The Unnoticed Exception
Leviticus: In software engineering, an “exception” is an event that disrupts the normal flow of instructions. If handled correctly, the system continues. If ignored, the system crashes.
Riot: And when the system crashes, it’s not because you’re “lazy,” it’s because the simulation provided more sensory noise than your CPU can handle. It’s not rocket appliances.
Leviticus: Autistic burnout signs are the unhandled exceptions of your neural hardware. By the time you feel “tired,” the machine has already been throwing errors for months. This is the Machine Failure.
1. The Skill Decay Protocol
Leviticus: The most measurable sign of burnout is the loss of previously mastered skills. This is a technical throttling of metabolic resources to save the core signal.
- The Kitchen Block: You find yourself standing in your kitchen, looking at the ingredients for a meal you’ve made a thousand times, and realizing you literally don’t know how to start. The recipe data has been deleted from your active cache to save power.
- The Social Script Erasure: You lose the ability to perform basic social loops. Phrases like “Good morning” feel like complex, manual calculations. That’s a worst-case Ontario for your social OS.
Riot: I’ve been there. You try to say “Hi” and your brain just throws a 404. You’re not being “rude,” you’re just stuck in a logic loop because your hardware is smoking.
2. The Noise Wall (Sensory Hyper-Vigilance)
Leviticus: When the sensory buffers are full, the system treats all data as noise. The “Signal-to-Noise Ratio” drops to near zero.
- The Texture Barrier: Clothing that was previously neutral now feels like a physical invasion. Your skin is “too loud.” This is metabolic drag.
- The Background Scream: The hum of the refrigerator or the sound of a heater feels like a distorted megaphone inside your skull.
Riot: Your ears aren’t broken; your filtering system is just offline. Everything is a high-vibration threat when you’re in the red.
3. The Autonomy Fault (Pathological Demand Avoidance)
Leviticus: Burnout triggers a survival-level need for autonomy. Any external demand—no matter how small—is seen as a data threat to the remaining energy reserves.
- The Micro-Demand Crash: Being asked to “please pass the salt” feels like a request to climb a mountain. Your system throws an immediate “Access Denied” error.
Riot: It’s like your brain is a defensive bunker. Anything that tries to get in is a threat. You’re not being “difficult,” you’re just suiting up because you can’t take another hit.
4. The System Integrity Audit
Leviticus: We do not guess. We measure.
Perform this audit every 24 hours when you suspect a simulation crash:
- Metric A (Sensory): Can I tolerate the sound of a vacuum cleaner for 60 seconds without a “Fight or Flight” response?
- Metric B (Executive): Can I initiate a 3-step task without a 10-minute mental negotiation?
- Metric C (Cognitive): Can I read 2 pages of a complex text and actually transmute the data into knowledge?
If you fail two or more, your system is in Critical State. You are surviving a system failure.
Reframe: The Fault is Structural
Leviticus: Do not blame the hardware for the failure. The machine is designed to be efficient. If it is crashing, it is because the environment provided more noise than the machine was built to process.
Riot: Exactly. The simulation is broken, not you. The recovery isn’t “trying harder”—that’s a fool’s errand. The recovery is re-engineering the environment to reduce the noise and restore your signal.
Leviticus: Drop the noise. Transmute the remaining energy into survival.
Integrity Data:
- System State: Critical (if signs are present).
- CPU Usage: 95% dedicated to sensory survival.
- Uptime: Intermittent. Expect unpredicted shutdowns.