Ooooh, could be neat. "I tend to be pretty bad at falling asleep if I'm not exhausted or snuggling, so it'd be pretty interesting" and informative about her sleep problems "if she was able to. But I was thinking more like... I wake up early and consume some media while waiting for you to wake up? And then I can be tired enough that evening to take a nap that will get me to max backlash, wake up from it at 9 pm as robot Cara, you run tests on her, and she can asleep snuggling you afterwards."

"Are you going to be able to consume media, like, successfully, while very backlashed?"

"We should test it one of these mornings, but I think at the snuggling-equilibrium point I should be perfectly capable of enjoying media, since I can hold a conversation? It's a lot less clear if Robot Cara would get anything out of watching media that was put in front of her, but - I think it's likely? Just based on what it was like to stop being her, earlier." She lets her head dip into his neck a bit. 's nice, not to have to do this alone.

"I guess if you have good retention of stuff you read like that it'd go into the, what did you call it, an executive function hack? category..."

"Yeah. I can't imagine needing it for reading specifically if I drop out of school, which seems pretty likely - most of the time when I'm reading something, there's a person involved in some way, and I want to be able to talk to them about it. Definitely worth testing, though - maybe we can find some sample reading comprehension testing prep questions."

"Or I can just aim that way while you're reading to me when I'm backlashed, I should be competent to do that."

"That could work! Though... do we have a backup plan if backlashed-you doesn't not find interacting with Robot Cara sufficient as socialization?"

"Oh, I can get Cricket or make a phone call, but I think I will? We're saying 'robot Cara' but you are not in fact a robot and even when I'm very backlashed guiding is sufficient to orient me to that."

"Well, what I mean is " wait, shoot, what if explaining this changes how his backlash interprets her backlash such that it's no longer satisfying? That would suck, and there's no safe way to test this, once he knows he knows...

Okay. Think it through.

How much value is there, really, in him knowing how disconnected she was? She can just say it sucked. And if it seems like it might be important later, she can circle back and explain then. Straightforward! No problems.

...Okay, now to pick up the sentence she awkwardly dropped! Haha whoops.

"...I guess I'm curious what distinguishes" her "me-in-that-state from a robot, but I suppose 'robots can't guide' is in fact pretty distinguishing." 

"When I'm heavily backlashed I get delusional, and guiding - like I said, orients me to reality. While I'm sane I believe you to be a person including when you're backlashed; I expect guiding will suffice to let me access that belief even if I get to dangerous levels. Which I avoid, because they suck. But even if you are for this or any other reason an unsatisfying conversationalist when you're in deep I can talk to Cricket or the many people I have as phone contacts for exactly this purpose."

...oh, okay, she was definitely overthinking it, she should just tell him... "Ah, okay! ...the reason I wanted to check is because when I was heavily backlashed, I don't know if I was... me? Like... when I was panicking this morning, it was like - I had just woken up, except also I knew I'd been awake the whole time, I remembered everything I'd done, I just didn't experience doing any of those things, they were done by my body without me." Ugh she's babbling. 

cling.

Pet pet pet. "Yeah, I can see how that might be an issue, my intuition is that it won't be in practice."

She nods. "And it sounds like even if it is somehow, you have Cricket and also your phone, so my concern is plenty assuaged."

She unwraps herself from him a bit so she can peer at his screen again.

It has obvious combinations like "test negative command then belayed - hypothesis: recency > positivity" gradually filling in the boxes.

"Oh, we should also do some tests with calendar notifications - I know they do something, because that's why I took my medicine this morning and went to my study group, but my guess is they're really low priority..." 

"Do you have any coming up?"

"Well, my phone is on DND, but - " She pulls at her phone and holds it so he can see it while she goes through her calendar. 

tonight:

6:30 pm - dinner with Jen (cancelled)

8:00 pm - Kaz's party

11:00 pm - Take some people to the roof to look at the moon?

2:00 am - head home if you haven't!!! No sleepover you have to do stuff tomorrow!!!!! (This event repeats every friday and saturday night)

tomorrow:

8:00 am - meds

10:00 am - Brunch with Sara (cancelled)

11:30 am - Study group for IR413

3:00 pm - EU crowd Online Movie Night

6:00 pm - call Aunt Rachel

9:00 pm - Ryan's Birthday Bar Crawl (check in on their sister, is she doing ok after the breakup? Buy her a drink)

"Is something happening to the moon tonight?"

"Nooooot especially! But the roof in that building has some great armchairs and I happen to like moonlit nighttime makeouts." She grins.

"Aha, I have a roof and can fly but there's no chairs on mine. Should you be alerting all these people that you're awakening and can't make it - or do you want me to chaperone you to some things, I could do that -"

"The parties are big enough that I won't be especially missed and also multiple people there will have seen my tweet about awakening! And it looks like Jen and Sara already figured it out and canceled, and Aunt Rachel knows I'm here, thought I do still want to call her and chat with her..."

Then she properly processes the chaperoning comment and her eyes get big. "...You'd do that?"

"I'm taking the week off to look after you, if you've got plans I can probably accommodate at least some of them!"

"Yeah, but like..." She leans on him. "You're doing a lot already, and it's really nice, and I just feel like - 'chaperone a backlashed Cara at a social event' seems like a pretty big additional thing! ...Also we'd need to figure out guiding logistics, since we can't just do this."