Written as a set of orders, "Sleeper Cell" reads like a handbook for an undercover agent, yet the secret mission seems to be simply living as a person. The speaker addresses "you," and the commands are strange and oddly tender: be kind to the parrot in the mirror, forget your dreams, leave messages made only of silence. The mirror image is a caged bird repeating words it doesn't understand, which suggests the self as something that just parrots what it has been given. "No one is on this, not even you" hints at an identity so hollow that nobody is in charge.
The mood is wry, eerie and quietly lonely. Humor shows up in the didgeridoo and the sleep apnea, but the tone stays cold and watchful. The ending, a careful escape on knotted bedsheets through fake "moonlight in the age of aluminum," gives a sense of longing to get out of an artificial, numbed world, even while the speaker stays calm and deadpan.