Bound to One Account

Lyrics

Three seventeen in the morning.
The weight of the box in my hands.
Just the hum of the fan in the tower.
And you.

Printed in the back of the manual.
Page forty-seven.
Sixteen characters in four neat blocks.
A name I have to learn to speak.
G, seven, J, nine.
X, K, three, three.
They printed you in a metallic silver ink.
A little trick against the Xerox machine.
A secret only for me.

One little life to give.
Blinking cursor at the prompt.
And I type you in, one key at a time.
The click, the clack, the final return.
A handshake in the dark with a server in Dallas.
Bound to one account.
Spent to kill the second life.
You're mine now. Forever.

The screen flashes... Accepted.
The program unlocks, it runs.
And you are gone.
Just ink on paper now.
A ghost of a password.
A spell that has been cast and cannot be undone.
The magic is out of the bottle.
And you, my little string of numbers,
you're just a scar in a database now. A flipped bit.

One little life to give.
Blinking cursor at the prompt.
And I type you in, one key at a time.
The click, the clack, the final return.
A handshake in the dark with a server in Dallas.
Bound to one account.
Spent to kill the second life.
You're mine now. Forever.

And somewhere in 2007,
a kid buys my old copy from a dusty shelf.
He feels the same weight in his hands.
He finds you on page forty-seven.
He types you in, full of hope.
And the screen just says:
"This key has already been redeemed."
Sorry, kid. It only ever loved me.

Bound to one account.
Spent to kill the resale.
Bound to one soul.
Just one.