oh, the end of infinity with you.

[engineers]

THE ENGINEER.

A playlist with liner notes for the visionary of the Eighth Galaxy. Beware spoilers.

ANYTHING ✨ HEDLEY

The Starry Sea Academy, full of unruly, rough students, where all the teachers quit day one.

A thousand disbelievers couldn't keep me on the ground
I've invented a momentum that'll never slow me down
I believe it 'cause I feel it, and I shout it out loud
I can, I can, I can, so

It doesn't matter. The ones who are the hardest to teach are precisely the ones who are worth teaching.

STAR WALKIN' ✨ LIL NAS X

It's a miracle for Lu Bixing to even exist, let alone to thrive.

Learned a lesson from the wise:
You should never take advice from somebody that ain't tryin.
They said I wouldn't make it out alive.
Told me I would never see the rise.
That's why I gotta kill em every time.

"And yet, as unbearable and as harsh as it was to shoulder, his life was like an arrow shot out from a bow that could not return. He had to continue to fly out."

DYNAMO OF VOLITION ✨ JASON MRAZ

A visionary, a legendary weirdo, someone unstoppable. The energy of this song? Immaculate.

I'm a drama abolitionist
Damn! no opposition to my proposition
Half of a man, half magician
Half a politician holding the mic
Like ammunition
And my vision is as simple as light.

Lu Bixing was the sort of person who could start a cult without even trying.

SKELETON KEY ✨ DESSA

Lu Bixing has Cayley and the Eighth in his blood. It's the dark streets and the friendly people on the corners, calling out to Monoeye Hawk's son.

Along the way, the old men call me by my mother's name.
She looked just the same, they say
The children wave or hide behind
Their mother's skirts afraid.

"I used to hang around those people when I was just a kid, finding a place to read books in the corner. When I'd get bored, I'd just watch them scam people. When they succeeded, someone would come pat me on the head when they passed by."

WAIT TILL YOU SEE WHAT'S NEXT ✨ JASON ROBERT BROWN

Description.

What's across the road? What's behind the wall?
What's around the corner?
And what will it take 'til I find my way?
Will it be today? Will it be too late?
Wait 'til you see what's next
Just beyond the hill, just along the river
There's something that's pulling me out the door
Try for something more, try for something great
And wait 'til you see what's next.

"After countless trials and failures, that experiment also ended fruitlessly. Yet, that was only one of many dreams he had as a young man, like a child on ancient Earth who admired the stars in the sky. Even if it only brought pain, the pain burned in a beautiful fire."

GENE KELLY ✨ FELIX HAGAN AND THE FAMILY

Description

There’s a boy who sits alone among a thousand little dreams
Wants the break the hearts of hundreds, growing drunk on fevered screams
He’s running from a shadow that has stalked him all his life
It’s the darkness that is lurking when you feel like you’re dropping out of sight.

"Ever since he was born, Lu Bixing had spent most of his time fighting against fate and the world. While others were learning the sweet taste of first love, he was struggling to learn how to walk. While others were living happily in the lucid dream that is the moral world, he was yearning to leave the atmosphere from the bottom of his heart.

Time was invaluable to Lu Bixing, so he was always running."

YOUNG VOLCANOES ✨ FALL OUT BOY.

For Lin Jingheng, the Sewer Space Station, and pulling off a miracle.

Come on, make it easy, say I never mattered.
Run it up the flagpole!
We will teach you how to make boys next door out of assholes.

Tonight, the foxes hunt the hounds,
It's all over now
Before it has begun - we've already won.

"Someone broke the imposed silence on the communication network. "...We won? We won!""

CURIOUS/FURIOUS ✨ WILLOW

Describe the song!

Somebody needs to know that
And when this life is looking dark, it's all that we have
And when nobody wants to talk about it
All that we can do is step into dread, that's what I said.

"Lu Bixing's Chicken Soup for the Soul was famous."

THE YOUNG THOUSANDS✨ THE MOUNTAIN GOATS

A date goes wrong. Lin Jingheng is exposed to the virus. So is Lu Bixing. But that's thing: Lu Bixing is immune to the Rainbow Virus. The Eighth Galaxy isn't.

Boats ease into the harbor bearing real suspicious cargo
And the sunlight on the water sets a switch off in your brain
The things that you've got coming will consume you
There's someone waiting out there in an alley with a chain

"You can say I'm a homunculus, the ship of Theseus. The Rainbow Virus killed 3.6 billion people in the eighth galaxy and saved one life. I was born in debt to this place."

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT ✨ THE BROBECKS

Lu Bixing had never been in love, and then Lin Jingheng turned his world on its entire head.

Turn the lights off, I'm in love
Wouldn't you like to
Wouldn't you like to kiss her?

"The lips were one of the most sensitive and thin skinned parts of the body. Lu Bixing had known this fact before, but didn't understand what it meant. It was like a colorblind person, seeing the world in full color for the first time. [...] The man's lips were not as cold as ceramic, like he'd imagined. No. He didn't realize they'd be soft. Scorchingly hot."

NINA CRIED POWER ✨ HOZIER

The Eighth Galaxy's unique position by the wormhole makes it a veritable safe place. It is Lu Bixing's home and a place where humanity thrives, despite the Union's image of vaccuocerebrals. A revolutionary song for a revolutionary.

It's not the wall, but what's behind it
Oh, the fear of fellow man, it's mere assignment
And everything that we're denied
By keeping the divide
It's not the waking, it's the rising.

"No...no. Wait.' Saturday stuttered as he asked, "Isn't this... does this mean we're going to walk out and turn the Eighth Galaxy into a foreign land outside of the Union?"

Lu Bixing returned his question calmly. "Is there something wrong with that?"

CRY, WOLF! ✨ MOLLY OFGEOGRAPHY

At the great success of the Eighth Galaxy came the greatest loss imaginable. But the Eighth has to keep moving, and Lu Bixing is its axis and its gravity.

There's a story about how it started,
How things hurt, and hurt promised relief.
With the force of atoms freshly parted
The origin of appetite is grief.
Grief is hunger, just hunger, so eat.

"He was like a man drowning as he gasped for air, in a desperate attempt to regain control of himself through self inflicted pain."

LITTLE DARK AGE ✨ MGMT

In his grief, Lu Bixing makes a series of bad decisions. No one sees it, but he experiments. In his grief, he learns. He tweaks. He finds the brink of madness - and then throws it away, burns the pages of research into ashes.

Oh-oh, I grieve in stereo, the stereo sounds strange
I know that if you hide, it doesn't go away
If you get out of bed and find me standing all alone
Open-eyed, burn the page, my little dark age

"He promised Prime Minister Edward that he would perish into ashes seven times, and revive seven times from his own ashes. When Lu Bixing faced a situation he could no longer handle, he would make a mark on his desk. It was like a contract with the deceased, and a countdown for himself."

WOKE UP NEW ✨ THE MOUNTAIN GOATS

The constant repetition of "what do I do without you" does a good job covering Lu Bixing floating through life as Lin Jingheng is gone.

The first time I made coffee for just myself
I made too much of it, but I drank it all
Just cause you hate it when I let things go to waste
And I wandered through the house, like a little boy lost at the mall
And an astronaut could've seen the hunger in my eyes from space

"He pulled that single strand of hair inside that resin ball like a maniac and extracted the DNA out of that strand of hair. He's gone, he thought. Maybe even a copy of that man would be enough to heal his broken soul."

GOOD LUCK KID ✨ JOSEPH

With the death of Prime Minister Edward, Lu Bixing becomes the Prime Minister of the Eighth Galaxy.

They handed you the keys
The driver's seat is yours now
There's nothing left to lean on
You're the queen from here on out
No time for doubt
Good luck, kid.

"The young man could feel the weight of the entire Eighth Galaxy pressing on his shoulders; he had too many plans to solve, there was no time to rest. Lu Bixing took a deep breath, and stood up."

SATURN ✨ SLEEPING AT LAST

For Monoeye Hawk, the father who pulled him from the garbage. For a lost mansion and a recording, and the voices of the men who made Lu Bixing who he is.

You taught me the courage of stars before you left
How light carries on endlessly, even after death
With shortness of breath
You explained the infinite
And how rare and beautiful it is to even exist.
I couldn't help but ask for you to say it all again.

"Death is like light, love, and the vast universe: it is eternal and equal.""

ANTHEM TO THE EDGE OF THE EARTH ✨ DIRT POOR ROBINS

It's not easy to build a new world. Interplanetary fighting comes. Conflict has to be settled. But the Eighth Galaxy, despite everything, thrives. Away from Eden. Away from the biochip humans. It thrives. And Lu Bixing will protect it from the AUS, from the Union, no matter what.

Tomorrow it comes with our cries
Valleys form where tears have dried
A call to hope and hope's reply
Looking east beyond the briars
Stand with those who fear the fire
Till morning breaks and death retires.

Lu Bixing explained patiently, as if he were teaching a class. "According to my observations, this particular pilot had bad aim, and seemed to have misfired towards my men earlier. We may be poor, but we don't like to owe others, so here's a missile in return. See you all next time."

THE LAST OF THE REAL ONES ✨ FALL OUT BOY

Lu Bixing and Lin Jingheng, in the Eighth Galaxy.

'Cause you're the last of a dying breed
Write our names in the wet concrete
I wonder if your therapist knows everything about me
I'm here in search of your glory
There's been a million before me
That ultra-kind of love
You never walk away from
You're just the last of the real ones.

"If he were to die in this distortion of spacetime, then his life would end with this kiss of a lifetime’s reunion.""

(CODE)