“I’d like to go out and have some breakfast,” I thought. But as I got dressed it became increasingly apparent that I really needed to do laundry. I put together a cute outfit with the intent of going out anyway, and then opened up the to-do list to tell my later self to consider this as an Important Tast That Needs Doing.
Upon thus escalating laundry from “a thing I do while procrastinating on Real Tasks” to a
- REAL TASK
with a checkbox and everything, I found myself suddenly compelled to just
- Do your laundry. It is past time.
All the scattered thoughts that nornally occupy my mind fled, and the whole of my consciousness was dedicated to
- put a load in the washer as quick as possible so I can get on with doing what I actually want to do
I felt like I was two beings at that point: a sack of meat with a set of desires and a consciousness, and a secondary electronic consciousness that it had set up to tend to its longer plans. And the external me reacted with utter disdain to treating “laundry” as something at that level: Consciousness is a privilege, not a right, Meatsack, and if you can’t get these few basic support tasks done it will be revoked until you do them.
When I had my brain back, I thought of Manfred Mancx in the first chapter of Stross’s Accelerando. And his system of self-notifications and alerts so complicated that when someone else stole his smartglasses, they began to become him.
Suddenly that seemed less implausible.
