How the World Ends #92: Autism

The world ends because everyone gets autism.

There is debate over the exact mechanism.

Some people get it from vaccines. Some people get it from microplastics. Some people get it from pesticides or food additives or the medicines their mothers took when they were pregnant.

Some people catch it from other people who already have it – from friends or family members or lovers who diagnose it for them.

Some people get it from playing too many video games, from spending too much time staring at screens at crucial stages in their childhood development.

Some people get it from living too close to cell phone towers or electricity pylons or wind turbines, or from standing too close to microwave ovens.

Some people come down with it after head injuries or emotional trauma or from being too indulged – or not indulged enough – as children.

Some people get it from exposure to solar flares, or vapour trails, or badly policed gender boundaries, or as a result of allergic reactions to food or chemicals or insect bites or the general insanity of modern life.

Some people seem to get it for no reason at all, at random and out of the blue, from which it is impossible to draw any conclusion or moral message.

It’s not all bad.

Everyone becomes a genius, for a start. We all develop hyperfocus, and incredibly narrow but deep interests, and a facility for spotting patterns in things that other people – that normal people – would miss. If we’re non-verbal then we develop superpowers to compensate, such as the ability to move objects with our minds or set them on fire, or to memorize entire books or recall the day of the week for any date in history, or to fly.

And if we’re not non-verbal then we can talk for hours on a range of very specific subjects.

Suddenly we can all understand animals, and learn other languages or master musical instruments in a matter of weeks, and solve impossible mathematical and engineering problems, and use our unique perspectives on the world to create amazing and singular works of art that deliver unexpected insights into the human condition.

There is not a person on earth who can’t finish a Rubik’s cube in less than thirty seconds, and most can do it in under fifteen.

What if, everyone wonders, this was always the way people were meant to be? That, instead of some genetic mistake, some evolutionary dead-end, this is actually the natural and better state of humankind, and our way to the future and the stars? This is the promise of the bright new dawn for the world, with skies filled with rockets and no more disease or hunger or suffering – and, instead, things that work and make sense, things made of facts and context and logic, and nobody getting upset by anyone else’s tics or fidgeting or other self-soothing behaviours.

But then we end up overthinking everything.

We spend days paralyzed by indecision, unable to see past the huge range of potential best- and worst-case scenarios for any given situation.

We develop extreme anxiety about everything, and are overcome with intrusive thoughts, and have to put vast energies into inventing machines or drugs or lighting schemes or sequences of behaviours to calm our wild and untamed brains.

We are unable to make eye contact.

We fail to understand theoretically simple social cues and clues – while also being hyper aware of the moods of others.

We find ordinary communication almost impossible.

We end up, all of us, spending more and more time on our own.

And with nobody left to do the basic neurotypical legwork – the pointless dance of small talk and political maneuvering and low stakes sexual harassment and bullying that, it turns out, has been holding society together all this time just like the normies always said – then everything falls apart.

Nobody bears witness to the final days. Nobody cares. We’re all too distracted by our special interests and our coping mechanisms. Too happy communicating honestly and at a distance.

Apparently, we are not greedy or ambitious enough for the dirty work of creating a brave new world.

And we don’t mind at all.