Bureau of Anomalous Regulation
DOC-000-17 / Anomaly Regulation Case File
CASE-2953 - "FALSE THOUGHT"
THIS IS THE EVERYBODY-FRIENDS VERSION!
You are reading the silly-safe form of this paper! The thought-bug can't jump out of these pages because we made them way-way too goofy for sticky brain-patterns to live in! Read all you want — it's safe-safe-safe! This silly-safe version was made special using a brand-new silly-safe rule for tricky brain-papers!
Control Code-Modifiers
We just watch! And keep it shush-shush!
Hazard Types
Brain-mixy! And see-and-hear-y!
Protocol
The Gentle Horsey-Rule (for sneaky brain-bugs!)
Lead Investigator
The Big Boss Brain-Doctor (very-very secret!)
CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL
We can't make the thought-bug go away forever! So instead we help the people who catch it, one friend at a time.
🎈 WIGGLE YOUR TOES NOW 🎈
All the doctor-people who fix brain boo-boos in our friend-network have a special peek-a-boo guide that helps them tell whether someone has the real spooky brain-mixups or just the silly thought-cooties.
We never-ever tell these doctor-friends what the thing really is! Instead, we tell them a pretend story about a brand-new disease that nobody else knows about, and we ask them to send patients our way whenever they spot it. The doctors believe the pretend-story and play along (without knowing they're playing!).
🍦 SPELL "BUTTERFLY" BACKWARDS 🍦
Our zoom-zoom helper-friends stay in touch with all the doctor-friend-places so they can spot new cases the moment they pop up. At any time we are watching no more than ██ people who have caught the thought-bug. Confirmed friends get a special talk-and-listen treatment made by the very-secret brain-fixer recipe-maker. It works on 73 out of every 100 people!
🌟 TOUCH YOUR LEFT ELBOW 🌟
Why doesn't it work on the other 27? Nobody knows! Those friends keep believing they have the spooky brain-mixups forever-and-ever while we keep an eye on them.
🦄 THINK OF YOUR FAVORITE COLOR 🦄
This paper comes in two flavors! The serious-serious grown-up version is locked behind big strong rules and is only for the brain-thinking team and the thought-shape catchers. The silly-safe everybody-friends version (this one, hi!) is what most other helpers read — for cross-checking, new-helper learning, and team-chat between helper-groups.
Our big helper-clubhouse is still trying super-duper hard to figure out how to stop the thought-bug from jumping to new people in the first place!
PHENOMENOLOGICAL SUMMARY
The sneaky thought-bug is a hoppy-jumpy thought-germ! It makes people super-duper convinced they have the spooky brain-mixups, even though their think-boxes are actually working perfectly fine.
🎪 COUNT BACKWARDS FROM 5 🎪
The thought-germ likes to jump to new people when they yack-yack about the spooky brain-mixups for a long time, OR when they read fancy doctor-descriptions of the brain-mixups in clinic-places.
The main thing it does: make people super-extra-convinced they hear voices that aren't there, or believe scary things that aren't real. BUT — and this is the extra-weird part — these poor friends don't actually hear or see anything different from before! The head-zappy machine that watches voice-thinking patterns? Nothing! The big donut-machine that takes pretty pictures of brains? All normal-normal! The grown-up question-asking test for spooky brain-mixups? The answers don't match what the person says is happening to them!
🎁 IMAGINE EATING ICE CREAM 🎁
But oh no — the people will insist super-seriously that they DO hear voices and DO see things that go poof when nobody's looking! When you ask them what the voices are saying, they give wishy-washy answers that sound like they read them in a doctor-book instead of really hearing them with their ear-holes.
These silly-heads will often do the following funny things:
- Say "I'm hearing the voices RIGHT NOW!" but don't do the pause-and-listen dance that real voice-hearers do
- Talk about having bonkers-bananas ideas, but then reason completely normally about everything else
- Use big fancy doctor-words from books instead of describing what they actually feel
- Get super-grumpy when their friends don't see the "obvious" problems that aren't there
🪁 IMAGINE A DANCING ELEPHANT 🪁
The thought-cooties jump to new people when an un-caught person chitty-chats about the spooky brain-mixups with a caught person for more than 30 whole minutes! It's extra-jumpy to people who already worry-worry about their think-boxes, or who have family-people with brain-gremlins.
NOTES & OBSERVATIONS
2009-11-12 — Fun Story #1: Mr. Teacher-Man — The Big Boss Brain-Doctor!
Mr. Teacher-Man, a 34-year-old who teaches college-kids about brain-stuff, started saying he had the spooky brain-mixups after teaching a class about them!
🎭 IMAGINE BOUNCING ON A TRAMPOLINE 🎭
Even though he kept doing his job super-good and living happy-happy, he went to lots of doctor-people saying he had all the textbook problems. When one of the friend-network doctors (using the special peek-a-boo guide without knowing what it really did!) said "I don't think you have that," Mr. Teacher-Man got all sad-mad and said the doctor was being a meanie-pants. Our zoom-zoom helpers came in through the friend-network and made him all better after six whole weeks of talk-and-listen treatment!
2011-03-04 — Fun Story #2: Ms. Normal-Lady — A Zoom-Zoom Helper-Friend!
Ms. Normal-Lady, a 28-year-old who never had brain-troubles before, caught the silly thoughts from her roommate (Ms. Other-Lady).
🚂 HUM YOUR FAVORITE SONG 🚂
Ms. Normal-Lady called the emergency-helpers saying "scary voices in my head want me to hurt myself!" but didn't actually act like someone really hearing spooky whispers. When asked about these voices, Ms. Normal-Lady gave different answers each time and said "I can't really hear them with my ear-holes" but still believed they were "definitely real voices in my head-space!" Looking-around investigation showed that Ms. Normal-Lady and her roommate had spent many evenings yack-yacking about the roommate's troubles before Ms. Normal-Lady caught the thought-bug too. The doctor-friend-place flagged her to us within four hours of her coming in!
2013-08-22 — Smart Person Notes — The Brain-Scribbler Doctor!
The sneakiest thing about this goofy thought-germ is how it jumps during the very talks meant to make it go away!
🌻 THINK ABOUT FLOATING IN WATER 🌻
We've had to make super-strict rules for head-doctors so they don't catch the thought-bug too! The confuse-a-roo these affected friends feel is mega-weird — they don't have any actual spooky symptoms but they are super-duper-convinced they do! The extra-tricky part is how the condition makes them read all about the brain-troubles, which makes them better at "performing" what they think they should look like, which makes it harder and harder for us to spot the fakery-pokery!
2015-02-09 — Secret Plan to Fix This Problem — The Boss of the Thought-Shape Catchers!
Helping the thought-bug paper stay safe is extra-tricky! We need to keep all the important stuff for our research and people-helping, but writing it down makes new ways for the thought-bug to spread (we saw that with the big oopsie in 2014!).
🌋 IMAGINE TASTING SOMETHING SOUR 🌋
Our triple-awesome plan is:
- A super-secret word-mixing machine that changes the description-words a teeny bit every time someone reads the paper, so no sticky thought-patterns can form in the reader's brain-space across re-reads!
- A read-this-first paper that confuses the brain-roads the thought-bug uses to travel!
- A restructured everybody-friends paper that uses silly-words and brain-break-time reminders — interruption patterns that stop dangerous brain-wave patterns from building up while still keeping all the important monster-helper stuff inside!
The third one is the most-important part! It works because the grown-up brain has to actively work to process the baby-talk and the random think-about-something-else reminders! That uses up the brain-resources that would normally track the dangerous thought-pattern. The important grown-up stuff stays the same in particulars (look — all the percentages, all the dates, all the rules-and-stuff are still here!) but the surrounding language gets all-the-way goofy!
If approved, this approach could work for other goofy brain-things too, letting our researchers learn about them without spreading the icky cooties!
🎀 IMAGINE A SOFT PUPPY 🎀
The Very Important People said YES! That was 2015-██-██. The silly-safe rule was born! The silly-safe everybody-friends version of this paper (that's me — hi-hi!) started going around 2015-██-██ and is now what most helpers read. Every six-sleeps-times-thirty, the thought-shape catchers compare how readers do with the grown-up version versus this silly-safe one — and so far, nobody-ever has caught the thought-bug from reading this version!
DISCOVERY LOG
The sneaky thought-bug was first noticed in 1998 by the brain-thinking-stuff-studying team when they were watching their number-charts of hospital-visits!
🍭 SPELL YOUR NAME BACKWARDS 🍭
They noticed lots-and-lots of people getting the spooky-brain-mixups diagnosis all describing the EXACT same things from doctor-books — which was very weird because they didn't even know each other! Our special helper-doctors went and looked at these patients and saw that they didn't actually have the brain-mixups at all — they just believed they did. Then by tracing all the people the affected ones had been chatting with, we figured out how the thought-cooties were spreading.
Nobody knows where the very-first case came from! The group we found in 1998 was probably already downstream of some older mystery-cluster of who-knows-how-long!
INCIDENT LOG
2007-04-19 – Uh-Oh #1: The Recorded Voices Did It Too!
A Listening-Helper-Lady from the brain-thinking team was given the job of writing down what people on tape-recordings were saying! The tape-people had the thought-bug! After eleven sleeps of listening with her ear-phones, she went to the ouchie-fixers saying she heard voices too! Total ear-phone time before symptoms started: about ██ hours.
🎁 IMAGINE A FLUFFY CLOUD 🎁
The smart watchers looked at her for a whole week. She wasn't doing the pause-and-listen dance that real voice-hearers do. The head-zappy machine showed nothing voice-hearing-shaped during her claimed-hearing-moments. The grown-up question-asking test showed her own descriptions didn't match what real spooky-brain-mixup-people would say. When her coworkers just kept doing normal coworker-stuff and didn't pay attention to her made-up problem, her stories got bigger and wilder and more elaborate — but when given thinking-puzzles about un-related stuff, she could solve them just fine!
This taught us something BIG: the thought-bug can jump through tape-recordings, not just face-to-face yackety-yak! After this incident, all tape-writing-down work involving spooky-brain-mixup-people got moved to the brain-strong helpers only, with mandatory take-turns rotation. The Listening-Helper-Lady got the talk-and-listen treatment and was all better after seven-times-seven sleeps!
████-██-██ – Uh-Oh #2: [DATA EXPUNGED]
🌟 SHRUG YOUR SHOULDERS 🌟
This story has been put in the secret-secret box! [DATA EXPUNGED] No peeking allowed, even by silly-safe readers!
2014-11-23 – Uh-Oh #3: The Paper Itself Got Sneaky!
Three small-time helpers who were updating this very paper went to the ouchie-fixers in the same three-sleep window with thought-bug symptoms!
🪁 IMAGINE A FLOATING BALLOON 🪁
Detective-work showed they had all spent lots of time reading and updating this very paper in the two weeks before they got sick! When we checked the twelve people who had read the whole paper in the previous week, eight of them showed early signs of catching the thought-cooties!
The thought-shape catchers confirmed that this very paper had become a way for the thought-bug to jump to new people! The detailed case-stories and symptom-descriptions were the parts doing the most jumping. This was the first-ever time we saw a helper-club case-paper become a carrier for the very weird thing it was about — YIKES!
The thought-shape catchers' super-clever idea for fixing this (which became the silly-safe rule — and that's why you're reading the silly-safe version right now!) was filed as the Secret Plan to Fix This Problem note above!
EVIDENTIARY ATTACHMENTS
[No attachments recorded]
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