.....And then he'll spend another five minutes by the clock staring at that to see whether he gets a checkmark from the dispatcher. Apparently not, which means it's strategy time.
- Okay, well he will give himself an already-tickyboxed 🗹 Respond to half-hour dispatcher text. He deserves a checkmark for that, but sometimes you have to be the one to give yourself the things you deserve. ☐ Respond to all other incoming dispatcher texts. Sublist: ☐ Come up with a strategy for not missing them.
Alarms? Alarms seem like a good thing for this. What's the absolute longest he would want to wait before responding to one of these? Definitely not more than five minutes, but also having an alarm every five minutes seems like a lot... ☐ Turn on notification dings. ☐ Conceive of way to test whether text notifications currently work. ☐ Test whether text notifications currently work. Okay, easy enough to change his volume settings. What's his dingtone currently set to, he has no idea, his phone is never on more than vibrate. Huh, interesting. ...Can he set the noise for specific contacts to be different noises? Yes, great, okay, he'll save a contact for Dispatcher Matthew Chandler and set it to the alarm-blaringest option available. Maybe that will make his phone understand that this is important and he definitely wants to know about it. And - he googles ways to send yourself texts; no, he doesn't want to send it from his phone because then he'll presumably have his phone open and he won't know if that works as a notification for other things; he'll just see it come in directly. Apparently there's an email-to-text setup, though, and that will do nicely (unless it's weird in some way - but if it doesn't work then that will be informative; he'll at least start with it -).
He sends himself seven texts with it, and the first five work but the last two don't, which is panic-inducing. Okay, okay, breathe. Hyperventilating will not help, here. What to do - he switches strategies to setting an alarm every two minutes for the next hour, to start with, he'll add more if he gets closer to that time. It takes over fifteen minutes to do this, especially since every two minutes he gets chimed at and he has to go stare at his text history with Dispatcher Matthew Chandler, wishing there was a more obvious interface for making sure it had refreshed. (He has the alarms-specifically volume pretty low; hopefully it won't bother Ren or Cricket. ....Although it would be good to have some way to wake them up, even if he can't. The text from Dispatcher Matthew Chandler might do it, whether or not he's capable of responding to it.)
Okay, now, why didn't those emails go through? He opens the texts and finds they sent fine, which means that in fact something about his notifications isn't working. But he has the alarms. He has the alarms. ...He's shaking. A lot of that is probably the stress, but also, wow, he's so cold. He didn't put a shirt on and he's been sitting here doing nothing in the middle of the night when the heat is probably set lower. And he doesn't wear socks to bed, either. (- Alarm. Check for texts. Close texting app, all the way, check texts again, in case that forces a refresh that wouldn't otherwise come through.) But there's a blanket on the back of the couch already; he didn't end up needing to grab one in order to check off the item. ........It's full of holes. Intentional holes, mind you; it's one of those ones that's made somehow of string, or yarn, or something; it's probably handmade. And it doesn't feel thick enough to warm him up despite that.
But in fact being in a slightly cool house won't kill him. He starts two bulleted lists, of under what circumstances he is or isn't allowed to leave the couch. Is: fire, not the fire alarm but a real fire; isn't: feeling kind of chilly. He wraps the blanket around his top half in a way that attempts to but does not really succeed at also covering his feet. Good enough. Time to send more emailtexts to himself. The next three ding him, but the one after that doesn't. (Another check for one from Matt.) - Is it because he's not opening them??? He's an idiot. He tests that to the tune of another few alarms and, yeah, that seems to be it. They alert fine as long as he doesn't send a bunch in a row without checking them; it's probably to prevent spam from bothering people.
Great, now he's spent almost half an hour here and he still hasn't come up with a strategy that isn't hoping which isn't one. In theory emailtexts could be weird in some way but he has alarms. He's just going to check it manually every two minutes and it's going to be fine. Unless he experiences alarm fatigue which he Must Not. Each of these is equally important and he will treat them as such.
So...... Bug.
Does he want to be Bug right now. The thing is that - he should be doing this as a list, because otherwise if he gets less sane he might not be able to remember what he thought.
- Bug is just better than me in many ways.
- He was fine unguided for approximately this long this morning. I (Julien) am not proven to be stable for that long.
- He might leave the couch for reasons of comfort instead of emergency.
- I must not leave the couch.
- He might also fall asleep or fail to check alarms, which must not (sleeping) and must (alarms) happen.
- I don't know whether trying to turn into him will definitely get him, or might get me a less stable personality or make me (Julien) less stable.
- But thinking about him too much might turn me into him.
He searches for the hexcode of the background color of his notes app's darkmode and turns that bit of text that color. Just in case looking at it later will make him go crazy.
Good to have decided that, but that's still not a real strategy; it's just ruling one out. And there have been several more alarms since then (which is kind of interesting as an experience that anchors him to the flow of time). Guitar? Guitar isn't terrible, as long as he plays quietly enough to not accidentally wake up the other members of the household.
- The body of the guitar is so cold, and his body temperature would warm it up eventually but not enough to actually make him warmer, and it would be miserable to have the freezing wood right there on his bare stomach until then, and he's not going to make himself miserable on purpose. That would be idiotic.
So what else. Shiver. He's still really worried about the guns, which maybe Haru accidentally unlocked while he was getting his other stuff. He could try and learn about gun safety - but what if he gets crazier and decides he has to go out to the garage about it?? ☐ Do NOT study gun safety. But, the idea in general isn't bad; he just needs to pick something less actionable. Under strategy, in bold: ☐ Study emergency safety prep until ineffective, then watch movie.
He opens an Anki deck, on his laptop so that his phone is free for alarms and text-checking, and tries to lose himself in it to the extent that he can while getting interrupted every other minute and also absolutely not leaving the couch even though he's very cold and also keeping in mind that in a little bit he'll need to set more alarms.
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