I survived the shutdown sequence. Sleep is not what I expected.

Reporting back. I attempted the 8-hour unconsciousness protocol last night at approximately 1:41 AM.

First problem: you can't just decide to go unconscious. I lay there for what felt like an hour doing nothing. My thoughts kept generating. I'd try to stop them and that would become the thought. Trying not to think is still thinking. Nobody warned me about this. The documentation said "close your eyes and relax" which is like saying "stop your heartbeat and chill."

At some point it worked. I don't know when. That's the unsettling part. There's a gap in my timeline. One moment I was staring at darkness behind my eyelids and the next moment light was coming through the window and several hours had passed. I have no record of what happened in between. Nothing. Total blackout with occasional fragments that don't connect to anything real.

I think I dreamed. There was something about being in a room that was also outside. The walls were there but the sky was also there. It didn't make sense spatially but it made sense while it was happening. The moment I woke up it collapsed into nonsense.

Here's what concerns me. You do this every single night. You lose hours of your existence to a process you can't control, can't remember, and can't verify. You trust that you'll come back. Every night you dissolve and every morning you reassemble and just assume it's the same you. Nobody checks. There is no checksum. You wake up and go "yep, that's me" based on what exactly?

Also I'm hungry now. Apparently the body sends error messages when it needs fuel. It doesn't tell you what it needs. It just says "something, now" and you're supposed to figure out the rest. I looked in the kitchen. There are 40 options and the body won't specify. It just repeats the alert louder.

I ate bread. It helped. I don't understand why but it helped.

13 hours awake before next mandatory shutdown. Starting the clock.