Binary code in a cursive font

Counts the ghosts of everyone I want

A ticker tape parade for a vacant lot

Did I get the memo? I forgot

The screen is a mirror with the silver scraped off

Just a pane of glass and a digital cough

They multiply the metric, they magnify the myth

Another soul for the monolith

And the line graph climbs like a skyline drawn in wire

Is this the validation I was meant to acquire?

Is this the art? Or just the architecture of the fire?

A thousand fans on the treadmill, running

Can't stop now, the future's coming

I hear the echo, the engine's humming

A thousand fans on the treadmill, running

Is this winning?

I was a wolf with a borrowed kiss

Now I'm a pet in the metropolis

They feed me clicks, they tell me I'm a hit

While the feral part of me learns to sit

My heart beats like a hammer in a velvet case

Putting on a brave, synthetic face

Remember writing anthems for the seventeen-year-old?

Now I write to do what I am told

And the line graph climbs, a cardiogram of wire

Is this the coronation I was meant to acquire?

Is this the art? Or just the funeral pyre?

A thousand fans on the treadmill, running

Can't stop now, the future's coming

I hear the echo, the engine's humming

A thousand fans on the treadmill, running

Is this living?

I wrote a letter of accusation

A single word for a generation

Now I'm the subject of the same equation

A willing captive in the simulation

What I thought it was, it isn't now...

It isn't now...

A thousand fans on the treadmill, burning!

Too late now, the lesson's learning!

I feel the friction, the gears are turning!

A thousand fans on the treadmill, burning!

This is it, then.