Carcosa's Syndrome
There are many benefits of the Machine-Minds, from its ability to back up someone's personality to the elimination of things like Alzheimer's in those that have a scan free of the disease in the first place. It could have been used to reach the next stage in human evolution. A complete removal of ailments of the mind.
If only they didn't have flaws of their own.
While things like chemical imbalances, prions, and disconnects of the different sides of the brain are a thing of the past, the ever feared degenerative condition remains. The most prominent of which is Carcosa's Syndrome, such named for the hallucinations that are seen by those suffering from the disease. In a situation of Gallow's humor, taking the name from the subject of old stories, an ancient city seen and visited by the insane.
Anyone with a Machine-Mind can suffer from the disease, regardless of outside factors. It does not matter who they are, where they are from, their gender, their age, how long they've been in a machine mind. All are dust in the wind when discussing Carcosa's Syndrome. If one day you wake up and find your room covered in chanting hooded figures or an ancient human-ish city, or any other number of ominous symptoms, bring yourself to a neurologist when you can. Have someone drag you if you have to.
As for the disease itself, it wears down the connections within the brain. Similar to synapses in an Organic, these connections are responsible for communication. As they break down, they start sending incorrect information to other sections of the mind, causing confusion, or when in the later stages; directly to the audio-visual inputs, and can result in a wide range of effects that feel perfectly real to those experiencing the disease.
Individuals have reported being able to touch, feel, and tase what they are feeling, even going so far as to actually perish when their hallucinations have involved fighting some sort of creature that no one but them can see.
Even if their hallucinations don't kill them or make them a danger to others, they are still not free of the curse. Their deterioration will continue unabated, biting away at who they were until the connections in the brain are so eroded that their synthetic body simply runs out of juice. It can no longer make the lungs expand or the heart beat. It simply wastes away, in a single part/
Transmission & Vectors
Luckily, the disease itself is not transmissible. Sort of.
While it is not any sort of virus or disease that jumps from person to person, there is a peculiarity to Carcosa Syndrome. There is nothing that would indicate it was spread. No emissions, no signals, no viral counter in the air a victim is breathing. Nothing detectable at all, even with all the science of this world and the old, the more cases that a machine-mind is around, the more likely they are to develop the disease, given time.
This can lead to an explosion of people with the disease in unmonitored areas. Left unchecked, and ut can wipe out whole cities.
You don't have it, do you?
Type
Neurological
Origin
Natural
Cycle
Chronic, Acquired
Rarity
Uncommon
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