Add-On Identity Crisis

Lyrics

[Intro]
The smell of warm plastic, November 21st, 1994.
Fresh out of the styrofoam tray in a Sunnyvale warehouse.
You don't look like you belong here.
A black tower on a beige foundation.

[Verse 1]
A whisper in a meeting back in May.
No minutes kept, just what Kalinske had to say.
He put you on a stage, June 2nd, summer air.
A stopgap for a future that was barely there.
Bolted onto the body of a trusted friend.
A story started just to watch it end.

[Chorus]
Are you the future, or a memory's ghost?
The one we needed, or the one we feared the most?
A mushroom console with a second cord for power.
Stuck between two ages, counting down the hour.
Just an add-on identity crisis.

[Verse 2]
First the Genesis, then you, then the TV screen.
Get the order wrong, you make a buzzing, angry scene.
Two Hitachi hearts, a twenty-three megahertz beat,
soldered in a hurry by Hideki Sato's team.
Another power brick to trip on in the dark.
A temporary, fading, water-damaged mark.

[Chorus]
Are you the future, or a memory's ghost?
The one we needed, or the one we feared the most?
A mushroom console with a second cord for power.
Stuck between two ages, counting down the hour.
Just an add-on identity crisis.

[Bridge]
Three engineers whose names the memos lost,
worked eighteen-hour days, no matter what it cost.
To make your copy of Doom flicker on the screen.
A thirty-two bit promise, shaky and unclean.
A glimpse of something that could never last.
A shadow that the next machine would cast.

[Outro]
That power button makes a hollow plastic click.
Too late, too soon, too slow, too fast, too quick.
Back in the box you go.
Back in the box.