Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Humans are Weird: Boredom

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 to hard or to 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 fourth 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 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.