Pilot's Madness

The acute mental and emotional condition brought about when a pilot is required to remain in the chair too long, without getting to interact with other living people.

Causes

Piloting an inter-real vessel is a strenuous task, and involves lying strapped into a chair that repeatedly buffs or dampens portions of your nervous system while throwing stimuli directly into your nerves to facilitate certain emotions. This means that pilots are constantly allowing a machine to pump sensations directly into their body, involving everything from the soft warmth of a blanket to the sharp stab of a stomach cramp. In times of dire need, the chair can even do VR experiences to call up emotions. Add in experiencing those emotions while maintaining the presence of mind to make something out of them and pilot the actual vessel, and your only sleep being an induced trance state in the chair, and the fact that there's literally no one else there to talk with about what you're going through...

Basically, complete exhaustion is the best outcome a pilot can hope for if they overdo it. A much more likely outcome is the condition known as Pilot's Madness.

Symptoms

• Peculiar turns of phrase and abrupt changes of subject, almost like the sufferer is externalizing their stream of consciousness
• Awkward conversational behaviors, such as talking past their interlocutor, interrupting or--conversely--not responding when it's their turn to speak, and emotional responses when empathizing that don't make sense
• Speaking too quickly and/or loudly
• Over-optimism or the flip side, agitated anxiety
• Oversensitivity to light, touch, and sudden noises
• Pains, particularly in the head
• Clumsiness, and a lot of bumping distractedly into doorways
• Oversharing

Treatment

Treatment involves lots and lots of rest, with someone else piloting the ship for a while. It also involves talking to other people a lot, which helps the pilot establish in their mind what a normal baseline is, so they can start aiming for it.

Prognosis

While the experience of Pilot's Madness is disorienting, it has a very good prognosis when rest and socialization are applied to it. Recovery takes a few days, but appears to be just about complete. Pilot's Madness does not predispose those it affects to mental illness later in life--it is very much a transient issue brought on by overstimulation of the nervous system and the temporary lack of normal checks and balances that talking with other people naturally provides.

Prevention

Pilots require regular periods of low-effort piloting, in which the vessel keeps running in the back of their mind, and they can walk about the ship and have normal conversations with others. They need to use the built-in trance state--as imperfect a substitute for sleep as it is--regularly as well. And pilots need to avail themselves of the mooring points built into the void settlements, which can temporarily take over maintaining the ship and lift the burden off completely, allowing the pilot real rest and the chance to eat, sleep, and be normal for a time.

Cycle

Short-term

Rarity

Extremely Rare