The Artifact
When everything felt like it was shutting down, I kept building something beautiful out of the static anyway. That's what these songs are to me: the thing I leave behind, whatever happens to the ship.
Sitting in the cockpit of a dying machine
The final, fading chapter of a long and broken dream
The alarms are going quiet, one by one they fall
And I can't remember why I'm even here at all
The pilot's log is empty, the mission is a loss
Just the final calculation of the damage and the cost
They say a captain goes down with his ship, it's true
But they never said what the captain's supposed to do
When the sea is just the silence and the stars are going cold
And you're the only witness to a story left untold
So I'm taking all the static, every warning, every spark
And I'm building a cathedral here alone inside the dark
I am building you an artifact, a black box for the soul
Made of shattered pieces that I couldn't make whole
It's not a song of triumph, it's a signal from the fall
Just a final, broken message that I was here at all
It's the only work I have left, the only thing that's true
This artifact I'm building, my last message to you
The fire's in the engine room, the hull is giving way
The quiet is so total at the closing of the day
But my hands are steady now, my purpose has been found
To take the noise of breaking and to orchestrate the sound
To take the final moments, the terror and the grace
And leave a single, perfect object in this empty, failing space
I am building you an artifact, a black box for the soul
Made of shattered pieces that I couldn't make whole
It's not a song of triumph, it's a signal from the fall
Just a final, broken message that I was here at all
It's the only work I have left, the only thing that's true
This artifact I'm building, my last message to you
The lights are going out
Just the telemetry
If you find this in the wreckage
Remember me