Uploaded August 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago

---

Sung by Larry Warner. Thanks to rocketman0739 for providing high-quality versions of these songs.
Download the album here: archive.org/details/filk_unreal_estate
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lyrics:

(Chorus)
Space is dark and space is deep,
But so is the vault in which we keep
One thousand years of hazard pay
Where interest compounds every day,
And accountants there will testify
That there's naught we see that we can't buy.

When we signed up for deep space, we knew we'd be gone a while,
So I made some arrangements that should set us up in style:
A tax-free trust receives our pay from our hard-won careers
At interest rates that double our net worth each seven years.

And so we set out on our trip through interstellar space;
Five hundred years we traveled, as our money grew apace.
There's thirty thousand trillion trillion dollars in the till
When some unknown caretaker breaks a seal to know our will.

(Chorus)

“If hyperdrive exists, then off of Earth diversify.
If not, then to develop it all proceeds please apply.
And if we are successful, then the secret hold quite dear,
And send someone to meet us when our target star we near.”

Ten years from when we set the quest, they found the hyperdrive,
And man spread to a million stars, and we own all but five.
For we control all commerce, any trade must feed our trust,
And every ship that moves must lease the hyperdrive from us.

(Chorus)

As we awoke from frozen sleep, we all knew what to do.
We each phoned up our broker just to ask him what was new.
One thousand years of compound interest leads to lovely thoughts,
Like assets in the range of three followed by fifty naughts.

Now we know everybody can't do everything we've done;
This only works if you're the first to leave your native sun.
But still there is the lesson here that patience can win out:
If this week things don't go your way, then wait the bastards out.

(Chorus)