Chapter Three: Simian Logic
Sonoro woke up in his bed. He remembered fuzzy images about some monkey that kept slapping him. Getting out of his bed he fell onto the floor and saw his guitar. The low ‘E’ string was broken. Remembering that caused a chain reaction of images that caused him to rush to the bathroom and dry heave above the porcelain god.
When he felt better, he managed to make his way to the sink, straighten up, and look into the mirror. A monkey stared back at him. His heart decided to skip a few beats and start thumping out an unnerving sound. “Hi,” it said to him.
“Agh…” he managed to reply.
“My name is Just Dice. I hear that Gene Simians has already contacted you. That is good.”
“Aghh…” he agreed.
“Do you know why I’m here?”
“Ughh…” he said in ignorance.
“I have already met with the defendant, and I think she is ready to proceed with the trial. Let me explain your situation in detail if Gene Simians hasn’t already.”
“Ugh…agh…” he guttered aloud.
“Then, here is the short version. In a nutshell, you are the main suspect in the ‘Pulling of Strings’ case, an instance of Transgressional Transmigration violations, code 2112 of section 13 in the Rule of Vindication handbook; which means that you are responsible for the disjunction from space of one of your own kind. This is a serious violation of the Actuality of Strings measure passed by the venerable Odious Aggregate in the year 31416 of our lord Tolemius Totempollum. Is that understood?” Sonoro’s eyes glazed over and he fell over backward. “I gather that means yes.”
Claudia was in bed by seven thirty. In vain she complained that it was too early for bed, but Charley was insistent, like adamantine, on her getting a good night’s sleep. She tried to sleep, but images of Just Dice kept invading her head. The clock kept telling her that time was ticking away by ticking loudly in the dark.
“In strings, I walk with you…” Charley was softly singing in his sleep. “I can’t help it… I can’t help it… In strings, I walk with you…” and his voice became just a tad bit louder.
Unable to drift off into her dreams, she got out of bed, put on her silvery slippers and walked downstairs to the kitchen. She looked at the clock to find that it was ten to midnight. Almost Tuesday, she thought to herself. The Kitchen was a bit warm for a San Francisco summer, and she clutched herself to shake out the chills. No light was needed in the kitchen since it overlooked a streetlamp that mercilessly flooded the room with particles of incandescent light. “Ugly, ugly lamppost,” she muttered and filled the kettle with water. Yawning but not sleepy, she placed the half-full kettle onto the stove and turned it on.
“Tea or coffee to make the evening livelier?”
She turned around clutching her heart and almost jumped up on the stove.
“Einstein once remarked that sitting next to a pretty girl for an hour seems like a few seconds, but sit on a hot stove for a few seconds seems like an hour. That’s relativity. Did you know that?”
“Just Dice?”
“What? Do we simians all look alike? Let me introduce myself, I am Gene Simians, lawyer and attorney at law… that didn’t sound right. My name is Simians, Gene Simians. I represent Sonoro Holfrost, the culprit who is responsible for you being unstuck in space, what we simians like to referred to as a Transgressional Transmigration.” He looked around the kitchen then, checking under the sink, pushing Claudia over to look in the oven, afterwards checking under the breakfast table. Putting his digitals on his lips and telling her to be quiet, he quickly opened the pantry doors then, slowly closed them. “OK. We’re good to talk. Tell me something, Claudia, how do you feel?”
“Ah, uh, what the hell are you doing in my house!?”
“That didn’t answer my question…”
“Where the hell is Just Dice?”
“That’s not of your concern right now. You see, if you can just cooperate with me for just a few minutes, I can better defend my client. He is a poor victim of bad judgment, and a really bad guitar player at that. So, you see, he needs all the help he can get.”
“I don’t understand you… I’m so confused.”
“Thank you for answering my question. Let’s see. Confusion has set in, which means that you could have been confused to charge my client with Transgressional Transmigration, a violation of code 2112 section 13. It could be mistaken identity.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What mistaken identity? I haven’t charged anyone with anything.” Claudia was clearly getting upset, with a monkey, no less.
“Please, please calm down. Sonoro is a nice gentleman who lives in the Haight-Ashbury district, so he must be a hippie. Hippies tend to like peace and quiet, and they certainly wouldn’t want to unstick anyone in time.”
“There’s no such word as unstick. All right, all right. He’s innocent, let him go.”
“It’s not that easy, Claudia. The Simian Circle of Elders has been called to order, and we must answer their queries. They have seen the Transgressional Transmigration and have called the Monkey Masters, for a lack of a better term, though Simian Masters would be preferred, to investigate the matter. Just Dice was called to contact you, the victim, as the Judge of the Circus. Circus as in meaning ‘circle’ in Latin, not the circus you are familiar with.”
“Thank you for the Latin course,” Claudia said sarcastically.
“You’re welcome. And I was called in to defend Sonoro as his personal lawyer. Is this all understood?”
Claudia’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Wait, if your laws are anything like ours, isn’t it illegal for you to be talking to me? I want to talk to Just Dice, right now.”
Gene Simians looked at her askance, but Claudia had already noticed the trembling hands and lips. She sensed that he wasn’t supposed to be here. “Well,” Gene said, laughing nervously, “our laws are not like your laws. There are differences.”
“How different are they?” Claudia was very good at reading people, and Charley hated her for this because she always bluffed him out of all his money in poker.
“Different enough…”
“Are you supposed to be talking to me?”
“Well, I… you see, there are exception to the rules as in any case…”
“OK. Tell you what, my dear Gene Semens-“
“Simians,” he corrected her.
“OK. Gene Simians, take me to Just Dice and I won’t tell him that you were here.”
“Promise?”
“Huh! I got you. You’re not supposed to be here. I knew it. It’s all monkey business with you, isn’t it?”
“I resent that remark. Though, I’m no monkey, I still object to that remark.”
“Take me to Just Dice and I won’t mention it.”
“Fine. But, please tell me, will you go easy on Sonoro? I haven’t lost a case in over three hundred years, but I’ve never defended a mutated simian.”
“Sure, I don’t know how I can make it easy on Sonoro, but I’ll try for your sake, or I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”
“Aunt.”
“Whatever.”
Sonoro woke up, but this time he wasn’t in his bed. He wasn’t even in his apartment, let alone somewhere on that godforsaken Earth. He stood up to find himself in a room, a nondescript room. There was nothing interesting about this room, except, maybe, for the fact that it had a triangular window facing out into nothing—nothing with bumps in it, of course.
“Knock, knock,” came a voice from behind the only door to this room.
“Who’s there?” He realized what had just happened. “I mean, who are you?”
“Just,” said the voice.
“Just? Just what?”
“Just Dice,” and the Simian opened the door and walked into the room with a flourish.
“You’re the monkey in the mirror.”
“No, the correct phrase, according to Claudia, would be ‘you’re the monkey on my back.’” Just Dice started to laugh, but seeing that Sonoro was staring at him strangely, he stopped. “OK. Sonoro Holfrost, I am Just Dice, the Judge of the Circus, called forth by the Simian Circle of Elders to investigate the Transgressional Transmigration. I believe that I have explained to you what that is, correct?”
“Yes, you did. I don’t understand what the hell is going on here. I don’t understand what I did to deserve this. If I did something wrong, I’d like to know what that is!”
Just Dice walked up to him to be nose to nose, which made it very easy for him to slap Sonoro silly. “I hate that word.”
