It's about a soldier in the airforce, or in an airplane

This song is about a pilot and their experience, which is very different from ground personnel. Pilots have a very different perspective on things, a very different job. The song deals with this particular soldier’s feelings of being separate from the devastation that he was inflicting. He’s above it all, flying 30,000 feet in the air, dropping bombs on targets then going back to the base. He’s not involved in ground combat where you stare someone in the face and kill them hand-to-hand. He said it’s a strange feeling to know that you’ve just wiped out an entire city with a touch of a button, and then you’re back at the bass watching reruns of a TV show. It’s just another day at the office, there’s no emotional attachment to it like a guy who was in a platoon and may have lost buddies. The pilot is dealing with a whole different set of issues that is a lot harder to define… I wrote this song, then months later I got a chance to play it for Lynn, the pilot I wrote it about, and we have it on camera. He was reading it and tears were running down his face. I asked him what moved him, and he said the line, “their tortured, painful cries will never fall upon my ears, and never stain my elder years. My heartbeat is all I’ll feel.” He said that’s what he feels every day. He was disconnected, but he does still think about it every day… Actually, when the breakdown happens and the bombing is taking place, Michael wanted the guitar solo to be representative of the airplane flying over the city dropping missiles and bombs. As per Geoff Tate on www.queensryche.com