By Anonymous Autist
Have you ever noticed that once you successfully do something once, certain people appear to permanently store that event in their internal database under the category “This Person Can Now Do This Forever”?
You manage one trip to a busy supermarket, successfully navigate the hostile terrain of unexpected layout changes, artificial lighting, people and trolley barricades, and the existential threat of someone standing too close behind you in the queue, and suddenly you “can manage shopping trips.”
You have one socially successful conversation where you remembered to laugh at the correct interval, ask a follow-up question, and not accidentally stare into the middle distance like a switched-off android, and suddenly people assume you are a fully functioning social machine.
What these people don’t see is that far from being the biological equivalent of Lieutenant Commander Data from Star Trek, you are more like Kryten from Red Dwarf constructed in a shed by a sleep-deprived inventor using spare wires, emotional trauma, and a stolen shopping trolley.
Some days, the machine works beautifully. You reach full operational capacity. You respond to messages and emails on time, tolerate noises, survive small talk, attend an appointment, and maybe even eat a meal that involves more than two ingredients.
Other days, you see an unsurvivable tsunami of emails, hear an orchestra of the worst noises known to humanity, and when some well-meaning person asks whether you want tea or coffee (knowing full well you always drink coffee), your brain responds by opening a small emergency hatch and jettisoning itself in an escape pod, boldly going where no brain has gone before.
Welcome to The Capacity Flux.
The sudden departure of the brain results in an often-inconvenient shift in cognitive, emotional, sensory, and physical bandwidth which means that something you could do easily yesterday may become completely impossible today.
This is deeply confusing to people who always get out of bed on the left side, dress to the right, schedule their day to the microsecond, and consistently juggle several tasks simultaneously while holding a conversation with a crowd of people.
“But you did a great job on it last time” they say.
The problem is that “last time” may have occurred under entirely different atmospheric conditions, potentially in an alternative or parallel universe, or possibly from an advanced clone of yourself.
Today, it may be lying face-down on the floor whispering, “I just can’t do it, Captain, I don’t have the power.”
If this sounds familiar, don’t panic. The Di lithium crystals and warp core will be fixed byeerin.
Problem: The 88 Sensory Input Threshold
The Capacity Flux usually operates in silent mode, and can activate without warning.
You wake up and perform the standard internal systems check.
Sleep: insufficient.
Emotional Stability: variable.
Physical Energy: 67%.
Executive Function: buffering.
Sensory Tolerance: available, but only under strict laboratory conditions.
You then begin the day and everything seems manageable. The kettle clicks. The dog breathes. The neighbour’s cockerel crows at the regular 8:05am until 8:27am. Someone in the distance shuts a car door slightly too loudly, but you remain composed.
Suddenly, the fridge’s humming in B minor crescendos, leading you to notice that your shirt collar and tie feel to be tied too tightly and is not choking you like a medieval torture device.
Your phone beeps and you see an email from your manager containing a terror-inducing Subject Line “Can you call me urgently? Meeting is now in person.”
Your brain, attempting to remain professional and starts running emergency calculations.
Social Expectation: 100%
Uncertainty: 90%
Sensory Tolerance: 5%
Shirt and Tie Strangulation Risk: 80%
You are now approaching the 88 Sensory Input Threshold at 40% lightspeed.
At this point, three small warning lights appear in the autistic brain, all flashing: “Why? Why? Why?”
Why is the meeting in person when it could have been an email?
Why is the email written like a riddle composed by a committee of Sphinxes?
Why has the plan been changed at the last minute?
Why does that hand dryer in the toilet on floor 3 sound like a jet engine arguing with a giant wasp?
As the 88 threshold approaches, the lights pulse into a steady, bright stream of internal alarm, reminiscent of approaching warp-speed.
Then along comes John, who does the morning drinks round, and has done for the past 3 years, and asks you whether you want tea or coffee despite knowing full well that you have the same black coffee in the same BPA-free coffee cup with sealable lid as you have requested the last 758 times in a row. This final straw measures precisely 1.21 on the Intensity Scale, which is the exact amount of power required to activate The Capacity Flux. At that moment, the air crackles, space-time distorts, and a temporal displacement field forms around you. Your brain’s internal engine room explodes into activity while Scotty from Engineering returns a grim report “Masking reserves are depleted! Executive functioning can’t take much more!”
Then, with a sound somewhere between a DeLorean accelerating, a Star Trek warp jump, and a microwave giving up on life, you suddenly disappear through a wormhole into the void, which, to the casual observer, appears that you stood up making spaceship noises, and walked out of the office while repeating “Does not compute. Does not compute. Does not compute.”
Solution: The Capacity Flux Survival Manual
As with all events involving sensory overload, masking collapse, executive dysfunction, and people saying “but you seemed fine yesterday,” there are several possible strategies.
The key is to remember that capacity is not a moral virtue. It is a resource. And sometimes the resource has been spent on surviving a room with strip lighting, small talk, and a man called Keith who keeps clicking his pen.
Option 1: The Temporal Capacity Disclaimer
Before entering any high-risk situation, issue a disclaimer, such as:
“Please note that my current capacity is variable and may alter depending on sensory input, social demand, unexpected changes, and whether anyone uses the phrase ‘common sense’ as a substitute for thought.”
This establishes, in advance, that you are a highly complex neurological system temporarily piloting a human body through an environment designed by people who apparently believe silence is illegal.
If challenged, explain that your capacity operates using advanced scientific principles.
Yesterday’s capacity cannot be automatically applied to today’s task because yesterday existed in a different timeline.
In yesterday’s timeline, you may have had enough sleep.
In today’s timeline, the neighbour’s cockerel crowed at 6:14am, your socks feel politically hostile, and someone has moved the sparkling water again.
Pros: Provides a clear framework.
Cons: People may still respond with, “Yes, but can you just try?”
Option 2: The Masking Power Reserve Audit
Masking is often misunderstood by outsiders, and is mistaken for “coping.”
In reality, masking is an advanced energy-intensive process involving advanced facial choreography, tone regulation, gesture management, eye-contact simulation, emotional suppression, conversational scripting, and the constant monitoring of whether you are doing something socially alarming. Eventually, the masking reactor reaches critical instability, which is where the Spacetime Manipulation function activates. By discharging massive power reserves, the autistic person distorts the space-time continuum and creates a wormhole, ideally directly under the person causing the problem, transporting them gently but firmly into the vortex to a different era, preferably one where they can practise saying “we treat everyone the same” to a confused medieval goat.
Pros: Reduces immediate stress.
Cons: Wormhole generation resulting in temporal displacement of colleagues may result in disciplinary action.
Option 3: The Planetary Anchoring Problem
One of the cruellest features of The Capacity Flux is Planetary Anchoring. This is the mechanism which ensures that, when you time-jump away from an overwhelming situation, you remain in the exact same geographical coordinates.
In other words, you escape the problem, only to arrive back at the same problem later.
You leave the meeting because you are overloaded. The next week, there is another meeting about why you left the meeting.
You avoid the accidental friendship by not replying for three weeks. The person sends a message saying, “Just checking you’re, okay?” and now you must either explain fluctuating capacity or claim you have joined a silent monastery in Nepal.
You survive one supermarket meltdown, recover, return bravely, and discover the sparkling water has moved again. This is Planetary Anchoring.
You have jumped through time, but the universe has maliciously kept the problem in the same place, like an autistic version of Groundhog Day.
The only solution is to create alternative or parallel realities, or boundary constraints, which include:
Written questions and agendas in advance for meetings and social interactions.
Escape plans and routes for shopping trips and public interactions.
Strict policies on time limits for any type of interaction.
Pros: Prevents repeated time-jumps into the same disaster.
Cons: Requires people to accept that planning is not “special treatment,” which may take several centuries.
Final Guidance: Respect the Flux
The Capacity Flux is not inconsistency. It is not unreliability. It is not drama, avoidance, weakness, or a failuto “build resilience.” It is the natural result of living in a world where your nervous system is constantly asked to process too much, hide too much, explain too much, tolerate too much, and then produce a socially-acceptable cheerful little summary at the end for someone with a clipboard.
Some days, you will have power. Some days, you will not.
Some days, you will reach 88 sensory inputs before breakfast and require 1.21 gigawatts just to decide which clothing is least likely to chafe you to death before the end of the day.
And above all, remember this:
You are not a robot because you managed something once.
You are not failing because your capacity changed.
You are not “difficult” because your nervous system has limits.
You are simply an autistic person travelling through the unstable spacetime continuum of daily life, doing your best to avoid sensory black holes, accidental friendships, and Professional Idiots.
Join us next time, where we investigate the curious case of “The Social Hangover: Why I Need Three Days to Recover from Enjoying Myself
