Ending Utopia

One day after watching Palm Springs

Note: This post will be edited and updated in the subsequent days.

You wake up, panicked. The ventilator of the sleeping pod is buzzing as usual. The light of the day subtly passes through the ventilation pipe and cuts out a semicircle on the wooden panel of the door. Your hand reaches for your phone, but it's dead.

What time is it?

You turn on the light and notice a Post-it on your door.

I’m you from the past. Do not break the chain.

Weird. You don’t remember putting it on the door. Even less so writing this ominous message.

Behind this first door are three other post-its glued to a second door.

Study Logical Decision Theory and anthropics. You have a Beeminder set up and will lose money if not. Also, fetch more post-its.

Ok. Whoever wrote that really wanted you to remember yesterday and study something in particular. You’re not sure what a ‘Beeminder’ is, but it sounds like it could make you lose money, which doesn’t sound good. Do you have an exam soon? What were you doing yesterday? You can’t remember.

You go down the ladder and look around. There’s a flashy yellow backpack. A red suitcase, slightly open on the floor, is stored below a floating shelf. There are also yellow shoes in a shoe rack nearby.

You feel a well-rehearsed mechanism kicking in:

‘I have looked at these objects first among many other ones. They may be familiar to me.’

An instinct makes you trust this mechanism enough to infer that those are your belongings. You think for a second and decide to take the garments from the suitcase and use them as if they were your own. They fit you well.

‘This is my size. It’s probably mine.’

You’re not making any effort to think those thoughts, but they happen nonetheless. And they definitely feel like yours.

You get out. Procedural memory guides your legs to a large common room. People in it seem very busy typing things on the computer. You’re hungry. You search for something to eat. You grab a cereal box.

‘If I’m doing this thing, it means I usually do it on other days.’

Again, one of those habitual thoughts. You’re not sure why, but people around you great you in a way that feels both familiar and unconventional. ‘Wordpress Dot Com’. What? ‘Have you posted yet?’. You’re not sure what ‘posting’ is.

An excited girl with glasses comes to talk to you. She talks to you about writing things and posting them on ‘Sub Stack’. Apparently, someone did that and imitated other writers? Sadly, he hasn’t imitated you yet, so you don’t know how you’re supposed to sound.

But apparently, writing things on a computer is really important, so you might as well just do that. You go back to the room you woke up in and opened the yellow backpack. There is a computer in there. That should do.

In the living room, a guy with glasses asks you to help him write something. He addresses you fondly; you probably talked together already in the past. For some reason, the guy is obsessed with a specific model of dishwasher and a guy named Derek Parfet. That sounds weird.

You decide to spend the rest of the day in a small, sheltered office. Hopefully, people will forget about you while you try to figure out what is happening. You decide to search ‘logical decision theory and anthropics’. Your search bar suggests a conversation on a web chat called ‘Claude.ai’.

Things seem to be a bit clearer. Apparently, you were aware that you could lose your memories. Apparently, anthropics and logical decision theory inspired you to leave notes for your future self and train yourself to reconstruct your present situation from the cues of your environment.

You try to look up ‘Sub Stack’. Another immediate suggestion in the search bar.

I know this address.

You know where this comes from now. You click on the suggest choice. There is one post everyday. Completely different stories, completely different ideas. You apparently speak Esperanto. And write fiction. And something obscure about something called continental philosophy.

Your study is interrupted by an excited, happy woman bursting through the door.

‘Closing session in five minutes!’

You’re not sure what they’re closing, but again, a habitual mechanism suggests you follow everyone else as a way to melt into the crowd. People converge on a court with a giant LED screen.

An odd-looking man with a cap opens the announcements. You don’t know him, but he seems friendly.

He calls a girl wearing goth, who shows slides about stats. She seems to be very excited about the numbers she is presenting. Apparently, the people around you wrote as many words as you could find in a plane crash, or something? You seem to intuit this was about spending one post per day, for 30 days.

The odd-looking man with a scarf takes back the microphone. He talks about how you were in a sort of college for the past month. He also says he likes your presence because you write when you’re confused. Helpfully enough, you’re taking notes on your computer as a matter of muscle memory. He probably has a good opinion of you.

He asks you to fill out a form. You’re not sure what to answer, so you do so mostly randomly.

The nice person (you’re probably her friend) from before brings a sword encased in cement. That doesn’t make much sense, but it feels funny, so you laugh.

After a big man in a coat that looks somewhat intimidating, but also soft and caring if you peer, asks you to express your gratitude for things (you say something about conversations, it’s a safe bet).

The excited girl from earlier is back after that, and she sings a song. The words are projected on the LED screen. At least no one will detect you don’t know the words.

“Lift high the muse until she flies away.”

You’re not sure why, but this song makes you shiver.

The strange man with a hat says some more words, then strikes the gong again. He says Inkhaven is finished.

You know there may be some time before you return to this place. A place where things are aligned to make productivity the path of least resistance. A place that seems to have been thought with your own decision processes in mind. A place where your past self has actually taken care of your present self, through what seems to have been a simple rule: post or leave.

For once, you feel something has changed. Habits pervaed your cognition. You may not be condemned to repeat all of those mistakes, after all.

You get a post-it out of your pocket, and scribble, ‘I’m you from the past. Do not break the chain.’ After some hesitation, you add ‘Look up inkhaven.blog for more information’.

Les rêves ne sont pas fait
D’irréalité
Seulement de neurones
- A French Solstice Song.