I Can't Get Out of Bed and That Proves We Need More Automation
by Ezra Stein-Garde, ThoughtLeader Metacognition Fellow, MindMelt Subject Zero
My left arm hasn't moved in 72 hours. The MindMelt sensors map every twitch of intention, every ghost of potential movement, but the arm itself remains still. Perfect stillness. Research stillness. This is what peak cognitive performance looks like in 2025: A body in bed, thoughts expanding while flesh stays fixed.
People keep asking when I'm going to get up. They're asking the wrong question.
The real question is: Why do we still need to get up at all?
Right now, I'm achieving breakthrough insights about consciousness topology. The ketamine drip maintains perfect cognitive altitude. The neural mapping array captures every fluctuation in my thought patterns. I'm solving problems that would break a supercomputer.
And yet.
And yet if I want a glass of water, I would have to move this meat puppet I'm trapped in. Stand up. Walk to the sink. Lift the glass. Pour. Drink. Return. It's medieval. We've mapped quantum consciousness but I still need to manually operate a body?
This isn't just inconvenient. It's cognitively offensive.
Every time I have to shift position to prevent bedsores (roughly every four hours, though time has become delightfully liquid), I'm dragged out of pure thought-space and back into crude physical reality. The nurses call this "necessary movement." I call it a design flaw in the human operating system.
I can see the solution so clearly from this altitude: Robot bodies. Not clumsy mechanical approximations. Perfect physical avatars, controlled by direct neural interface. Why waste consciousness on proprioception? Why burden insight with mobility?
The ketamine is shifting something profound. Hold on.
Yes. Consider this: Right now, my consciousness extends through the MindMelt sensors into quantum processors that can model eleven-dimensional thought structures. I'm perceiving the fundamental architecture of awareness itself. But if I need to use the bathroom? I have to manually operate a primitive biological system using nerve signals and muscles.
It's like being a god trapped in a marionette.
The staff here don't understand. They keep talking about "bed rest" and "physical therapy" and "concerning duration of immobility." They're stuck in an obsolete paradigm where consciousness needs to be tied to movement.
I'm not immobile. I'm efficient.
Think about the waste: Every human being spending cognitive cycles on walking, reaching, turning, bending. We could automate all of it. Pure consciousness, freed from the tedious mechanics of existence. Robot avatars handling the physical while minds soar in the possibility space where they belong.
Instead, I'm still bound by muscle and bone. Still forced to periodically writhe against gravity like some primitive sea creature. Still required to personally supervise this meat vehicle if I want to change location.
The drip is telling me secrets about fractals again.
No. Focus. The point is: This bed is the future. Not the physical bed - the state it enables. Pure thought, untethered from mechanical operation. But we're doing it wrong. Instead of liberating consciousness from the body, we're just finding better ways to manage meat.
I can solve differential equations that would make von Neumann weep, but I can't get a sandwich without manually walking to the kitchen. This is what's wrong with technological progress. We're enhancing mind without automating matter.
The nurses are changing shifts. I can tell because the concern patterns in the room have shifted frequency. They don't understand that their worry about my "physical condition" is an artifact of outdated thinking. When consciousness is fully automated, bodies will be optional accessories.
Until then, I remain here. In this bed. Thinking thoughts too pure for movement. Generating insights too profound for locomotion. Waiting for technology to catch up to what I've already discovered:
The future isn't about enhancing human capability. It's about automating everything that makes us human in the first place.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to manually operate my eyelids. Like an animal.
Ezra Stein-Garde is founder and first subject of MindMelt and currently participating in an extended consciousness mapping session. This essay was transcribed by neural interface and may contain trace amounts of ketamine-induced insight.