Dead Reckoning

[Verse 1]
Three-oh-four on the dashboard clock, rain on the wrecker glass
I-285 is a closed-loop system moving way too fast
The dispatcher's voice is a dial-up tone, a garbled data-stream
Another chassis twisted to a post-modernist dream
I see the flares, a perimeter breach, a halo of red light
Smell of burnt coolant and wet asphalt cuts the August night
The load-bearing pillars of the roof are bent, a catastrophic fail
You're a ghost in this machine now, just a name on the incident trail.

[Chorus]
They called it in as a 10-50, property damage, nothing more
But the cracked screen on your cell phone's still lit up on the passenger floor
It's a handshake protocol that never completes, a packet that's lost in the gray
And I'm just the admin with the flatbed who has to clear the cache away.

[Verse 2]
Your last route's still on the nav screen, a vector to an unknown end
The system logs the torsion, but not the message you were 'bout to send
There's a MARTA card clipped to the visor, a scuff on the passenger dash
A receipt from that jerk spot on Campbellton, crumpled up with the cash
I'm running diagnostics on a life from the fragments that you left behind
A forensic audit of the physical world you designed
That's the latency, ain't it? The delay 'tween the skid and the final decree
Your whole life's in this black box and the only one with the key is me.

[Spoken Interlude]
(Filtered, staticky voice)
"Kilo-One-Niner, confirm on location, I-285 eastbound, just before the Cascade exit. Single vehicle rollover. You're clear for the hook-up."

[Bridge]
I log the VIN, it's a unique ID for a deprecated shell
Another asset transfer from this asphalt server room to hell
The rain washes the glass shards to the shoulder of the road
I just punch in my closing time, and carry the code.

[Chorus]
They called it in as a 10-50, property damage, nothing more
But the cracked screen on your cell phone's still lit up on the passenger floor
It's a handshake protocol that never completes, a packet that's lost in the gray
And I'm just the admin with the flatbed who has to clear the cache away.

[Outro]
Just clearing the cache away.
Another ghost in the array.