State Change

[Verse 1]
The soles on these Balenciagas never touched the asphalt lot behind the BP
on Campbellton, back when the Wi-Fi password wasn't AES-three.
I'm still the architect who mapped the load-bearing walls inside this city's grid
just swapped the blueprints for a key that opens doors the old one never did.
I see the scaffolding you see as wreckage, that's the disconnect, the packet loss.
You see a ghost, I see a beta test that's iterating on the cost.
You're tracing chalk outlines on pavement where the server farm is humming low
I'm tracing fiber optic lines to places that you'll never get to go.

[Chorus]
If I swap the motherboard and change the case
same machine, or just a ghost that's in my place?
If every single memory cell gets wiped and written over
is it still my story when the latency is slower?

[Verse 2]
*You see a foundation, I see a demolition site.
The kid who wrote in notebooks wouldn't recognize the code you write.*
The code's the same, the syntax just evolved to run the update.
The air still tastes of ozone, and the rain on I-285 comes late.
*You bought the block to flip it, don't you talk about the weather.*
I bought the block to firewall it so we'd have a place forever.
You call it sellin' out, I call it owning the whole server stack.
You said, "You're not that kid I knew," and you're not wrong, I can't go back.

[Chorus]
If I swap the motherboard and change the case
same machine, or just a ghost that's in my place?
If every single memory cell gets wiped and written over
is it still my story when the latency is slower?

[Bridge]
She asked me, "Are you happy?" Tuesday, over lukewarm coffee, fourth of May.
I said, "I'm solvent," which is system-architect for 'I don't know what to say.'
The truth is just a data point without the proper context key.
The only one I ever lost was you, or maybe it was me.

[Outro]
Same machine?
Or just a ghost that's in my place...