OOCS

Chapter 21 : Troubleshooting / Secondhand Knowledge

Tris asked “What is depression?” in her usual bluntness.

All eyes were focused again on Karl-Heinz, but this time it was less of a “you are worthless and bad” connotation of the question in his mind, as he didn´t have to bear open his flaws directly to answer the question. Mere indirect self deprecation if one would want to make the argument, but Karl didn´t have the interest in actively aiding his bad feelings.

“Depression in simple words is that someone felt so bad for so long, that he can´t stop feeling bad and useless, The worse it gets the worse one feels and usually the depressed person ends himself to stop the misery.” Before continuing he shoved another spoon full of soup into his mouth as everyone processed that information. “It can be healed, when a skilled psychiatrist can find the reason of the depression and then work the sick guy out of his misery.”

His audience was still processing this information, Sarsa and Vaskra facepalming for not asking Karl-Heinz more thoroughly days ago, he continued his now derailing answer, as he had answered it to potential lovers on dating apps so often in the past right before getting blocked or unmatched. “I don´t know the core of my issue, I just know that I don´t have enough friends, not take care of my mental problems and generally am fuck out of happiness most weeks of the year. Maybe also to pessimistic.“

He Shrugged again and continued to eat his meal. The room went into half whispered murmurs as they all tried to understand this, but mostly lacked the knowledge foundation to properly grasp the concept of depression in comparison to ptsd.

After a short while Tris broke the silence, as she didn´t let herself be bothered by this kind of knowledge. “If we keep you happy, you will be ok. So what fun thing do you want to do next?”

This earned Tris a few angry glares and a hardy slap from Laka, as most of the wifes didn´t deem the situation over quite yet and wanted to continue the current progress they were making with there most valuable asset.

Before Karl-Heinz was able to answer, the motherly shield of Laka interposed herself verbally. At least that was Laka´s instinct to try and do, but even she got overruled by Sarsa this time. Sarsa with sheer volume and concentrated presence of a person in command, overruled everyone with an amazing display of loud yet calm order “Silence! You all stand down and listen! Karl you tell us now how the depression is to be cured and then we will see to that that happens.”

The Nagasha then switched to a much softer and less voluminous sound, as she had successfully culled the room into attention and submission. “You are a constant threat to yourself and others with your bad decisions and moody breakdowns, this is a war zone, we are in danger and we need you to rally more allies and to not implode at any given moment.”

The heavy undertone and seriousness didn´t manage to completely penetrate Karl´s mental shield of self defense by indifference, but it did get him to rattle of the theoretical knowledge he had remembered from way back when he had still tried to get therapy to work. “The idea of depression is, you learn things as you do them. When you draw or dig trenches, you get better at it the more you do it. Same goes for feeling happy or sad, when you are happy at every moment, then it is very easy for you to be happy and be optimistic. Depression sets in when you are so constantly sad, that you only feel bad at every given moment.”

Laka reached out to try and embrace Karl-Heinz into a hug, but the sharp stare of Sarsa made her abort that action. Karl continued undisturbed. “Now the talking doctor talks with the depressed person to try and find why he started feeling sad all the time and then they try to fix his life so he no longer is permanent sad and to rebuild slowly what the sad person gave up on before being found depressed and getting treated.”

The room was focused solely on Karl, who to his own luck wasn´t socially aware enough to develop stage fright, he started to blush a little as his subconscious brain realized the attention, yet his speech went on unhindered. “Now my issue was or is that I am a lonely asocial weirdo, who has no clue how to fit in with other people and has no way to even start to fit in anywhere. So I am lonely and have no motivation to do anything but to go to work and play games.”

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At that self reflection a tear creeped into his eye, but before it could fully manifest he had a random idea and abused the stone from the floor and the walls to make a mostly simplistic chess board and figure set.

Before Tris or other quick mouthed wifes could throw in there next reactive comment, Sarsa asked. “Now you aren´t lonely here and being swarmed with eager faces, what other issues do you have that you know of ?”

Karl stops what he is doing and starts rubbing his head, seemingly trying to squeeze thoughts out of it faster by treating it like a lemon that still has some juice left to be squeeze rubbed out of itself. “gnnnnnn hmmmmmmm … ok, yeah, so the way I keeped myself working was to have all basic needs meet, drinking lots of water, eating healthy food, not be exposed to the elements, have some social contacts in my games, have a meaningful job or rather work I do, do some exercise to stay fit and have enough sleep. Nothing more I can think of … nope this is all I think.”

To this Vaskra had spotted a flaw that she couldn´t pin down and asked. “Then why did you have your crying fit yesterday or when you shot Tris?”

This question hit a sore spot in Karl-Heinz, he froze up for a few long seconds: Again Laka was about to try and shield him again, yet she caught on that he can take a few hard questions and just needs time to get an answer out. At least she hopes that is the way his head works, otherwise it would be very bad of her to let this happen.

Karl´s face was still not betraying much of anything going on in his head as he dropped his answer “I got overloaded.” This stumped his wifes and after a few more seconds of questioning glares and answer beaconing gestures, he continued with a few more words. “I destress badly, I don´t care about most things or try to not care, but it sneaks up and overwhelms me here and there.”

“ So you are like one of the officers in the back line that bitch and moan about every battle lost, don´t care about the women killed and dish out punishments when there meal gets to them cold or 2 minutes late?” Came from one of the new faces, which was followed by a few hard smacks and punches, that knocked her to the floor and left her gasping for air.

Laka´s motherly senses got there fuses blown out by that comparison of there husband to the sheer universal subject of undivided hatred on both sides of the front line. Leaving Karl´s side, she grab that woman and dragged her, by her foot, of out of the room, closely followed by the Kohb and another wife Karl hadn´t cared to look at or get her name yet.

The room was rather tense and loaded with trepidation of what Karl would do to react to this display of disrespect.

Karl-Heinz just wasn´t able to read the room correctly, mentally declared the uncomfortable questioning session concluded and instead gestured to the crowd of still present wifes. He then says “So who would like to learn and or play chess?” as he points at the finished and now fancy shining set of slightly stylized chess figures and board in front of him.

Not missing a beat and wanting to be the first this time at something, Sarsa pushed the others away and leveled herself opposite of Karl-Heinz at the game board. After the less regal act of her taking the offer was done, she then dismissed the most of the rest of the onlookers with “I know you still got tasks to do! Now go and finish the inventory of the last raid and don´t skip the other tasks, I hope one of you also switches out with the current guard too!”

This made them scatter out of the room like cows once there milking is done, with the next cow behind them pushing them out away of the milking machine, with the attitude to match the emptied cow.

Tris and Vaskra Stayed and flanked the game.

As Karl-Heinz explained to the background noises of some punitive beatings, the women present tried to process this new heap of information. Not being subjected to much propaganda and lies in there life, they took the statements at face value and tried to work out solutions to the problem.

After a while and a bit into the first test game, Laka returned and then joined in in watching the to them unknown game.

Tris rather quickly declared “Well this is boring, get me if something interesting happens.” and then she fucked off to somewhere unknown.

Being on the topic of games, Karl-Heinz took the moments where Sarsa had to think about her next move, with the aid of a stone slab that had the legal movements of the figures etched into, he went ahead and created a small pile of dice, popular easy to remember and recreate board games and even tried to create some cards for card games, but quickly dumped that, because stone cards were very impractical and he didn´t want to leave and get other materials.

Further being side tracked as the slow game of Sarsa learning chess went on, he then made stone slates with the roles of the other games he had created and explaining some of them to Vaskra and Laka.

Over some time the room filled again with other wifes and soon they were almost all playing games.

This made them happy enough to shower there priced stud with some prays of his ingenuity.

The praises did spark a small smile on Karl-Heinz face, which was noted by Sarsa, causing her to smirk herself.

A while and a few quick loses against the much more skilled, but quickly being out matched, Karl later. He yawned and got up “I am tired so I will go to sleep now.”

As he was leaving the room Tris commented with a snicker. “fuck em up good hubby!”

This confused Karl-Heinz a bit until he got to his room and found today's rotation of waifu´s awaiting there turn with him. But rather it was the first rotation of the plan they had worked out to all have a turn on the magic lance. He had just been to much of a mess or random weirdo until now to actually get there schedule started.

Feeling mostly good at that moment and himself having had a full day to recover his lower stamina, the eye candy sprinkled around the fuck room and on his bed made him very ready very fast.

When he stepped into the room he even was ambushed from behind by a very passionate kiss and guide, carried on groping hands over to the bed.