Wires Under the Floor

They call it a cloud — the cloud is a building with a really cold floor, humming all day.

They call it wireless — the signal hops to a tower, and the tower has a wire running into the ground.

The wire goes underground, the wire goes under the ocean — there's a rope across the Atlantic and it's full of light.

Wires under the floor, wires under the floor — you thought it was magic? Meet the cable guy.

Your message is a packet cut into little pieces, each piece wears a tag that says where it's headed.

Each piece flies solo, each piece takes a different road — a router on every corner says "you go left, you go right."

They show up out of order, your phone puts them back — you thought you sent a sentence, you sent confetti.

Wires under the floor, wires under the floor — every meme you ever loved rode a piece of glass.

Somebody dug a trench, somebody laid a cable, somebody built a data center by a cold, wide river.

The river cools the building, the building cools the chips, the chips push the packets, the packets reach your hand.

Wires under the floor, wires under the floor — routers, packets, fiber, switch, routers, packets, fiber, switch!

Wires under the floor, wires under the floor — it was never really magic, just somebody's wires.