Chapter Two: The Path of the Monkey Masters
It was ten forty-eight at night, and Sonoro was madly typing away on his computer. He was composing a mini-symphony, mainly of string instruments, for his class. The project wasn’t due until the end of the week, and this being Monday gave Sonoro five days to finish. It was a simple project, yet, he was taking meticulous care in arranging every note upon the staves.
He picked up his guitar, bored from staring at black characters upon a white background, and began to play an arpeggiated version of Puff the Magic Dragon. But, somewhere in the middle, he changed tunes and realized that he was playing a different song. He put his guitar down and went back to his computer. More notes were placed on staves, some alone, and others together. As he was placing the last note, his guitar twanged and broke the low E string. “Huh,” he thought to himself. “How the hell did that happen?” he asked himself and walked over to his guitar. He saw the dangling string bounce back and forth gently touching the A and D strings.
He reached over to pick it up and looked at the clock on the wall. It told him it was ten minutes to midnight. As he looked back at his guitar, he saw that his hands were wrapped around a chimpanzee’s neck. He didn’t know if he should scream or gently let the neck go. “I think letting the neck go sounds very good to me. I don’t like screaming.” He realized that it wasn’t he that was doing the talking. “If you wouldn’t mind, sir Sonoro, of letting go my neck, I could explain to you how this occurred.” His hand was frozen by a sudden panic attack. Simians in San Francisco? He knew that Saint Francis was the Saint of all animals, but this was just too much for him.
“What the hell are you?” He managed to say. He didn’t scream, but he didn’t let the neck go, either.
“I realize that you have questions, but I am talking and I am definitely not a figment of your imagination, for which I am so grateful.” The chimpanzee looked Sonoro straight in the eyes. “Would you please let the neck go!”
“Uh, yes,” and he did as he was told.
“Thank you. Let me introduce myself. I am Geist. Polter Geist.”
“You’re a poltergeist?” Sonoro gasped.
“No, I am just kidding. My name is Gene Simians. Really. I’m sort of glad to meet you, Sonoro Holfrost.”
“Nice to meet you, Gene Simians.”
“OK. Now to explain this whole thing. Here, let’s walk down the corridor to the ante-chamber were we can have a pre-talk before we go to the parlor and have a chat.”
“But, there is no ante-chamber or parlor in my apartment.”
“I realize that you come from a capitalist state and presume to have access to this place by just merely presenting yourself, but we don’t do things like that here. Come this way.” They walked down a corridor which Sonoro had never seen before. As they entered the ante-chamber, he realized, probably most certainly, that this was definitely not his apartment.
“Is this your place?”
“Finally, a capitalist comes almost to his senses. No, this is a house. I don’t know whose house it is, but it’s just a house.”
“Aren’t we going to get arrested for trespassing?”
“Only if we pass in threes.”
“What?” Sonoro was quickly becoming confused by the simian’s verbiage.
“We can’t get arrested because there are only two of us. That’s the beauty of being a lawyer. I’ve been practicing for seven-hundred years.”
“What?”
“Seven-hundred years. For two-hundred years before that, I was studying simiology and metamprology. I wanted to be an ocular seer. But I ended up in law because I took this course in Chaos Theory and I don’t think I quite understood it—something about randomness generating the illusion of order. So, I decided to test this out by studying law. Supposedly, according to linguists, law is opposed to chaos. Am I not right?”
“I think so.”
“That’s what I told my advisor. She thought I was crazy, but she let me do it anyway. And so, here I am. Seven-hundred years of law and loving it. I brought you here because you are to become my client.”
“What?”
“You keep saying that. Is that your favorite word, or what? What? What? What? Why do you keep saying that? That is sooo annoying.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s all right. So, what do you know of transgressional transmigrations?”
“What?”
“You say that one more time and I’ll smack you silly. I mean it.”
“All right. I’m sorry. I don’t know what a transvestional transmogration is.”
And Gene Simians smacked Sonoro silly. In dreams, and only in dreams, I walk with you.
When Sonoro was fully conscious and coherent, he asked, “Why the hell did you do that?”
“I told you that I would smack you silly if you said that word one more time. I meant it. I mean what I say and I’m mean about it.”
“But the context of the sentence required the use of that word. I couldn’t help it.”
“That’s what they all say. It’s the easy way to defend yourself. Your words exactly.” Gene Simians repeated back to Sonoro, in his own voice, emphasizing that word, what he had said. “So, there. Continuing with my locution, what do you know of transgressional transmigrations?”
Sonoro had no idea what a transvestional transmogration was. He thought that it was something that Calvin had made up in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbs. “I have no idea what it is, and if you don’t mind me asking, what does that have to do with me?”
Gene Simians smiled a monkey smile. “Do you know someone name Claudia?”
“You mean Claudia Schiffer? I want to get to know her, but…” he was smacked silly again. Can idiots learn the value of etiquette without pain?
“I’m getting tired of you slapping me silly. Do you know that it is my constitutional right to a lawyer if I’m charged with something?”
“I am a lawyer. Hadn’t I told you that just about twenty minutes ago? Seven hundred years and counting! You mutated simians have no memory, though you seem to flaunt it endlessly by arguing silly arguments like ‘I remember…’ and ‘no, that’s not how it was…’ Personally, I’m just getting sick of your memory games.”
“Sorry.”
“OK. It seems that you don’t have any idea of what a transgressional transmigration is. While you were innocently playing your guitar at home, you had caused a ‘Pulling of Strings’ that ended in a mutated simian… I mean a human being turned into an idea. Your ‘E’ string broke, that sent an equivalent force of cosmic, oscillated quantum energy in the form of a wave to create a transgressional transmigration. In short, you caused a disjoint in time and space, and your victim is this said Claudia.”
Sonoro wanted so much to say “Schiffer”, but being slapped silly was not an enjoyable experience. “I see,” he said. “And so,” he continued, “my guitar string breaking without my knowledge caused someone else to be unstuck in space and time.” All this came out of his throat in a guttural, suspicious sounding voice. “How am I to blame for this?”
“That’s not the point. The point is that it has happened and is due to your horrible guitar playing.” Gene leaned back in his chair and studied the room around him. “That is why I have volunteered to be your lawyer. I get no pay for this, you understand. But, and only but, I ask for this: do not play me or yourself for an idiot.”
“What?” It is only a matter of time before a mutated simian does what he hears.
Claudia stood before the door in front of her house. Her hand held the key that would open her front door. Would she use it? “Tune in next week as we continue the exciting journey that Claudia is taking due to circumstances unforeseen.” Just Dice came out from behind the door without opening it. Some would say that he walked through a closed door.
“How did you do that?” She almost dropped her key. Then, composing herself and realizing that all her problems were standing right in front of her, she decided to attack, verbally. Closing her eyes she shouted: “Do you know that because of you I got fired today!? You and your nothing where only Time exists and space meets time in little bumps in the nothing… I got fired!”
“You don’t have to scream at me, dear. I’m sorry. Why don’t you come in and tell me what’s wrong?” When she opened her eyes, she saw her husband. Charley’s face was contorted in a weird expression that she couldn’t identify because he was reading the same expression on her face. They were like mirror images of each other looking into eternity without comprehending the theory behind the eternal. She slumped forward into his arms and he dragged her inside.
He sat across the small coffee table on an uncomfortable chair while she lay sprawled out on the long couch. The silver coated pen kept going up to his mouth then dropping onto the table to make an annoying tapping sound, a gentle and rhythmic annoyance. Her arms were draped across her face covering her eyes. She was moaning gently.
“Are you ready to talk, dear?” The name of Bill Gates was still with him as he watched her moan in agony. “What happened? How did you get fired?”
Claudia’s arms fell to the side of her and she opened her eyes. Sitting upright on the couch, she covered her face with her hands in what seemed like a desperate attempt at stopping her brain from spilling out of her eyes. “I… don’t know! I was in the bus then suddenly I was in front of my Vice-President and I was getting fired for being late to work.”
“But, you’re always late to work,” he said, trying to help the situation.
“That’s not the point.” She wondered if she should tell him about Just Dice. She started to laugh and Charley feared the worst. He took out his PDA and started to search for his friend’s phone number. “You won’t believe this, but I think I may be going crazy. You see, I was on the bus and pulled the chord to get off. But when the bus started to slow down, it seemed that I was suddenly pushed forward toward the windshield. I swear I was flying… The next thing I knew, I was talking to this monkey called Just Dice, and he was telling me something about space and time and bumps in the nothing.”
He found his friend’s number, Gordon Trustlyer, a psychiatrist. “Tell me more about this encounter with this… monkey.”
“He told me that I summoned him by pulling the chord. I don’t understand. Tell me, can time exist independently of space?”
“I need to talk to you about something… it’s a theoretical impossibility… it’s about Claudia…” Claudia hadn’t noticed yet, but he was on the phone and talking to her at the same time. Charley was a remarkable Physicist in that he could perform two things at once or more things if the task demanded it.
“That’s what this Just Dice told me, that I was in this place… I guess not a place since only time existed there. These little bumps, he said, were the junction where space met time, and that’s where I came from…”
“Yes, next Friday should be fine… what did the monkey look like? No, I’m not talking to you, Gordon, I’m talking to Claudia. Did it seem a bit suspicious looking? Sure, three is fine. I’ll see you then.” He put the cell phone down and looked up to see her staring at him.
“Who was that on the phone? Were you even listening?”
“Of course, I was listening, dear. I was just making a dentist appointment for you. It seems that an abscess can cause delusional behavior in people.” He thought about what he had just uttered and realized that it may have been a mistake.
“Are you saying that I’m delusional?” She put her head back into her hands. “I don’t know what’s going on.” Looking back at him, she sighed deeply. “I guess that it sounds really strange. If you were telling me about this, I would think that you were insane.”
“Don’t worry, Claudia, you just need to rest, take care of your teeth and rest. Come on, let’s go to bed.”
“But… it’s only six o’clock and we haven’t even eaten. Are you sure it’s me that’s delusional?”
“In that case, we should order out. I’m in no condition to cook and neither are you.”
