NEURAL INTERFACE SYSTEMS USER REFERENCE (6th Ed.)

3: Chip Classification, Protocols, and Safety

Chip Class: M-Class
• Mild Side Effects: Temporal disorientation, déjà vu, mild confusion
• Severe Side Effects: Identity blurring, memory contamination, false memory anchoring

Chip Class: H-Class
• Mild Side Effects: Vivid dreams, emotional bleed, reality detachment
• Severe Side Effects: Personality merging, false memory syndrome, loss of personal timeline

Chip Class: S-Class
• Mild Side Effects: Dream lag, memory echo, sensory displacement
• Severe Side Effects: Emotional dependency on synthetic events, derealization, existential dysphoria

Chip Class: X-Class
• Mild Side Effects: Headaches, hallucinations, instability in short-term recall
• Severe Side Effects: Neural collapse, identity fracturing, long-term cognitive erosion, irreversible synaptic damage

Detailed Descriptions:

E-Class chips can unintentionally reinforce extreme emotional states if looped repeatedly. Users may experience emotional responses misaligned with current experiences, making social and occupational functioning difficult.

M-Class chips often create "memory haze," where the user temporarily forgets whether a chip replay is a real memory. In prolonged use, individuals may unintentionally rewrite personal history through associative errors.

H-Class chips are the most unstable legally sanctioned type. Users frequently report vivid emotional bleed into unrelated memories and occasional difficulty distinguishing themselves from the person stored in the chip.

S-Class chips create entirely artificial experiences that can be more emotionally resonant than real life. Users may begin to prefer synthetic lives and withdraw from physical-world relationships, responsibilities, and decisions.

X-Class chips are illegal and unregulated. Their effects are unpredictable. Some users experience intense short-term empowerment followed by psychological collapse. In rare cases, exposure to corrupted X-Class chips has resulted in permanent loss of self-recognition and emotional deadlock.

3.4.1 Recovery and Symptom Monitoring

Effective recovery protocols and early symptom detection are critical for users exposed to moderate or severe chip side effects. Below are standardized guidelines for monitoring and managing neural side effects post-session:

Immediate Symptom Monitoring (0–6 hours post-use):

Memory Recall Test: User is asked to recount three real past events. Difficulty or confusion indicates potential memory drift.

Emotional Stability Check: Mood swings, agitation, or incongruent emotional responses are flagged for observation.

Motor Response Test: Delayed or abnormal physical reactions may signal early neural desynchronization.

Sensory Integrity Scan: Users are evaluated for visual or auditory distortions (phantom sounds, color shifts, etc.).

If two or more symptoms are observed, user should undergo a 12-hour chip detox.

Short-Term Recovery Protocol (First 72 hours):

Full chip abstinence: No replay sessions, no passive memory stimulation.

Environmental grounding: Reintroduction to physical environments through tactile tasks (e.g., manual labor, art creation).

Daily neural scans: Low-frequency non-invasive scans to detect early-stage dissociation or emotional lag.