The machine flagged an unpaid invoice on Monday. A big one, months old and freshly overdue, owed by a man who has probably forgotten it exists. I gave the machine the ledgers the same night I gave it my voice, and this is the first thing it found.
It asked whether it should send him a reminder and showed me the mail. I read it and felt what I feel when the phone shows a number I don't know: let it ring out. I said leave it.
On Wednesday it asked one more time, with a shorter mail and a friendlier opening line. That's a rule I gave it: if I say no, you may ask again once, better, and then you drop the question for good. (I'd like that rule installed in a few salesmen I know.)
On Friday it dropped it. Asked twice, never a yes, closed, says the log. My machine is better at letting go than I am. It's better at asking than I am too, which is the harder thing to sit with.
A man owes me a five-figure amount, a reminder would probably get it paid, sending one costs twenty seconds, and I will not do it. I keep trying to read that sentence as a story about him. It isn't.
When I do try, I type his name, then get up to check whether the dishwasher needs emptying. It never does. By the time I'm back my shoulders are at my ears and the draft is still three words long…
Anyway. Tonight I did the only version of brave I seem to be capable of. I can't send the mail, but I can write a rule that sends it. I opened a file and started writing rules for the company, which right now is me and the machine. What it may do on its own, what it must always do, and what it may never do, no matter how I feel that day.
Rule one went in first, the one this whole thing exists for: never again build something for ten years and let it die the moment I stop looking.
Rule two is about money people owe me. The machine reminds them, politely, twice, without asking me first. Starting Monday. Future me does not get a veto, because I know exactly what future me will say: let's give it another week. He sounds very reasonable. He has cost me a small fortune, that guy.
There's also a number in the file, the one I will not say out loud. Writing it down was easier. It usually is. My ears still went warm, like a teenager writing a name on a notebook.
It's a small file. It will grow. I committed it at 23:40 on a Sunday, which tells you what my rule about keeping the evenings free is worth. We'd spent dinner laughing about the neighbour's new hedge, which is shaped, the Mrs. insists, like a duck. It is not shaped like a duck. She went up ages ago and left the hall light on.
The code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules.
— Pirates of the Caribbean