The Man Who Could See Every Moment and Chose None (Dr. Manhattan / Jon Osterman)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
They locked the intrinsic field chamber
with you still inside —
a watchmaker's son
standing in the place where atoms
are taken apart for research purposes —
and the field subtracted you
the way Cavendish subtracted himself
from the room with the torsion balance
except the room did not give you back
You came apart
Not metaphorically, not gradually,
but at the level of the strong nuclear force
and what reassembled
was not Jon Osterman
but something that remembered
being Jon Osterman
the way a photograph remembers a room

[Verse 2]
You rebuilt yourself —
first a circulatory system walking
through the cafeteria without skin,
then a skeleton, then the rest,
until you stood in the parking lot
eight feet tall and blue
and glowing with Cherenkov radiation
and the prefrontal cortex
that had once made you late to dinner
now processed all of spacetime
simultaneously
which sounds like omniscience
but felt — you said it felt —
like the opposite:
not knowing everything
but caring about nothing
because when you can see
every moment at once
none of them is urgent
and urgency is what makes a moment
worth standing inside of

[Chorus]
You could see the future
and the past
and your own hands
building a glass palace on Mars
while simultaneously watching your father
repair a pocket watch in 1945
and the thalamus
could not prioritize the signals anymore
because the thalamus prioritizes
by time — this first, then that —
and you had abolished time
so every signal arrived at once
and arriving at once
is the same as silence
and the silence
was the loneliest thing
anyone with unlimited power
has ever described

[Verse 3]
Laurie left because you were multiplying —
three of you in the laboratory,
one of you in bed with her,
one of you contemplating quarks —
and the version of you that was with her
was not lying about being present
but it was not the only thing
you were present for
and she needed to be the only room
and you had become
a man who was in every room
and none of them all the way
The anterior cingulate
monitors what deserves attention
and yours had been replaced
by something that gave everything
exactly the same weight
which is the clinical definition
of not caring

[Bridge]
You went to Mars
and built the glass cathedral
because the symmetry of hydrogen atoms
was more interesting to you
than the problems of eight billion people
and that sentence
is the most honest thing
a god has ever admitted
You are not cruel —
cruelty requires preference
and you have none
You are not indifferent —
indifference is a choice
and you are past choosing
You are the man who can see
every card in every hand
at every table in every casino
that has ever existed
and has therefore
lost all interest in the game

[Outro]
Somewhere in 1945
your father is still repairing the pocket watch
and somewhere on Mars
you are still building the glass cathedral
and somewhere in the parking lot
you are still standing
blue and enormous
and remembering what it was like
to be late to dinner
and to care about being late
and to walk faster
because someone was waiting
The drawer where they keep Jon Osterman
is the only part of you
that still fits inside a human shape —
the watchmaker's son
who used to run
because running meant
something was worth arriving at
and you cannot remember
what that felt like
but you cannot stop looking
at the version of yourself
who could