Percussive Maintenance

The crowd of aliens were gathered around a human who was just sitting, rocking in their chair and muttering things under their breath. Nothing anyone said made a difference or stopped the human from muttering or rocking and they were too afraid to touch them in case they lashed out.

George who had just wandered in saw the gathering and came over to see what was happening.

“Hey what’s up?” he asked.

“Oh hey George” a Lisphon who looked around said back to him. “Frank seems to have malfunctioned when his computer stopped working and he’s just been sitting there rocking and muttering. Nothing anyone has said has made a difference.”

“Okay I got this.” And George started walking through the crowd towards Frank. When he got up to the desk, he saw the computer had a crazy screen display so he reached over and slapped it on the side. Instantly the screen cleared up and everything there was fine. George moved the mouse and made a few clicks to test things and it was okay. Then he turned to Frank.

“Frank buddy, you in there dude?” he called out but Frank didn’t seem to be listening. At this, George reached over and slapped Frank in the side of the head just hard enough to get his attention.

[SLAP] “What the hell did you do that for dude?” came from Frank as he looked up at George.

George looked back at him and said “You were having a panic attack dude. Did you forget to take your meds again last night?”

At this Frank got a shocked look on his face. “Oh yeah. I might have forgotten to take them. I was busy with this project and then when the computer started acting up I panicked didn’t I?”

“Yeah. But that’s understandable. Make sure you take them next time. Okay dude?”

“Yeah thanks. And thanks for getting the computer working again.”

At this George turned away to go back to his desk.

“What did you do George?”

“Oh I used percussive maintenance on the computer to get it working again. It usually works when it’s just a minor problems like a loose connection.”

“No, I mean what you did to Frank? What was that all about?”

“Oh that. Well I used percussive maintenance on Frank as well because he has a slight loose connection and if he forgets to take his meds, then he needs a small smack to reset things. It’s an old human thing.”

“Oh. So when humans start being weird we should just slap them on the side of the head?”

“NO. We know when a slap is needed and you won’t. It takes a long time to know when a small slap is all that’s needed. Other times it needs a hard slap to get the human back to normal.”