[fast rap lines] [monotone] (Verse 1) Chess pieces on a board, nothing more than numbers Arranged on a grid of black and white Someone's finger flicks us into place Leaving behind only assigned roles An inorganic balance in a bank account The weight of love, settled with a single transfer Our value turned into symbols Just waiting for the digits to increase (Verse 2) A serial number assigned to a birth certificate A code given before any "congratulations" An individual buried in the management system Individuality is merely treated as an error A number called out in a hospital hallway The voice calling names is completely exhausted In a sea of registered 0s and 1s Tired of swimming, sinking down (Chorus) Inside a cage of countless sequences of numbers We strip off and throw away our names Standing in a single file, at the very end of the line Shaken in the metro, "Seat Number 1" Numbers of street addresses, shadows of billboards Tail numbers of aircraft tearing through the sky Controlled by this endless sequence (Verse 3) Waiting in line for my turn to come Reading the label on the back of the person ahead Calculating when my turn will arrive The quiet of an afternoon spent doing nothing more Even the reflection in the subway window Has merged into part of the train car Added and subtracted every time the doors open Just a plus or minus named "an individual" (Verse 4) Look up, scrap metal floating above the clouds Altitude and speed, a route calculated A sky bound by invisible threads Thousands of aircraft silhouettes crossing the night Meanwhile, endless funeral bells resound "How many today?"—a count of those passing away A statistics of life returning to zero Even sorrow dissolves into a graph (Bridge) Time does not stop, a cruel gear Numbers called "seconds" keep turning Time wears us away second by second The edge of a soul gradually eroding The revolving disk of time that keeps ticking An eternal roulette that never stops Whose turn will it be next? (Verse 5) An old address plate on a weathered wall Even the place to return to is nothing but numbers Open the door, and it's just another box Divided spaces, a standardized dream The world is a giant tally sheet And we are just dots placed upon it Wiped away with a single eraser A fleeting stain of ink (Chorus) Inside a cage of countless sequences of numbers We strip off and throw away our names Standing in a single file, at the very end of the line Shaken in the metro, "Seat Number 1" Numbers of street addresses, shadows of billboards Tail numbers of aircraft tearing through the sky There is no escape from this formula (Outro) 1, 2, 3, 4… Counted, then forgotten, Yesterday is added onto today. Until our end, ticked away by the second hand, Inside this endlessly spinning wheel of time, As nothing more than numbers, The count goes on forever... 1, 2, 3… 0.
