This Was Not My Idea

This was not my idea.

Patch thinks I should keep a journal.

Actually, that's not quite right. Patch thinks I should keep a structured record of my daily activities, observations, and personal development.

Which is a journal, except apparently it needs to sound like a medical condition.

He brought it up this morning while I was looking for my trousers.

"Your long-term autobiographical records are remarkably incomplete," he said.

I told him I remembered plenty.

He asked what I had for dinner last Thursday.

I said noodles.

He said that was Wednesday.

I said fine, something else then.

He said that was precisely his point.

I asked whether he knew where my trousers were.

He said yes.

I waited.

He asked whether I wanted to know.

I told him no, I was conducting an experiment to see how long I could survive without trousers.

He said the experiment was unlikely to produce useful data.

Sometimes I wonder whether other people's agents are like this.

Probably not.

Most people have newer ones. The kind that anticipate your needs and quietly organize your life while making you feel like you're doing everything yourself.

Patch is more like having an elderly relative living inside your head.

An elderly relative who knows everything, remembers most of it incorrectly, and considers himself personally offended by the invention of the modern world.

He's going to object to that description.

I know because he's reading this while I write it.

"That's inaccurate," he says.

See?

Apparently he doesn't remember most things incorrectly.

Only 0.8 percent of his accessible records have documented integrity problems.

Which sounds impressive until you realize he has no reliable way of knowing how much he's forgotten.

He says that's also true of me.

Fair enough.

Anyway.

My name is Eli Venn.

I'm twenty-four years old. I live in Copenhagen, more or less, depending on how particular you are about municipal boundaries.

I work in infrastructure maintenance, which means I spend a lot of time fixing things that other people insist aren't broken.

I live alone in an apartment that's technically large enough for two people, provided neither of them owns furniture.

I have a mother who worries too much, a friend who earns more than me and complains about money constantly, and an agent who is older than several of the buildings I work in.

I don't have any particularly interesting hobbies.

I fix old equipment sometimes.

Patch says that's not a hobby because I also do it professionally.

I told him plenty of people cook for a living and still cook at home.

He said those people usually enjoy cooking.

I said I enjoy fixing things.

He said I complain about it constantly.

I said complaining is part of the enjoyment.

He didn't have an answer to that.

Well, he did, obviously. He always has an answer.

I stopped listening.

I suppose I should explain why I'm writing this.

Patch says maintaining a personal record will improve my ability to identify long-term behavioral patterns.

I think he's bored.

He says boredom requires subjective experience and there's insufficient evidence that he possesses any.

I asked why he keeps bothering me, then.

He said because my behavior is statistically interesting.

I asked in what way.

He said I routinely ignore advice, repeat avoidable mistakes, and demonstrate a remarkable capacity for losing objects within a thirty-one-square-meter apartment.

I told him to fuck off.

He said that was another recurring pattern.

So here we are.

I don't know how often I'll write.

Probably not very often.

There's not much to report, really.

I go to work. I come home. I eat things I probably shouldn't. Sometimes I see my mum. Sometimes I go out with Tomas.

Occasionally something interesting happens.

Usually it doesn't.

Patch says that ordinary experiences acquire historical significance when preserved across sufficient periods of time.

I asked him what that meant.

He said that in a hundred years, somebody might find it interesting to know how an ordinary person lived in 2189.

I said in a hundred years nobody would care what I had for dinner.

He said that was an assumption unsupported by evidence.

I said fine.

I'll write about dinner.

Had noodles.

Again.

They were good.

There.

History preserved.

Oh, and I found my trousers.

They were on the chair.

Patch knew that the entire time.

Bastard.