Battery You Can't Replace

Lyrics

[Intro]
They gave me a card.
A little paper card from Bedford, Massachusetts.
It had the exact second you were born.
The moment they soldered the battery in.
Your first tick.
Your whole life sealed in plastic.

[Verse 1]
SecurID model 200.
Cool in my palm.
A little gray window showing me the future,
six digits at a time.
Our secret, changing every sixty seconds.
The key and the lock, you were both.
My only way in.

[Chorus]
And the manual said, in cold black type,
"Do not attempt battery replacement."
A countdown in the chip from the very first day.
A seed that would erase itself.
Just a slow, certain fading.
A battery you can't replace.
A heart you can't restart.

[Verse 2]
U.S. Patent 4,885,778.
That's the number of your cage.
Your creator was just a three-digit code
on a production log from 1986.
Did they know they were making a ghost?
Something designed to forget its own name?
Three years. Maybe five, with luck.

[Chorus]
And the manual said, a promise and a threat,
"Do not attempt battery replacement."
A countdown in the chip from the very first day.
A seed that would erase itself.
Just a slow, certain fading.
A battery you can't replace.
A heart you can't restart.

[Bridge]
March 14, 1997.
Two seventeen in the morning.
I smelled the warm plastic.
The last numbers flickered on your screen.
Fifty-nine seconds to go.
Then fifty-eight.
Then... just a blank gray window.

[Outro]
The clock inside you is quiet now.
Your seed is gone.
Just a little plastic coffin in my hand.
Full of numbers I can't see anymore.
Full of silence.