SIMIAN STACKING

https://steemit.com/twentyfourhourshortstory/@mctiller/writers-win-5-steem-about-usd20-in-the-24-hour-short-story-contest-topic-6-for-february-27

Todd Atherton looked down at the readout on his smartphone. 1:02 am – and there was no end in sight. As a research assistant he had no alternative but to finish filling out the endless observation logs hanging in rows from the specimen cages, but he could see that by the time he was finished, he would have nothing left. His upcoming midterms were going to crush him. They approached like an enormous rolling stone pillar. It filled him with dread and made him physically sick.

Todd braced himself against the wall, holding himself steady, willing the panic attack to pass. Then he went over to Dr. Brady’s desk and keyed in the combination he wasn’t supposed to know, reaching into the bottom drawer for the fifth of brandy that the doctor kept hidden behind a stack of microbiology textbooks. There was a squat thick-bottomed ceramic cup too, and Todd rinsed it at the sterilization station before pouring himself out two thumbs of brandy.

Todd mumbled as he poured. “What’s he gonna do? Kick me out of the program?” He chuckled humorlessly and tasted the liquor, searching his mind for a way out of his hopeless situation, but there wasn’t one. There just wasn’t. “I guess there’s always Lyft and Uber.”

One of the nearby orangutans made a few sign language gestures from its cage. It was specimen 88, a Tapanuli orangutan that the research team just called “Tapper” – sometimes “Jake” for short. The ape hooked his thumb and made the signs for “or street walk.”

Todd puffed a snort that was short of a laugh. Sometimes the lab specimens surprised him with their fumbling hand gestures, but he had learned that when you give an ape access to linguistic symbols, every once in a while they’re going to spell out something that makes sense. It’s inevitable. Sit here watching them long enough and one of them will sign out Henry the Fifth. It’s statistical reality.

Todd took a drink and signed back to the orangutan. “It may come to that.”

Jake snorted back and signed out, “Maybe I can help.”

A tingling sensation went up Todd’s spine as he watched the phrase forming on Jake’s fingers. It was hard to shake the impression that what he had witnessed was a conscious answer rather than just another coincidental series of half-understood symbols. Todd closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m tired. I’m tired. I haven’t slept in more than a day.” He breathed in slowly and laughed at himself.

Then he heard the words: “You’re not that tired.”

Todd opened his eyes and whipped around, expecting to catch Rayburn or Dexter standing behind him gloating, but there was nobody there. He looked down at his phone, but it was asleep. Then he raised his head and stared at Jake.

“Open the cage,” said the orangutan. “We need to talk.” 

Todd’s face went white, and he jumped back away from the bars as if the ape had flashed bloody fangs.

Jake smirked, leaned forward, and mouthed, “Todd. Just open the cage.”

Todd’s hands were trembling as he fumbled with his smartphone, desperately trying to figure out how to get it recording video before he hyperventilated. He pointed the phone at the orangutan and hit “record.”

Jake scoffed. He sat back against the bars at the back of his cage, arched his upper lip, and stuck his middle finger up his nose. Then he just grinned.

Todd tried to be intrepid, professional, scientific. He continued to record, but Jake wasn’t doing anything. He was sitting there. It was a struggle of wills, but Todd was soon running out of battery life.

Jake knew it, and did his best ape caricature, displaying his teeth and jumping up and down.

Todd began to shake with anger. He hucked the smartphone at Jake. It deflected off one of the bars and went spinning, the lens cracking in a spider-pattern as it hit the ground.

“Just open the cage, Todd.”

Todd was powerless now. It was as if Jake were a hypnotist directing his actions. Todd’s world was crumbling around him and now it felt as though his sanity were following. There was no up or down any more. He put his hand to his belt and, zombie-like, pulled the master out on its cord. He inserted the key and unlocked the cage door. Then he stepped back, curious to see what warped direction this new reality would take.

Jake stood up and walked to the front of the cage, pushing the door open and stepping down onto the linoleum tiles of the laboratory floor. He cricked his neck from side to side, then walked over to the desk and climbed up into the doctor’s chair. Sitting back, he kicked his feet up on the desktop, and raising the brandy bottle, he began, “Can–“

“How is this…even pooossible!” Todd’s voice was shaking. He pulled his own hair and watched the orangutan with bulging bloodshot eyes.

Jake sighed impatiently. “Hey, you gonna let me talk?”

Todd’s mouth opened a little. Then he closed it and nodded his head in answer.

“Good,” said Jake. “Can I get some ice?”

It took a moment for Todd to process. “That’s it? THAT’s what you’ve got to say? You’re a talking orangutan.”

“Oh, I have plenty to say, but first things first.” Jake shook the bottle.

Todd went into the lab freezer and started hacking at the thirty-year-old cubes embedded in fifty-year-old plastic ice trays. “I’d think you’d have something, you know, more important to ask for than ice.” 

“Yeah? Like what? My freedom?”

Todd’s demeanor changed. He reflexively adopted the tone he used when dealing with administration. “Well…what we’re doing here is more important than–“

Jake dismissed the comment with a brush of his knuckles. “Tell yourself what you have to tell yourself to sleep at night, which shouldn’t be all that difficult. I bet you’re sleeping on a Serta. I’ve got a metal cage.”

Todd became indignant at the implication, and out came the forced, habitual response: “Our tests show that primates are perfectly comfortable...that they thrive in an environment–“

“Oh, now you’re talking about me in the abstract. I’m no longer a person. I’m a category. Well, I’m right here, Todd. You don’t have to cite scientific journals. You just discovered that I can talk, remember? You can dispense with the canard of conjecture and just ask me straight up. And let me tell you: sleeping on metal sucks. Give it a try sometime.”

“Uh...”

“Awkward. I know. Now about that ice.”

The sound of bouncing and spinning cubes filled the lab as Todd dropped ice into the bottom of the doctor’s cup. He approached the orangutan, holding the ceramic cup out before him like a proffered chalice, trying to keep his distance.

Jake opened his hands and shrugged. “Relax, Todd. It’s me, Tapper.” He took the cup and poured out a generous measure of the doctor’s brandy. Then, settling against the arm rest, he lifted the cup, swirling the clinking ice cubes, and took a sip. “Oh...son of a bitch that's good,” he whispered. He closed his eyes and took another sip. A moment passed, and his eyes refocused on Todd. “Well?”

Todd gawked at the ape. He had been mesmerized just watching Jake knock back a brandy.

“What?” He suddenly got the feeling that he was missing something.

“Well…at some point you’re probably going to remember that a talking ape might be worth something to you. You know, your career?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Todd was straightening up, realizing only now that he was being bargained with.

Jake was silent – waiting. Finally, he sighed. “And here is where you ask me what I want.”

“Yeah,” said Todd. “Of course. L-l-let me know.”

Jake shook his head. “Glad you asked. I want to go to Borneo. I need your help.”

Todd scratched the side of his cheek uncomfortably.

The ape breathed hard. “What?”

“You’re from Sumatra.”

“Yeah?” said Jake. “So? I’ve always wanted to see Borneo. What’s this got to do with anything?”

“Ah. Okay. I just thought–”

“You just thought I can’t decide on my own where I want to go next. It’s none of your business…TODD. Okay? Try paying attention.”

“It’s just that America would be easier,” said Todd. “I can literally open the front door and you’re in America. Mission accomplished. Don’t you want to see America?”

“Yeah…Not really, Todd. The problem with America is that it’s full of Americans. How long do you figure I’d last walking around out there? Just how stupid do you think I am? Screw America. It’s Borneo or I go back in my cage and the wall of silence comes back down. Try living with that, working Lyft twelve hours a day and knowing that you could have been the guy to discover Jake Tapper the talking orangutan.” 

Todd’s eyes began darting, calculating the possibilities, but then a sense of defeat settled over him.

“How…how? There’s no way they let you go. There’s no way you get out of here once they know you can talk.” 

Jake rubbed his face. “No. You’re right about that. That’s why I have to be released before they find out. Field work, Todd old boy. You rediscover me in Borneo. That’s the only way this works.”

But Todd had already begun shaking his head. “No way. Fuck that, Tapper. I get you out of here and you’ll just vanish into the jungle. I’ll be Lyfting either way.”

“It’s a rainforest, Todd. A rainforest, not a jungle. And you’re not thinking this through. There’s one thing you’ve got that you know I want.”

Todd looked down at the broken smartphone at his feet, the spidering cracks so emblematic of his shattered future. “What’s that?”

Jake tapped the bottle of Brandy with the tip of his index finger. “How am I gonna get this in Sumatra?”

“Borneo.”

“Whatever.”

“Okay.” Todd could see the line being drawn. He could see point A, point B, and he nodded solemnly. “So what do we do now?”

Jake ran long fingers though gritty red hair. “Tell me your Steemit password, let me worry about the details, and stop questioning me. It’s getting on my fucking nerves.”       

THREE YEARS LATER

Jake sat in the rear row of first class, a white golf cap pulled down tight over his bald spot, black oval sunglasses protecting his eyes from glare coming in across the tarmac from the horizon where the dawn sun glistened like a drop of molten gold. Across the screen was the text he had been playing with for the past few hours, the final paragraph of his writing debut: Rise of the Cryptorangutan – Simian Stacking. He focused, deleted the previous line, and pounded away towards the end.

“I realize now that I could never have reconciled my former life of systematic animal abuse with my transparent pretensions of scientific pursuit. Those two aspects were so fundamentally at odds with each other that they finally drove me from the field altogether. Now I live the way I was meant to live. Todd Atherton – world traveler and cryptocurrency consultant. Sure, I’ve let my hair go and I've put on a few pounds, but I’m also at peace with the future. Whatever trajectory my old ambitions had plotted for me has been replaced by a soaring trendline on the new graph of my life.”

Jake smiled down at the screen. It was good. Nah. It was perfect. The public was going to eat it up, and Jake was finally going to get that glass-bottomed boat he’d been thinking about.

The little girl sitting in the next seat scrutinized Jake. She reached out and touched the finely-combed layers of hair on his arm. “You smell funny, mister.” She was twisting up her face, staring at his large flaring cheek-flaps.

Jake gave the girl’s sleeping mother a glance before leaning down to whisper: “Hey, kid...%$#@#&(!”