I mean, the doctor says the rhythm is steady. Perfectly functional. But you look at the face in the glass and you wonder... is there anyone left behind the valve? Or is it just the plumbing?

The ticker counts the seconds of a borrowed afternoon

While the landlord in the counting house hums a leaden tune

A rhythmic thud against the ribs, a piston in the chest

Just a biological remainder of a life we once possessed

The wallpaper is peeling in the hallway of the mind

Where the empathetic impulses are increasingly hard to find

Oh, the arrhythmia of the masses, the bypass of the truth

We’ve traded in the passion for a systematic proof

Just a metronome of the mundane, marking out the cost

Of every tiny fragment of the mercy that we lost

(Vocalisation: Ooh-wa-ooh, distorted and pained)

Tear the zinc from the ceiling

Grease the gears of the feeling

It’s a cold, metallic clicking where the kindness used to sit

In the ledger of the living, you’re just another deficit

Are you still alive inside?

Or did the empathy just slide?

The bleeding tickers line the street, looking for a hand

But the bypass was successful and we’ve cleared the vacant land

A copper-plated lubricant for the grinding of the day

While the biological components slowly rot away

Keep the pressure in the copper, keep the fluid in the line

Everything is functional, everything is fine

Oh, the arrhythmia of the masses, the bypass of the truth

We’ve traded in the passion for a systematic proof

Just a metronome of the mundane, marking out the cost

Of every tiny fragment of the mercy that we lost

(Vocalisation: Woah-oh-oh, fading into a hum)

Just a pump.

Just a gear.

Is there anybody home?