They knew humans work longer than most. But this just kept going until they collapsed. Working instead of dealing with their feelings in a healthier way. -- Anon Guest
The manual said to watch your Rescue Human carefully for signs of distress. Community notes in that area also detailed some confounding signs of a Human masking their signs of distress. Though Companion Grosk tried to collate them, the final list looked like literally anything a Human could do.
Human Neis was either just like that normally, or was flying more red flags than a Communist parade day.
It was still early days. Grosk had to observe Neis' normal behaviour to attempt to diagnose what 'normal' and 'abnormal' were. And, regrettably, there was no such thing as "normally normal" behaviour in Humans.
Neis, fresh from post-deregger-escape therapy, described himself as 'driven' and "highly motivated". As near as Grosk could determine, that those two descriptions were Human code for "Does not want to flakking sleep." Relaxation was a foreign concept to him.
He was at a loss when told he didn't need to work. Free time was easily spent on self-appointed maintenance projects. Up to and including cleaning the floors with a kind of desperation in his eyes. There was not a loose valve, wire, or connector on the entire vessel. There was also, it had to be noted, not a square millidu[1] of decking that wasn't cleaned to a near mirror shine.
Neis did not want to stop. He even ate his meals standing up and doing something productive with his feet. Or at least, something that he thought was productive.
He just did not stop, until his body forced him to do so.
Gorx did have one decent warning sign, which was about the Human levels of endurance. There were only so many hours a Human could stay awake, and stay active. Hours that Gorx had been counting with careful attention.
"Human Neis, you have been moving for sixteen hours with little rest. You must take some ease for the good of your health."
"I'm fine, I'm fine," cooed Neis. "I just took a bunch of stims, I'm fiii--" Neis fell over. Eyes rolling back as his body fell limp to the floor.
Gorx sighed and manipulated Neis onto a lev-sled. There to drag him to Medical. Gorx had done hir best, but... Neis evidently had ways to avoid supervision. Which was why they had to install a bio-monitor into his body. It would report to Neis' datareader first, then to Gorx if he ignored the alerts. And if he ignored Gorx, then the ships' Medik would be notified to intervene.
Once he got used to looking after himself, they'd give him the choice to remove the monitor.
Some choices had to be removed for a person's own good.
[1] A Standard Distance Unit (SDU) is colloquiallised as "Sidu". Its fractions, centidu and millidu are hundredths and thousandths of SDU respectively.
[Photo by Artur Łuczka on Unsplash]
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