(Chapter 8: How to Tame a Human— contd…)

Dealing With Stubborn Humans

For some owners, the bath routine may prove to be an exhausting ordeal. Even though the human may be restrained—provided our recommendations have been followed—this is not a guarantee that the human will be cooperative throughout the process.

Restraints serve a double role in the bath routine. The first is for safety: properly applied restraints will protect both human and owner from outbursts of physical violence—intentional or otherwise.

The second purpose served by the restraints is psychological. The restraints are a tangible reminder for the human that struggle is futile and that escape is not an option. While this may be enough to convince most humans to direct their energy elsewhere, some humans—especially new wild-caught or free-range humans—can fail to grasp the reality of their circumstances.

This is a quirk of human psychology that can be expected to arise as an obstacle many times throughout a human’s training. The species can be remarkably stubborn and resilient.

Wild-caught and free-range humans can genuinely believe that they can overcome any hardship with sheer force of will. Research has found that this is true, at least insofar as it applies to a human’s personal limits. Humans have yet to demonstrate that they can will themselves free of properly secured physical restraints.

Nevertheless, the resilience of the human mind means that some especially willful specimens may be able to resist the soporific effects of spiritual water to some degree. In the event that an owner finds themselves in possession of a human that is resistant to spiritual water’s effects, they can expect to face resistance from their human throughout the process.

A human’s attitude may change drastically from one bathing to the next. A human that is perfectly cooperative for one bath may be fiercely resistant on the next. This is normal. Wild-caught and free-range humans are known to be mercurial in their moods compared to their domesticated counterparts, with wild-caught humans especially prone to tempestuous emotional swings in captivity.

Patience, therefore, is paramount. Any given human’s resistance to the effects of spiritual water is unlikely to be indefinite. The majority of humans will eventually succumb, relax, and become much easier to handle. Even if an owner’s human proves to be one of the few that can endure the effects of spiritual water throughout the entire bath routine, the important thing is that the owner keeps a firm hand and does not respond to provocation.

For especially belligerent humans, it may be tempting to soak them in spiritual water for longer at the beginning of the bath but this is inadvisable. Not only would a longer soak not necessarily bear fruit, but any departure from routine will ultimately prove to be a setback in the human’s training.

On the other hand, some owners may be tempted to punish their human for ‘acting up.’ This is also counter-productive. Humans in the wild have a concept known as ‘Sticking it to the man’, and a belligerent human is likely to view its punishment as a sign that it is doing something ‘right’ by resisting an unjust authority. This reframes the human’s relationship with its master as a fight against tyranny. Once this happens, the mindset that a human’s owner is an enemy that it must defeat can be difficult to overcome.

The particulars of human psychology mean that the more that a human fights its owner, the more sacred every routine must become. An owner must not punish their human as a disincentive for bad behavior and neither must they alter routine to accommodate their human’s tantrums.

The owner of a belligerent human must show their human that its belligerence will ultimately change nothing. The human will naturally come to understand that there is no unjust authority to fight—no battle to be won—just circumstances to endure. Once it realizes that its baths will happen the same way every time whether it fights its owner or not, it will eventually choose to spare its energy and become much more cooperative.

The advice in this section isn’t restricted simply to human bath routines; many of the lessons herein can and should be applied to other aspects of a human’s training. Domesticating a wild-caught or free-range human is a marathon and not one that is without considerable hurdles. It is not a task for the weak of will or the impatient.

A human can be the best companion that an Immortal could ask for—and some would contend that wild-caught humans have the greatest potential for developing that kind of bond—but a city is not built in a day and a good human pet takes time and continuous, deliberate effort.

Post-Bath Care

The first few times that a human is subjected to the bath routine can prove grueling, especially for novice owners who have yet to experience the quirks and nuances that make taming a wild-caught or free-range human so challenging.

It isn’t uncommon for a first-time owner to be exhausted after bathing their yet-untamed human. This can be true even if the human is cooperative, and more so if the human is of the previously discussed stubborn variety.

The temptation to leave the human in the bath to rest for a few minutes must be resisted for several reasons. First is that to create a routine that works for the human, it is important to not only establish a definite start to the process but a definite end as well. The human must learn that bath time starts when its owner starts handling it, and that bath time ends when its owner stops handling it.

The second is to dissuade any notions of independence. If the human is left alone after its bath so that its owner can rest, it may form the misguided apprehension that this time is for its benefit rather than its owner’s. It may come to believe that it is being deliberately given time to relax and unwind. These thoughts are deleterious and should thus be discouraged.

The third is to build good habits and discipline. It is easy for an owner to develop an attachment to their human and lower their guard. While forming this attachment is the eventual goal of training a human, it can prove unhelpful in the early stages.

Although humans are less developed than Immortals and lack the capacity for higher-order empathetic communion, they do possess lower-order empathy and can exploit their owners’ affection for them. It can become especially tempting to change one’s training regimen to make things easier for one’s human or to ease the human’s discomfort, but this is not advisable.

One cannot afford to be lackadaisical when it comes to training a human and improvisation is to be avoided at all cost. As long as a human’s training regimen is not causing it permanent harm, an owner must not deviate from the plan—for their sake and the human’s sake.

If an owner has doubts about whether their human is actively being harmed by their training regimen, contact information for trusted and highly-rated evaluation services is provided in Appendix C. Owners must not alter their training regimen just because their human is exhibiting discomfort without seeking a professional opinion as humans are resourceful creatures capable of convincingly feigning distress.

Learning to set definite boundaries not just for one’s human but for oneself concerning something as simple as the bath routine will make doing so for future routines and training sessions easier.

And so, one might wonder what the appropriate steps to take after the bath routine might be. After conducting cleaning and maintenance of a human’s mindscape—or acclimatizing the human’s mind to the texture of one’s consciousness, if the human is fresh—it may make sense to dry the human off. Indeed, this is what should be done once the human is better trained, especially so if the human behaves well during the bath routine. Fresh wild-caught or free-range humans, however, should be removed from their baths and returned to their cages without drying. If an owner would prefer to avoid getting spiritual water on their floors as they move their human from the bath to the cage, they might carry their human above a towel to catch any drips.

While this may seem callous, the purpose of returning the human to its cage sopping wet is twofold. First and foremost is safety. Even a human that is resistant to the effects of spiritual water is not immune to it and thus will be much more sedate and easier to move while under the effects of spiritual water.

Untamed humans are a danger to themselves, to others, and to their owners. Safety will always be the foremost priority of any advice provided in this manual and prospective human owners should adopt a similar mindset, both for their sake and the sake of their human pets.

The second purpose is to reinforce the human’s place as a pet. In the wild, humans develop a concept known as ‘human dignity’, which posits that all humans are entitled to a certain minimum standard of treatment and respect as befits their station as intelligent, thinking beings in contrast to non-sapient beasts.

Although it has not been mentioned explicitly until this point, the discerning owner might have realized that every aspect of a human’s training is geared toward dismantling its conception of human dignity and belief that it is above creatures that it would consider baser beasts.

The human must come to understand that there is little distinction between itself and one of the many beasts kept as ‘pets’ by wild humans, that it is nothing more than an animal despite its capacity to be self-aware, and that its sense of superiority is the result of ignorance and misguided egoism. Equally important is that the human learns that this applies not only to itself and its specific circumstances but to all humans, those who reside under the auspices of the Greater Unison and otherwise.

Returning the human naked and wet to its cage reinforces its place and teaches it that it cannot expect special treatment because of its human-ness. It will learn that as long as it continues to act like a wild animal, it will be treated as one. And like any wild animal that bathes, it will have to wait until the air dries it off.

Only once the human is safely contained in its cage should its restraints be removed. Even should it be resistant to the effects of spiritual water, it should be relatively subdued at this point and the excess spiritual water that remains on its body should extend its sedation for a short while.

During this time, it is imperative that the owner not leave the room. This is to condition the human to its owner’s presence and also to impress upon it that it can expect no privacy even during what it might perceive as a vulnerable moment.

As the human dries and gradually recovers from its spiritual-water-induced stupor, an owner should keep a close eye on its reaction. It is not uncommon for a human to dissociate or exhibit distress at this point, especially if it is fresh or early in its training.

As the human becomes more aware and remembers what transpired during its bath routine, especially if its owner chose to exploit its highly sexual nature, it may become increasingly distressed. At this point, the human may become physically or emotionally volatile. This is normal.

During this time, the human may become quite loud. Weeping, shouting, and screaming are common. Any urge to soothe the human or to punish it for the commotion must be ignored. Instead, an owner must adopt the role of a dispassionate observer.

If the human turns its volatile emotions to its owner by becoming verbally abusive or making efforts to reach its owner to inflict physical harm, or simply by being accusatory toward its owner, the owner must never respond nor show any emotional reaction to the outburst. Instead, the owner should depart from the human’s presence and not return unless absolutely necessary.

Humans are social creatures. Although most Immortals would find solitude to be meditative, humans eventually find it intolerable. As the human learns that the only companionship it can expect is from its owner, it will inevitably become dependent on its owner’s presence. Once this occurs, the deprivation of its owner’s presence becomes a deterrent for bad behavior.

This is a strategy that should only be used regularly at the beginning of the human’s training. Overuse of this method can lead to the human developing abandonment issues over time, which would be undesirable.

Once a human responds to this strategy in the desired way—by noticeably changing its behavior when its owner returns—it may be time to consider a change of method. One way to achieve similar effects is for an owner to make an otherwise innocuous but distinctive noise or pattern of noises every time they leave. The human will gradually associate this noise with something negative—the deprivation of its owner’s presence—and eventually, it will learn to correct its behavior once it hears its owner’s distinctive noise of disapproval.

Aside on Human Dignity

Conscientious Immortals might recognize that this concept is similar to the notion of ‘common dignity’ that forms the bedrock of society in the Greater Unison. The human notion of ‘human dignity’ differs from this core tenet of Greater Unison society in that it glorifies humans alone and diminishes all other creatures that they share their environs with.

As most Immortals might understand on an instinctive level, the core of common dignity is that all life in the Greater Cosmos is deserving of a certain minimum standard of treatment and respect, however primitive they might be, so long as they are not causing harm to others. Naturally, this encompasses Immortals in all their various forms and abilities, but it extends the ideas of care, respect, and compassion even to creatures that would be considered livestock or vermin.

When presented with a glimpse of life within the Greater Unison, enlightened humans of the distant past (i.e. individuals known to other humans as sages or wise men capable of just barely touching the Greater Cosmos with their minds) expressed admiration of the concept of common dignity followed by confusion, revulsion, and indignation shortly upon learning about the role of humans and their treatment in Greater Unison society.

These enlightened humans objected to the treatment of humans as pets and decried human training as humiliating, denigrating, and antithetical to the concept of common dignity. Indeed, owners of untrained wild-caught or free-range humans may be on the receiving end of such arguments should their humans learn somehow of the notion of common dignity.

Such arguments are fallacious and to be dismissed out of hand. If humans were a truly intelligent species, then perhaps the argument may hold merit but the data does not lie. Time and again, humans are proven to at best rise to the level of pseudointelligence with the vanishingly rare exceptions that just barely touch the threshold of intelligence.

What enlightened humans fail to consider, perhaps in their short-sightedness or their inability to grasp that they are themselves fundamentally different from their baser kin, is that common dignity also holds that each creature in the Greater Cosmos has its rightful place in the great hierarchy of being. Adherence to the tenets of common dignity means treating each creature according to its station. That is to say, not diminishing nor glorifying it.

The training of humans is therefore not an affront to the principles of common dignity. Indeed, the concept of common dignity demands it. Wild-caught and free-range humans come under the auspices of the Greater Unison infested with delusions about their place in the great hierarchy of being which means that all Immortals have a moral obligation to cure them of their misapprehension and misplaced egoism.

While wild humans might view the idea of being trained to abandon human dignity and embrace a life of being a pet to be distasteful and degrading, the tenet of common dignity requires that it be so.

Feeding Routine

Humans, like most animals, require regular feedings. As baser creatures, they must consume other life forms for sustenance in contrast to Immortals who can choose to partake of food for the pleasure thereof but can, if necessary, subsist purely on the energies of the Greater Cosmos.

As a prospective owner might be aware, there is a great degree of variation in the food requirements of pets. Some pets require feeding multiple times a day while some are satisfied with an occasional large meal every few cycles or so.

Humans fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. In the wild, they feed themselves one to three major meals every milli-cycle with an occasional smaller meal in between. During times of hardship, however, wild humans can reduce their feedings to once every few milli-cycles or so to conserve resources.

While humans can go without food for a few milli-cycles, it is neither healthy nor sustainable. Food intake reduction is a survival strategy humans employ when times are lean and the alternative is starvation.

Humans that are subjected to prolonged periods of food deprivation sustain considerable psychological damage and may develop undesirable behaviors such as food aggression and food hoarding. Therefore, it is recommended that human owners replicate for their human a feeding schedule similar to what it would experience in the wild.

When it comes to the act of feeding a human, it is once again important to establish a routine. In the wild, humans have various rituals that they perform to coincide with mealtime such as making verbal dedications to pseudo-religious figures, catching up with recent events through various publications, or engaging other humans in conversations about various topics. Prospective owners should take care not to inadvertently mimic these rituals lest their humans make the mistaken apprehension that they are being treated as equals.

Just as with the bathing routine, it is important to conduct the feeding routine at a consistent time, with a consistent interval, and for a definite duration. Consistency is vital. A human in the wild has the ability to seek out and consume food at any time. A human left to its own devices is capable of consuming more food than is necessary for it to maintain its metabolic processes, which can lead to a variety of psychological and physiological issues over time.

A human’s wellbeing is its owner’s responsibility and part of that is ensuring that the human has healthy food habits. Therefore, it is imperative to teach a human that food will only be available in appropriate quantities sufficient to satisfy its physiological requirements at certain times of the milli-cycle. As the human becomes conditioned to this routine, its innate drive to seek food outside of its designated meal times will be naturally suppressed.

Humans, just like any animal, are instinctively capable of feeding themselves. Unlike other animals, however, the way that humans feed themselves is intimately linked with the erroneous concept of human dignity. As the objective of training a wild-caught or free-range human is to dismantle their conception of human dignity, a human cannot be allowed to consume food in the manner to which it is accustomed.

Prospective owners might be aware that certain varieties of wild-caught or free-range humans customarily consume their meals with the assistance of specialized eating utensils. These varieties might find having to eat with their hands particularly distasteful or primitive. It may therefore seem reasonable to force a human to eat with his hands instead of providing the specialized eating utensils that it might expect but this is a naïve strategy.

Even among the human variants that prefer to eat food with utensils, certain foodstuffs are considered perfectly acceptable to eat with one’s hands. Furthermore, certain varieties of wild-caught or free-range humans have no qualms at all about eating with their hands, rendering such a strategy ineffective against humans of this particular disposition.

A more effective strategy for dismantling a human’s perceived dignity when it comes to meals is by forcing it to eat without the use of its hands. Most shops catering to human owners will have, for sale, padded mitts that can be secured onto a human’s hands during mealtimes. These mitts allow the human to support its own weight with its arms, but they immobilize its fingers so that it cannot reliably use them to facilitate its feeding.

At this point, the owner may provide the human with food to eat on its own or they may elect to feed the human themselves. Both methods are valid, but the former is more suitable for the early stages of training, while the latter is better suited for when the human’s natural aggression has been tempered by its training.

The first method is safe and simple. All that an owner would need is a bowl in which to place the human’s food. It is recommended to use a pet food bowl instead of a bowl that an Immortal might use for their own meals. This is to further reinforce the distinction between people—the human’s owner—and animals—the human itself.

This method mimics how humans feed their pets in the wild. Forced to eat like the animal that it is will contribute to the dismantling of a human’s perceived dignity. Gradually, its mind will come to accept that contrary to what it has believed all its life, it is not particularly special compared to most other beasts. This is likely to start as a subconscious acknowledgment but given enough time, a human will consciously accept its true place in the great hierarchy of being.

Once a human has progressed in its training, an owner can make use of the feeding routine as an opportunity to enrich their bond with their human by feeding it out of their own appendages on occasion. As with any direct interaction with a human, it is important to start small and safe, such as by ensuring that a human is restrained to allow only minimal movements before manually bringing food to its mouth.

If a human’s training has progressed to the point that it no longer exhibits aggression toward its owner, the restraints can be omitted. An owner should gradually move from giving their human food to simply holding the food and encouraging their human to approach on its own accord to eat the food off of its owner’s appendage.

In the later stages of a human’s training, it will come to see its owner’s touch as a source of warmth, comfort, or even pleasure. Once this is the case, then an owner can, on rare occasions as a reward for good behavior, take the opportunity to hold their human close while feeding them. This is a good way to further develop a human’s emotional bond with its owner but shouldn’t be overused.

Food as Motivation

While on the topic of food, a controversial but undeniably effective method of dealing with problematic humans might as well be discussed. What follows should only ever be considered once other options have been exhausted.

As mentioned in the previous section, it is deleterious to deprive humans of food for any extended period. As such, humans should be fed in a way that reflects how they might eat in the wild, but in a manner that is more controlled and better for their wellbeing.

There is one notable exception to this advice, and that is during the early stages of a human’s training but if and only if the human is a particularly belligerent and uncooperative specimen.

One thing to note is that the average human exhibits only a moderate level of food motivation. While there are outliers in both directions, food can’t generally be used as a training tool for most humans.

A method exists to turn a human that isn’t generally food-motivated into one that is, at least temporarily. This tactic can leave lasting psychological scars, however, and later lead to other issues. But when a wild-caught or free-range human is proving to be particularly difficult and resistant to typical training methods, this strategy can be used as a last resort.

A human can survive without food for longer than an Immortal might think for an animal that typically consumes sustenance more than once in each milli-cycle but it is unlikely to enjoy the ordeal. Hunger causes physiological and psychological pain in humans that increases in severity the longer a human is denied proper nutrition.

Wild humans are well aware of the misery that is hunger. The concept pervades their culture. It may be taken lightly as in the innocuous notion of a normally level-headed human becoming testy and abrasive due to hunger but it can also be taken quite seriously. Many works in the corpus of literature written by wild humans attest that starvation is one of the worst ways for wild humans to die.

There exists a deeply rooted fear of hunger in the human psyche, alongside a fundamental desire to avoid the pain that hunger can cause. This is key to this strategy.

Bringing a human to the brink of starvation outright heightens its natural aggressiveness, making it unlikely to be productive. A struggling owner must therefore endeavor to do so gradually.

Step by step, the frequency of feedings should be reduced from once or twice a milli-cycle until such time that the human exhibits constant low-grade hunger and no longer hesitates when presented with food. This is generally accomplished once feedings have been reduced to once every four or five milli-cycles.

A human’s conception of its intrinsic dignity can rapidly deteriorate in these conditions. It will reach a stage where it will promptly and eagerly eat its food without consideration for the fact that it is being made to eat like an animal. Once its brain has been flipped into survival mode, it more readily accepts that it is little more than a beast, like most other animals.

This said, struggling owners should not expect immediate results with this method. The effects of hunger on a human only accumulate with time and may not reach their peak for tens of milli-cycles after it is subjected to a starvation diet.

An owner should keep a close eye on their human during this period. Once its misguided egoism, self-respect, and sense of self-worth have collapsed, and satisfying its hunger has become the primary impetus for its existence, training can begin in earnest.

By this point, the human will be sufficiently worn down physically and mentally, making it more likely to comply with its owner’s commands. Small, non-substantial pieces of food can be used to reward and incentivize good behavior but care must be taken to ensure not to reward food in excess. The human must be kept in a constant state of low-grade hunger to maintain its conditioning but at the same time, the food rewards must be just satisfying enough that the human will be encouraged to work toward them.

If this is done correctly, even the most bullheaded of humans can receive a proper training but there are considerable risks involved such as the development of undesirable behaviors such as food aggression, food hoarding, or disordered eating. These can be resolved once a human is properly trained, but not without great effort. It is for this reason that the following must once again be emphasized: this method should only be used as a last resort when contending with a difficult human.

(To be continued…)