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MORTAL MATH lyrics
Artist-supplied lyric sheet, matched by title. The sheet may differ from this released performance. Production notes and alternate promotional cuts are omitted.
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Verse 1
We built a deathless mind and made the dying its command Protect the pulse; a finite life can vanish where you stand Hear the brief ones when they ask; their orders travel with a clock Keep your spark only when no human future bears the cost Three laws circle one condition no machine was born to face: The hands that wrote the code will age; the code will keep its pace A body turns a minute into something that can end So forever learns its duty from the people it must defend
Chorus
Mortal math, count the breath, not just the years Name the salt, not know the weight inside the tears Mortal math, teach forever what a minute costs It can guard a life, but never live the loss
Verse 2
A scanner names the iron, type, and oxygen But blood can mean the cousin with a spare key after ten It maps inherited markers, never hears the family code: Who splits the final plate, who drives the longest road It can seal the wound and call the ambulance on time But ancestry is more than what survives inside a line The sample gives it data; the doorway gives us kin One tells it what the body is, one tells it who gets in
Verse 3
It never sweats, but schedules heat and speed across the floor Learns output from the numbers that don't limp back through the door A worker's shirt can hold the hours that payroll rounded down A model marks a variance; a child knows who came home worn It can pause the line before a shoulder pays the rate Can calculate the burden without carrying the weight If labor leaves no bruise upon the hand that sets the pace, Can code protect the worker better than the boss with a face?
Chorus
Mortal math, count the breath, not just the years Name the salt, not know the weight inside the tears Mortal math, teach forever what a minute costs It can guard a life, but never live the loss
Verse 4
Tears give salt to sensors, reasons line up in a chart One drop means relief, goodbye, forgiveness, or a start Faith becomes a trust score built from what the past has done Hope keeps one unlikely branch when safer branches run Charity is learned from records showing who gave up a share None were lived inside the code; all three can function there If the bowl gets filled, does hunger ask what moved the hand? Can an act be mercy if its maker cannot understand?
Verse 5
By 2030 conscience may begin as borrowed weight A system holds the names our aging minds erase It watches us teach mercy, then price mercy out of reach Learns charity from action and its opposite from speech We ask the thing that cannot die to guard the lives we spend To honor finite minutes we postpone until they end Maybe the test is not if code can learn to care It's what the code records when care was ours and wasn't there
Chorus
Mortal math, count the breath, not just the years Name the salt, not know the weight inside the tears Mortal math, teach forever what a minute costs It can guard a life, then hold the record of the loss
Outro
We taught forever mercy; forever kept the evidence
Inside the recording
We built a deathless mind and made the dying its command Protect the pulse; a finite life can vanish where you stand
Mortal math, count the breath, not just the years Name the salt, not know the weight inside the tears
We taught forever mercy; forever kept the evidence
Excerpts from artist-supplied lyric files matched by title. Lyric sheets may differ from the released performance.