He spent the majority of the next day not accomplishing much other than reading on the internet and then later books as he felt it to be more productive, he was very hungover. Hangovers for him seemed to have no rhyme or reason as to when it occurred, it seemed to have no correlation with how much he drunk and of what. In the early evening he decided to text Sarah again.

"Cool, why knitting? is it something you have done for a while or why did you start?"

"A while, it's something to do with my hands when I listen to music or watch movies, plus you can make special things that you cant buy anywhere"

Once again he was floored, her response was perfect to him in his infatuated state, he wondered if she had been using some AI to generate responses. He didn't want to respond right away, he wanted to wait a day once again, he felt it was more special this way and gave him time to think of a proper response or questions.

Should I wait another day though? surely she sees it as a habit by now. I don't want to give her expectations to expect it in case I no longer want to do it one day, maybe I should skip a day now? the longer I wait to skip a day the more the habit will be established and any break in it will ruin things. It's kind of poetic though to only say one thing a day, it's like the old days when people used to send telegrams or letters.

He remembered a story his Uncle had told him when he was younger, that in the early days of the internet he used to play chess with a friend over email, each sending their move once a day, presumably 12 hours apart. He thought this was a really special story, something so far removed from how people would interact in modern day and represented people trying to work out the best way to use the new technology of the internet. He presumed but never actually enquired if his uncle and friend would also exchange general chat alongside the chess moves. Ast loved this idea of slow communication and felt it to be more poetic and special, the ease of which text messages could be exchanged these days made the words feel less special to him. Even if someone was clearly trying to say something important, there was some underlying bias behind the scenes that if it was really meaningful then they would try to do it in another format like in person. Ast wished to return to the days of letter exchange when messages were properly thought out and carefully considered due to their sense of permanence and the fact that any clarification arising from misinterpretations was slow and difficult. Ast wished he had someone to exchange letters with but had not found anyone who has the patience to do something like that.

His uncle's chess match (or matches, he wasn't sure) which presumably took months reminded him of the movie The Seventh Seal, one that was a defining movie of his own youth, he had never seen the connection until now, in fact he might never have thought about his uncles story since he told it over 20 years ago. Maybe he didn't need to start letter writing, maybe he just needed to find someone who would give all messages the weight of importance they deserve, maybe Sarah could do this, maybe they could establish a modern form of slow and deliberate communication, through self imposed limitations. He wondered if this would be as poetic as his Uncle's story in 20 years time, his uncles was self imposed to a degree but the story still seemed to him to be largely a product of the times, rather than a forced creation which made it seem more beautiful to him but he couldn't tell if this was true or was simply a misconception he had.

What could replace text? maybe direct internet based communication through neural implants? like you just think what you want to say and who you want to say it to and then it gets sent. That's really just another form of text message though, maybe they could let you send feelings or vague concepts, like for example you could share your mood with someone or maybe you could ask for a date and send a vague feeling of the type of date you want it to be, how much excitement, how much privacy, how much energy you have, things you cant easily word and then they could get a sense of what you are after and meet in the middle. That would no doubt be the end of all language, surely? people would just entirely communicate in this form.

As mentioned earlier, most of Ast's thoughts weren't in words, they were vague collections of words/ideas/themes and emotions, he felt this was the most efficient way to think and only resorted to words for the sake of others. Even though he felt this to be by far the most efficient form of communication he would refuse any neural implants out of principle.

If the communication was two way as opposed to just transcribing thoughts into audible words for them then you would no longer be able to trust any of your own thoughts, like if it had the power to directly stimulate words/feelings inside your brain then who is to say it wouldn't stimulate an ad and make you want to buy a certain thing or feel a certain way about some political event. I guess it wouldn't matter at that point, it wouldn't matter if the thoughts wouldn't have occurred without the stimulation because the thoughts are you now as the neural stimulating device would literally become a part of you. It wouldn't matter to you whether your thoughts came from your brain matter or the implant, they would affect you in the same way. It's like now, I often don't care whether my thoughts come from my conscious brain, if I have an understanding of the chain for why they occurred or if they just seem to pop up randomly from my subconscious with no explanation, I know that if I ignore either they will haunt me all the same. I do care though? if something comes up from my subconscious I usually try to feel my way through where it came from, what i was feeling and what chains led to that thought. I guess the same could be done for some implant, it could make you think there was a good chain of reasons leading to that thought. What is my point? this doesn't matter, I should think about what to say to Sarah next.

He scrolled up through his texts and reread the tiny conversation about 10 times.

I guess I should stop asking questions like I am interviewing her. Is that what I'm doing? I guess to a degree but that's normal. Maybe she thinks my questions are relevant to my poem, maybe if I went away from the questions she would think I'm over stepping boundaries and hitting on her. Nah, she could still think I'm telling her these things to see how she would react, even telling people things is like a type of question as to what they think about what you told them. Maybe I could tell her that, just outright say something strange with no context, that's always fun, write to her 'telling people things is like a type of question as to what they think about what you told them, therefore everything is a question?', I'd like to see what she says to that, it seems a bit tryhard though as if I'm trying to sound smart. Maybe I could just tell her 'sorry about all the questions, they are relevant to my poem' then if she asks how then I could say 'everything is relevant to everything' it's vague enough to be true and it's kind of like I'm hitting on her but with enough plausible deniability if it goes wrong. That sounds off, it sounds like my poem is the main concern and the rest of the life is just a means to accomplish it rather than the reverse, well not exactly the reverse but they should be intertwined. I should try to establish some connection, to show I can relate to her and maybe add in some light hearted self deprecation, that is always welcome to put them at ease and make it known that you aren't interviewing them.

He thought about possibilities for a few minutes and eventually came up blank and decided he would think about it tomorrow, he tried unsuccessfully to bring his mind back to his poem so ran his mind back through all the other things he had been meaning to look into and settled on AI therapy.