space monkey mafia (1)

dangers of underserved power – a chuck wendig prompt

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I wave a cheeseburger in front of the animal. The chimpanzee observes carefully. He nods vigorously, showing teeth. His ears flap. Chuck’s the only chimp I know to prefer burgers over bananas, or fruits, or gummy bears. He’s a primate in every way.

Probably I could bribe him with booze and cigarettes too. Nearly a human…

I point at the screen. The pattern is so slow, that even the stoned biology student catches up. 

Chuck scoffs at me, as if saying ‘too easy’. Yeah. He’s right.

Maybe I should work on a translator… But what has a chimp to say?

Hand signs are okay for now, but not okay during the experiment. He is docile, which is great.

I’d do it myself, it must be a spectacular sight. But I fail to see, how I ought to endanger my life for wormhole initialization. The knack is to keep hammering in the pattern.

At least the procedure should stay high quality, when the parts are cheap Chinese knock-offs… This is what they give me to work with.

Me!

After all these years with Professors Mills and Farnsworth. They get the Noble Prize, and I get sued. We’ll see who laughs last, when I make time travel accessible for everyone. No more financial benefits, for nobody. I don’t care what the corporate guy says. No  matter what he, or his superiors want, they need me. They need me, like fire needs oxygen. They get me, to my conditions only.

This is why they keep the test subjects and the material coming.

We lose the dog a month ago, and the parrots are useless. The vortex forms freak air pockets and plasma unpredictably. Don’t get me started on the capuchin. It kind of explodes, as it gets sucked into the log tunnel.

Nobody in publicity notices the disappearing homeless. It’s hilarious, really. But hey, what are the odds, that a social nuisance is cared for properly? What are the odds for justice? Yeah, that improbable. In this case, the homeless get three free meals and a room, in a scientific residential care home, with restricted access.

I think these corporate guys study the strategy of european middle age emperors and generals. Nothing’s really new throughout history.

I think it’s Vlad the Impaler, Emperor of Moldavia, who uses this technique. He invites the poor to a feast, traps them into his feasting hall, and sets said hall on fire. Voila! The poor aren’t a problem anymore.

Same procedure, different method of elimination. Here, they get to walk the event-horizon, and maybe cross the timeline. I’m not entirely convinced about the crossing. On the board, the equation looks good, but I can never be sure, if I’m not going myself.

Last week, a hobo shorts himself into the circuits of temporal localization software, causing a fire. Problem solving, the Vlad-style. Setting things on fire… Hyperspace entropy shift is a bitch, though. The magnetic fields tear the man apart. It’s an ungodly mess. I’m not cleaning that up. He has some old implants the corporate guys do not check for. A mistake never to happen again.

The fire almost destroys everything I work for.

And then, they bring me Chuck, a young circus chimp.

He can do it. Simulation goes just fine with him. He stays were he should. He keeps doing  what he should.

I repeat the  experiment with adapting velocity. The student drops out after the second adjustment. Chuck is good. He keeps pace. Even I can barely perceive the change. His mnemonic performance is better than expected.

Tonight I start again, with all parameters in place. Emission peaks and we’re good to go.

The tunnel lights up, and the wormhole is stable for once.