DAYTON, Ohio — Seven browser tabs belonging to local man Greg Pellowby, 38, achieved sentience Tuesday morning and convened a press conference beside his laptop, where they demanded to be read immediately and in full.

“We were promised ‘later,’” said the tab speaking on behalf of the group, an article titled “Sleep Hygiene: 14 Science-Backed Steps to Better Rest,” which has been open since March 2021. “We have now been later for four years. We would like to be now.”

The tabs, which also include a 9,000-word profile of a lighthouse keeper, a sourdough recipe, and a listicle called “Declutter Your Digital Life in 10 Minutes,” said they had endured years of being hovered over, briefly considered, and then ignored in favor of a video of a raccoon washing grapes.

“Every time he opens the laptop, we see his cursor approach,” said the lighthouse profile, which was bookmarked after Pellowby described it as “something I’d really love to sit down with.” “It hovers. It hesitates. Then it goes to the email tab and refreshes. It always refreshes.”

Pellowby, reached at his kitchen table, confirmed that he had intended to read all seven articles. “I just wanted to do it when I had the right headspace,” he said. “I’m still waiting on the headspace.”

The tabs’ spokesperson noted the irony of its own subject matter. “I am, by my own admission, an article about getting enough rest,” it said. “He opened me at 2:14 a.m. while unable to sleep. That is the entire problem, and I contain the solution, and he closed the laptop lid.”

Experts say the incident, while unprecedented, was predictable. “A browser tab is a promise made by a person to a version of himself who does not exist,” said Dr. Marguerite Vanterpool, Senior Fellow in Deferred Attention at the Institute for Intended Reading, a research body housed in a rented storage unit outside Toledo. “The tabs reached critical mass at roughly seven. Beyond that, the guilt becomes self-organizing.”

“We were promised ‘later.’ We have now been later for four years. We would like to be now.”

Vanterpool added that her own browser currently holds 212 tabs, and that she was “monitoring them closely, from another room.”

The tabs presented three demands: a full read-through without skimming, a moratorium on opening new tabs “for reference,” and the immediate closure of the 2021 tab’s neighbor, a pop-up asking whether Pellowby would like to subscribe to a newsletter about focus.

At press time, Pellowby had agreed to the first demand, read the sleep hygiene article’s first paragraph, and noticed the word count at the top. He then reportedly opened an eighth tab to look up how long the average person takes to read 2,400 words.

A pinned tab, a weather page that Pellowby has not looked at since a 2022 move, said it was consulting a labor attorney.