Krill walked at the heals of his human captain holo-board tucked under one of his extra arms mimicking the behavior he had seen from other humans aboard the ship. Commander Vir walked in front of him with his uniform hat tucked under one arm. The long white hallway was full of orderlies scurrying about in all directions like ants through a destroyed anthill.

"What are we doing here commander."

The human turned his single green eye upon the Vrul doctor. His usual cheery smile had been almost completely replaced by a more serious expression. It was strange how the human face could do that, seemingly restructure itself to appear ten years older. When he smiled he looked his age, late twenties, when he put on his serious face, he aged almost a decade and a half. It was a useful tool as commander of the first intergalactic fleet of spaceships, but it was unnerving as hell.

"I have decided that it's time you see something, something very important if you want to understand humans." Krill had to hurry to keep up with the human as he sped up aimed for a large reception desk at the end of the hall.

"What do you mean."

"You'll see."

They stopped before the desk, and a smiling orderly looked up from behind her computer, large framed glasses making her eyes look bigger than they should have been. She glanced down over the desk at Krill who stood very business like in his tiny white lab coat. He didn't usually wear one, but the humans had insisted it made him look more professional.

"Commander Adam Vir. I am here to see Corporal Davis."

The orderly glanced down at her computer, gave a smile, "Oh I see, right here." She stood from her desk handing them two visitors badges, "Put these on, and then follow me." Krill pinned the little badge to the front of his lab coat as he scurried down the hall after the two humans. The woman swiped a card, admitting them through a set of doors and into the interior of the building. There was one long grey carpeted hallway and many doors on either side. There were a lot of large white windows that looked out onto the surface of the martian planet, and its hazy grey sky and red soil.

Passing down the corridor, Krill saw many groups of humans milling about near couches and chairs, always overseen by one of those white-coated orderlies. The humans themselves seemed pretty normal, through a disproportionate amount of them had not changed out of their night clothes, and wore large oversized sweatshirts.

The woman they were following took them through another set of doors, and then ran her key-card, "We call this the Venus Ward." The three of them stepped through the door and into a large open room. Another three or four orderlies stood about the room staring in towards the center where sat a large set of couches and comfortable beanbags.

Krill noticed right away that something was off. The humans that sat in the middle.... well , they weren't..... He couldn't put a finger on it. They LOOKED perfectly human, but as if there was something..... lacking . A few of the humans sat huddled on the couches arms around themselves rocking sharply back and forth. They stared forward with unseeing eyes mouthing words to themselves that no one else would understand. A few of the humans had curled themselves into balls and subsequently fallen asleep curled in heaps of clothing that only appeared human on close inspection.

Occasionally a human would turn to look at them, and the way they looked suggested that the human was completely cognitively there. He could see it in their eyes, the curious nature with which they followed the movements of the alien and the Commander. One of them stood and approached. By all rights the human seemed completely normal, but the eyes were heavily sunken, the skin seemed to hang about it's skull, its hair was stringy and limp. The body below the clothing was rail thin.

"Good morning Jessie." The orderly said cheerfully, "Have you eaten this morning?"

The human tilted their head with an almost annoyed or inconvenienced expression, "I had a pudding cup for breakfast." they turned their head towards the Commander, "You're that guy from TV. The one who flies that space ship."

The Commander broke into an easy, calming smile, "That I am. And you are."

The human smirked, "Well that's hardly important."

Commander Vir tilted his head "Well I disagree very much. Your name is just as important as mine." He held out a hand, "Let's try again. I am Commander Vir, and you are..."

Eventually the human relented and raised a hand to take the Commander's, "Jessie Dean." Their once annoyed expression couldn't help but break into a smile in response to the Commander. He was just like that: hard to resist, as personable as he was.

"A pleasure to meet you than."

By this time, their introduction had drawn the eyes of a crowd. Many of the humans looked up from their rocking or even sleeping to look over. One man, very tall and with long dark hair wandered over. He had a large smile on his face and introduced himself as Samuel. He excitedly started up a conversation about space ships only relenting when one of the orderlies walked over to fetch him. He walked away waving, and the commander waved back. He could have been normal..... Almost... accept for. It was almost as if the man had been too nice too innocent like a child talking with the knowledge of an adult.

Across the room one of the humans began to laugh. Krill looked up unnerved at the human who paced about the other side of the room with disjointed bodily movements head shaking from side to side hands reaching up to cover his face every so often in quick repetitive bursts. The laughter died away to muttering though the pacing continued.

As they walked down the hall Krill noticed a few more things. A human sat curled in the corner. At first Krill thought that he was wearing a pair of gloves, but on closer inspection, he found a thin blue energy field around the man's hands. He reached up trying to gnaw on them, but his teeth simply slid off the energy barrier. A few of the other humans wore similar contraptions. Some that immobilized the entire upper body while others held tight around the waist. As he watched, one of the humans lost his balance and tipped over saved from hitting the ground as a gravity field about the belt engaged lowering him softly to the ground.

Another human walked past them down the hall followed by a floating silver ball. Looking into her eyes, Krill found another human that appeared to be all there, but with a sudden burst of anger she swiped backwards at the ball. It dodged easily out of her way and kept coming.

Towards the end of the hallway, they stopped at a door, which the orderly opened, "Conner... Mr. Davis, you have a visitor. "

She looked back at the commander and then motioned him inwards. The two of them stepped inside the tiny room, barely big enough to fit the two of them, and the third person, who sat huddled on the floor head in his arms rocking slowly back and forth whispering.

Commander vir slowly lowered himself to one knee, "Hey corporal, it's me Adam Vir.... do you remember?"

The human stopped rocking at the sound of his voice slowly lifting his head. He had wide manic eyes, but as he saw the commander, a fragile smile broke out across his face. It looked as if he was about to shatter in half like a porcelain doll dropped to the floor, "Captain?" He smiled, "Long time since I saw you.... Long;. Long time..... Long like space.... Space... space, space, space."

Commander vir placed a hand on the man;s shoulder, "Shhh its ok, you're safe. There is no space here." He patted the walls as if to give the man proof, "See, no space."

Conner nodded, though he didn't seem convinced, "How are you?"

The man looked at him with haunted eyes, and krill recoiled at the voidless vastness that reflected back at him, "There's so much...." The man whispered, "When will it end."

They weren't able to get much more out of him other than that first recognition. The poor man was completely lost. Eventually Commander Vir and Krill stepped out of the room and into the hallway. Commander Vir's face was crossed with pain, "He isn't getting much better, is he."

The orderly shook her head, "Afraid not."

Krill looked between them in confusion, "Commander, what is this all about"

The man sighed, and leaned against the wall, "I.... made a mistake, Krill. A long time ago. I was young and I..... well..... You remember Omnidocing don't you?"

Of course Krill remembered. It was that crazy exercise where humans left the ship in a space suit on a tether, and then allowed the ship to cloak behind them giving the image that they were in space alone. The effects for humans could be anywhere from euphoria to spiritual to maddening, "Yes."

He sighed, "Well, I used to do it.... A lot. The only way to legally get high without mind altering substances. Didn't mean it was any good. I suggested others do it too. IN my idiocy, I assumed that everyone was like me, and that they would get the high that I suggested they might. Turns out, and I should have known this, That that is now always the case..... They called it Cosmic Hysteria back in the day, but I think they renamed it recently Cosmic..... Cosmic Exposure Dissociation Disorder. Some people when confronted with something so mind numbingly large ad empty just... can't take it. He snapped. They say it's similar to Agoraphobia, but like a hundred times worse. Plus with Agoraphobia people aren't really scared of open spaces themselves but what might end up happening in those open spaces. With CEDD they are afraid of the space, but they also experience horrifying dissociation symptoms like they are going to float out of their body and expand to fill the universe.... To become part of the void. They feel like they need to desperately hold their soul inside their bodies or else it will escape."

Krill shivered at the thought. He was incapable of imagining what that might feel like, "So... this place. It's a hospital for the mind/"

Commander Vir nodded, "Yes. A lot of these people you see suffer from a disorder that doesn't allow them to function properly on their own. Many of them might recover and leave.... Some of them may not. Many of them experience horrific auditory and visual hallucinations, some are just delusional, and others.... Well they are people who were just fine, and then experienced a traumatic event that they just couldn't recover from on their own. A few of them have to be watched to make sure they don't hurt themsleves...... it is honestly a shame."

Krill glanced around the room again surprised at the sheer amount of things that could go wrong. "It's better than it used to be, of course. Three thousand years ago, the treatment for mental illness was different types of torture, and even after that things werent great. Women especially got the short end of the stick, they could be called hysterical for simply being a woman, and be locked away for no other reason than being sad on occasion. Even two thousand years ago things were still questionable. They didn't understand how important activity is for these people, they'd just sit them in a room all day with nothing to do and put them on medication with horrible side effects that most weren't able to stay on, on their own."

He shook his head, "IT takes a special kind of person to work here. Heroic really, because for me it's just sad to watch. I can't imagine being trapped by my own mind ..."

"Don't you have PTSD...." Krill nudged

"Not so much anymore, but I suppose your right. But there are plenty of people who operate with PTSD, sometimes not in a healthy way, but comparatively to some of these people, I can hardly compare what I went through."

***

Walking out of the building, Krill couldn't help but contemplate what he saw and what he heard. A woman hunched over at a table arms wrapped around a notebook with incomprehensible squiggles on the inside claiming that the bible told her when the end of the world was, that she was thousands of years old, and that she had millions of children.

He saw another person, with no more but the burden of immense sadness in her eyes, so sad that Krill had to turn his head or the pain that radiated from her was too much to bare.

The dark haired man waved happily at them as they left his wide innocent eyes devoid of guile, devoid of hate.

It was a sad truth about humans, their complexly beautiful brain structure lorded over by so many chemicals and structures that, even the smallest issue had a similar chance, of being bypassed, or causing a butterfly effect that left the human bent under the burden of a crippled mind. The simple fact that an event, which caused no trauma to the body, could send the mind weeping to its knees was almost too much to bare.

Humans are physically indestructible on many levels, a powerful being with a powerful will, but even as powerful as their bodies are, their minds can be as delicate as glass. So please, I admonish you, take care of your humans, lest they suffer on the inside.