[Simon turns on the video feed and looks... much more normal and well put together than he has been over the last few days. He's sitting in his room, and while he seems like his normal, sort of stiff self, there's maybe a little bit of melancholy to his expression.]

I'd like to apologize for my behavior over the last few days. I guess the port's effects took a while to wear off completely. I'll be taking up regular shifts in the infirmary again.

[He considers putting out a message for River, or maybe the rest of the crew, but ultimately decides against it, click off the feed without saying anything else.]

[As Constable Crabtree has so succinctly put it, Crazypants is still crazy, and has been roaming the Barge doing fairly not Simon-ish things, like napping in weird places and climbing on things and babbling quietly to himself. Feel free to have seen him around being a little off.

Right now, though, he's camped out on the floor of a common room, with a couple medical textbooks lying around him. Some of them have had pages shredded out of them, some of which have also seen the business end of a pen and a highlighter. Some of the notes are neat, but others look like little more than scribbles. Entire paragraphs have been crossed out or circled almost at random, and Simon currently has another book in his lap, his pen running across the pages as he mutters to himself under his breath, one knee bouncing nervously up and down, his free hand propped up on his other knee and held near his forehead, fingers twitching.

The muttering gets a little more coherent, because he knows the camera's on and he's trying to figure out a way to explain this to everyone - and himself - but he doesn't look up at the communicator, instead continuing to apparently edit the book.]

There's no reason for it. It's a puzzle without a solution, it's lost, they misplaced it. It was the wrong one, anyway. They ripped it out, tried to make her dance, but it didn't work, something- something went wrong, everything went wrong. Nothing makes sense- [And as if to prove that point, he suddenly rips the page out of the book and tears it in half again before throwing it aside. He stares at it for a long moment before turning around and shoving the stack of books off the coffee table with a frustrated not quite scream. The books make a satisfying thud, and once again he just regards them for a few seconds, like he's forgotten the camera's even there.

He looks up, eyes wide and almost haunted or afraid, staring at the camera, voice shaky.]

River?

[Simon clicks on the video feed, but for a few seconds, it's evident that the communicator is lying at a strange angle, showing the surface of a table in one of the common rooms. There's a pile of dry rice on the table that Simon's currently organizing into shapes - flowers, mushrooms, cats, little boats - on the tables surface, and he moves the communicator to get it all in better few, his expression somewhere between earnest and panicky and very serious as he glances at the camera briefly, like he's got something important to talk about.

He's probably been seeming a little off the longer we've been waiting for repairs to get finished, mumbling quietly to himself or saying something almost entirely without context, but by now, he's lapsed into full on unintentional imitation of his sister because of Wonderland's influence, and sanity is not really in the picture today.]

It's a charade. They're just going through the motions. Anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and inferior frontal cortex, they're there, they feel, they can be quantified, but they don't function. [He starts changing the shapes in the rice designs so that some mirror each other, while others don't, looking a little misshapen instead. There's a petal missing from one, the second boat is lopsided. He's basically babbling at this point, not looking at the camera and speaking quickly, like the words are in a rush to get out.]

They make them see things that aren't there. Tell them it's better because they understand, no one else does. That they're a king in the graveyard, but they're wrong. The mirror neurons are firing. They hear, but they don't listen. They don't comprehend. [He makes a bit of a face, continuing the rearrangement, brow starting to furrow in fierce concentration.] It takes time. [He shoves the rice back into a pile before digging his fingers into his temples for a moment, kneading the skin there as if to ward off a headache.] It shouldn't. They're damaged.

[And now he seems frustrated, and almost desperate, like this is all really important but he can't figure out a way to make you all understand.] It's broken. It doesn't make sense.

[He picks up the communicator, staring into the video feed for a long moment, brow furrowed slightly, expression once again serious and focused.]

It's problematic. [And he clicks off the feed.]

[ooc: Simon's still on the ship, but seriously everyone come talk to him. :3]