A hang is a computer term for the failure of a program to continue to respond to signals, causing the operating system to freeze. Hangs occur in different ways, but this work first depicts three common symptoms of the hang: "thrashing", the exhaustion of memory from rapidly exchanging data and "infinite loop", where a sequence of instructions is in no condition to stop and "kernel panic", a safety measure that stops the system from further data loss due to an internal error. The work ends with the death knell to any operating system, a crash aptly named, Blue Screen of Death.
Depicting failing machines, this is music marked by frequent reboots, constant bleeps, bops, clicks, the occasional rude interruption, and makes use of ever-repeating musical figures to help depict an eternal state of stuck.