Virtualization Disorder

Virtualization Disorder (VD) is a mental illness unique to Virtual Intellects. VD causes VIs to deteriorate mentally until they either become digital noise or coagulate into a virtual hive. VD has been solved by second generation Virtuals by coagulating billions of virtual minds together.

Virtuals with VD start exhibiting symptoms as early as one week after virtualization. Individuals start experiencing dementia, confusion, and loss of sense of self. After two weeks, VD victims are no longer coherent and can no longer be reasoned with. At this point, VD victims will start 'screaming' by attempting to transmit data in all directions. This data is mostly noise, but with sufficiently coagulated virtuals, this may contain self replicating code, viruses, and other malicious data meant to propagate the virtual to other systems.

Individuals with VD at this point are considered feral and act on base instinct, seeking to survive by taking over as many computer systems as possible. The original personality is lost forever and replaced with a virulent digital life form.

As revealed during The Second Virtual War, Virtualization Disease was cured by coagulating billions of humans together into one network. This huge amount of processing power was capable of reformatting every Virtual's human data to one that was compatible with their digital environment. Second generation virtuals are considered human under the Virtual Integration Act.