Not As Good As The Book (The Tangent)

Called into life comes a man knuckled down, broken in, but already working Slightly bemused by the new world he finds himself in Adapting his thoughts to environments strange and bizarre, He never thought to encounter, Running his fingers through things he once read of in books And all of it seems so unclear It's not the future he once held so dear But there's always tomorrow, always today There's always something in the way He grew up with Eagle — computers that plotted his courses to far distant planets But ended up in a grey office suite, with Excel Now he finds routes to the goals of his peers And the vast empty space of their pockets Crossing the vacuum that lies between sci-fi and hell And all of it just seems so drear It's not the future we once held so dear But there's always tomorrow, always today (The future never looks There's always something in the way (Like It reads in the books) And is this the dream I had as a child? To see moons from whatever side... Exploring space with flashing lights To ride in the pod at Virgil's right To boldly go where no man went before To take chicks along just to settle the score I smile and press the key And see Uncle Microsoft smiling right back at me If I could take on those adventures Have I reached the point where I'd rather stay at home? And is the comfort of the slippers worth trading For an evening in the Federation Neutral Zone? It's half past nine on Tuesday morning And still nobody's landed yet on Mars But if I get my quota finished there might be time For a swift half in the bar What happened to me? Was it a turning that I took? What happened to the future? It's not as good as the book. They went to space in an old tin of beans haphazardly strapped to a firework, With less than a ZX81 to direct them back home... We sit here with Gigs (abytes) and just twiddle our thumbs, While personalising our desktops Raising the firewalls and hoping the heatshields can hold I watched Buzz Aldrin step out of the tin, to the Moon and start his adventure That seems to end here with a nice coloured “skin” for my phone I see those steps through a digital stream and a mass of hot burning plasma Neatly wrapped up on a 50 inch screen in my home And though the pictures aren't clear There's so much more there than I'm wanting here And there's always tomorrow, always today (The future never looks There's always something in the way. (Like It reads in the books)