Pet Owner Training manual.
Chapter 1
How to Keep Your Human Happy
As you have learned by now, this manual has nothing to do with the upkeep of beasts, but more about the upkeep of human companions. As we all know, the Galactic Assembly does not categorize the human as a Pet species, but there has been some call from nonhuman- coworkers for a manual on dealing with their human companions.
The publishers of this manual were unsure how insulted humans might be on the creation of this manual and therefore put it under a different name for we know that humans have an odd hatred for following concrete instructions, and therefore usually do not read users or construction guides.
We would like to begin by stating a truth universally known: Time and time again, history has proven that an unhappy human is a destructive human. As a super-complex emotional species, the human has many ways of being unhappy, they can be angry, sad, depressed, annoyed, frustrated, hurt, betrayed, or bored.
In turn, the influence of their destruction can be wide-ranging or even dangerous. The spectrum can range from self-destruction all the way to homicide.
Humans are more emotionally complex than any species in the galaxy, but they are also one of the youngest sentient species as well with an extreme connection to their animalistic instincts compared to more evolved species.
Not to say that the human isn't intelligent. The cortical capacity of a human is as wide-ranging as their emotional spectrum. They can range from a low G-6 classification with brain damage to an A-9 genius level.
The human cortical capacity to learn and grow is beyond what we have seen from almost any other species. They need to learn, and they need to be occupied to satisfy the brain, and thus the emotions, in an engaging way. While we will be discussing all classified forms of human negative emotion, we are first going, to begin with, one of the most dangerous and brilliant of human motivations.... boredom.
Boredom is characterized as the feeling a human gets when they are not being cognitively challenged, and ignoring the signs can have dire consequences.
***
The inside of a rundi prison couldn't be categorized as very homey. It was almost.... nothing.
It was the absence of extremes. The white walls reflected all light, the floors were not too hard or too soft, the atmosphere matched average body temperature, There was nothing to look at, and nothing to talk about. There was hardly any background noise at all.
Krill might have found the environment relaxing if it wasn't for his human companion pacing angrily back and forth across the cell.
Ever since being thrown in this cell, the captain had grown increasingly agitated. The first few days he had quietly sat in the corner making Smalltalk with Krill to let the time pass, but it was hard to define time in a place like this, and the human had grown increasingly agitated.
Krill felt fine, but the human clearly wasn't.
"It'll be fine captain, this is all just a misunderstanding. Once the crew finds a good negotiation strategy things will work out."
The captain paused turning to face him with his one working eye, and the look Krill saw there was almost chilling. "If I don't get out of here soon, I am going to go insane."
Krill paused not sure if that was just an exaggeration on the captain's part or if it really was true, Humans tended to have odd reactions to things that normally wouldn't bother the rest of the galaxy.
"Captain..." He ventured softly
"The walls are white, the floors are nothing, the sounds are nothing, the heat is nothing. I cant FEEL anything, and there's nothing to do."
Krill stared on in fascinated horror as the human continued his tirade which quickly devolved into nonsensical ramblings as if his only goal was to fill the room with noise. He paced back and forth at an increasing rate until the pacing turned into circles and the circles turned into frantic wandering.
"W-what's wrong with you.... what's wrong captain?"
"I'm BORED." The man snapped flopping down on his back to stare up at the ceiling, He stayed that for a while before rolling over to beat his fists against the floor.
Krill pulled back.
The human stood lunging towards the door to beat on it savagely with his fists, "LET US OUT... LET US OUT YOU BASTARDS!!"
The human stepped away again before charging back towards the door.
He must have been at that for an hour before sliding down against the wall to stare at his feet.
Krill stayed fixated the entire time.
When the human wasn't sleeping he wasn't still for long moving from one activity to the next at a manic pace. Krill had heard about a human state similar to this but assumed it only appeared in the pathology of mental illness. He didn't think the captain was ailed with such problems, but here he was growing more and more irritable by the minute,
His quiet muttering turned to humming, and then the humming devolved into soft singing, then the singing became shouting.
He stared at the door as if hoping to get someone's attention, and then he would fall back to the floor and fall asleep. He would sleep for hours upon hours before waking again to return to his manic state of before.
"Talk." The human demanded, "Don't just sit there, say SOMETHING!" his one eye rolled with savage insanity
Krill stammered, "Captain, I... What do you want me to say."
"Anything, Anything... Please." The human begged
"Oh ok... um Ok.... how about I... teach you.... my language."
The human paused lifting his head and tilting a little to the side. He walked over and calmly sat down next to Krill, "Go on, I'm interested."
Inside Krill gave a sigh of relief. The human had relaxed though the way he was watching him, so intently, was rather unsettling. Humans had terrible focus, but here he was more focused than Krill had ever seen him.
This pattern continued for days, and the moment Krill let his guard down and allowed the room to go quiet, the human slowly started devolving back into the more savage state.
It was very stressful.
One morning, he rose from a meditative state to find that the human had disassembled his prosthetic leg and was using its pieces to build small animal figurines. He seemed relatively pleased with himself almost back to his normal state.... before he ran out of materials and grew board once again.
Didn't take long before the human was speaking in full sentences with Krill without the aid of his universal translator. He had to admit it was rather nice.
Until the next morning. The human had admitted to him problems with sleeping, but Krill couldn't keep an eye on him at all times, and the next morning he came too to find the walls painted with long wavelengths.
Red
He shot up in shock and horror to find the human sitting by the wall using his fingers to paint pictures against the white. His fingers were coated in blood.
"Captain." he shrilled in horror
The captain looked up at him and shrugged, "It's alright," He held up his hand, pricked my finger last night. Thought this place could use a little color.
Krill couldn't stop staring. The human had gone insane.
The captain walked over and sat down beside him, "We were working on motion verbs yesterday."
How could that happen. He was insane one minute and almost calm the next.
"Are you alright, Captain?"
The man shrugged, "I was bored last night, but then you woke up, and now I'm fine."
Krill shook his head in consternation. He couldn't take much more of this, and he doubted the captain could either.
When the crew finally came for them, the captain had systematically learned a second language, destroyed his prosthetic leg, scarred his hands, painted the room red, screamed his throat raw, and gone nearly insane.
Upon hearing of the incident The Galactic Assembly took action voting to add a subsection on humans involving the intergalactic prison system*
*upon conviction, humans are to be housed in prison facilities equipped with an acceptable number of cognitive-enhancing tasks to avoid the likelihood of prison cell insanity.