Le Somnambule

Lyrics

[Intro]
The chart reads: severe parasomnia.
The subject presents as if awake.
But the pilot is not in the cockpit.
The prefrontal cortex is dark.
There is only the engine, running.

[Verse 1]
May twenty-fourth, 1987.
The delta waves are deep, a slow tide.
But the body rises.
The hands find the car keys.
The feet find the pedals.
The motor system is online, executing a script written in sleep's deepest ink.
Twenty-three kilometers to the in-laws' house.
A journey without a traveler.

[Chorus]
Automatism.
The hands perform the complex work while the mind is offline.
The body is a vessel on a planned trajectory.
No memory engram is formed.
No conscious intent is filed.
The ghost is in the machine, but the machine is driving.

[Verse 2]
The steering wheel is cold under his palms.
He does not feel it.
The kitchen knife is a familiar shape in his hand.
He does not recognize it.
There is a severance.
A clean vagotomy between the cortex and the spinal cord's command.
The violence is efficient, procedural.
A task completed.
Like folding laundry, or making a meal for a family he cannot name.

[Chorus]
Automatism.
The hands perform the complex work while the mind is offline.
The body is a vessel on a planned trajectory.
No memory engram is formed.
No conscious intent is filed.
The ghost is in the machine, but the machine is driving.

[Bridge]
He drives to the station.
The blood on his hands is a fact without a story.
He presents himself to the officer on duty.
The words are recorded, a quote for the courts.
"I think I've killed some people."
I *think*.
The confession of a man who was not there.

[Outro]
The EEG confirms the diagnosis.
The law confers the acquittal.
The pilot wakes up to the wreckage.
He is told what his hands have done.
Case closed.
The cockpit remains empty.