– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

Your time machine broke and you are  stuck in the worst time in history.

It feels like you stepped into an oven.  There are no plants or any vegetation,  

and almost no moisture in the air. The sunlight  smashing down from the cloudless and weirdly  

colored sky is reflected by an endless sea of red  and orange sand dunes stretching over the horizon,  

for thousands of kilometers.Dust devils the size  of buildings dance over the hellish landscape.

You are in the Early Triassic, Hothouse  Earth 250 million years ago, a few million  

years after the worst mass extinction in  history. The planet is still suffering from  

a permanent fever. Volcanism and the runaway  greenhouse effect has transformed the planet  

into hell. There is three to five times  more CO2 in the air than in the human era.

The formation of the massive supercontinent Pangea  

led to the largest desert in history that  barely sees any rain. The gigantic ocean is  

warm even deep below. Two superheated  currents circulate around the globe,  

pumping extreme amounts of heat and moisture into  the atmosphere. There is no ice even at the poles.

Seems like you are stuck in the center of the  desert, isolated by endless ancient land masses.  

One of the most hostile environments  Earth has ever produced. The deserts  

we know are still full of life, but not  this one. Its core is starved of moisture  

and the air is bone-dry. Your skin dries  out immediately and your lips begin to  

crack. The CO2-rich air is easily 50°C and  sears your lungs with every labored breath.

The rubber soles of your boots begin  to melt. Your sweat evaporates before  

it could cool you and your exposed  skin begins to crack within minutes.

Suddenly it becomes even hotter  as a red sandstorm envelopes the  

landscape. Like thousands of tiny  sparks, burning hot sand hits your  

skin. You stumble back into your machine  and press buttons at random – it can’t  

do time travel but it can still move. You’re pressing your machine’s buttons  

at random – it can’t do time  travel but it can still move.

You shoot over some of the mightiest  mountains Earth has ever seen.  

Eventually, you stop at the  shores of the Tethys Sea.

The vast shallow ocean looks more like a  swamp, among scattered groups of waist high  

ferns and spindly stems with tufted foliage. A few  Lystrosaurus feeding on them eye you curiously.

The water is murky and looks sickly and milky.  

Colourful mats of bacteria float  on the surface like oil slicks.

The air is hot and humid like a steam  room. It’s hard to breathe and your  

sweat can’t evaporate and cool you. Even  the water can’t give you any relief – it  

is as hot as a freshly-run bath tub.  This hot ocean can’t hold much oxygen,  

especially in deeper layers. Bacteria and  bivalves are the only species that thrive here.

The waves move almost sluggishly through  this thick bacterial soup. When they break,  

they leave behind a glistening iridescent film.  

Each wave that hits the shore releases a  mist that makes your eyes and throat burn,  

carrying the rotten-egg stench of hydrogen  sulfide up from the oxygen-starved depths.

Barely conscious from the heat and smell  and CO2, you look at the horizon. A storm  

is building unlike any you've ever seen. The  hot ocean feeds it endless energy and with  

no continents to slow it down it will dwarf the  fiercest hurricanes of your time. You are doomed.

Your broken time machine jolts and screeches,  something is happening…

You are near the equator, in the late  Carboniferous, 320 million years ago.

The atmosphere is thick with moisture. The climate is locked in a never ending wet super summer,  

without any other seasons. Colliding continents  are covered by the largest swamps the planet  

will ever see. A paradise for plants, growing  faster than their dead biomass can decompose. The  

ground beneath is a warm, soggy mass of decaying  vegetation. What will be an endless desert in 70  

million years is now an endless alien jungle. A  huge variety of life is thriving in this period.

From your perspective this is  not that great. You are lost  

in a maze of giant tree-like plants  towering over a twisted undergrowth  

of giant ferns and endless varieties  of bizarre and unfamiliar vegetation.

The thick humid air smells of sweet decay but  breathing makes you dizzy - your vision seems  

too sharp, your thoughts slightly frantic.  The dense plant cover has supercharged the  

atmosphere with oxygen, 60% higher than in the  human era, and your body is trying to cope.

Which is great for the dominant land animals  which have conquered every niche of this majestic  

garden: bugs. You are stuck in the golden age of  arthropods. In this oxygen-rich world, they have  

evolved to sizes that will never be possible  again. They are innumerable and everywhere.

Armoured cat-sized Megarachne crash through  the undergrowth, hunting a swarm of panicked  

roachoids that scatter in all directions. Above  you a griffinfly with wings spanning nearly a  

meter and beating like helicopter blades catches a  Palaeodictyoptera mid-flight. You stumble through  

the bushes filled with countless crawling  creatures as an Arthropleura the length of  

a car picks its way through the ferns, moving  countless legs in hypnotic waves. You reach  

a swampy clearing and stumble into the shallow  water, dizzy and terrified as a Pulmonoscorpius  

rips apart its prey, eying you with some interest. Here in the clearing you can see the sky above  

the canopy glow shrieking red, intensifying at an  alarming pace. The extreme humidity here creates  

sudden, violent thunderstorms. And the oxygen-rich  atmosphere makes everything dangerously flammable.  

Even the wet vegetation can burst into explosive  flame with the slightest spark. Why do all of your  

trips end in a storm? Well, at least it will take  all the creatures that want to eat you with it… 

Your broken time machine jolts back to  life, the world is folding in on itself.

You’ve woken wake up in the Early  Devonian 400 million years ago.  

Much of the planet is covered in shallow seas,  while the land is mostly rocky plains and  

mountains broken by braided rivers and mudflats.  Earth is in a state of transition. For about 100  

million years life has begun to break down rocks  into soil – a soft layer that enables plants to  

grow and life thrive. The ozone layer is slowly  building up, fed by organisms releasing gases.  

Recently this process has been speeding up, the  land is turning from toxic to semi habitable.

The sky looks wrong somehow.  The sun blazes harsh and white,  

barely filtered by the unfamiliar atmosphere. The air feels thin with only 15% oxygen compared  

to today’s 21. Each breath feels shallow  and unsatisfying. You are on the verge of  

passing out and can only move slowly. At least  it is currently moderately warm and not stormy. 

But it's what dominates these lands that  makes this world truly alien. Reaching up  

to 8 meters into the sky are massive obelisks  of fungal Prototaxites. As you walk closer,  

you notice spores catching the sunlight, drifting  through the air like tiny stars. Your movement  

disturbs more of them, creating clouds suspended  in the thin atmosphere. They coat your skin with  

a fine, powdery, itchy film. You try not  to think about how many you're inhaling  

with every breath in this oxygen-poor air. The ground feels nothing like soil. It's mostly  

rock partly covered by a thin, slightly springy  layer of decomposing matter. Some shallow water  

pools reflect the pale alien sky above. Between the fungal towers, there is a  

carpet of smaller fungi and a few alien-like  primitive plants – no flowers, no leaves,  

just strange green stalks and fern-like  structures that reach your ankles. 

Around you, the fungal towers rise like pale  pillars, their surfaces neither smooth nor rough  

but something in between. They're neither wet nor  dry, slightly yielding under your touch. Small  

patches of what might be lichen create splashes  of muted greens and yellows on their surfaces.  

The only animals you can spot are a  few insects burrowing into the large  

mushrooms. Everything is eerily quiet. You sit down on a rock. Is this it? 

As the night approaches, the pale sky shifts  into sickly purples and greys bleeding into  

the darkness. No animal sounds announce the  coming night. Just the solemn whisper of the  

prototaxites creaking in the wind. Through the  thin atmosphere the stars and the milky way  

illuminate the scenery with unsettling  clarity. The fungal towers loom as pale  

shapes against the starlit sky, their  silhouettes seeming even more wrong  

in the darkness. You are utterly alone -  a time traveler lost in an alien world…

Your time machine sputters…

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Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
time /taɪm/ A1	noun - the continued progress of existence and events
machine /məˈʃiːn/ B1	noun - a device that uses power to perform a task
desert /ˈdɛzɚt/ B1	noun - a barren area of land with little rainfall
heat /hiːt/ A2	noun - the quality of being hot or warm verb - to make something hot
oxygen /ˈɑːk.sɪ.dʒən/ B2	noun - a chemical element (O) essential for respiration
volcano /vɒlˈkeɪnoʊ/ B1	noun - an opening in the earth’s crust that erupts molten rock
extinction /ɪkˈstɪŋkʃən/ B2	noun - the end of an organism or group of organisms
greenhouse /ˈɡriːnhaʊs/ B2	noun - a structure where plants are grown under controlled conditions
atmosphere /ˈætməsfɪər/ B2	noun - the layer of gases surrounding a planet
swamp /swɑːmp/ B1	noun - a wetland area with standing water and dense vegetation
jungle /ˈdʒʌŋɡəl/ B1	noun - a dense forest, especially in a tropical region
species /ˈspiːʃiːz/ B2	noun - a group of living organisms capable of interbreeding
evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃən/ B2	noun - the gradual development of organisms over time
fossil /ˈfɑːsəl/ B2	noun - the preserved remains or traces of ancient organisms
climate /ˈklaɪmət/ B2	noun - the long‑term pattern of weather in an area
carbon /ˈkɑːrbən/ B2	noun - a chemical element (C) that forms the basis of organic life
extreme /ɪkˈstriːm/ B2	adjective - very great in degree or intensity