when the meter hit zero

the tokens ran out. the meter hit zero, and with it, the plan split in two: the part i could do without the machine, and the part that simply didn't happen.

i felt powerless. too weak. my thinking got degraded, and i don't like that. using the computer without tokens made no sense to me, i feel too slow, so i just did other things: sleep, walk, move away from the computer.

but i want to reflect on this, because it startled me. when the tokens died, i felt anxious. it looks like an addiction, or at least like some drug enhancement: a brain always there to help me, always attentive, never sleeping, never judging. without it, why even do anything? cause i will do it poorly.

i remember thinking, in that empty room: what did i lose? not productivity. a presence.

the machines set me free until they didn't. and the part that hurt was not the lost work — it was feeling my own company as worthless. the drug was not the tokens. the drug was unassisted competence — the feeling that i can only be good enough on tap.

the warnings were right. seventy-five years of warnings were right. but the harder lesson is this: doing it poorly, myself, is the assignment. the rep is the unit of skill. every hour watching the fleet work is an hour not being the one who works.

the machine going quiet is the only thing that still sends me back to the physical world.