Electronic Freeway

       © John Palme 1989

         Am                 Em
1.  It's midnight at the computer.
       D               Em
    My modem starts to dial.
    Am               Em
    Staring into the monitor
    D             Em
    I can see for miles....,  
		                 
          C                D          Em
refrain:  Flying down that electronic freeway
          A9                      Em
          exactly at the speed of light.
                C            D            Em
          Got a password for every single roadblock.
          A9                        Em
          No one stops my jammin' tonight.


2. 	Left some E-mail in Kentucky,
	messed with voice mail in St. Paul.
	Crashed a network down in Phoenix.
	Well, you just can't win them all.

3.	Read a bulletin-board in New York
	that said it can't be done.
	15 minutes later I guess 
	I'm the only one.
 

refrain:


4.	Then I zipped across the borders,
	zapped across the seas.
	Raided a Russian database.
	Spied on the KGB.

5.	Even visited a laptop
	up in the Amazon.
	They probably thought it was the humidity.
	Then I was gone.

6. 	At 3 a.m. my journey
 	took a sudden turn.
	My keyboard got the hiccups
	and my screen began to burn.

7.	My whole system went down
	but I didn't waste any time.
	Took some parts from my VCR
	and I was back on the line.


refrain:


8.	Then at 4 am I caught a virus
	from over in Zaire.
	This one was ugly.
	That was pretty clear.

9.	It grabbed hold of my packets
	and would not let them go.
	I swore a string of hex
	and vowed to break it's code.

10.	I debugged,  retroprogrammed
	disassembled all I could.
	But it took over an hour
	before it did any good.

11	I finally pulled a couple lines
	and much to my surprise.
	The style was familiar.
	This virus was one of mine.


refrain:


12	I had let it go 2 weeks ago
	somewhere in the middle east.
	And somehow it had grown
	to this huge binary beast.

13.	It had mutated in Istanbul
	mated with a worm.
	Hung out with a gang of virulent strains
	adding code at every turn.



14.	Now it was a monster code
	hidden in a million places.
	It even had it's own bulletin board
	to down load documentation.


15.	But for some reason it missed me
	and wanted to come home.
	So I let it infect
	my clone over the phone.

16.	Then I ripped out my hard drive
	and threw it in the fire.
	Threw on a couple printouts
	and watched the flames grow higher.

17.	When the programmed screams died down
	I finally fell asleep.
	And dreamed I was a king
	of a country full of sheep.

18.	I awoke to find the chimney gone
	and the trees were sprouting wires.
	But when the future gets hairy
	I've NO DESIRE TO RETIRE.

refrain:

© John Palme 1989








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