Chapter One: The Precepts of the Monkey Masters

“Claudia,” Charley said shaking her softly. “Claudia.”

Slowly her eyes opened. The image of Bill Gates’ head on a silver platter vanished from her mind. Somewhat resentful, for the appearance of the head on the platter was very pleasing, she slowly turned to him and asked, “What?”

“I saw strings… varied colored strings… they were floating in our bedroom… and I touched one.”

“Was it similar to Bill Gates’ head?” She wanted to get back to her dream.

“What?” His perplexed voice sounded flat. “Who?” His voice drifted off into the heavy darkness. “Claudia,” his voice reverberated in the empty gloom of the night. “Claudia… are you awake?”

Since it wasn’t important, she could ignore and tune out his voice. As the head reappeared on the silver platter, a smile appeared on her face. Then, the platter changed to gold, and her smile turned into a smirk.

“What was that about Bill Gates?” he asked in the morning. Who was this man? Do I know this guy? His thoughts weren’t on the plate in front of him. His linear thinking led him to a brick wall: passing through the molecular matrix of cement and corrugated steel, his thoughts sped along through quantum fields of volatile energy, spinning with the quarks and flirting with free radicals, until he reached the plenary Plane. The sudden calm would have given a regular man a heart attack, but not him. Instead, a face appeared before him. “Who’s this Bill Gates?”

Her mouth was constantly in motion, though she wasn’t talking. The food appeared on her fork for only a millisecond before disappearing forever. Not exactly annihilation, but the process entailed the metamorphosis of matter, change of phase, therefore, disappearance. In a crooked line, the food would travel through her esophagus, during which it would be sublimated to its surrounding. That is assimilation. As she was engaged in this process, he noticed a trickle of sugar falling off the left tip of her mouth. He licked his lips and she quickly looked up.

“What were you saying?” she asked.

“Nothing… it’s not important. Anyway, you’re going to be late if you don’t hurry.”

“Oh… holy mother of… Jesus… I better run.”

“I had better run…”

“See you,” and the trickle of sugar was forever lost to him. In exchange, the right tip of her lips met him on his right cheek.

“Quanta…”

“Lasciate…” she said flying out the door.

Her feet almost slid down the steps of the bus. She found an empty seat, sat down, and immediately turned her head to look out the window. As the bus passed a park full of children swinging on the swings and high bars a word entered her mind. “Monkeys…” she said to herself. The word seemed to hang in the air in front of her, the letters made from multi-colored strings. Wiggling like Jell-O, the letters changed shape from “monkeys” to “mystics” to “monotheism”. The chain of words sparked a wild idea inside her head: mystic monkeys muttering monotheism.

She saw the huge structure that was her workplace. As the edifice grew in size and tried to engulf her mind, a wild electric pulse slid down her spine. Pulling the chord as she stood up, she had decided on something which was immediately forgotten. The bus screeched to a halt and she was thrown toward the windshield.

“I’m going to die,” she calmly said to the bus driver as she flew past him.

“Yes, you probably will,” the driver managed to say as the linear form that was Claudia transformed itself into Xeno’s Paradox: the space between her and the windshield kept diving in half, ad infinitum. So, she never reached the windshield. Somewhere between the glass and Oblivion, she had become an idea.

 

People say that eternity lasts a long time. Others, in response, have stated that infinity doesn’t exist. Skeptics, though, rejected both of these premises on the basis that what we can’t experience directly cannot, necessarily, be relevant. But, the Epicureans definitely hoped that sybaritic experiences were eternal. On the other hand, we have Claudia, who had just become an idea.

How does it feel to be an idea? Claudia knows.

 

The clouds overhead were contained within silver linings. The purple haze descended slowly over the horizon as night approached dawn.  But dawn didn’t like night, so, she ran away with day because it was lighter and not so gloomy. The good old moon married the cow as the mouse ate the clock.

“This is like a Dalí painting,” Claudia said aloud.

“Being an idea is like being in a Dalí painting. Or, a very watered down Renoir.”

She turned around and saw a very hairy man. He was hairy to the point that she had problems discerning his physiognomy. There was something about him that did not look right.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I am that which I am.”

“Please,” she said rolling her eyes. “Don’t play God with me.”

“I’m not playing God. I’m merely the dice he throws.”

She thought his comment amusing, but she wasn’t amused at her situation.

“I’m sorry… how rude of me. I’m Claudia,” and she extended her hand.

“I’m Dice,” replied the stranger.

“Like Andrew ‘Dice’ Clay?”  She chuckled to herself. The stranger stared at her in a strange way. “Anyway, Dice. Where am I?”

“I think you know where you are. You just don’t want to admit it.”

“Thank you for the rhetoric, but I really don’t know where I am.”

“What was the last thought you had before you appeared here?”

She thought back and couldn’t think of anything. There was some kind of moving vehicle involved and a giant that was about to eat her: this memory flashed between her ears. She was certain that there was a string or chord involved. Pulling the string must have awakened some potential energy and had turned it kinetic.

“I can’t think of anything. I think I was pulling strings.”

“Now, who’s playing God?”

“In the literal sense, not metaphorically...”

“Well, come this way and I will attempt to help you.”

She followed Dice through a strange metamorphic landscape. Kafka’s head appeared to the right of her, changed into a little mouse and started to sing. The shrill, high voice hurt her ears. Waves of multi-colored light walls shot past her at one point. The sky changed from purple to orange to pink to fuchsia. Rivets of gold fell from the sky like rain, and as they touched her outstretched hands, they turned to molten lead.

Tiny animals that resembled crickets flew past her, each one a different shade of green. Finally, looming ahead like a giant monolith, a huge monolith appeared.

“What a big monolith.”

“It’s not a monolith.”

“Then, what is it?”

“It’s an edifice. It’s a house. I call that home.”

She was sure that she had seen it before. Maybe from some old film made in the 60’s by some director who had taken too much acid and decided that a monolith was a good medium for evolution, or it could just be déjà vu, the breakdown of synapses as they misfire information into the wrong receptors.

“I feel like I’ve seen it before…”

“You probably have. Are you familiar with Mr. Quijote?”

“You mean, don Quijote?”

“No. What I meant was if you were intimate with Mr. Quijote.”

“I don’t understand.”

Without another word, Dice walked into the monolith and disappeared. She walked over to the other side but he didn’t emerge. As she stared at the giant edifice, it began to vibrate and a voice called out to her: “please enter.”

She walked into the edifice and her senses reeled. She felt as if a fish hook had attached itself to her mind and she was being drawn in for the slaughter.

“Mr. Dice…”

“Just Dice,” a voice came from somewhere.

“Dice…”

“No, Just Dice. My last name is Dice and my first name is Just.”

“Oh… well Just Dice, where are you?”

“I’m inside your mind. Hold on tight…” Then, it felt as if someone had taken a hold of her brain and was wrenching it free from her cranium.

Though this description makes the process sound painful, it is not.

When the process had ended, she found herself sitting on a chair face to face with Just Dice. As Claudia looked at him, his appearance seemed to become more simian like. “Monkey,” she said aloud.

“No, that word has been abused to the point of losing its meaning. I’m a simian, not a monkey. I belong to a subclass of Primate, which is not monkey. But, I am a master. Which makes me, in your eyes, a Monkey Master.”

“Oh,” her lips said. “Simian. What kind of simian are you?”

“That will soon be revealed. You are in a space-less dimension that we call the Chronosplane. Only time exists here. Look around you… what do you see?”

She looked around her and saw nothing. “I see nothing.”

“That’s because time works in mysterious ways.”

“No… no,” she said condescendingly. “No. The phrase is, ‘God works in mysterious ways.’” She felt proud to have just corrected this Monkey Master called Just Dice.

“Well, let’s see. Can you see time?”

“No.”

“Isn’t time all around you?”

“Yes.”

“Even though you can’t touch it, nor see it, you believe in it?”

“Yes.”

“Then, what’s the difference?”

She was stumped, but her philosophical background, though minimal, helped her. “That’s a syllogistic mistake. You’re just comparing. Your argument is a fallacy.”

The Monkey Master smiled. “I see that you have begun to inductively destroy my deductive reasoning.”

Claudia’s mind began to churn. “That’s not right. You’re not making sense here.”

“Actually, I slowed down time in order for you to see my point.” He held out a finger to her and she saw the point of his digital.

“What? You can do that?”

“I’m a Monkey Master. Time knows no bounds, and I, for one, don’t have a boundary.”

“You sound like a Zen Master.”

“What’s the difference?”

She was about to compare and contrast the two when she realized that she had no idea what a Monkey Master was. Just Dice smiled at her. “Now, let’s see how much you really know about your reality. What was the course of events that led you here?”

“I don’t remember. The last thing I remember was pulling strings. But, that seemed to be taken out of context. I’m sure that string was tied to something.”

“That something is I. I am the string that you pulled.” The phrase sounded crude to her, but she managed to hold down a chuckle. “What’s so funny, you mutated simian.”

“Hey, there’s no need for insults here.”

“I’m not insulting you. I’m just stating a fact. Getting back to time: what do you see now around you?”

She looked around her one more time and she discerned bumps and crevices in the nothing. “I see bumps and crevices in the nothing.” Her mind echoed what she had just experienced.

“Good. Those bumps and crevices in the nothing are points where time and space meet. That’s where you come from.” She found the idea very interesting. “Your class of simian has taken too much liking to time. Your lives revolve around it. For example, don’t you feel anxious and uptight when you’re late to work?”

“Maybe.”

“Then you’re fired.” The voice sounded different. When she looked up, she realized that she was in her supervisor’s office. “I don’t understand how this is nothing to you. You’ve been late for the past two weeks, and, on top of that, your performance has gone down two-hundred percent. Productivity for this department has suffered because of your poor performance. I don’t know what’s going on inside your head, but we can’t let this one slide. I’m sorry Claudia. You have one week to clear out your office.”

She was mute. Her mind was doing somersaults within her brain. Where was the Monkey Master? Where was the Chronosplane? As she was leaving the office, a thought entered her mind: the Monkey Master works in mysterious ways. She knew that she had to find him. He would be able to explain everything to her. As she left the building, she wondered what she would say to her husband.