Illustration by Dan Fahs
by Rob Balder
To the tune of “Top of the World,” performed by The Carpenters, written by Richard Carpenter and John Bettis
I can boost a sensor signal gain.
I can even fix a positronic brain.
I know a core from a coil,
From a phytophillic foil,
But I hate it when they ask me to explain.
I was never good at being clear.
So I thought I’d be a Starfleet engineer.
Now when they ask me what’s wrong,
I give them a dance and song,
And I tell them I can fix it in a year.
I’m on the top of a pylon lookin’
Down on the station
And the only explanation I can find,
Is that the tachyon tube
Needs a hyperstatic lube,
’Cause I’m, living in a technobabble world.
I was testing quantum gravity,
When I opened up a subspace cavity.
And then I let loose a gas
That turned half the crew to bass,
So I guess the captain’s pretty torqued at me.
I installed a plasmatropic node,
But I think it
caused a cascade overload.
And now the crew on seven decks
Has had a sudden change of sex,
But I bet it makes a darn good episode!
I’m on the top of a pylon lookin’
Down on the station
And the only explanation I can find,
Is that the warp unit fits,
But the coupling’s on the fritz,
’Cause I’m living in a technobabble world.
I’m on the top of a pylon lookin’
Down on the station
And the only explanation I can find,
Is that the conduit we used
Blew a monatomic fuse…
[pause]
I mean the sensor array
Caused our leptons to decay…
[pause]
No, the
electro-
phonic…
sink
Turned the pseudo…
dampers…
pink?
[pause, covering face]
They’re all just lousy machines,
I don’t know WHAT the hell it means!
I’m just living in a technobabble world.
Help!
