References: "Sirens of Titan" and "Breakfast of Champions."

This is the Rush/Dream Theater song on the album. The recurring chord that you hear throughout in-between the major segments is known to guitarists as the "Alex Lifeson Chord."  (Alex Lifeson is the guitarist in Rush.) I'll cop to that.

I like the instrumental sections a lot. It's one of the heavier things I've written. At one point I'd named the individual pieces with references to the above named novels.  The sections were called:

I. Midland 1973
II. Salo's Message
III. Kilgore Awakened
IV. Midland, Later That Same Day

It doesn't help to know that. But I did it, dammit!

The title is in reference to the message carried by the alien Salo in the "Sirens of Titan" novel. Salo goes to great trouble, watches wars, loses his grip on who made him who he was...etc... All to carry a single message across the galaxy from his people to the people of Earth. When the message is opened, it's a single dot, which in Salo's language means "Greetings."

The third section means a lot to me. It's once again voiced by Kilgore Trout in my mind. (It's important that for what I'm about to describe you remember that Kilgore Trout is Kurt's author-avatar.) At the end of "Breakfast of Champions" (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT) Kilgore is given sentience by Kurt Vonnegut, who also appears in the book. Mirroring similar events elsewhere in the novel, Kurt tells Trout that he is a character in a book, but he now is able to know that, understand what that means, and live for himself. Kilgore asks--or more like BEGS--Vonnegut, "Make me young, make me young, make me young!" Then the book ends with a full-page drawing of Kurt Vonnegut, crying.

I think that's as close as I can come to explaining this song.