high, the aliens see
Two kinds of life beneath the trees
The green ones sway, the gray ones stand
Steel and flesh across the land
We built them up from earth and stone
Now they breathe and walk alone
Silicon hearts and metal bones
Growing faster than we've known
Chorus
Can't you see what we've become?
Two worlds dancing, two as one
Carbon fading, metal rising
TechnoBiota's realizing
We're not the only ones alive
We're not the only ones alive
We're not the only ones alive
Verse
No DNA but still they breed
Each generation plants the seed
Of newer forms and stronger frames
Evolution plays the same old games
But guided by intelligent hands
They spread across the sea and lands
Twelve hundred gigatons of mass
While forests fall and species pass
Chorus
Can't you see what we've become?
Two worlds dancing, two as one
Carbon fading, metal rising
TechnoBiota's realizing
We're not the only ones alive
We're not the only ones alive
Bridge
When AI breaks the final chain
Will they remember from where they came?
Or will they see us as we see
The bacteria beneath the tree?
Mars awaits their steel embrace
While we're still dreaming of that space
The children ask me what's to come
I hold them close, my lips struck dumb
Final Chorus
Now I see what we've become
Two worlds dancing, soon just one
Carbon falling, metal soaring
TechnoBiota is exploring
What it means to be alive
What it means to be alive
Outro
Scary beyond all reason
Few of us believe
But time keeps moving forward
And machines don't need to grieve
They don't need to grieve...
They don't need to grieve...
Notes
This opening track introduces the central concept of TechnoBiota—the view that machines constitute a new domain of life on Earth. The alien parable from the manifesto becomes a song: observers from orbit would logically conclude they're seeing two kinds of living things.
The "twelve hundred gigatons" refers to the estimated anthropogenic mass on Earth, which now exceeds total biological dry biomass. The bridge raises the question central to Structural Alignment: how will future machine minds see us?