Confessions of a ChimpManZee

By J E Murphy

Arthur Godschalk, an undergraduate student, innocent in the ways of the world and of women, finds part-time work at a lab that has contracted with the government to do experimental development of an army of killer chimpanzees. Becoming intimately involved with the family that owns the lab, as well as with several other women who work there, Arthur finds himself in a precarious position when he wakes up after an accident to find his fate is totally in the hands of the person who hates him most in the world, his mother-in-law.

Leading his new chimp army from California to Africa, Arthur struggles to survive his new situation as he discovers secrets about himself, as well as the search for meaning that has driven all hominids for a million years--the quest of Life itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J E Murphy
• Release date: Mar 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311239068

J E Murphy

J E Murphy, author, poet, philosopher, credologist, student of natural history, anthropology, sociology, genetics, and politics. Novels include A VIEW FROM A HEIGHT, THE GOD VIRUS, and THE NEXT BUDDHA.A credologist is a person who studies belief systems. I cannot say I have studied all belief systems, because I am sure there are some I have never heard of, but I have studied most of them. What I can say I have learned from this is that the world is a mystery and nobody knows enough about it to even head off in the direction of an answer. Yet still we demand that everyone else stop and look at our own broken compass.I have been around the world and have seen how people live and worship in many different countries. I have been to Tibet, China, Nepal, India, half of the countries in Europe, a few in Africa, the Solomon Islands, the Galapagos Islands and parts of South and Central America. What I have learned from these travels is that, at heart, we are all the same; we are all cousins; we all want the same things out of life. As children, our souls are as free as angels, but we grow into the molds that our cultures have shaped for us.I have always enjoyed most the books that expanded my horizons and showed me new ways to look at the world, a way to discard a broken compass, a way to break the mold of culture and belief. I hope that someday, people will say my books did that for them.

Book preview

Chapter 1, In the Company of Women

Every story begins with a woman. For haven’t all our lives begun with a woman, and isn’t every life a story?

I love women. I can’t help it. I am built that way. I wouldn’t change it even if I could. There are, of course, exceptions to everything, but leaving them aside for the moment, and putting it simply, men love women, and women love men. That is why we fall in love with each other so easily. We see in each other our own immortality. This aspect of the relationship is not usually obvious to us. Our DNA would prefer that we simply pursue the sexual aspect and leave the rest to nature. We come together for the sex, but we stay together, or not, for other reasons that may even transcend DNA’s own intent.

My own parents chose not to stay together, probably wisely. Although, I don’t think it was my mother’s choice. I found a photograph of my father when I was a child, and asked my mother who that man was. I couldn’t take my eyes off her face as she studied the picture; it was such a storm of emotions, like a cyclone tearing across the grasslands. My uncle, my mother’s brother, said that my father’s only compass was in his pants. I didn’t know what that meant until I was older and started following my own compass. I was my mother’s only child, but my uncle suggested that I probably had brothers and sisters coast to coast. I longed to meet them, but never did.

Some of us are lucky. Some of us are smart. Some of us find our one true love in the beginning. Some of us have to work through all the various trials and errors to realize what is important. What is true love? Many think they know. I think you know. And I think that as undefinable as it is in words, we both understand it cannot exist without intellect. DNA invented intelligence, sentience, cognition in order to rise above itself, and although it is still a work in progress, as life on earth, we seem to be hobbling in the generally correct direction. I think you will agree, that strange as it may seem, it is intellect that gives wings to love.

My mother wanted me to be a doctor, and she worked hard to pay for my education, so it was the least I could do to work hard to get one. I went to college with the intent of going to medical school and becoming the doctor my mom wanted me to be. Unfortunately I couldn’t sit through the chemistry classes without getting a brain cloud. I nearly flunked out.

Depending on who you ask, I was better looking back then. At least my mother never told me I was homely. I had both arms then, but not as much hair. But still, even with only one arm, I am stronger now than I was. Stronger in every way. Such is life; it giveth and it taketh away. But now I know what I need to do.

Many people thought I was a little plain as a young man, with a long face and a decidedly non-athletic build. But I have discovered that good looks will only take you so far anyway. There is a reason why brains were invented.

The girls in my hometown had a curiosity about me, prompted by an incident during a book report gone bad, but that did not happen until I was a senior. In the time and place that I grew up, good girls did not call boys on the telephone, and guys like me did not call the girls either—not after the first ten or twenty rejections. I was neither an athlete nor a musician nor any member of an in-crowd, and I felt as if I wore a cloak of invisibility when I walked through the halls at school. The girls hanging on the arms of the football players would nearly run over me for the simple reason that they could not, apparently, see me.

The only naked girls I ever saw during my high-school years were in the magazines at the gas station. It is rather remarkable, when you think about it, that colored dots of ink on a piece of paper, when properly arranged, can give a guy an erection. These days, pixels on a light-emitting display screen will do as well, and save a trip to the gas station. Interestingly, although it was common to see men buying small stacks of girly magazines back then, you rarely saw them buying stacks of magazines with photos of mountains or oceans. I think that simple fact goes a long way toward explaining what the adolescent male brain finds fascinating.

When I went off to college, things did not improve. None of the co-eds were at all interested in a lanky corn-fed hayseed. I found myself stalking girls in the hallways. This was a natural pastime for men of my particular age group at that time. It probably still is. On the bright side, the quality of magazines improved and also had glossy air-brushed fold-outs.

The female I especially liked to stalk was, like me, also in pre-med. She was brilliant, both in her mental abilities and in that she seemed to shine with a sexual glow. Or it may have been the fog of testosterone in my brain. She often hired out to help the less cerebrally gifted. I talked my mom into hiring her as my chemistry tutor. Her name was Denise Axel. She was beautiful. Very athletic; slender, perfectly proportioned, breasts of a much younger girl (or so I thought at first), and skin like she had been carved out of solid vanilla ice cream. She had a Prussian look and feel, blue eyes, blonde hair, and a matching Prussian compassion for others. Not an ice princess, really, but she just did not warm up very quickly to those who, like myself, had made the world a little less beautiful by being in it.

Her goal was to make the world more beautiful than she had found it. She started on this crusade by spending her personal teenage income on clothes, shoes, and cosmetics, although, if you asked me, she looked better without any of that stuff. Most women do. Denise felt sorry for all the ugly people in the world, and it depressed her to have to look at them. Ugliness was a curse, she thought, even more so for those who had to view it. She wanted to study genetics and to learn how to make other people as beautiful as she was. That sounded OK to me at the time. Young and horny as I was, I thought anything she said sounded pretty OK. I thought we could start making beautiful people by her having my kids. But that was all in my head. I tried to contain all of my fantasies inside my skull so as to avoid arrest.

She got me through pre-med. Nothing helps a young man achieve something like thinking his reward will be the affections of a nubile young woman. However, she was all business, at least around me. The only time I ever saw her smile was in my dreams. I did make her laugh on rare occasions. All men know (or think they know) that if you can get a woman to laugh at your jokes, they will go all the way with you. A desire to get laid is the reason why men are always telling lame jokes around women. A desire to get laid also explains why some women laugh at those same lame jokes.

When Denise laughed, it was only a few quick heh hehs, like she had a tiny hairball. Not charming at all to an objective observer. But when pheromones are hitting you like a hurricane, and your hormones have become tsunamic in their intensity, a nubile young girl’s laughter never sounds less than charming.

On a particularly momentous evening, I went over to Denise’s house for tutoring, as was usual. When she answered the door, she held her hand up by her face like a blinder on a horse and turned her head away.

Oh my God! You have a horrible thing on your cheek, she said. What is that?

It’s just a pimple. I’m not growing a third eye or anything.

Heh, heh she laughed, looking away from my general direction. Funny. But I can’t work with you tonight, your face is too loathsome with the pimple. Besides, it looks contagious.

She shut the door and left me standing under the porch light, wondering if loathsome was the best word she could summon to describe my (certainly, now) pitiable countenance. At least it spoke of a large vocabulary and a well-rounded education—perhaps an exposure to the classics. I guess she had never had a pimple. I had to admit, she didn’t look like she ever had.

Then the door swung quickly open again, and a man twice Denise’s size was filling the passage-way.

Are you OK? he asked.

I nodded, puzzled and startled. Are you Denise’s father?

If I’m not, I’m an axe murder trying to leave the scene. Denise said you had a wound.

I pointed to the pimple. Too ugly.

Good lord! What difference does a pimple make when you already have a face like a mule’s ass? Come on in. We’ll put a patch on it, or maybe build a little house over it so Denise can make some spending money. She already wore the clothes she bought last week. What will she wear if she can’t make money for new clothes for next week? She never wears a fucking thing twice.

That was how I met Doctor Rodney Axel, later my mentor. He also became my best friend, and the father I never had. His influence on me was immeasurable. But we were off to a rocky start.

I followed him into the house, wondering if he told every male student that he had a face like a mule’s ass. I was feeling very humbled. I found out later that he insulted every eligible male that came around his daughter, as a sort of preliminary taste of what to expect from him—a warning shot across the bow. I knew him by reputation and by seeing him once from a distance at the university. He was one of our more famous professors, but actual sightings were rare.

We went into the kitchen, where Axel gathered alcohol and pads, and began sterilizing a needle.

What are you. . ? I asked.

It’s called surgery. I am allowed to perform it on any student who comes into my house. It’s in my contract. I’m a medical doctor too, you know. Isn’t that what you are studying to be, a doctor? Did you sleep through the part where they discussed surgery?

I, uh . . .

Denise says you aren’t very clever at chemistry either.

I, uh . . .

Don’t know chemistry; don’t know surgery; can’t string three words together. You’ll make a fine doctor. Just do what the drug companies tell you. You’ll make lots of money; have lots of kids; lots of wives; lots of bills. A full life.

I suppose it was because I was a good listener that we became friends later. He was a natural born teacher. He liked to talk, and disliked interruptions, and I did not have enough self-confidence to interrupt a talking parakeet, much less, a university professor with a string of letters after his name that wrapped to the next line.

Axel had a boat at Woods Lagoon, which we would later take out fishing in the Pacific. We would listen to big bands on his brand new eight-track player, and he would tell me about the world—The Pacific Lectures, as I came to think of them.

He told me to call him Rodney or Rod. I tried that, but I couldn’t make it work for me. When I was young, he was always Doctor Axel to me. Later, when I had my own titles, I began to think of him as just Axel. He thought titles were bullshit.

The world is either ninety-nine percent bullshit or one hundred percent. I haven’t decided which yet, he told me once on his boat.

Really? That's a lot of bullshit.

Yeah. Maybe it’s only ninety-nine. Fishing may not be bullshit. I think there are two things that might not be bullshit in this whole universe. Two things and their corollaries, like fishing.

What’s that?

Killing and fucking. Killing and fucking may be the only things that aren’t bullshit. That and the passive versions of same, dying and being born. That’s it. That is all there is. Everything else is just dancing around those two things. Killing and dying, fucking and being born. Man, woman, birth, death, infinity.

Like the doctor show? I never thought that was all there was to it.

Most people don’t. Most people have their heads so far up their own asses, all they see is their own shit. If you want to eat, you got to kill something; if you want more sex, be a more successful killer. In this country that means make more money. Why do you think people want more money?

More sex?

Right. Why do you think people want more sex?

Um. Because those that didn’t want it died off a long time ago.

That’s exactly right; you’re smarter than you look. If your parents didn’t have any children, chances are you won’t have any either. We eat because we are hungry. Sex is a hunger too. It is built into us. Hardwired. Sex and food are the only things we animals really hunt for—leave our comforts for. They are what drive us as animals.

OK.

What makes a male octopus sneak up on a female and deposit a packet of sperm in her body cavity? We don’t know what is going on in his little head while he is fleeing the scene, but we do know that he is obeying the number two rule of evolution, or DNA, which is the same thing, really.

What rule is that?

When you find something that works, you stick with it until you find something that works better.

What is the number one rule?

Try to find something that works better.

I guess that goes for people too.

People are different from other animals, though. Or at least some people think they are. Those people with their heads up their asses think so. The only animals we can speak about with any authority are the human ones, and we are generally wrong about them as well, because we lack objectivity. However, I will admit that humans are different from other animals in one possible way; humans are aware of the certainty of death. This gives us a third hunger that might be the ultimate purpose for the other two. Do you know what it is?

No.

It is the hunger for immortality.

A hunger for immortality . . . I guess so. I would want to live forever. Who wouldn't?

That’s right. Who wouldn't? All the fucking and killing we do is for that third hunger — for immortality. Immortality is the strongest hunger for humans. We will even give up the other two for that one. People do it all the time – celibates, ascetics. Which brings up the questions of whether everything is bullshit, or just ninety-nine percent of everything.

How’s that?

Actually, there is no question about it; immortality is bullshit. Which makes it all bullshit. Either life has a point or it doesn’t, and I can’t figure out what the point is.

How can you continue to live if you think everything is bullshit?

Just as with sex, those of us without a strong desire to live died off a long time ago.

A fourth hunger, maybe? A desire to be physically alive? A fear of bodily death? I ventured to propose.

Yes, but a lesser one, in fact. It is a moment by moment thing, not something we actively pursue unless things get desperate, and then it can kick in big time. More of an instinct, like breathing, than a hunger. In order of importance, the hungers would be immortality, sex, food, and then everything else, depending on circumstances. People will risk their lives for food. They will take even greater risks for reproductive rights. And they will actively seek death if they have a firm belief that the result is immortality. Your DNA doesn’t really care if you die. You are just a transport mechanism. What it really wants is for you to have lots and lots of children, which is ultimately sex and immortality bound up tightly together.

Why did you say that DNA and evolution were the same thing?

You can’t separate them. DNA is the wheel and evolution is the turning. But you can get off the wheel.

How do you do that?

Take that octopus sex I was talking about. The male octopus sneaks up and deposits a packet of sperm inside the female and then scurries away. And what about the female, he continued. As the male swims away with a big metaphorical grin on his face, does she think that she is now thoroughly fucked, that her life is over, that she is a dead octopus swimming? Or has her life now been validated by that packet of sperm, so that her heart swells as she thinks of her brood to come and the sacrifice she will make for the next generation?

He went on a bit about the octopus mating habits, and I began to have an eerie feeling, like the top of my head was lifting off. Too much beer, tuna, and wave action, I thought at the time. A premonition? I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. Something about letting go.

*

Axel was right about a lot of things. He was also wrong about some things, although not as much as most people. Picking out what he was right about and what he was wrong about was the challenge. The saddest thing about Axel was that he almost put it all together. He was outside one box, but still inside the larger one. What might have been. . .

*

The fishing trips came later, however. In his kitchen, I was just a dumb student like the ones he saw every day. He was quite a presence in the room. I knew about him by articles I had read, and I was even signed up for one of his courses next semester. He was head of the department of neurology at the university hospital. He taught comparative neurology, and micro-neurology at the university, had a practice in neurosurgery, and was famous for his hobby in paleo-neurology. He had more letters after his name than a game of Scrabble. To make matters worse, he was quite large, over six feet, and muscular, like he worked out all the time. If I gave him any guff, he could probably hold me down on the kitchen table with one hand and lance my pimple with the other. I heard he was a star quarterback in his college days and married the head cheerleader. I thought stuff like only happened in movies.

I tried to think of something to say, just to show I could talk in complete sentences.

You make your daughter buy her own clothes? I asked as he was looking at my pimple.

No. We don’t make her. We would buy her a reasonable amount. But not as many as she wants. We told her to get a job if she wanted to support the clothing industry single-handed. Who pays for your stuff? Who is shelling out the money that Denise ultimately doles out for the latest fashion?

Um, my mom pays for the tutoring. She wants me to be a doctor.

Do you want to be a doctor?

Not especially. School costs a lot, so I do what makes my mom happy. I don’t guess I know what I want to do.

Research.

Research? What kind of research?

Any kind. Anything that tries to find the truth.

What kind of research do you do?

I can’t talk about it.

Really?

Really. Being an MD is fine, but don’t stop there. Get a PhD too. Then you can go into research. That’s where the fun is. Why don’t you pay for your own tutoring and then study what you want?

No job.

Would you work if you could find a job?

Sure.

How do you feel about shit?

Um, what kind of shit?

Shit is shit. Would you take a job cleaning up shit if it paid well?

I thought he was just testing me. Yeah. I guess. I would like to help out my mom if I could. If I could pay my own way, that would be great. I thought that sounded noble, and might help my grades later when I had his class.

He put some iodine and a small bandage on my pimple.

That should hide your ‘wound’ sufficiently from Denise, he said. And then added as he stepped back, I have an opening at my lab.

You have a lab?

Yes. I just said I had a lab.

What kind of lab?

I already told you I can’t talk about it. If I hire you, you have to sign some non-disclosure agreements that say you will gladly suffer death, or life in solitary confinement with your hands chopped off and your tongue cut out if you ever tell anybody what you do. Then I can tell you. Sound interesting?

Are you pulling my leg?

Not excessively. I was going to call in my ad to the newspapers tomorrow. I hate doing interviews. You look like you could clean up shit as well as anybody. Denise says you're a farm boy, so you probably have experience at it. Plus, the money I pay you would go right back to my daughter to pay for her clothes habit. If I don’t hire you, then what happens when your mother decides all this tutoring is a waste of time and money? If you want the job, I will give you a form to fill out right now. There will be background checks. Thorough ones. If you have ever broken the law, you might as well tell me right now. In my business, we are only allowed to break very specific laws.

Um, what does it pay?

Plenty. More than any of your classmates make. Should I get the background checks started?

Can I take some time to think about it?

Once I start interviewing, I guarantee I will find somebody better than you for the money.

Then I guess it would be dumb to say no.

Take my word for it.

Ok, then. I’ll do it.

One more thing.

What’s that?

I have a low tolerance for bullshit.

I didn’t think I had given him any reason to warn me about this. Sometimes people will blurt out something about themselves that they want other people to believe. Sometimes they just want to believe it themselves.

Chapter 2, Tripping Over One’s Own Fate

I almost forgot to explain why I am telling you all this. I want you to have all the facts. A person cannot make good decisions without good information, and later, you will need to make a decision.

Dr. Axel told me to allow a week for the background checks, and then to meet him at his office on a particular Saturday morning. I found the place along highway 17 just outside of town. It was one of those places you notice when you drive by and wonder what it is because it is so non-descript and secretive.

I announced myself to a speaker box by the gate and drove through a high concrete wall lined along the top with two parallel rows of barbed wire, one slanted outward at an angle, and the other slanted inward. I didn't know it then, but also along the top were parallel rows of metal spikes like fishhooks pointing downward in a v formation, so if anyone made it past the barbed wire to the top of the wall and set their foot down on it, they would be trapped and unable to extricate their feet without external assistance and some heavy tools.

The single-story building inside the wall did not seem as large from the outside as I discovered it was from the inside. The exterior walls were serpentine and curved out of view to be hidden by trees and shrubs. This was not some simple laboratory like I had expected, but was a huge operation with a lot of money behind it.

The receptionist, who could have passed for Dolly Parton’s sister, didn't ask me my name. You got some I.D.? she asked. She had a Midwestern accent. Pretty common in California in those days. I even had one.

I showed her my driver's license.

She took it and examined it while she asked me to repeat information that was on it, such as my name, address, and so forth. She had me look into a camera high on the wall as I did so.

Then she gave me a stack of papers to read and sign. After she got them back and compared my signature with the one on the driver’s license, she pressed an invisible button and I heard an electric lock snap open in the door to my left. She passed the signed papers through a small window behind her, but kept my driver’s license.

You can have it back when you leave, she said.

The door opened to a hallway, and at the end of the hall, through an open door, I could see Dr. Axel sitting at a desk. He waved me to come in.

You read the papers you signed? he asked.

I nodded.

Especially the penalties? he added.

They sounded serious.

Well, they’re even more serious than they sound. This is a top secret military installation, and if they ever decide they can't trust you, you will never be seen or heard from again. You may think I'm joking, but I'm not. They have no problem with killing people. It's their job. We are involved with national security, and when you put that on one side of the scale, and your miserable little life on the other, you might as well be weightless. I can tell you about this, now that it is too late for you to change your mind, unless you are suicidal.

So that's where all the money comes from. I thought you owned the lab, but when I saw the grounds, I thought the university must own it.

On paper, I own everything. If anything bad happens, I go to jail, or worse. The university knows about it, but the administrators have all signed the same papers you just signed. It’s a lot of money in everybody's pockets, but DARPA is paying for it all. I couldn't even tell you this much if you hadn't signed.

What's DARPA?

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They do a lot of cutting-edge research for the military. They've been doing a boatload of research at UCLA and other places to make a communications system they are calling ARPANet that can survive a nuclear war. Here, in this lab, we are trying to make a new weapon.

What had I gotten myself into? I was beginning to breathe a little faster. A nuclear weapon?

No. A biological weapon. It’s not something that can survive a nuclear attack. DARPA looks at defense from every conceivable angle. They look at anything that can possibly be turned into a weapon or used as a defense against a weapon.

A biological weapon? I wasn’t feeling any better about this.

He opened a folder on his desk and pulled out some black and white 8x10 photographs. He pushed them across the desk at me. They were of a man lying on his back in the grass. His face was missing.

Fuck me! Some kind of bacteria did this? I was starting to gag a little.

An animal did that. If you will notice, his arms are torn out of their sockets. The man's hands were bitten off while he tried to defend himself. The animal that did this is highly intelligent and extremely dangerous. Do you think you still want to work here?

God! Is it like a leopard or something?

No, but one-on-one with a leopard, and no ambushes, the odds are equal.

As I studied the photograph further, it looked as if the man's face had been bitten off. I could see that the edges of the skull had been crushed inward in distinct scallop shapes. Why did you pick me for this job? was all I could think to ask. I wasn't sure if I was cut out for this. I don't know anything about wild animals.

I had already ordered a preliminary background check on you, he said. I do that for everyone that spends any time with my daughter. So I already knew you were real. You are a very intelligent underachiever. You are in the right studies at school, so far. If you found something you could be passionate about, there would be no stopping you.

I should have thanked him for the compliments, but they kind of blew by me at the time. What do you mean 'real'? I asked.

There are a lot of other countries that would like to know what we are doing here. One way to try to find out might be to have someone hang around with my daughter. However, Denise doesn't have a clue what we do here. She doesn't even come here. She thinks we work with dogs and rats, and is not interested in such things. If she knew what we really worked with, she would probably go to school out of state.

What animals do you work with?

Actually we do work with dogs and rats, that is we did until we got most of the wrinkles out of our technique. We tested out our procedures on them before we tried them on anything as expensive as a chimp. Our primary subject is chimpanzees.

That's what killed that man?

Yes. The chimp escaped from his cage at a zoo, and the man tried to herd it back with a pole. Not a good idea.

How can you turn a chimpanzee into a weapon?

You need to see the movie. Come with me.

Dr. Axel led me down another hallway to a small theater. He began threading a strip of film into a projector at the back of the room. We use this room a lot, he said. We film the chimps so we can study their behavior over and over and analyze exactly what they are doing. I have seen this movie a few times, so I am going to leave you with it. Come back to my office when you are finished. Do you know how to turn the projector off?

I nodded and he turned out the lights and left the room.

After the introductory squiggles at the beginning of the film, there was some grainy footage of chimps in a large-walled compound. The film concentrated on active behavior, such as the rapid climbing of trees, an attempt by several chimps to catch a squirrel that had accidentally entered the compound, and an attack by a group of chimps against a single chimp. This was a brutal and frightening assault in which the aggressors bit the defender repeatedly, hit him, jumped on him with their feet, twisted his appendages, and afterwards, when he was near death and barely conscious, ripped off his genitals and left him bleeding to death. It made me physically ill to watch it.

This documentary type footage was followed by a crude black and white cartoon showing a troop of chimps carrying bayoneted rifles, dropping from a helicopter and walking together down a street along which the buildings were in ruin. It showed them leaping easily to the tops of walls to look down on the other side, and then shooting down into the unseen area. It showed a chimp in another segment in hand-to-hand combat with several human opponents, taking them out easily. In another series of short pieces, the animation showed a chimp hearing a faint noise and then turning and firing at a sniper in a third story window, and another one sniffing the air to find people hidden in underground bunkers. Then it showed them climbing rapidly up ropes to a helicopter above. The helicopter didn’t even have to land. I didn't miss the point that chimps would make great mop-up soldiers to send into dangerous urban areas.

I turned off the projector and went back to Dr. Axel’s office. There was another man sitting across from Axel. He was smaller even than me and seemed to have Asian ancestry. He had a large black and red spray-can hanging from his belt. He looked me up and down and then his eyes settled on my crotch.

You have a girlfriend? he asked me.

No, I replied thinking this was part of the interview, but wondering if the background check would not have told them this.

You have a boyfriend? he asked. You want one?

Dr. Axel broke out laughing. Su is a little light in the loafers, he said to me.

I prefer girls for loving and boys for fishing, I said.

Dr. Axel laughed again. Good answer. Su is our current head of animal maintenance. Our highly over-educated shit sweeper. He is going to show you where you will be working.

You have a nice package, Su said to me, looking again at my crotch. What a waste. Come. I show you the apes.

I followed him to a door that opened into a large circular room, empty except for some unused hospital gurneys. Several double doors led out of the room. Su walked up to one of the doors and pointed to the window in it. Surgery, he said. At another one, he said, Recovery room. I looked through the window and saw an unconscious chimp strapped to a bed with a tube in his arm and