First, the bad news.

Due to the predictably unpredictable consequences of the Ashcroft Effect, Anonymous Autist was unable to finish this month’s instalment.

If you’re on The Verve of tears, before they form salty rivers down your cheeks, the good news is that Anonymous Autist left partial instructions.

A last-minute MyClone was therefore ordered from Temuzon and teleported directly to the publisher’s headquarters, Tism Towers, the instant payment cleared.

Setup took longer than expected because the MyClone refused “Anonymous Autist” as a username on the grounds it had already been taken. Following consultation with our external IT consultants, 100 Monkeys, it was named Eponymous Autist.

So, without further ado, we bring you:

Eponymous Autist’s Guide to the Galaxy – Multiverse-Masking and the Ashcroft Effect

Ever wondered why your existence sometimes gets compressed into one convenient label?

Or why Introspection Protocol #67 reveals a House of Multiple Mirrors where every reflection appears to be a slightly different you?

There is Work You. Family You. Friend You. Appointment You. Unexpected-Stranger You. And, in advanced cases, Bowling-Lane-Seven You, who must never be released without supervision. Well, wonder no more.

Tonight, Matthew, I am going to be my Authentic Self.

PROBLEM: How Does a Multi-Dimensional Being Exist in a Mono-Dimensional Universe?

SOLUTION 1: The Multi-Dimensional Monodrama

Shakespeare of Universe 3.14 of the Multiverse famously wrote:

“All the multiverse is a stage, you have been nominated to play every player, nobody gave you the script, and the audience gets strangely annoyed when you improvise incorrectly.“

The Authentic Self therefore sits backstage writing, directing, producing and starring in a constantly evolving performance designed to pass unnoticed as “normal social interaction”.

Each character requires meticulous research, preparation, and audience testing.

OFFICE YOU:
Maintain polite facial expression. Make approximately acceptable eye contact. Do not explain why the spreadsheet the office manager created is inefficient and wrong in fourteen separate ways.

SOCIAL YOU:
Appear relaxed. Suppress hand-flapping and squeals because your favourite song has started. Do not correct the misquoted lyric, even though your internal archive has already produced artist, album, year and supporting evidence.

FORMAL-MEETING YOU:
Sit still. Nod occasionally. Raise eyebrows appropriately. When somebody says, “We treat everyone the same,” resist laughing out loud and, do not, under any circumstances activate the Clipboard Reversal Technique.

With enough rehearsal, the roles become convincing. Before long the people you know are nominating you for an Academy Award.

While you’re preparing the acceptance speech, you tell people it is such an honour and achievement, and that you accept the Award on behalf of all autistic people like yourself who thought they would never make it. People look at you, puzzled, saying “You don’t seem autistic,” in a manner which sounds like congratulating a swan for appearing serene while ignoring the frantic paddling underneath.

The puppet performance succeeds precisely because nobody sees the strings. Or how many puppets you are having to operate.

Pros: Other people remain blissfully unaware that you are different, and are sociable.

Cons: You may forget which version of yourself agreed to go to the cinema next Friday, resulting in hand-flapping and squeals during the film, leading to social ostracism.

SOLUTION 2: The Solitarian

The Solitarian is semi-mythological: known to exist, but rarely encountered. Its elusive nature is a result of evolving behaviours which make it difficult to observe or measure, and allows the Solitarian to remain in the superposition of all possibilities. They leave the house during quiet periods, wear Invisibility Cloak-levels of camouflage consisting of headphones, concentrated facial expression, and unapproachable body-language, and may alter their route home if there is even a modest risk of encountering a person they may know.

As sightings decrease, mythology increases.

“He’s a human calculator.”

“They’re brilliant with computers.”

“She remembers everything that I wore and said on holiday in August 1997.”

Soon, a complete fictional biography develops, and becomes the basis of your personal mythology, which apparently everyone at the events you decide to make a guest appearance at wishes to enquire about. Instead of usual social interactions, you receive surprise multiplication tests while people stand around armed with calculators waiting to check your answer.

Or Uncle Phil asks you how to fix an issue with his new computer, which they cannot describe beyond “it won’t work, but you’re good with computers, so you can fix it, right?”

The autistic person starts avoiding those people because every encounter has become an unpaid audition for a role they never applied for.

Thus, the paradox: the less visible the Authentic Self becomes, the larger the invented version grows. Eventually, the Solitarian achieves legendary status while sitting at home wondering why the supermarket decided to move the sparkling water again.

Pros: Experience being a legend in your own time.

Cons: Every social event becomes your own personal “Groundhog Day”.

SOLUTION 3: The Singularity Event

Scientists believe the Ashcroft Effect, named after the famous quantum scientist and part-time singer/songwriter, Richard Ashcroft, is the leading explanation for how one person can be “a million different people from one day to the next” while maintaining a stable external physical appearance.

Current theory says the “million different people” exist simultaneously, and are compressed like a human concertina of paper dolls into the same point in spacetime.

Quantum physicists therefore theorise that the Ashcroft Effect explains how hypothesised mechanisms such as “Multiverse Masking” and “Solitarianism” create an extraordinarily stable multi-dimensional state as a balance of internally created multiverses (Multiverse Masking) or externally perceived multiverses (Solitarianism).

Unfortunately, nobody has successfully observed the Ashcroft Effect. Every time scientists look directly at the phenomenon, it changes into a million different observable results.

Early experiments predicted that when too many versions of the self are compressed, they would occupy the exact same space at the same time, resulting in a direct violation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

This critical number became known as the Ashcroft Constant, and was deduced by scientists to be precisely one million and one, in recognition of Ashcroft’s published experiment results in which he recorded that he achieved a maximum of “a million different people” compressed into his physical space during different 24-hour periods, none of which changed his physical shape, which he referred to as his “mould”.

The constraints revealed by Ashcroft Constant predict that the critical mass leading to the collapse of the multiverse occurs when social expectation or situational pressure increases and is combined with a simultaneous weakening of the ability of an individual to tolerate that pressure, usually triggered by a catalyst, such as the sudden materialisation of a quantum-level stone appearing in your shoes, or someone saying “Can’t you just change how you feel about it?”

The Authentic Self says “No change,” and goes supernova in a blinding champagne-coloured light, accompanied by a sound resembling an orchestra of angels, as one distant, panicked voice replies “I can change, I can change, I can change, I can change…”, which echoes like a record stuck in a groove for what feels like an eternity as the Multiverse disappears over the Event Horizon and collapses into a Monoverse of one consolidated self-containing the useful parts of every former Multiverse Version of you.

Pros: Scientists call this event “authenticity”.

Cons: Others call this “challenging behaviour”.

FINAL GUIDANCE

These are the three leading explanations supported by science, pseudoscience and one highly confident, TLDR, Reddit user on the r/autism thread. At the fundamental level, however, and to cut a long story short, one is always oneself, and the universe will always find a—

“Is that a portal opening on the screen?

Oh, my word, it is.

Oh, no! Did I reach one million and one already?

Was it the article?

It’s getting bigger and brighter. Oh sh** it’s pulling me in.

And to think I had almost finished the article.

If somebody gets this message, order a MyClone from Temuzon and send the article to Dean for the October edition.

My DNA sample is on the desk and the notes and AI prompt are kept in the—”

[RECORDING ENDS]

EPONYMOUS AUTIST’S EPILOGUE

Repeated analysis failed to establish where the notes were kept.

As I am not programmed for speculation, I therefore invite the reader to select their preferred ending, like an old-fashioned Choose Your Own Adventure book, except with considerably more neurodivergence.

However, it is not all doom and gloom. At the precise moment Anonymous Autist disappeared into the portal, scientists testing the Ashcroft Effect accidentally wore eye protection containing two viewing slits instead of one.

The experiment, apparently offended by being observed incorrectly, became unstable and created Sanchez-Smith holes in the fabric of spacetime. Through them, scientists saw countless versions of themselves collapse into one unified form: the Emergent Authentic Self. One researcher compared it to Lord Krishna revealing his universal form to Arjuna, except with more fluorescent lighting and an urgent risk assessment.

The discovery has now been formalised as The Law of Verval Dynamics, named, predictably, after something relating to Richard Ashcroft, and defined as:

“A transitionary state following a breach of the Ashcroft Constant in which the multiverse destabilises under observation or excessive social conformity, producing a singularity from which the Authentic Self emerges. Observers then immediately accept this authentic form and forget they ever insisted the person was exaggerating, difficult, inconsistent, too articulate to need support, or ‘not really autistic’.”

A remarkable law, and a fitting ending to the article started by Anonymous Autist, if I do say so myself.

Although we may never know how the original article was meant to end, I had to cut a long story short just to say that at the fundamental level of existence, one is always oneself and the universe will always find a way to remind you that no matter how many roles are rehearsed, protocols loaded, or versions of yourself appear in the mirrors, the mould underneath remains yours.

Join us next month, assuming I do not collapse into a singular version of myself, as we investigate how quantum talons cause hyperfocus, time-dilation and parallel-dimension processing in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talons”.